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Will DirecTV move to H.265?

11K views 148 replies 26 participants last post by  P Smith 
#1 ·
Hope not. I'd hate to give up my HR20-700 w/ built in OTA.
 
#77 ·
No one broadcasts 40Mb/s bitrate like you can find in higher bitrate sections of BD disks. Even OTA broadcasts, which are the least compressed broadcast tv you could get into your home currently, maxes out around 18Mb/s(I think, maybe its 13) and most/many are still in MPEG2 format, with stations that are using their full allocated bandwidth for 1 primary and no sub-channels. 18Mb/s mpeg2 is equivalent to maybe 10-ish or so mpeg4.
 
#82 ·
ccrowe3;3173142 said:
And then DirecTV then reduces the bitrate further and seems to be trying to pack in more channels per transponder than they previously did. It is approaching Dish Network quality after some of the recent additions.
That is not the case. They found a way to use their capacity more efficiently without reducing picture quality.
 
#83 ·
Hoosier205 said:
That is not the case. They found a way to use their capacity more efficiently without reducing picture quality.
Magic?:D

DirecTV knows that most people are 'OK' with dumbing it down. DirecTV's bread and butter is in the middle of the crowd of people that perfectly are happy with squat-o-vision and over-compressed bit-starved crap. Many would be surprised at how many people think they are watching HD but aren't. The people that won't put up with over-cramming are in a tiny minority and DirecTV knows it and will continue to cram as much as they can into the space they have. Unless people start caring about it and letting DirecTV know they care bad things are going to happen....

DirecTV had HD-Lite for years so we know they are willing to dumb-it-down. It's only a matter of how much they will and how many people will complain to them about it.

The reasoning will be - we only need to do it 'temporarily' until we get the new birds in the sky....
 
#85 ·
Mike Greer said:
Magic?:D

DirecTV knows that most people are 'OK' with dumbing it down. DirecTV's bread and butter is in the middle of the crowd of people that perfectly are happy with squat-o-vision and over-compressed bit-starved crap. Many would be surprised at how many people think they are watching HD but aren't. The people that won't put up with over-cramming are in a tiny minority and DirecTV knows it and will continue to cram as much as they can into the space they have. Unless people start caring about it and letting DirecTV know they care bad things are going to happen....

DirecTV had HD-Lite for years so we know they are willing to dumb-it-down. It's only a matter of how much they will and how many people will complain to them about it.

The reasoning will be - we only need to do it 'temporarily' until we get the new birds in the sky....
This forum is full of PQ snobs... If DirecTV PQ was suffering there would be a lot of posts about it.

Edit to add... AVS Forum would be full of posts, too.
 
#88 ·
Laxguy said:
So, Mike, I might I conclude your PQ has diminished markedly over the last year? Or is your plaint largely leveled at the poor SD picture?
Nope - not that I have noticed but after the last round of 'HD-Lite' I expect to have lower picture quality sometime in the future. I figure they'll add more HD to cover more crap channels and at some point people will start to notice the picture quality going down....

My personal opinion is that it goes along with the speed of their DVRs. No need to spend money as long as the masses don't complain.

If I want quality I do Blu-Ray. I can't even use Dolby Digital with my AVR because there too many break ups - at least when I checked last. Sucks but somehow I don't think enough people complain about it to make even a little blip on their radar.

DirecTV is a corporation that has one goal - to make money. If they can cut down on the picture quality to save money and only get complaints from a fraction of their subs they will do it without even a tiny bit of hesitation. That is what the stock holders expect and that's what they'll get.
 
#91 ·
Mike Greer said:
I didn't mean to suggest that the PQ has gone down - only that it will.
I've been tracking HD daily for several years now and have seen no indication that this is or will be the case, especially with the D14 satellite expected early-2014. The future is always unknown, but the HD PQ area has been excellent for years, and appears to be very well thought out.
 
#93 ·
Mike Greer said:
Nope - not that I have noticed but after the last round of 'HD-Lite' I expect to have lower picture quality sometime in the future.
HD-Lite hasn't been around since they migrated the old MPEG2 HD channels to the MPEG4 versions so it's been a few years. IMHO it was a necessary evil back then, DIRECTV didn't have the transponder space to do it right back then so they were kind of forced into doing it just to be able to provide a limited number of HD channels. Times have change, there's now MPEG4, new KA satellites and newer encoders to allow for better utilization of bandwidth.

Mike Greer said:
If I want quality I do Blu-Ray.
OK, compare Blu-Ray with data rates that can go into the 20Mbps range to DBS where streams are usually under 10Mbps, something has to suffer.

Mike Greer said:
I can't even use Dolby Digital with my AVR because there too many break ups - at least when I checked last. Sucks but somehow I don't think enough people complain about it to make even a little blip on their radar.
I used DD all the time, one though a Denon via HDMI and another via TOSLINK to an Onkyo and haven't had the DD5.1 drop problem in many months.

Mike Greer said:
DirecTV is a corporation that has one goal - to make money. If they can cut down on the picture quality to save money and only get complaints from a fraction of their subs they will do it without even a tiny bit of hesitation. That is what the stock holders expect and that's what they'll get.
What corporation doesn't do that? If you're looking for a provider that's going to give you BR video/audio quality I don't think you're going to find any out there, maybe FIOS would get close but only a small portion of the US has access to it. Sure, DIRECTV could go and spend millions and launch a bunch of additional satellites and put two or three channels on a transponder but nobody would want to pay what that would need to charge for the service. Look at the folks that b*tch every year when their bill goes up $4 to $6 per month, forget DBS, I'm going to OTA and Netflix/Hulu downloads, $'s trump PQ for the vast majority of customers.

Just my two cents.
 
#94 ·
Sixto said:
I've been tracking HD daily for several years now and have seen no indication that this is or will be the case, especially with the D14 satellite expected early-2014. The future is always unknown, but the HD PQ area has been excellent for years, and appears to be very well thought out.
Hoosier205 said:
Considering how few HD channels are left to be added and the capacity they will have after the sat launch next year...I see no reason to believe that at all.
I hope you're correct - I just can't see DirecTV spending hundreds of millions in profit if they can keep that cash and lower the PQ a bit.

I don't want it, don't see it now, but I just see them trying to please us snobs when we don't have anywhere else to go....
 
#95 ·
RAD said:
HD-Lite hasn't been around since they migrated the old MPEG2 HD channels to the MPEG4 versions so it's been a few years. IMHO it was a necessary evil back then, DIRECTV didn't have the transponder space to do it right back then so they were kind of forced into doing it just to be able to provide a limited number of HD channels. Times have change, there's now MPEG4, new KA satellites and newer encoders to allow for better utilization of bandwidth.
But... When they try to catch up with cable's OnDemand who is to say HD-Lite won't become a necessary evil again? The bottom line is the most important.

RAD said:
OK, compare Blu-Ray with data rates that can go into the 20Mbps range to DBS where streams are usually under 10Mbps, something has to suffer.
I don't expect DirecTV to do Blu-Ray quality - it would be cool but won't happen!

RAD said:
I used DD all the time, one though a Denon via HDMI and another via TOSLINK to an Onkyo and haven't had the DD5.1 drop problem in many months.
I'll have to try it again - I've had it off for 6 or 7 months because it was too distracting.... Maybe it's fixed now. That would be good news.

RAD said:
What corporation doesn't do that? If you're looking for a provider that's going to give you BR video/audio quality I don't think you're going to find any out there, maybe FIOS would get close but only a small portion of the US has access to it. Sure, DIRECTV could go and spend millions and launch a bunch of additional satellites and put two or three channels on a transponder but nobody would want to pay what that would need to charge for the service. Look at the folks that b*tch every year when their bill goes up $4 to $6 per month, forget DBS, I'm going to OTA and Netflix/Hulu downloads, $'s trump PQ for the vast majority of customers.

Just my two cents.
Exactly! That's why I expect PQ to go down. PQ will be cut long before profits get cut.

I'm not saying they should be any other way - I'd like to have full bit rate 8K TV with lossless audio but I also live in the real world and understand people are not going to pay what that would take.

I think we are in agreement here!
 
#97 ·
Hoosier205 said:
...what? On Demand content isn't delivered by satellite. It would have no impact on this.
I didn't say OnDemand was delivered over satellite.

I'm saying it will be in the future - at least to some extent anyway.

DirecTV's current OnDemand is a laughable and hardly functional compared to what cable can do. Not because DirecTV doesn't want to make it better but it is a huge problem for them.

OnDemand is just about the only thing cable can and does do better than DirecTV. I'm sure DirecTV is working on some way to improve it but they have a long way to go and new codecs and delivering OnDemand over satellite is really their only hope.

At least I hope they are working on it....

I know a few people with cable that don't understand why people pay for DVRs... OnDemand from cable has massive massive content and it is instant, has all the perks of a DVR without having a DVR. Obviously not everyone feels that way - especially sports freaks.
 
#98 ·
Mike Greer;3173266 said:
It will be in the future - at least to some extent anyway.
What are you basing this conclusion on?

Mike Greer;3173266 said:
DirecTV's OnDemand is a joke compared to what cable can do.
I live in a substantial Comcast footprint and DirecTV's On Demand product is very competitive with it. I'd say DirecTV's might even be better after their HBO On Demand updates last year.
 
#99 ·
Mike Greer said:
I didn't say OnDemand was delivered over satellite.

I'm saying it will be in the future - at least to some extent anyway.

DirecTV's current OnDemand is a laughable and hardly functional compared to what cable can do. Not because DirecTV doesn't want to make it better but it is a huge problem for them.

OnDemand is just about the only thing cable can and does do better than DirecTV. I'm sure DirecTV is working on some way to improve it but they have a long way to go and new codecs and delivering OnDemand over satellite is really their only hope.

At least I hope they are working on it....

I know a few people with cable that don't understand why people pay for DVRs... OnDemand from cable has massive massive content and it is instant, has all the perks of a DVR without having a DVR. Obviously not everyone feels that way - especially sports freaks.
What is better about cables OnDemand that would be made better on DIRECTV by reducing PQ? Yes, cable OnDemand may have more content and HD content then DIRECTV but I don't see how reducing PQ on DIRECTV would help that? When I had cable a few years ago (Comcast) I didn't think it was that great since every now and then when I selected a program to view I couldn't because all the channels on my node for OnDemand were in use. DIRECTV's on Demand service isn't as instant as cable but with the new "Watch Now" feature HD program start playing within 10 seconds.
 
#100 ·
RAD said:
HD-Lite hasn't been around since they migrated the old MPEG2 HD channels to the MPEG4 versions so it's been a few years ...
Yep, 21 HD channels went "live" on 9/26/2007, will be going on 6 years soon, all has been fine PQ-wise for a long time.

And if anyone looks closely at this, DirecTV could have easily caved a long time ago and cut the quality. It's been wildly obvious that they've been sticking to keeping the quality, based on how they're carefully rolled out new HD.

As least for now, and based on what they've done daily for almost 6 years now, I've seen no indication of profit getting in the way of PQ. Profit may certainly have affected the quarterly capital cycle, and the carefully timed (and spread) roll-out over the years, but no indication of any quality sacrifices.
 
#101 ·
Hoosier205 said:
What are you basing this conclusion on?

I live in a substantial Comcast footprint and DirecTV's On Demand product is very competitive with it. I'd say DirecTV's might even be better after their HBO On Demand updates last year.
I'm basing it on the embarrassment that DirecTV calls On-Demand. Obviously I don't have any inside information.... I feel their pain - it's not like it is easy when you're dealing with a national distribution system rather than locally like cable... But they will have to change something if they want to keep calling it OnDemand and want to go head-to-head with cable OnDemand.

DirecTV can increase content - although they have a long way to go but the killer is how instant cable is.

DirecTV has more of a Demand Now-Watch Later system that requires a decent Internet connection to be usable at all.

With cable - at least around here - changing between OnDemand content is darn near as fast as changing channels. With Comcast I could take a quick look at 10 different OnDemand shows before I can get one OnDemand from DirecTV to start playing.... And that's with 50/5meg Internet speed.
 
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