[Guest]

I have dishnetwork and a PVR 508.

I hear from both fronts (D* and E*) that all these providers are overcompressing the hell out of their signals to squeeze more out of their satellites.

Why don't these providers just decide to eventually phase in some MPEG4 standard for everything? that way, they have space for HDTV, more local channels, and higher quality without the expensive of putting up more billion dollar satellites?


Will MPEG4 -ever- happen? Are there any ways to swap out decoder chips in any of the units to newer ones? or would all receivers have to be completely replaced? do any current dish or directv higher end receivers feature upgradeable codecs or swappable decoder chips?

I bet with MPEG4 you could more than quadruple satellite capacity overnight.

 

[scooper]

Never - Cost of converting ALL STB's makes this a non-starter. Not to mention that at the bitrates DBS is using, MPEG2 and MPEG4 are essentially equal.

What DOES hold promise is to convert from the current QPSK to 8PSK, similar to what Dish is doing for Discovery HD Theater. This will add about 30% more bandwidth (by the time error correction is factored in). But again, this will take a systemwide replacement of all IRD's.

 

[cnsf]

Wouldn't some sort of 8PSK adapter be an option than a general swapout?

Also, wouldn't a protocol/media change at the same bit-rate be a viable option? What would be involved in going to MPEG-4 beyond a software upgrade? Is there hardware decoding going on in un-upgradeable hardware?

I'm PC savvy, but not satellite savvy, so....go slow.....

;-)

 

[xavier]

mpeg 4 would only save a very limited amount of satellite space, the cost would be huge, cause first you got to replace every reciever on the field then upgrade the uplink center. the main purpose of mpeg 4 is two way communication, it would never happen.

 

[Guest]

Originally posted by xavier
mpeg 4 would only save a very limited amount of satellite space, the cost would be huge, cause first you got to replace every reciever on the field then upgrade the uplink center. the main purpose of mpeg 4 is two way communication, it would never happen.

maybe i'm mistaken. divx is derived from mpeg4, right? is mpeg4 very similar to divx in terms of compression efficiency?

I thought divx at least was miles ahead of mpeg2.. you can fit in 700mb the same quality level as probably 3000mb of mpeg2 ! i thought...

whats this about 2 way communication???

 

[Mike123abc]

MPEG-4 is better than MPEG-2 for very low bit rates (i.e. internet speeds). MPEG-2 falls apart when the bit rate goes below 200kbit/sec. But, when you are running 2-3Mbit/sec that satellite speeds are going, they perform about the same.

Going 8PSK would be the best way for DBS to improve picture quality because it gives them 30-50% more bits from the same transponder (depending how powerful the transponder is). Throw in turbo coding and you go even faster.

But, the issue is that current boxes do not talk 8PSK. Upgrading everyone for free without a merger does not seem likely. And people hate to pay for things themselves (look at the squaking about having to do the 8PSK for the 6000).

 

[Rick_EE]

From what I understand, for streaming video, MPEG-4 is better at error reporting and correction. Thus the required return path (two-way communication).