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How much British TV is shown in the US?

WPBA/30 in Atlanta shows 2 episodes MI-5 Monday nights. In late 2010 and early 2011, the station had shown more UK detective series nightly including Life On Mars.
 
Remember, "PBS" really stands for "Primarily British Shows".
 
At least in the digital age watching British shows has become a more pleasant experience.
In the old days the picture quality, once it had been converted from 25 FPS 625 lines PAL
to 30 FPS 525 lines NTSC, left a lot to be desired.
 
I remember back in the 1980's and 1990's KQED9 in San Francisco used to air more British shows. I know around the 2000's KQED inc decided to move more UK shows over to KTEH (now KQEH) and make KQED9 air more PBS network programs with exception of BBC-TV News.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
At least in the digital age watching British shows has become a more pleasant experience.
In the old days the picture quality, once it had been converted from 25 FPS 625 lines PAL
to 30 FPS 525 lines NTSC, left a lot to be desired.
Click to expand...

These days, with digital television, it's hard to discern what is NTSC and what is PAL / SECAM. I found out last year when we went to Paris on our honeymoon, and TV in France was close to fully digital -- it was practically impossible to discern a digital TV picture in France from that back in the US. This is unlike back in the analog days, in which imports from Europe looked blurry on an American TV.
 
On my first trip to Europe "back in the day", I was stunned how much sharper and "vibrant" the TV picture was over there. But now that everything is digital, I'm hard-pressed to tell the difference between the HD picture here and there.

My daughter and her (English) husband are not big TV watchers, so all they have in their London flat is a small old analog unit....which still produces a razor-sharp bright picture. (And even though she's not much of a TV addict, she does have a slingbox hooked up to our cable system here at home).
 
Firebird said:
WPBA/30 in Atlanta shows 2 episodes MI-5 Monday nights. In late 2010 and early 2011, the station had shown more UK detective series nightly including Life On Mars.
Click to expand...

WGBH 44 (aka WGBX) groups a number of British dramas under the English Channel umbrella, airing them on Monday through Wednesday nights.
 
In general, HD picture quality in Europe should be better than in the United States because most HD broadcasts there use the newer and vastly superior H.264/MPEG-4 compression standard rather than the now-ancient MPEG-2 standard still used by North American broadcasters. The difference, however, is primarily seen in terms of amount of noticeable macroblocking/pixelization and the bitrate required to obtain an adequate picture. NTSC/PAL/SECAM differences have all gone away, as those are all analog transmission standards.
 
cyberdad said:
On my first trip to Europe "back in the day", I was stunned how much sharper and "vibrant" the TV picture was over there. But now that everything is digital, I'm hard-pressed to tell the difference between the HD picture here and there.
Click to expand...

Yes, in the analogue days, over here it was easy to tell at a glance if a show was from the USA, before anyone spoke, as the picture quality, tbh, wasn't as good. With digital you can no longer tell the difference. Indeed some of the channels lower down the EPG have lower bit rates and hence lousy picture quality whether the show is from UK, the USA or wherever. The BBC have high technical standards but some of the commercial channels look dreadful even on a 22" screen. Frankly they've tried to cram too many channels in....


Oh and 'back in the day' I was always jealous of you guys- the handful of my school friends who had visited America came back with reports of dozens of channels to choose from, while we were still stuck with four. I guess I should have been careful what I wished for.



My daughter and her (English) husband are not big TV watchers, so all they have in their London flat is a small old analog unit....which still produces a razor-sharp bright picture.
Click to expand...

FWIW, the analogue signal was switched off in London around Easter time, so they will be using a converter box now. But yes, 625 line PAL could be very good, if you had a decent signal.
 
Anybody ever actually get a look at French television back when they were on the old
819 line system? I'm guessing it would have been eyeball-popping sharp in comparison to
what the US and UK were using.
 
In preperation for the Olympics I recently signed up for a service called UKTV2C which give me my own satellite receiver in London which I can control and watch anywhere using Sling technology.

The package I opted for includes HD and a DVR, so I can watch things on my schedule.

I find it surprising how much American channels they enjoy yet the only thing we get here in the states is old rehashes on BBC America.

The picture quality is excellent even on the HD channels. I am using a Boxee Box with the Slingplayer App to watch on my 50 inch television. (My internet connection is 30 mb down and 5 up from Cox Cable.

I can't wait to see the Olympics as they air in London. NBC is already ruining this years Olympics by once again turning it into the Michael Phelps is god show. (If you have watched the trials on TV the past few nights you will know what I mean.)

The start up costs for UKTV2C are high, but so far it has been worth every penny.
 
@BMR--

I understand in the 1950s or 60s they'd (BBC?) tried doing experimental colour broadcasts using the old 405-line system, using basically the same colour system used in NTSC. Did that ever catch on or did they just give up and keep it black-and-white until they discontinued 405-line service?
 
The 405 line NTSC broadcasts in Britain were experimental only. They never sold any 405 line
color sets on the consumer market. The VHF 405 line system continued to operate in black-and-white
until signing off in early 1985.

At the time they were conducting these tests, talks were already underway on a unified European
standard (which turned out to be 625 lines). And the UK decided to hold off on color until a more
stable system was developed, which turned out to be PAL. And by then they had made the
administrative decision to shift all television onto the UHF band anyway. So no investments
were made in upgrading the 405 line VHF system to color.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
And by then they had made the
administrative decision to shift all television onto the UHF band anyway. So no investments
were made in upgrading the 405 line VHF system to color.
Click to expand...

Yes I always strikes me as odd no use was made of the VHF band in the UK to offer additional channels. Potentially we could have had 2 more national channels on there, or a series of local TV stations.

But that's all irrelevant history now.
 
How about..
The Goodies
All Creatures Great And Small
Blake's 7
Kenny Everett Show
After Benny Hill, Thames Presents..

I wished we had Steptoe And Son and Till Death Us Do Part instead of Hollywood remakes though!
 
BBC America seems to be where most of the British shows wind up here. Other than that, my local PBS station airs Doctor Who on Saturday nights, and occasionally MI-5. Hustle aired on AMC a few years back. As for the big OTA commercial networks, they don't air any British shows.
 
...in the 1960s, you could find several British productions on the major networks -- The Saint on NBC, The Avengers and This is Tom Jones on ABC, Danger Man/Secret Agent and The Prisoner on CBS. I think the last time any of the networks ran a British-produced series in prime time was The Six Wives of Henry VIII on CBS and Alistair Cooke's America on NBC, both circa 1971. CBC has run the recent seasons of Doctor Who in Canada, but as far as the Stateside commercial networks, forget it...
 
Ultimajock said:
I think the last time any of the networks ran a British-produced series in prime time was The Six Wives of Henry VIII on CBS and Alistair Cooke's America on NBC, both circa 1971.
Click to expand...

ABC ran an ITC-produced miniseries, "The Strauss Family", in 1973. But after around that time, the only British-produced programming on the networks were either TV movies or specials, with series either relegated to PBS stations or syndication.
 
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