All of you bashers of VOOM's bitrate - checkout this link

[DarrellP]

Not if cable has better bitrate, or E* if they figure out what to do with HDTV and/or DarrellP keeps working with their Engineers. Does D* come over to you guys houses and play with your nipples for a few minutes every week or something? My god! :shocked

You know what guys? Dish and Cuban are listening and listening hard. Since I've been monitoring HDNET the last week and sending a report to Dish, HDNET has gotten back the WOW factor. Last night HDNET World Report was eye popping :shocked , this is what I desire with Voom. If they can achieve the same quality after they fire up the new codecs, I will be happier than a pig in sh*t.

 

[Walter L.]

Darrell, how Discovery HD compares in E* vs. V* today?

 

[Bruce]

This is from Darin at AVS:

Originally posted by Darin
The problem is, you are comparing two different numbers. As you can see by Lyngsat, Voom is running 22000 characters per second. They are running 8psk modulation, which gives them three bits per character, and 5/6 FEC. Multiply all that together, and you get 55Mbps per transponder, times 13 transponders (715Mbps total). If we assume 2.5Mbps for SD channels, at roughly 90 channels, that leaves 490Mbps for 37 HD channels (13.2Mbps average, within the 12-16 number you've seen).

Go through the same process for DirecTV, and we see that they are running 20000 cps, at QPSK (2b/c), and 6/7 FEC. That results in 34.3mbps. If we look at DirecTV's worst case (Show/HBO/HDNetM), where all three are on one transponder, that's 11.4Mbps. When you look at their 2 ch/xponder cases, they're at 17.2Mbps.

The mistake everyone is making is they are looking at Cheezmo's average bitrate numbers, calculated from recordings he's extracted off of the HD-TiVo, and adding them up to get 28Mbps total per transponder. While those may be good numbers, they aren't comparable to the calculations above that show Voom to be at 13.2/ch average, or DirecTV to be at 17.2 or 11.4/ch. I was confused by this at first too, but I've learned there's a lot of overhead that's still not being taken in to account by the initial calculations: Reed-Solomon encoding is a big chunk of it, packet headers/trailers, PID flags, data for guide data, channel mappings, channel authorizations, maybe some headroom left by the stat-muxing encoding for bandwidth demand peaks, and maybe some other stuff I still haven't learned about. These aren't things we typically think about, but they are necessary regardless of the provider. But since we don't have a way to record Voom, we have no way of seeing the real net numbers that are actually used just for the programming. But just because we don't know what those numbers are, doesn't make it a fair comparison to use Voom's gross numbers compared to DirecTV's net numbers. Voom has an advantage in their proprietary channels... those they have the option of pre-encoding, maybe even at lower resolution, probably saving bandwidth for other more important channels.

The whole point is, they are fairly comparable in the grand scheme of things.. one may have the advantage on one channel, while the other does on another. But because we don't have easy access to the actual resolution or final bitrate of Voom programming, no one has complained about those numbers. Now that the cat's out of the bag with DirecTV, everyone is up in arms. We all want the best quality we can get, and there's nothing wrong with complaining if we feel we aren't getting it. But do it based on your viewing experience, not because of the numbers you saw on an internet forum. And if you're going to start pointing fingers and saying X is better than Y, make sure you're comparing apples to apples.

 

[Bruce]

You know what guys? Dish and Cuban are listening and listening hard. Since I've been monitoring HDNET the last week and sending a report to Dish, HDNET has gotten back the WOW factor. Last night HDNET World Report was eye popping :shocked , this is what I desire with Voom. If they can achieve the same quality after they fire up the new codecs, I will be happier than a pig in sh*t.

HDNet and HDNet movies are on 1 transponder-12311 R/tp 7/
SR 21500/FEC 2/3

TNT-HD,HBO-HD and HD-PPV are on-12399 R/tp 13/
SR 21500/FEC 2/3

and SHowtime-HD,Discovery-HD and ESPN-HD are on-12457 R/tp 17/
SR 21500/FEC 2/3
got the info at:

http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/dish110.html

Also from AVS:

Originally posted by dr1394
21.5 Msps * 3 (8psk) * 2/3 (FEC) * 188/204 (RS code) = 39.6 Mbps

39.6 / 2 = 19.8, so HDNet and HDNet movies are getting "full" bitrate.

39.6 / 3 = 13.2, so HBO and Showtime are getting nearly bits they got in
the past.

Ron

 

[Dvlos]

Voom has to move on their new Sat. and the codecs, they could acheive that eye popper like Darrell said, and be the PQ king in DBS. They have to focus on it, and not clutter their Exclusives and Website with ads that they have "Crystal Clear" the Best HD right now.

 

[DarrellP]

Darrell, how Discovery HD compares in E* vs. V* today?

Even though Dish is running DiscoveryHD with 2 other channels on the same transponder, it still looks better than V*, which is quite noisey. When I was talking to the Dish engineer last week, he told me they worked very hard to tweak DiscHD so it would look good. There is still a big PQ difference when changing from any HD channel to HDNET.

 

[Dvlos]

3 on 1 TP, they have to be filtering DiscHD, it must look softer. Actually I hardly ever spot noise on DiscoveryHD, maybe because I've also seen EquatorHD.

 

[DarrellP]

The noise is not at all like EquatorHD, it's much less but it is there. If I turn it on Voom and watch it, I don't really notice it but it seems something is missing and when I tune to Dish, the image is much cleaner and makes the noise on Voom really stand out. I'll try to remember to do a comparison tonight and post the results.

 

[Dvlos]

Are you comparing DVI to component, DVI to DVI, or component to component? It would seem the b/w available to V* and E* for DiscHD is the same, the only thing that could be different is any pre-filtering that they are using.

E* should change their name to the HDNet Provider as they are the only one dedicating everything to it.

 

[DarrellP]

Component to Component. I don't use DVI for Voom since it is so noisey, it makes all the flaws jump off the screen, whereas Component softens it a bit so it's not so bad.

 

[Walter L.]

Component to Component. I don't use DVI for Voom since it is so noisey, it makes all the flaws jump off the screen, whereas Component softens it a bit so it's not so bad.

I really depends on the display. It has to do with the ability of the display to handle analog vs. digital signals. In my case, DVI looks much better than component. There is much more detail. Everyone should try both and decide what is more convenient.

 

[DarrellP]

I agree, Walter, the DVI is MUCH sharper, that's why I don't use it, it really shows the background noise due to Voom's lack of bandwidth. Voom would look spectacular if they would allocate full bandwidth to it. The mosquito noise is much bigger at 110", very annoying, like a bunch of bugs crawling all over my screen. Every channel has them to SOME degree, but Equator is the worst.

 

[vurbano]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=444673 :shocked :shocked :shocked :shocked :shocked

Yeah I am having quite a debate in there. Really outnumbered too. I just cannot believe how they support this. Sacrificing 160 hours a week of reduced PQ for an 8 hour a week pay subscription.

 

[Walter L.]

I agree, Walter, the DVI is MUCH sharper, that's why I don't use it, it really shows the background noise due to Voom's lack of bandwidth. Voom would look spectacular if they would allocate full bandwidth to it. The mosquito noise is much bigger at 110", very annoying, like a bunch of bugs crawling all over my screen. Every channel has them to SOME degree, but Equator is the worst.

You should add this to your HT
Seriously, I feel your pain. Let's hope that V* increases bandwidth if it makes it to the WM9/H.264 transition.

 

[Dvlos]

Some people are such die hard D* fans they will seriously take HD-lite up the rear and then thank D* for it.

 

[Sean Mota]

Some people are such die hard D* fans they will seriously take HD-lite up the rear and then thank D* for it.

Here's the latest example: d* downressing hd makes some sense

I do not want to generalize my statement to apply to all AVS members but there are some that feel that this ok.

 

[vurbano]

Here's the latest example: d* downressing hd makes some sense

I do not want to generalize my statement to apply to all AVS members but there are some that feel that this ok.

I agree. The only conclusion I can draw is that AVS is chock full of fanatic Sunday Ticket subs?

 

[Dvlos]

vurbano you're up against some people who don't have ST, apparently they take their HDTivo's to their bedroom for some menage'a'trois.

 

[DarrellP]

You should add this to your HT
Seriously, I feel your pain. Let's hope that V* increases bandwidth if it makes it to the WM9/H.264 transition.

Here's the real deal. And it's ONLY $3495!! Voom should issue one with each stb they send out.

 

[Dvlos]

Holy crap DarrellP that cures everything? Man suddenly I think I want this more than a PVR.