MPEG4 Transition - What does it mean for BEV subscribers?

  • Thread starter Thread starter I_Want_My_HDTV
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*ahem*

Dish has been seeding their customer base with MPEG4 HD receivers, plus aggressively replacing the HD MPEG2 receivers in customer homes with new MPEG4 receivers, since Jan 2006. Where do you suppose those "refurbished" 6100s are coming from? You can buy a new 6100 at BB for $299 or one that was previously used by some family in Arkansas for a few months and then dusted off and repacked and shipped to Canada for $249 -- and still be stuck with MPEG2. Now there's a deal not to be missed: $50 off for a used HD receiver that is already obsolete for Dish and soon to be obsolete in Canada the dya you buy it. Thanks, Bell.

Yes, BEV uses the same technology: but so far ZERO customers have MPEG4 and until some substantial number have it (by buying/renting/swapping receivers), no one will see those MPEG4 signals. Which HD channels are you willing to see go to black and pay the same amount until you buy a new box?
 
They are a little more aggressive with the MPEG4 transition but they still have very few MPEG4 signals. Dish will not activate an MPEG2 receiver even though they aren't planning a full transition to MPEG4 until 2009. Dish also makes customers pay an upgrade cost to obtain an MPEG4 receiver. There are people who spent up to $1000 for Dish's early HD PVRs. One model was so bad it was pulled from the market after only 6 months. I doubt many people with older HD receivers and PVRs are very happy there either. Dish and DirecTV are currently using MPEG4 for local stations. That's hardly a requirement since they can usually be picked up OTA. If EV told me that I couldn't use my 9200 to get their MPEG2 channels anymore, I would be rather upset. It would be even worse if they wanted as much or more money for a receiver upgrade than they want from new customers for the same hardware.

As far as transitioning goes, many who went through the Nimiq2 (82) satellite upgrade can tell you what a mess that was. EV had very few HD customers at the time. Even so, some people had to wait months for the upgrade. Appointments were missed as were people who should have received the upgrade but didn't. Many gave up waiting and paid for it themselves. Others, like me, were told they didn't qualify and had to pay for it themselves. Now that EV has 10 times the HD customers with many being added daily, I wonder how well it will be handled. They will need to perform not only a satellite/dish upgrade but also a receiver upgrade in 2009. That should be fun. :rolleyes:
 
I belive ALL signals would be closer to the truth.


Not true, BEV will accept whatever you supply and convert to their needs .
Too bad a large amount of compression is usually involved.



I totally disagree, years ago we were moving NHL games from Boston to Vancouver on analog microwave links, you could not see any loss of PQ. What has changed is the standards have been greatly lowered in transmission systems, an easy way to keep costs low is to compress the hell out of a signal and don't worry about the viewer. Conversion from analog to digital at a high level is transparent, I challenge anyone to disprove this. just beacuse a signal is digital does not make it better, in most cases, BEV included, the analog source is of much higher quality than the delivered digital. Anyone that knows of statistical multiplexing will know what I mean.

We are dealing with a generation of people on a large that are happy to watch VHS and video on cell phones, that has to change before the suppliers will increase the quality, all a matter of more low quality signals = more $.
A small group demanding higher quality, does not threaten the masses that will watch and pay for crap.
 
We heard rumours about the USB ports on EV boxes for years and none of them came true. Even the limited uses available to Dish customers never got implemented by EV. :(


They put the ports there to get people excited. They are always marked "future use", but never get used for things people would get excited about. :rolleyes:

One use could be VOD over DSL but I doubt that will happen because Dish is not a phone company and could care less about DSL.

Streaming audio or video? It will never happen in Canada due to rights limitations imposed by copyright holders. We can't even get that on a PC from many US sites and more are being blocked as time passes. Even if EV wanted to do it, they would probably tie it to Sympatico and that is way overpriced.

Connect PVRs together to share files? Maybe, but probably not due to encryption concerns and implementation issues. (You want Dish to do that when they can't even get a stand alone PVR to work properly? :rolleyes: ) File sharing with PCs or networked disks certainly won't be allowed by copyright holders.

Any other ideas?
 
Comments like that won't win you much creadability around here. You have no way of knowing what the game plan is at the various BDU's so that is just a lot of wind.



In order to get that third you are going to have to swap out almost all the receivers any ways. At that point you might as well just get it done.
 
Sure, I was just reporting my initial impressions and found it to be neither better, nor worse than existing signals out there.

I guess I missed making the point that just because it's MPEG4 doesn't make it fool or bulletproof.

Really a opportunity to reset any expectations perhaps to something more realistic.

I'll need to spend some more time with a carefull eye.

At least now with 4 different HD PVR's, I'm in a position to do some decent comparisions as they are all routed through the same switcher, so comparisions are easy and valid between either providers or broadcasters.
 
Charlie Ergen won't give up the hardware business - he's too cheap!

I am sure sooner or later, Echostar will take all the pirate FTA manufacturers to the cleaners.

But you are right about open source hardware equaling or surpassing OEM equipment. You can probably make that statement about any open source technology.
 


Well it should mean more choice, as has been discussed MPEG4 uses less Band Width than current MPEG2.

Will Express Vu give the paying public this.?

I don't think so it will have a price tag attached.

I look forward to the new receivers, after all I have purchased every single receiver I have in the house, 3100, 3200, 5900, 5200 and the 9200. I have paid out over $1500 for these units, so hell, what's another few hundred $'s..... Just have to convince the Mrs. that MPEG4 is what we need...... And that the Sirloin is just way too extravagant.....lol

NImiq 1
 
True, a transition has to take place and Bell engineers and senior management knew that very, very clearly in 2004 and 2005. They chose to believe HD would role out much slower than it has and bet that their satellite roadmap -- which is fixed several years in advance -- would allow for increased capacity in time. They were wrong.

Bell's transition plan is the only one they can follow, as a practical measure: introduce MPEG-4 capable boxes as quickly as possible for all new shipments of HD equipment, notify all stakeholders of the transition with proper lead times, and develop some swap program for existing customers. The transition might include launching premium new HD services ONLY in MPEG-4 -- like additional sports or movie channels.

Bell has backed itself into a corner with very little extra capacity so they don't have the option to deliver the SAME channel in both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. Plus, if you swap out old boxes sooner than natural obsolescence, you have an interesting logistical problem getting boxes to the right customers in time.

Bell has suggested it is doing exactly what Star Choice has already done: move new technology boxes into the market for 18 months or two years before making a switch and then allowing the oldest boxes to be replaced for a small fee. Star Choice only has a fraction of existing HD customers to swap as most already have the right hardware for their 8PSK transmission change. Bell is still at the starting gate, hence the 2009 timeframe before they launch any MPEG-4 signals.

If they have 200,000 HD customers today, two years from now they will have 400,000 or 500,000; and some of the 200,000 will already have migrated up (switching from HD to HD PVR for example). But they will still have to tread cautiously on how to deal with the 150,000 or so customers on HD MPEG-2 only. Contrast that with Star Choice and its insight to move early: they probably only need to upgrade 10-15,000 HD customers out of 110,000 today.

Don't despair: Bell has a plan, and will get there, and have a significant presence in the Canadian and HD market. But thanks to the botched vision and execution, it won't be till 2010 or later that they can put this whole sorry mess behind them; and not till around this same time that they have genuine flexibility again in HD launches and product re-definition.

Bell's greatest risk: neither Star Choice nor their major cable competitors will be sitting on the sidelines twiddling their thumbs for the next three years.

Adding the launch of Nimiq 5 for new HD in the 72 slot in 2010/2011 doesn't make this matrix any easier to manage successfully.
 
Probably through legal means, but that won't curb the zillions out there.

He's cheap for sure or tough when bargaining with programmers.
He has no qualms about just turning off a channel if the deal isn't right.
How many had to watch Biography while he fought it out with CourtTV?

Anyways, it's less than a couple of months away for the next highly anticipated MPEG4 ready HD FTA box from our Viewsat friends.

This should do as well or better than the famous Sonicview that's been out and running well for some time.

At least they told their users the s/w was beta, will the new Bev MPEG4 units need a maturing period as well?
Echostar's s/w track record has some major blemishes and when Bev tinkers and removes features that their infrastructure can't support, what does that do to things?
 
If Bell continues to use Echostar as their supplier of receivers, they will have no choice but to go MPEG4 for HD at least. Surely the 9200/942 has been phased out of production by now.

And to switch to another supplier will be very costly and wrought with problems. Bell's encryption relies partially on receiver firmware and the related proprietary chips. Trying to get Motorola or the like to produce something compatible that is not ridden with bugs is nearly impossible and not a good way to introduce a brand new offering of HD receivers.
 
Sure you wern't thinking of some of the new FTA boxes that automatically update after an ECM via the ethernet port connected to the internet?

Even easier than a USB flash drive, can you beat those Koreans?

Sad to say, but Echostar's technology is starting to lag behind the free market system, just as many have speculated and hoped for.
 
Interesting, I didn't know that.
Ys, 3 more TP's would alleviate a lot of tension the subs are currently feeling about their future with BEV HD.
But as you said, it likely isn't practical to move other Telesat customers, especially since Telesat isn't under the BCE umbrella.

I find an FTA unit a great utility/tool to scan for signals and they are a lot smaller.
I needed to locate some signals on a quirky stacking system for a comercial install and a blindscan was the answer.
No decrypt needed, just signal identification.
Love those little USB units and a laptop, cat's a$$!

The 72.5 for French only would allienate the WESTERN francophones.

So it seems that all the experts agree that unless Bev has a rabbit in their hat, they are pooched for the near term.
 
Do you know if this set-top box will handle 8PSK in addition to MPEG4? For some reason, all the HD FTA units they are producing don't support 8PSK.

What is so special about 8PSK? Correct me if I am wrong, but 8PSK is a non-proprietary modulation scheme, no?
 
If MPEG4 is on hold until 2009 then I don't understand why they don't atleast make the move to 8psk. Way cheaper to pull off and would atleast give them some though not much elbow room. If they did it with SD it would give them a lot more room but older STBs would have to be swapped out whole sale.
 
They forgot to mention all the bugs they intoduced when they rolled out those new features they were talking about. But that is another thread as well.

If this is true it is definitly bad news for Bev on the HD front. I guess they could always pull some SD channels. Country Canada comes to mind. But the number of SD channels you need to pull to get an HD channel would seem to make that unlikely. They could also scale back on the PPV. But with the new report showing it making more and more money that isn't likely either.

They could always crank up the compression more but that will tick of the users and risk them jumping ship. I still see 8psk as being their easiest short term option outside of doing nothing. I doubt it would take a year to pull off. The most worry some thing for me is that they don't seem to care.
 
I was out by a factor of 2. :eek:

In any event, there is no way EV is going to get 65 HD channels with their current setup. If they employ their usual fuzzy logic and count seasonal channels and other part time channels, it might add up to 65 but it is not 65 full time HD channels.

Taking a peek at Lyngsat reveals that all 32 transponders are used for SD channels at 91
 
Aren't all HD units BUT the 6000 8PSK already?
So any swap there would be trivial and don't they have an abundance of 6100's?
I think that's the 6000 replacement.

Given the # of TP's already dedicated to being Canada's HD leader, a 50% improvement could go a long ways until they get their $h1t together.
 
Bell won't switch all HD programming to MPEG-4 overnight. At most, it will target small groups of HD customers at the same time as signing up all new customers with MPEG-4 capable hardware. Dish still offers most HD channels in MPEG-2 even thought they are in the midst of transition to MPEG-4.

Most current hardware -- all of it MPEG-2 -- will continue to deliver all SD programming from Bell well past its useful life.

Even if Bell, two years from now, had switched most HD programming to MPEG-4, and still had MPEG-2 hardware in stock that was originally intended for HD -- those units could be rented to SD customers. The 9200 would make an excellent SD PVR -- two tuners, lots of recording space.

Maybe Bell will move all non-network channels to MPEG-4 and leave only the nets in MPEG-2 for another 4 or 5 years. I wouldn't get upset about what Bell might do until it impacts you directly.
 
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