Dish Earnings Conference Call and reported HD Plans...

[HokieEngineer]

Charlie can go stick his head back up his a**. What about 6000s? I've kept mine around, all the problems people have with the 811 and 921 give me NO incentive to upgrade. My 6000 works and I can live with the few bugs. I get a great picture and it works. They better come up with a mpeg4 module to replace the 8psk.

I cant imagine if I had bought a 921. I'd REALLY be pissed. What the hell is wrong with this company? The right hand has no clue what the left is doing. Charlie goes and says something so stupid about Mpeg4, I bet their engineering dept is like "wtf, we dont even have the hardware!". Whenever they DO release a box, I bet its filled with more bugs than Win95.

The only channel Comcast is missing right now is HDnet. However, they have InHD. It might be time to sacrifice and let Charlie say we mean business, by depriving him of our cash. Money talks!

 

[Frank Solich]

So let me get this right, I have E*, have had E* for a while and if I want to stay with them and then get the new HD MPEG4 I'll need to "BUY" a new reciever from E*?!?!? WTF???

More and more reasons to move to D*.

More and more reasons to move to D*?

When I was shopping around for HD service the only reason I went with E* was because they offered free 811s.

I called D* and they told me to go to Best Buy and PURCHASE an HD receiver if I wanted to get HD programing from D*.
I couldn't even buy an HD receiver by calling D*. Talk about a "WTF?".

 

[GregN]

Seems to me they could have a PCI card Chipset for under $100.00 that would do realtime MPEG 4 HD encoder/decoder to plug into the 942 and 921.

http://www.electronicstalk.com/news/adl/adl135.html

The PCI-MP4S is a video compression development kit that combines excellent real-time image acquisition with an advanced MPEG4 software video compression algorithm.

 

[NightRyder]

Seems to me they could have a PCI card Chipset for under $100.00 that would do realtime MPEG 4 HD encoder/decoder to plug into the 942 and 921.

http://www.electronicstalk.com/news/adl/adl135.html

The PCI-MP4S is a video compression development kit that combines excellent real-time image acquisition with an advanced MPEG4 software video compression algorithm.

Interesting, but not HD.

Here is a blurb from the Extreme Tech review of the 921.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1630586,00.asp

The three cards on the left are the tuner cards. Curiously, three PCI slots are visible, but unused. It's likely that PCI wouldn't have had the bandwidth to handle the aggregate throughput needed to view and record two HD channels, even compressed.



NightRyder

 

[jsanders]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1630586,00.asp

The three cards on the left are the tuner cards. Curiously, three PCI slots are visible, but unused. It's likely that PCI wouldn't have had the bandwidth to handle the aggregate throughput needed to view and record two HD channels, even compressed.

Huh? There are three tuner cards, two sat cards, one OTA card. With those, it WILL allow you to record two HD channels while viewing a 3rd program. Shipping 921s do this. If it can do it, then there should be enough PCI bandwidth.

Why is an MPEG decode different from SD and HD other than the size of the resulting frame? They both have an incoming stream of bits that get descrambled and double checked. I suspect they both have i-frames and p-frames. I suspect they both do the same transform to move the energy to the upper left hand corner of the screen. Why does there have to be a difference?

 

[jsanders]

Also remember that the box must be able to encode and decode at the same time.

Why does it need to be able to do an MPEG encode? That is a lot more difficult to do.

 

[John Kotches]

jsanders says:

First, the 921 is a computer running Linux. Second, five years ago, my 400MHz powerbook could do an MPEG2 decode an play a DVD movie in software. The results were fine. The 921 isn't top of the line computer, but it should more horsepower than a 400MHz powerbook did.

The MPEG2 decode/scaling is highly intensive for CPU utilization. It is likely that this is done on an ASIC, not by the general purpose CPU.

Cheers,

 

[jsanders]

The MPEG2 decode/scaling is highly intensive for CPU utilization. It is likely that this is done on an ASIC, not by the general purpose CPU.

I agree with you, however, I was stating a case that didn't use an ASIC. Companies will try to do whichever is cheapest. If the ASIC is cheaper than a fast processor with software development costs, they will use the ASIC.

 

[trido]

No room dont believe it

The quote from the call said no capacity until they launch new satellites next year... since the new 105 bird has already been 'launched', does that mean it won't be used at all for HD? That was my question.

I just dont believe they cant add one lousey channel UNIVERSAL HD?

Well if Insight would add TNT HD back I go .

trido

 

[BFG]

Wow this thread has been bombarded with engineering talk, it's going right over my head

I always feel lost when people start talking so complex in the forums

But hopefully they can add Universal HD, they still haven't used TP 19 for anything except the elections app since the olympics, and it was once an HD TP before all the channels except HDN/HDNM got crammed on 3 channels per TP. I would like to see Universal and move TNT back to that TP.

 

[hongcho]

> Why is an MPEG decode different from SD and HD other than the size of the resulting frame? They both have an incoming stream of bits that get descrambled and double checked. I suspect they both have i-frames and p-frames. I suspect they both do the same transform to move the energy to the upper left hand corner of the screen. Why does there have to be a difference?

To put it simply because you are trying to compress 100% more without sacrificing the quality. To achieve that MPEG-4 High Profile (and WMV9) employs various "tools" (or encoding techniques) and this "complicates" the process.

If you are not convinced by the developer's minimum requirement, then I guess you won't be convinced, period.


> I agree with you, however, I was stating a case that didn't use an ASIC. Companies will try to do whichever is cheapest. If the ASIC is cheaper than a fast processor with software development costs, they will use the ASIC.

True. However, a software solution will never be "cheaper" in the long run for this type of signal processing. A hardware solution can be impossible because there is no such solution, but it will become cheaper once it's available.

Hong.

 

[jrbdmb]

Very poor/stupid customer service? Yes

Grounds for legal action? Highly unlikely.

You would pretty much have to have a written statement from Dish that guaranteed the 921 would never become obsolete.

NightRyder

If you purchased a 921 for $1000 and were not informed at the time that Dish Network had already decided that all future HD programming would be incompatible with your receiver, and that in effect Dish had already rendered your receiver obsolete, I do think there is a major problem with that.

I'm not aware that Dish Network has announced these plans (except on the conference call), and I doubt the CSRs are aware of this, so as we speak subs may be picking up the 921 without knowing it is a dead end product (Not eveyone reads Satellite Guys, after all ) .

 

[jsanders]

Did you understand what I was asking? I asked why can't an MPEG4 HD decode use the same process as an MPEG-4 SD decode? You just replied with:

To put it simply because you are trying to compress 100% more without sacrificing the quality. To achieve that MPEG-4 High Profile (and WMV9) employs various "tools" (or encoding techniques) and this "complicates" the process.

That doesn't answer the question. MPEG-4 uses an advanced video coding (AVC) compression process that cuts the bit rate by as much as 50% for the same image quality as MPEG-2. Wouldn't "100% more" suggest there aren't any bits left? The MPEG-4 standard is not just about video, it is more versatile than that. It can encode and transmit multimedia content that can include video, text, sound, and animation as independent objects, allowing each media type to be handled independently for maximum efficiency.

It uses several refinements of the general MPEG compression scheme that provide additional compression efficiency, including spatial compression at the pixel level as well as in the frequency domain.

That is how it gets better compression efficiency when compared to MPEG-2. It seems that this standard should just be able to take a stream, SD or HD and decode the bits. That is why I asked the question.

If you are not convinced by the developer's minimum requirement, then I guess you won't be convinced, period.

Did you state what the developers minimum requirement was? That would be a good thing to know. Show us a link, some sort of reference telling us what the requirement is for a Linux box. I would appreciate it.

However, a software solution will never be "cheaper" in the long run for this type of signal processing. A hardware solution can be impossible because there is no such solution, but it will become cheaper once it's available.

Is there a typo in there? You said a software solution won't ever be cheaper, but you don't state why you believe that. If the software was written, and you've got extra hard drive space that doesn't cost anymore to use, then why would that be more expensive?

In all honesty, I think it is a long shot to think software could do it, but it is worth asking the question. Unfortunately, nobody has offered any proof that it can't. Because you say so isn't exactly proof. A mips rating for an MPEG-4 decode would be very helpful, along with the mips rating for the 921 processor at its current clocks speed. A developer's minimum requirement for a Linux box would also be good.

 

[SimpleSimon]

I forget the exact number (800-850MHz?), but I know the 921 CPU is less than 1GHz. It's an Intel clone - IBM/Cyrix/Via.

I find it amazing that the 921 has a CPU that was obsolete when they designed the box. On second thought, no I don't - just typical E* crapola.

 

[hongcho]

jsanders,

Just look up a bit in my previous post in the previous page. I did include the link www.wmvhd.com which states the minimum requirement for WMV9 HD. That was what I meant by "developer" (Microsoft being the developer of WMV9). I have a suspicion that it may not satisfy your curiosity, though...

We are only talking about the video codec portion of the MPEG-4 standard, aren't we? I am not sure why you brought up the other codec and system aspects of the MPEG-4 standard which have no bearing on the efficiency of the MPEG-4 video codec because I doubt the broadcasting industry is going to use the "blue screen" stuff anytime soon.

Anyway, MPEG-4 video codec has many variants and they are not all created equal. AVC or Part 10 (or later amended High Profile) is different from MPEG-4 ML that have been in use for a while. MPEG-4 ML is mainly designed for low bitrate transmission and has been implemented in software for many OS.

MPEG-4 HP implements many other techniques geared toward the high definition application. It was originally called H.264/MPEG-4 AVC/MPEG-4 Part 10, but due to a texture reproduction issue compared to WMV9, they came up with High Profile (originally called FrExt).

I don't have the "MIPS" number. But from what I read on the testing HD satellite broadcast for one of the European DVB organization, MPEG-4 HP required definitely more computing power than WMV9. So, the minimum system requirements for WMV9 on www.wmvhd.com.

I said the software solution wouldn't be cheaper in terms of comsumer electronics. Once the compute intensive part of the algorithms is put into an ASIC, the chip will be a much cheaper component than can be put together in a general purpose system. Think of a PC system that can play WMV9 as required by www.wmvhd.com and a future HD-DVD/Blue-Ray player. Sure the PC system would be more general purpose, but for the WMV9 decoding purpose only, it will be more expensive.

Oh, one last thing... For a computationally intensive process such as signal processing, the OS (whether it's Windows or Linux) matters less, not anything, but much less than the number crunching ability.

I hope you find the answer you are looking for.

Hong.

 

[waltinvt]

Very poor/stupid customer service? Yes

Grounds for legal action? Highly unlikely.

You would pretty much have to have a written statement from Dish that guaranteed the 921 would never become obsolete.


NightRyder

Not necessarly and not when you look at "E"'s presention of High Defination as a whole over the past year. There is plenty of evidence to establish certain "reasonable" assumptions and expections on the part of customers that invest in Dish's equipment and programming. Class action suits have been won on far less.

That aside, I think Charlie is playing poker again - he has to be because if he's not, he has basically just announced the beginning of the end of Dish Network as we know it.

I don't believe it's coincidence that this is happening right before congress must decide to enact new SHVIA legislation before Dec-31st.

I hope Chuck has something up his sleeve because if he doesn't, the outlook is pretty dismal.

 

[bdemz]

Can't justify it.

I almost did it then I heard of the MPEG4 thing and the fact that DISH will not be offering anymore HD anytime soon.

How can you justify it, if it will not receive new HD channels if they are ever released?

 

[NightRyder]

Not necessarly and not when you look at "E"'s presention of High Defination as a whole over the past year. There is plenty of evidence to establish certain "reasonable" assumptions and expections on the part of customers that invest in Dish's equipment and programming. Class action suits have been won on far less.

IMHO: Class action suites are basically worthless when it comes to compensating the consumer or even punishing the offending corporation. The lawyers get rich, the company settles with no admission of wrongdoing and the consumer gets (in this case) some meaningless credit towards future Dish equipment or more likely some PPV coupons. All this after 5 or 7 years of legal wrangling.


NightRyder

 

[nippjas]

I almost did it then I heard of the MPEG4 thing and the fact that DISH will not be offering anymore HD anytime soon.

How can you justify it, if it will not receive new HD channels if they are ever released?

Guys, this is worth getting cheesed about only if it is true. There has been rumors and past discussions on MPEG4 and what it means to us. And frankly E* has not formally announced the full scope of how this will impact users or otherwise, as such this discussion is speculation and unsubstantiated. I agree we need E* to address our concerns, but I highly doubt this would render any of our receivers useless overnight.

AMC-15 had been launched...Fact
Another Bird is on it's way up....Fact
These birds have been planned for additional HD for some time...Fact..although I'd like to see the channel assignments for them, I'm fairly confident we will see additional content.

I will say that we will likely not see HD locals as these are likely to be MPEG4.

Now I can remember this kind of thing happening before, Like the cellphone industry when they launched Digital Edge/TDMA/CDMA, analog was still functional during this transition and actually analog is still active. Other manufacturers are trying to rollout GSM to standardize North America with the rest of the world...That's a fairly slow process.

Let me add that the development of these MPEG4 receivers is not complete...They could be a ways off product launch yet?

In summary we are making assumptions because we don't have all the info...BTW to the stop whining and switch to D* guy....I hear D* is working on a new compression protocol too, for those new planned birds for all HD locals...etc.... E* is not alone in the race for space....

Just my 2 cents.

Jason

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Guys, this is worth getting cheesed about only if it is true. There has been rumors and past discussions on MPEG4 and what it means to us. And frankly E* has not formally announced the full scope of how this will impact users or otherwise, as such this is speculation and unsubstantiated. I agree we need E* to address our concerns, but I highly doubt this would render any of our receivers useless overnight.

Jason,

We are only going on what the Chairman and CEO of Echostar said yesterday on his SEC Earnings Call. And what is said is now on the record. While some people are blowing things up to be bigger then what they may be, I don't feel they are too far off the mark considering what Mr Ergen said on the record yesterday.

Dish needs to supply answers and it would be best for them to do it soon, the longer they go the more the speculation grows.