BEV to BEV-HD Transition questions

[goalie81]

Hi everyone,

I've been an ExpressVu subscriber in the USA (Maryland/DC area) for about seven years. Now I'm getting ready to make the jump to HD, so I'd like to get some advice from the experts here, especially those who may have already completed their transition to HD programming.

* Should I expect issues receiving the HD signals in my location?

* Can I or would it be worth it to reuse my 60cm round dish by adjusting the pointing or is it better to just get new hardware for outside?

* Are there any special cabling issues I need to worry about when routing the signal from the LNB to the receiver? Perhaps maximum cable length, type of cable used, etc.? I can offer my house's internal wiring works great for both BEV and DirecTV, with my signal strength hitting the mid-90's on both.

* If I get a receiver like the 9200 with PVR, do I need to pay a monthly fee to use the recording capabilities? It would be nice to record in HD but I wouldn't use it enough to justify a monthly fee. I'd love to be able to program it myself like a VCR instead of an interactive guide w/season pass that I'd never use for example.

* Any other issues I should know about?

Thanks!

 

[Derwin0]

I can receive all the transponders in the York, PA area, so you should be okay.

As for monthly fees, Bell does not have a DVR fee at all, but the HD pack is $20/month though.

 

[Mr Tony]

* Should I expect issues receiving the HD signals in my location?

you should be fine. I'm in Minnesota and the signal is fine. Its when you get to the deep south or west coast that there are issues

* Can I or would it be worth it to reuse my 60cm round dish by adjusting the pointing or is it better to just get new hardware for outside?

does the dish right now have 2 LNB's or just one?

* Are there any special cabling issues I need to worry about when routing the signal from the LNB to the receiver? Perhaps maximum cable length, type of cable used, etc.? I can offer my house's internal wiring works great for both BEV and DirecTV, with my signal strength hitting the mid-90's on both.

you need 2 lines to the 9200 so take that into consideration

* If I get a receiver like the 9200 with PVR, do I need to pay a monthly fee to use the recording capabilities? It would be nice to record in HD but I wouldn't use it enough to justify a monthly fee. I'd love to be able to program it myself like a VCR instead of an interactive guide w/season pass that I'd never use for example.

no extra fees for the DVR capability

 

[Jumbo Dumbo]

Expressvu has gone HD Lite : 3 signals/transponder for an average rate of less than 9 MB/sec.

Make sure that you can live with that before you shell out the $$$$.

 

[RVD420]

Expressvu has gone HD Lite : 3 signals/transponder for an average rate of less than 9 MB/sec.

Make sure that you can live with that before you shell out the $$$$.

9 MB/sec for 720p isn't that bad. It isn't that great either.

 

[scrooloose]

HD Pack is $10/month, not $20.

Also, you might want to consider the 9242 receiver instead of the 9200.

-Mike

 

[Satellite Expert]

9 MB/sec for 720p isn't that bad. It isn't that great either.

I was at a retailer who had 2 identical Toshiba 42" HDTVs setup - side by side - one with a 9200, the other with DSR530. Looking at Habs game on RDSHD, it was quite apparent where the phrase Compressvu came from.

9 MB data rate is certainly not "Full HD" as Bell likes to advertise even after they downrez it to 720p and 1240.

 

[goalie81]

Wow...fantastic replies- thanks everyone!

To answer Iceberg, my current 60cm dish has one LNB, so I'm guessing that limits my options (all new hardware required), right?

As for the 9MB rate, that is most disturbing based on what I've been reading. The *only* reason I have ExpressVu in the first place is for the hockey and the international sports coverage (live programming of the Olympics, figure skating, etc.) I'd love to see the side-by-side demo of ES and BEV of that Habs game mentioned earlier.

But BEV remains the only place I can get all the games from the NHL and NFL, plus the CBC Sports/TSN right? Even with a compressed signal, I'd have to say that sadly, the programming wins out over the quality for me at this point.

What I have now is both non-HD versions of BEV and DirecTV. I was hoping to go HD with just BEV and drop DirecTV since BEV offers all the programming I watch (okay, except for C-SPAN...) As long as the quality was the same between DTV and BEV for NHL and NFL games, I figured it's a toss-up. Given the cost of maintaining both as HD, I suspect I can tolerate 9MB rates of BEV.

But I'll do the math and see if DirecTV (w/NFL + NHL packages) augmented with ES for CBC/TSN works for me. At least there's options...

Cheers!

 

[diogen]

Expressvu has gone HD Lite : 3 signals/transponder for an average rate of less than 9 MB/sec.

To compensate for the reduced bitrate, BeV changed its encoder and switched to a variable GOP length. The movie channels used to have a constant 15 frames distance between I-frames. The latest Lowry-restored Bond series that started showing on MPXHD (Thunderball and Goldfinger) can have GOPs as long as 90+ frames.

This improves compressability, but if an I-frame is corrupted, you can lose as much as ~4 sec of footage.

For comparison, HD DVD has a 15 frames GOP and Blu-ray - 24 frames (maximum length).

Group of pictures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Diogen.

 

[SJ44]

Interesting info.

 

[clayface1000]

Diogen, would this explain why I'm having frequent "MPEG incompatible" error messages when trying to author HD-DVDs from my modified (169time) receiver? I never used to have problems until the past month or so.

 

[diogen]

Diogen, would this explain why I'm having frequent "MPEG incompatible" error messages...

No, not because of the variable and/or long GOP. It is still within the standard.

But the quality of the stream (nothing to do with the quality of the picture) is really gone down...

I think BEV's biggest problem is the encoding process, in particular muxing the audio and video together.
The audio has often gaps: when the stream is re-synced empty audio frames are inserted if it is out of sync.
Those gaps can really screw up software analysis of the resulting recording.

And when talking about the quality of the picture: Lowry did of course an outstanding job in restoring the whole series,
but with BEV's under 7 Mbps ABR streams (tonight's "You Only Live Twice" and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"),
it can look only so good... Heck, superbit DVDs have higher bitrates...

Diogen.

 

[clayface1000]

Thanks for the reply, Diogen. The only way I've been able to get ULead MovieMaker to accept my Expressvu HD MPEGs recently is to run it through Womble's GOP Fixer first. Unfortunately, as you said, there are all sorts of sync issues, which manifest themselves as momentary video freezes -- which I never used to get.

Any suggestions on how to smooth this out? Live viewing is fine; it's just the recording of the stream and the resulting HD-DVD that have all these problems.

 

[diogen]

I don't think there is a simple way to fix this, especially considering how many different variations of "screw-ups" BeV has up their sleeves...

I use VideoReDo. Start with a simple Fix Stream. It does the job 60-80% of the time. Sometimes MPEG2CUT2 works when VideoReDo doesn't. They both create an I-frame at the cut point.
In the end, I encode the movies into VC-1 (WME9 or Expression) or H.264 (using x264) to fit onto SL/DL DVD, depending on size/length of the movie. Unfortunately, many encoders will only start on an I-frame and don't like audio gaps either.

Diogen.

 

[clayface1000]

Thanks, Diogen! I've been using VideoReDo's quick fix, which used to be very effective. But as I said, in recent weeks, it rarely seems to render a file that can be authored.

I'll give MPEG2CUT2 a try and let you know what happens.

 

[diogen]

It looks like the annoying audio dropouts on MPXHD lately were due a hardware fault on BEV's equipment...
TMN HD & MPIX HD on BEV--> Constant Audio Drop Outs - Page 2 - Digital Forum

Diogen.

EDIT: "The Man with the Golden Gun" had half as many errors but still plenty...

 

[clayface1000]

Diogen, I tried running MPEG2CUT2 and it still get a message from ULead MovieMaker5 that says the MPEG is incompatible. I've tried everything I can think of. Notwithstanding sync issues, I can't even get the program to process the file. Up until a month or so ago, I was able to author HD-DVDs with no problem at all. Any suggestions?

 

[diogen]

...I tried running MPEG2CUT2 and it still get a message from ULead MovieMaker5 that says the MPEG is incompatible...

Then it must be a MovieMaker limitation. I've never used it.
What are you using it for? Converting the recorded hidef movie to regular DVD format?

Diogen.

 

[clayface1000]

No, I'm using it to create a compliant HD-DVD. There's a lengthy thread about how to do this at the AVSForums site. I've had great success with it for the past year -- no problems at all until recently. I thought something might have changed with the stream, which you confimedin your earlier post, which caught my eye.

Even when the file through Womble's GOP fixer (the only program which seems to work), the resultant mpeg is filled with sync problems. Again, this seems to jibe with what you said about the variable GOP lengths.

 

[diogen]

The issue hasn't been fixed, just the number of errors dropped. Or maybe it was a fluke (see the link above).

Try recording something from VuHD1-4. It has a low bitrate as well but doesn't show as many errors, sometimes none.

Diogen.