MPEG4 Transition - What does it mean for BEV subscribers?

  • Thread starter Thread starter I_Want_My_HDTV
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That's NOT the point. I agree with you that unless you're sitting damn close to a 50" HDTV, you won't notice the difference between a native 720p feed and a native 1080i feed. However, IF YOU'RE DOING ON-THE-FLY REALTIME RE-SIZING with anything less than an IBM Z-series mainframe, you WILL notice "re-sizing artifacts". This applies regardless of whether it's 720p==>1080i or 1080i==>720p.

One of the things that caused problems for Global with NFL games was that they were upscaling a 720p feed to 1080i in realtime. For the SuperBowl, Global purchased a raw 1080i feed in order to avoid re-sizing artifacts. This was after the brouhaha over a playoff game earlier on.
 
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Not realy true, the normal Fox feed to Global was a pre encoded 19.3 mb/s feed, normally meant to go directly to the viewer, just the way Fox likes to do things. Everyone knows that when a signal is encoded at this point it cannot be reprocessed and encoded again. The dist superbowl feed was received at 35 mb/s and allowed them to process and encode it with lower loss.
 
What I would like to know is whether BEV is going to skip plain MPEG4 and go straight to h.264... That would make the most sense, especially for the consumer. We would be getting more channels that don't have to be transcoded to a lower bitrate, giving us the most channels and the best quality possible. Instead of what happens now... When a sports match of some kind is on, all of our other HD channels have their bandwidth stolen to beef up the sports HD... Which is unfair to those of us who would rather eat razor blades than sit through a game, and pay the same amount of money per month.



.... although I realize it isn't possible, and would be bad for business... it would be ideal if BEV could dump all MPEG2 content and switch over to MPEG4-AVC ( aka h.264 ) completely... SD h.264 requires very little bandwidth which would leave a ton of room for HD content. When I am encoding SD, 1.7 Mbps-vbr is more than enough, and 4 Mbps-vbr is adequate for 720p, and 6 Mbps is adequate for 1080i.... compared to often more than twice ( sometimes 3x ) that for MPEG2...
 
I could see them doing something along the lines of what they did when they brought in sat.82.
Subscribers of channels that were switched to 82 got a free dish upgrade, at least I did. I'm not saying, if you say subscribe to a HD Movie channel, and that channel is moved to MPEG 4, you'll get a free new receiver, but you may be the first offered a deal on a new receiver.
 
A switch to 8PSK is an option, as pointed out, since only some of the HD boxes in market lack the ability. However, Bell must also ensure its commercial partners have enough notice to upgrade facilities. This is a minimum of one year, I'd guess, to accomplish if the goal is to move ALL current HD channels to 8PSK -- which still brings us to a mid-year 2008 solution. In any case, current management have not signalled they have any intention of moving to 8PSK at the moment.
 
The only thing BEV has going for it is that they still have the most HD at this time. I have 1.5 years left and we will move if the content is not there. I am typical, I rent and have no ties once my contract is up if the content is not there we will move providers. Only wish we had Rogers in Manitoba. Bell or Bull no difference than any other provider in Canada, they are all crappy!!
 
I had a chance to examine and compare a mixed bag of HiDef DVB DBS signals broadcast in N.A. and here are the empirical results for those that may find it useful.

In each case 1 minute of programming was captured and analyzed

Encoding Format FPS Bitrate Filesize
MPEG2 720p 25 564019 Kbps 48128K
MPEG2 1080i 60 663552 Kbps 101520K
MPEG4 720p 30 503885 Kbps 63920K
MPEG4 1080i 25 300810 Kbps 37600K

The decoder indicated the MPEG4 was H.264
Also of interest was both 1080i's were NOT 1920x1080 as expected but 1440x1080

It's difficult to draw any conclusion.
While the 2 720p signals had comparable bitrates, the MPEG4 file was LARGER.

It appears that encoding bitrate has the largest impact and not the encoding algorithm.

The signals are using technology 100% compliant with BELL's current and future offerings.

How THEY choose to implement it is an operational decision and it may vary, for better or worse than those used by their technology partners undertakings.

How does this translate into increased capacity for a b/w strapped provider?
Judging by the result, not very well.
If my interpretation is correct then expect even greater HD compression to fit the bill. (I hope I'm wrong)
Will they offer unsuspecting Canadians HD-Lite?
What about what appears to be 720i and not 720p?
How does Canadian law address consumer rights to full and complete HD and not some watered down inferior grade consumer version while other players use full resolution commercial grade signals?
Would that be acceptable perhaps at a reduced cost?
 
As an operator of a Bell commercial installation, I get routine email updates and visit their commercial support website and there is yet to be ANY indications of needing to upgrade my rack of Tandberg receivers.
They are deliverying both SD & HD signals.
I've even asked directly. Nothing, Nada, Zero, Zilch, Zippo!

In these type of situations, any changes don't just affect a single subscribers viewing habbits, but in many cases can affect entire communities, so it's very prudent to provide ample lead time for any changes.

Of course this is precisly what's happening in the SBS (formerly Cancom) deployment of 8PSK.
They need to inform and deliver new receivers to all headend customers.
Since this type of equipment is generally not in as plentiful supply as consumer products are, they lead time is much greater.
 
a new communication was sent out today to clarify some of this, and even mentioned Hugh's article.

the new hardware is expected to be out in Q4 (a new HD receiver and a new HDPVR).

both of these models will support MPEG4.

MPEG4 isn't expected to be launched until sometime in 2009 (times up nicely with the new Nimq4 satellite).

the new HD receiver (replacement for the 6100) will add HDMI output...it will also support a new EPG.
HDPVR will add 5 extra hours of HD recording capacity and an SVideo output.

the company wanted to clarify that the differences in the new hardware will be minimal, and that customers shouldn't "wait for MPEG4" as it is still a couple of years away.

i think it makes sense to clarify the information...as a customer wanting to make a move to HD can know that the equipment they have now won't be "obsolete" in a few months...the last thing you want is holding off on HD, only to find out there isn't a need to hold off at all...if you have the TV, get the HD box and start enjoying all there is with HD.
 
I am sorry but with out more information that comparison is some what meaning less.

First keep in mind that there are many settings that you can apply to an MPEG X encoder that will allow you to compress as much as you want. With out knowing more about the settings used the above is meaningless. One could be set for higher compression than the other. The other issue that comes off the top of my head is we don't know what was in the stream.

The way most encoders work is they look for things that have not changed since the last frame and write some code to describe that. That way you don't have to keep resending the same information. What is remaining is then compressed.

This is not lossless compression so the more you compress it the more detail you loose. The amount of compression is settable. The difference between MPEG2 & 4 is the amount of detail you loose for the same amount of compression. With MPEG4 you loose less detail getting to the same amount of compression. Or to look at it another way you can compress more and get the same detail.

Now back to your files. If some one pointed a camera at a white wall and the camera didn't move and the wall didn't move you could record it in 1080P @60 frames a second , pass it through an MPEG 4 encoder set for very light compression and still get a very small file because nothing is changing from frame to frame. The first frame would be large because all of the information has to be passed through for it. After that though almost nothing has to be passed because the image doesn't change much.

Now take an image where a strobe light is flashing very quickly, record it in 720P @ 30fps and pass it through an MPEG 4 encoder set to squash it hard (loosing a lot of detail) and you might end up with a much larger file than the previous example.

For more info try this link.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/reviews/MPEG-4-the-multi-media-format-of-the-future-

Hope that helps.
 
The CRTC regulations for digital TV say that the BDU must pass the digital signal on to the end user in the same format and quality in which they receive it, with no degradation.

The current problem is that ExpressVu seems to be skirting the regulation for some 1080i channels via a loophole where they say the conversion from 1080i -> 720p is being done by the broadcaster before it's delivered to Bell.

That could be true in a couple of cases (ex. Global-HD and maybe CTV-HD), but the last time I checked they were still delivering CBC-HD and HDNet to customers in 720p, and there's no way either of those broadcasters are converting their 1080i signal to 720p for ExpressVu.

In short, the regulations are there to protect the viewer from signal degradation, but nobody seems to be holding ExpressVu accountable on the matter :(.
 
That makes perfect business sense and yet they caused all sorts of grief upon themselves.
Hopefully they learned a valuable business lesson that you can't dick around with people anymore.
 
they did...they asked he pull the article, as it wasn't accurate...he refused, and the rest is history.
 
Interesting news. First the MPEG4 transition was last Fall, then this Fall (with receivers available Q2). Now it is 2009 with receivers available Q4. Will someone at EV pleeeease make up their mind?! In the meantime, where are the new HD channels such as MPIX HD, National Geographic HD and Bravo HD? And what about AMC and TCM? Does EV expect its customers to wait until 2009 for those as well? :confused:
 
I was always of the understanding that BEV/DN was simply a standard DVB-S using the Nagra conditional access?

DVB-S defines QPSK, 8PSK and 16-QAM as being compliant. The forward error-correction uses a convolutional inner code with a reed-solomon outer code. While they don't specify what the inner code must be (only that it is a convolutional code, typically viterbi), they specify the rates though.

Since Turbo code is a block code and by no means proprietary, either I'm wrong about them using DVB, or you are regarding their 8PSK implementation.

Again, I was under the understanding that part of the reason that BEV/DN is so easy to hack is because they are using the DVB-S standard so the only thing that really needs to be done to hack it is to bypass the CA.
 
I always though that DVB-S didn't include 8PSK, while DVB-S2 did.
While Turbo FEC may not be proprietary, since only DN is using it in N.A., it sends up a red flag if it were to be included in a FTA box if one is to believe they are mostly being used legitimately.

Either way, the points made remain valid.

I can tell you also in the business and suspect you may well be correct on those specifics, if so I stand corrected.
 
It sounds like EV could stop FTA piracy by replacing a few 6000's and implementing 8PSK. *C is already doing this. The fact that EV is not (and not gaining extra HD channels in the process) indicates that EV is no longer serious about stopping piracy or providing more HD to its paying customers.
 
DVB-S not only includes 8-PSK, but 16 QAM as well. Just that most homeowners wouldn't want the 2.4 m or 3.6 m dish required to receive them.

DVB-S2 is much more efficient so they can use the higher modulations while maintaining similar Eb/No thresholds at the receiver.

Regardless of which modulation and FEC technique and coding rate they use, it would only be a temporary fix. Broadcom has a chipset available that has pretty much all industry standards implemented (including DCII). The weak point is the CA.

From my understanding part of the reason that DCII is so secure is that Starchoice doesn't directly generate the receiver authorizations. All of those are still generated by Motorola. They've kept such a tight leash on that scheme that they don't reveal any information to thier customers than they absolutely have to.
 
Thanks for the clarification.
Yes the Moto SAC and the ACC, nice bunch of people down down.
I've been in the room, kinda weird, almost a separate entity from Moto, but still in the same building in S.D.

And I'm not convinced that dropping the 6000's and moving to 8PSK will buy them much, maybe a little needed bandwidth and of course the 6000 supports the now much sought after 8PSK module that is being raped and pillage to work in the new HD FTA units that like you say, have the latest chips to support MPEG4 and everything under the sun.

Wouldn't that be a hoot, ship a boat load of 8PSK modules out for all the 6000's, then folks will cancel en masse and replace them with SV-8000's and VS-8000's, drop in the modules and be 8PSK AND MPEG4 ready before Bev is.
 
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