Earl, quick question ...

Yes and no...

MPEG-2 ones probably will, as they will then have the bandwith to stop "tweaking" the resolution.

MPEG-4 will pretty much stay the same, until:
1) They update your local encoding center
2) Get direct access to the original source material from the affiliate (right now, they tap into the same MPEG-2 signal you can get via OTA)
3) The MPEG-4 codec encoding systems improve (and are upgraded)

They will "probably" relax the level of compression a hair, but nothing to drastically change the picture.

Earl Bonovich said:

Yes and no...

MPEG-2 ones probably will, as they will then have the bandwith to stop "tweaking" the resolution.

MPEG-4 will pretty much stay the same, until:
1) They update your local encoding center
2) Get direct access to the original source material from the affiliate (right now, they tap into the same MPEG-2 signal you can get via OTA)
3) The MPEG-4 codec encoding systems improve (and are upgraded)

They will "probably" relax the level of compression a hair, but nothing to drastically change the picture.

Click to expand...

Just curious, why are the Hd pack Mpeg-2 channels (ESPN HD, TNT HD) so much worse than the satellite Mpeg-2 channels (NY locals in the 80s). I've seen some NBA games on ESPNHD that are so bad they're almost unwatchable and yet the NY locals are pretty good eventhough they're also Mpeg-2.

I don't know why they dont' have a consistant compression/resolution on the different MPEG-2 ones.

It is not the MPEG-2 technology, it is how they are implementing it in different cases.

Earl Bonovich said:

I don't know why they dont' have a consistant compression/resolution on the different MPEG-2 ones.

It is not the MPEG-2 technology, it is how they are implementing it in different cases.

Click to expand...

True it's very weird. The NFL game last night was pretty good. I feel like that on the HD shows that are watched a lot like the NFL games and especially the Super Bowl and other big events the picture is really good. Then on some of the lesser watched stuff like a routine regular season NBA game the compression is super dialed up and the picture is atrocious. It's frustrating as a customer to get such inconsistent quality but as I said before I'll be with Directv until my SD Tivo units die and can't be fixed.

What is the difference between MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 ???

In layman's terms, these are different schemes for compressing an original high-quality piece of video (which in its original state would be quite large in size and therefore would require a lot of bandwidth - either to download on your puter or from a satellite). MPEG-2 is the standard compression used for DVD Movies and Videos. MPEG-4 is a newer generation of the same thing which allows you to maintain the quality found in MPEG-2, but at a further reduced file size, allowing you to fit more video into your bandwidth stream. D* is banking on MPEG-4 to fit more HD programs into the stream coming into your HR-20 for instance.

Halsey101 said:

What is the difference between MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 ???

Click to expand...