Banner Question

[GreatFTA]

I have been noticing on the banner on bottom of screen (when changing channels or picking INFO on remote) these letters and number:
Beneath the channel number and name of channel, there is a list consisting of:
REC channel lock ...etc..then to $ D HD and the one that got me curious the letter or number square.
Most of the time a A would be there. But there is one satellite that has scrambled channels and instead of A, the numbers 3 or 4 appears.
What does the A and the numbers indicate?
Also the is a A with a satellite dish next to it. This is next to the signal and quality bars. What's that mean?

 

[hd fan]

the A with the satellite dish means tuner A , remember the AZ P+ could have an optional tuner B installed.

the other A I have seen numbers as well and is related to parental ratings though I have not been able to see the logic behind them.

The HD icon only lights up if the user select the Insert HD Flag for that channel by pressing the menu key with agreen light on the front of the P+.

there is also the third icon which lights up when CC info is present and the 4th one when Teletext service (not used in NA OTA but widely used in Europe OTA even 12 years ago) is present.

 

[GreatFTA]

Thanks HD!

 

[hd fan]

well one can assume that maybe the AZbox follows the ratings as defined on the European DVB standard but unfortunaelly the next link is broken nowadays.

http://www.dvb.org/metadata/cs/ParentalGuidance.xml

As per the ETSI web site (European regulator) the ratings are sent within EIT tables and these are an explanation of its descriptor. So who knows, it could be that those numbers are being wrongly sent in the stream (I do not think that that programming was for 3 or 4 year old kids) or maybe the AZbox is wrongly interpreting them. I would assume that A means All because 0 was used as the age or the parameter was undifined as per table 75(0x00). the rating descriptor is an 8 bit field indicating the minimum age so 0x09 means for 12 years old and 0x19 means for 9 years old. It will be interesting to use a PCI card and TSReader to extract the info on the stream. (see table 75) . Most channels it shows A though , rarely you see a number on it.

6.2.28 Parental rating descriptor​

This descriptor (see table 74) gives a rating based on age and allows for extensions based on other rating criteria.​

Table 74: Parental rating descriptor​

Syntax Number of bits Identifier​

parental_rating_descriptor(){
descriptor_tag​

​

​

​

8 uimsbf​

descriptor_length​

​

​

​

8 uimsbf​

for (i=0;i<N;i++){
country_code​

​

​

​

24 bslbf​

rating​

​

​

​

8 uimsbf​

}
}​

Semantics for the parental rating descriptor:
country_code:​

​

​

​

​

This 24-bit field identifies a country using the 3-character code as specified in ISO 3166 [41]. Each character is coded into 8-bits according to ISO/IEC 8859-1 [23] and inserted in order into the 24-bit field. In the case that the 3 characters represent a number in the range 900 to 999, then country_code specifies an ETSI defined group of countries. These allocations are found in TS 101 162 [i.1].
EXAMPLE 1: United Kingdom has 3-character code "GBR", which is coded as:
"0100 0111 0100 0010 0101 0010".​

rating:​

​

​

​

​

This 8-bit field is coded according to table 75, giving the recommended minimum age in years of the end user.​

Table 75: Parental rating descriptor, rating​

Rating Description​

0x00 undefined
0x01 to 0x0F minimum age = rating + 3 years
0x10 to 0xFF defined by the broadcaster​

EXAMPLE 2: 0x04 implies that end users should be at least 7 years old.

 

[LocutusOfBorg]

there is also the third icon which lights up when CC info is present and the 4th one when Teletext service (not used in NA OTA but widely used in Europe OTA even 12 years ago) is present.

I've always been curious about CC. A program would display the CC symbol on the screen but there's no closed captioning on FTA. I remember when I could never get closed captioning on DCII (4DTV) channels but I've noticed that CC is now present on DCII. Kind of strange the way CC is done.

 

[hd fan]

well there are acctually lots of channels that indeed have close caption on their programming or some of them (Cubavision on Hispasat 30W for instance has them on US made movies and series, I have even seen teletext service on some channels on the Spain mux on that bird) but you need a CC compatible receiver. both coolsats I have allow me to see CC if I use the A/V output but not if I use the HDMI on the CS8100. HDMI based CC receivers are apparently hard to find even among pay cable and satellite TV services (my Bell 9242 display CC1 via HDMI but not CC2 yet if use A/V they work ok.). You still have to enable CC on your TV menu though.

Maybe the AZbox only works with digital CC (called 608 and 708 I think instead of line 21 as in analog).