MPEG2 vs MPEG4 on the 921/924 question..?

[socceteer]

I was talking to a friend who just installed a new plasma and wants to jump on the HDTV wagon. He wants to wait until the new DVR that supports MPEG4 is available and he was told that the Direct TV Tivo HD DVR supports MPEG2 and MPEG4 and all that it was needed to use MPEG4 is to get a antenna that points to the new satellite which will broadcast the MPEG4 channels.

Is this true...?
Is this also True for the Dish 921/924...?

I thought that the recorder was the one that needed to be replace.

Can someone share some light on this subject..?

[Ron Barry]

My understanding is that the HD Tivo DVR is not MPEG4 compatible and I know for sure the 921 and 942 are not. Box swaps will be needed all of them. That is my understanding.

[Cyclone]

MPEG-4 has nothing to do with which antenna or which satellite. Antennas and satellites don't care about that level of encoding and will just pass along the signal without any problems.

None of the existing HDTV boxes have the MPEG-4 decoder chip in them yet. The chips one went into mass production last winter, so up until now it was too expensive to put them in the boxes that are currently on the market. There are a lot of logistics involved to cut over the existing millions of SD & HD customers to MPEG-4 so look for this to be done in a series of phases.

The first phase will likely be customers of HDTV locals via satellite. Since this is a new offering, no one will have existing service impacted and will just have to upgrade to receive it.

The second phase would be new national HDTV channels only availabe with MPEG-4 supported STBs. Existing customers would have to upgrade if they want the new channels, but won't lose any of their current HD channels.

Phase 3 .... Migrate existing HD channel and offer new SD channels in MPEG-4

Phase 4 Migrate existing SD channels to MPEG-4

Phase 5 etc... You get the picture

The HDTV Tivo, the 921, & the 942 do not have MPEG-4 so they would each have to be replaced to show any new MPEG-4 HDTV channels. So does you friend want to wait for that? It might not be important until next winter or even later. He'd miss a lot of good HDTV programming. Also if he gets decent local OTA channels, there is a lot of HD there that won't go away when MPEG-4 happens.

I'd say that he things he would be happy with whats out there today, then by all means get a HDTV DVR today. But also keep any open mind that he may want/have to upgrade within a year if he's the type who wants to be on the early adoption edge.

There will likely be an upgrade path laid out by Dish and DirectTV to upgrade to MPEG-4 equipment. I'd expect around a $200 - $300 fee on this.

[socceteer]

That is What I thought..thanks for the information

[lakebum431]

Do you really think it will be that expensive for customers that already have the 942s? I"m going to be pretty irritated if I have to fork out another $300 to keep getting the same channels that I get now, especially since I've already paid for the 942...