Is the HD OTA Signal Using MPEG2?

[mignognarl]

I have a question in regards to the OTA signal. When the local station broadcast a signal and gets a HD feed from its affiliate. Is the signal converted to MPEG2 before it broadcast out to the airways? If so, will they converting to MPEG4 down the road?

[BFG]

Just a little background to your question to try to spread more info.

There is actually always 2 things that go on when transmitting digital video by both satellite and OTA

The first thing is the compression of the video. Right now they all use MPEG2.

The other thing that is done to send the signal is how the transmission is encoded.
The transmission encoding that OTA uses is 8VSB
The transmission that satellite uses is QPSK(D*) and 8PSK(E* and V*)
Cable uses QAM

What E*,D*,and V* will be doing is taking the MPEG2 video signal the receive and be compressing it even more into the new MPEG4 stream so they can fit more channels.

The OTA networks and all others like ESPN etc will not need to change to MPEG4 because they don't have the bandwidth problems.

So the video compression that is sent OTA will remain MPEG2 for a while.

[mignognarl]

Dumb question, is it a vantage for the broadcaster to send the local OTA signal in a MPEG4 format? Better HD picture and less data that needs to be transmitted?

[BFG]

Well if they wanted to start making money with things like internet OTA and selling bandwidth to folks like USDTV then yes. But im pretty sure they have to follow the MPEG2 standard that has been set...