Is Dish ever going to 1080p for all broadcasts?

[TheForce]

OTA Broadcast TV will never see another paradigm shift in technology that requires a major upgrade in both broadcast and receiving equipment. The reason is the OTA RF Broadcast business model won't survive the future generation's shift to internet or IP broadcasting. Local TV is ad based revenue and unless they can find another income source their business model just won't survive without public funding, i.e. another government spending drain and another cause for tax increase to keep broadcast TV alive.

As a licensed Broadcast engineer I've spent most of my life working with the technology side of TV but the money has always been there through the 20th century business model-- advertising. Today the competition for the ad dollar is just too prolific and TV execs have not been innovative at all in diversification of income. TV broadcast has resisted change ever since I can remember. While the industry successfully moved from NTSC to ATSC the business model has remained the same. Until you all can figure out a new profit center for OTA TV all this discussion of 1080p60 or 1080p24 is nothing but fantasy dreaming.

My personal experience is that when my TV production business went from analog to digital, I could see the writing on the wall so I took my company's content from Local TV broadcast channels to cable channels to now, webcasts. I kept it alive as the ad revenues shifted from one outlet to another, this dictated the change in technology. What I read in this thread is just the opposite. You all are proposing the technology dictate the change. I just don't see that happening since there is no justification for a market for the technology. The reason for this is that content trumps PQ. And quantity of content trumps quality of content ( in the majority of revenue based programming). Finally, price for content, ie. competition, is what kills quality, and delivery.

In other words, make a good story, lots of stories, and deliver it to me the cheapest way will win out. Local OTA TV just is nowhere near competing against IP TV in the next 20 years. If it survives at all, don't expect it to be the bastion of the latest high quality of content and technology.

 

[TheForce]

Remember CRT based Tv's? Interlace has essentially been the standard for a long time. And if based on interlace scanning cameras the image is a bit smoother then a 30p picture. Obviously interlacing introduces its on problems.

Excellent point! Many people forget that the whole reason for the interlaced picture construct was because of the CRT tube TV receiver technology. The picture scan being interlaced was to work with a phosphor persistence timing of that day that with progressive would create a horrible amount of flicker in the motion images. Therefore the problem was resolved by setting the TV standard to interlace scan lines where the first scan of horizontal lines would persist on the phosphor for half the frame rate timing while the second field of scan lines are drawn between the first creating a lighted screen for the full frame. The timing was designed around the phosphor decay timing of the tube. This worked well for many years of TV production and when the digital screens made the scene, we discovered this interlaced technology didn't work so well so we had to convert the entire display methods to pixel based switches of on and off light sources in a grid array. Now full on of every spot in the frame at the same time was needed and we called this progressive framing. During the mid 80's until about the mid 90's TV cameras were undergoing a major shift from tubes that scanned to digital imagers that took a snap shot for each frame. It was in the late 80's that we also began the redesign of the TV broadcast technology from NTSC to ATSC or from analog to digital. The major issue in all these radical changes was backward compatibility. This is why we still have the interlaced format today. There are still interlaced displays in use and still cameras that only shoot interlaced content. It may be 50 more years before interlace will completely die off. But the truth is with any digital TV screen and any non tube TV camera, there is no reason to use interlace. If anything, we have the technology today to create an interlaced signal for older TV tube CRT's so there really is no point and interlace should die a quiet death with converters for those who insist on still using an interlaced CRT display. I suspect, today there are still far more people converting interlace broadcasts to progressive when we really should be doing just the opposite. How many of you are taking a 720P broadcast converting it to 1080i in your receiver to send to a Digital TV screen where the image is then converted to progressive for display?


There is one more issue that was mentioned in this thread but the truth was never discussed. It has to do with the reality of 1920 H pixels vs. 1440 or less.
Point is that the majority of programs were generated with video formats, or films were telecined and distributed in formats that were no higher than a resolution of 1440 as restricted by the tape media limits of their day. HDCAM, the most widely used field production system was for many years limited to 1440 H pixels on the tape. For many years the D5 workhorse of telecine film chains only did HD in 1440. Furthermore, until the proliferation of 1080P x 1920 DLP and other displays, you had no way of seeing any resolution beyond 1200 on a crt or 1280 on a digital display except for a few of the professional $100,000 dlp's that few people had. But since about 2007, many newer HDCAMs and other camera technologies including optical media recordings 1920 pixel resolution became more mainstream. But that still leave a whole lot more content in circulation at the lower resolution than most of you all care to acknowledge. Nothing in the distribution end of TV will add back the resolution that just was not recorded to begin with. However what you do get when all limits in distribution are removed is a transmission of video and electronic noise that shows up as grainy detail texture to what should be clean original content. AKA an artifact!
It is of no point to allow content with limited detail to be transmitted at high bandwidths as if that detail existed. Rather a business decision is made to restrict this artifact in the content ( noise) and allow for more quantity of content as that is what pays the bills.

 

[mike123abc]

While I agree that OTA HD format is probably locked in place for another 20 years, it would be possible for local stations to provide cable and DBS companies a higher resolution. It could be something to justify the sub fee that they want to collect for retransmission. It could also be incentive for OTA HD to cut resolution for more sub channels, generating more revenue for the station.

In some of the smaller markets missing a Major this would be a great way for a local station to make more money. Look at Ada/Ardmore market, they have a station doing both HD CBS and HD Fox. The picture looks good, but it is downresed some. To the cable and DBS companies they could provide a full HD version of both channels.

This is an avenue that the CW should be taking. They are a sub channel on a lot of CBS stations in smaller markets. The local stations should be feeding DBS/Cable with the full HD feed instead of the SD OTA version they do.

 

[TheForce]

mike- prove it!

See how many would be willing to pay for the cost of 1080p24 1920. If you include the cost of production ( I consider that there is very little content in distribution now so all content for distribution would have a production cost ) and distribution costs it is likely that a program of this quality would sell for about what a BluRay disk retails for, say $20 per program. Set up a skewed poll of satellite guys who are more skewed in favor of quality than your average public, asking a question like- How many would pay per view a movie like the Next Star Trek or NFL game as a surcharge over NFL Sunday ticket price, just to get it in 108024p 1920 and uncompressed 5.1 sound. Essentially, give them everything you get on a BluRay in quality but charge the blu ray price over and above the regular price. I'd bet it would not be enough people to justify the cost. IOW the business model fails, but go ahead and prove me wrong. I know I wouldn't pay the up price.

 

[mike123abc]

mike- prove it!

See how many would be willing to pay for the cost of 1080p24 1920. If you include the cost of production ( I consider that there is very little content in distribution now so all content for distribution would have a production cost ) and distribution costs it is likely that a program of this quality would sell for about what a BluRay disk retails for, say $20 per program. Set up a skewed poll of satellite guys who are more skewed in favor of quality than your average public, asking a question like- How many would pay per view a movie like the Next Star Trek or NFL game as a surcharge over NFL Sunday ticket price, just to get it in 108024p 1920 and uncompressed 5.1 sound. Essentially, give them everything you get on a BluRay in quality but charge the blu ray price over and above the regular price. I'd bet it would not be enough people to justify the cost. IOW the business model fails, but go ahead and prove me wrong. I know I wouldn't pay the up price.

The networks are the ones that could do it. Affliates would be passing through the higher resolution over fiber feeds to the cable/DBS companies. It could be a way for them to justify charging more for retransmission consent. If they could charge 2x for a higher quality feed, they could recoup the costs. All the live camera feeds would still be 1080i for a while, but in a few years 1080p 60fps will be cheap to produce. Filmed series are already 1080p it is happening right now if you have the proper deinterlacer in your TV.

My original comment was more oriented towards channel revenue by cutting back on the primary HD channel for more revenue producing subchannels. OTA viewers would suffer, but they could give the better feed to DBS/Cable. Even if it was the full 1080i at 19mbit/sec it would be better than most are showing now OTA with compression to fit in subchannels.

 

[Stargazer]

I think it would take another revolution in tv for another change to be made and by that time MPEG-4 could be old news. The next revolution would be 3D television then holographic television.

 

[kb7oeb]

mpeg4 is coming to OTA for their mobile tv standard. They could also leave a single 480i mpeg2 stream for the converter box and put everything else in mpeg4 but it wouldn't happen unless mpeg4 becomes mandated like atsc tuners did.

That's not quite true. 1080i can refer to either 1920*1080i or 1440*1080i, and a lot of TV stations are already chopping down to a 1440-wide frame to allow them the bandwidth for additional 480i feeds (NBC Action Weather, for example).

This is all neither here nor there; NOBODY broadcasts in 1080p.

1440x1080i is not part of the ATSC spec, I'd be interested to hear what stations you know to be in this format.

 

[whatchel1]

So things will change.

OTA Broadcast TV will never see another paradigm shift in technology that requires a major upgrade in both broadcast and receiving equipment. The reason is the OTA RF Broadcast business model won't survive the future generation's shift to internet or IP broadcasting. Local TV is ad based revenue and unless they can find another income source their business model just won't survive without public funding, i.e. another government spending drain and another cause for tax increase to keep broadcast TV alive.

As a licensed Broadcast engineer I've spent most of my life working with the technology side of TV but the money has always been there through the 20th century business model-- advertising. Today the competition for the ad dollar is just too prolific and TV execs have not been innovative at all in diversification of income. TV broadcast has resisted change ever since I can remember. While the industry successfully moved from NTSC to ATSC the business model has remained the same. Until you all can figure out a new profit center for OTA TV all this discussion of 1080p60 or 1080p24 is nothing but fantasy dreaming.

My personal experience is that when my TV production business went from analog to digital, I could see the writing on the wall so I took my company's content from Local TV broadcast channels to cable channels to now, webcasts. I kept it alive as the ad revenues shifted from one outlet to another, this dictated the change in technology. What I read in this thread is just the opposite. You all are proposing the technology dictate the change. I just don't see that happening since there is no justification for a market for the technology. The reason for this is that content trumps PQ. And quantity of content trumps quality of content ( in the majority of revenue based programming). Finally, price for content, ie. competition, is what kills quality, and delivery.

In other words, make a good story, lots of stories, and deliver it to me the cheapest way will win out. Local OTA TV just is nowhere near competing against IP TV in the next 20 years. If it survives at all, don't expect it to be the bastion of the latest high quality of content and technology.

I a broadcast engineer as well I'm a member of the Society Of Broadcast Engineers. Things in the digital age are changing at a much faster pace than they did in the analog days. It is my understanding that in the next couple of years I'm am being told that we will be migrationg from MPEG 2 to MPEG 4. Those that have the new boxes & TV sets will have to replace the STB or the inboard tuner of the HDTV with a new STB that is MPEG 4. The reason for this is MPEG 4 is a better format that will allow be compression of the signal and take less bandwidth than the MPEG2. So you may want to prepare for the next change.

 

[whatchel1]

Already being tested

I think it would take another revolution in tv for another change to be made and by that time MPEG-4 could be old news. The next revolution would be 3D television then holographic television.

The 3D is already being tested in Britain.

 

[CowboyDren]

mpeg4 is coming to OTA for their mobile tv standard. They could also leave a single 480i mpeg2 stream for the converter box and put everything else in mpeg4 but it wouldn't happen unless mpeg4 becomes mandated like atsc tuners did.

The old Racer Maxim used to be, if it's not forbidden, it's allowed. I wouldn't put it past the FCC to allow MPEG4 as an ad hoc standard as long as the 480i/MP2 stream is kept.

1440x1080i is not part of the ATSC spec, I'd be interested to hear what stations you know to be in this format.

Not a part of the standard, no, but since the content (below) is limited at this level, it was part of the leverage that D* and E*used to petition (and win) the FCC to downres content for retransmission. I can't point to specific cases, but it appears to be an open secret. It's mentioned on the 1080i Wikipedia entry, and nobody's disproven it, so I have to assume it to be true. Not that I believe everything I read on Wikipedia...

Is the pixel count really a part of the spec? Couldn't one theoretically encapsulate a 480*640 square-pixel stream inside a 1080i signal without upscaling, as long as the aspect ratio is flagged in the transport? I'm not an engineer, so I don't know from experience, nor am I a member of a consortium that distributes the spec books.

There is one more issue that was mentioned in this thread but the truth was never discussed. It has to do with the reality of 1920 H pixels vs. 1440 or less.
Point is that the majority of programs were generated with video formats, or films were telecined and distributed in formats that were no higher than a resolution of 1440 as restricted by the tape media limits of their day. HDCAM, the most widely used field production system was for many years limited to 1440 H pixels on the tape.
[...]
But that still leave a whole lot more content in circulation at the lower resolution than most of you all care to acknowledge. Nothing in the distribution end of TV will add back the resolution that just was not recorded to begin with. However what you do get when all limits in distribution are removed is a transmission of video and electronic noise that shows up as grainy detail texture to what should be clean original content. AKA an artifact!

 

[mike123abc]

I a broadcast engineer as well I'm a member of the Society Of Broadcast Engineers. Things in the digital age are changing at a much faster pace than they did in the analog days. It is my understanding that in the next couple of years I'm am being told that we will be migrationg from MPEG 2 to MPEG 4. Those that have the new boxes & TV sets will have to replace the STB or the inboard tuner of the HDTV with a new STB that is MPEG 4. The reason for this is MPEG 4 is a better format that will allow be compression of the signal and take less bandwidth than the MPEG2. So you may want to prepare for the next change.

I do not see the main channel changing from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 for at least 10-20 years. But, they could of course start stepping down the resolution of the main channel to make room for MPEG-4 subchannels. After all the trouble to get millions of converter boxes in place, I do not think that the FCC would go along with making them obsolete in the next few years. If a new standard was inacted I could see the FCC allowing the switchover after enough years have gone by to allow all the old MPEG-2 ones to break and be replaced by MPEG-4 capable ones.

I would love to see MPEG-4 available. It would be nice to easily get 2-3 HD pictures on a channel.

 

[whatchel1]

STB

I do not see the main channel changing from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 for at least 10-20 years. But, they could of course start stepping down the resolution of the main channel to make room for MPEG-4 subchannels. After all the trouble to get millions of converter boxes in place, I do not think that the FCC would go along with making them obsolete in the next few years. If a new standard was inacted I could see the FCC allowing the switchover after enough years have gone by to allow all the old MPEG-2 ones to break and be replaced by MPEG-4 capable ones.

I would love to see MPEG-4 available. It would be nice to easily get 2-3 HD pictures on a channel.

Since all they have to do is keep the 480i MPEG2 in place for the STB's then I see no reason why it won't be allowed to go MPEG4 for the HD siganls. The switch to digital is all that the new ATSC boxes are for. The built in tuners on the new HD sets is only a small part of what the new HD sets do since all have multiple inputs on them it is possible to have a new outbord decoder for MPEG4. Since some have ports for S/W updates it may be possible for those to be upgraded to MPEG4. So i see little reason why the industry will not be allowed to move much faster to MPEG4 than to digital.

 

[navychop]

"Better" does not necessarily mean "better enough" to get such a major change adopted. Pols may see this as more pain, so soon after the last bit of (not) fun.

Of course, we're really talking about a small proportion of the population that would be affected. It is my understanding that the number of people completely reliant on OTA is well below that of a year ago. Many just went with cable rather than buy a converter or new TV.

Hmmm. If you're right (about MPEG-4 coming soon - not "soon" ) -and I hope you are, I'm just doubtful- then that would explain the ViP722K, wouldn't it? Just sell the boys a new MPEG-4 OTA module.

Such a move could actually be good for the OTA business model, even with yet more investment required. With say, 12-15 SD channels going out from the station, the broadcasters could drop the air time rates they charge. Then small interest groups could go out over the air. Local metro woodworkers, anyone? With a weekly show on duck decoy carving? The Router Workshop returns? Basket weaving using organic materials? Shoe making at home? The Glass Blowers tutorial? Etc etc. Multicasting destroys PQ & AQ, but allows for niche programming.

Maybe I'm coming around to your way of thinking. Perhaps the pols will decide this last go 'round wasn't so bad after all, and pretty much ignore the process. Possible.

 

[CowboyDren]

With say, 12-15 SD channels going out from the station, the broadcasters could drop the air time rates they charge. Then small interest groups could go out over the air. Local metro woodworkers, anyone? With a weekly show on duck decoy carving? The Router Workshop returns? Basket weaving using organic materials? Shoe making at home? The Glass Blowers tutorial? Etc etc. Multicasting destroys PQ & AQ, but allows for niche programming.

By the bimap math (not the MPEG I/P/B frame math), a full 1080i/60 frame is over 62Mpix/sec. A 480i/60 frame is way less than 10Mpix/sec. An "HDLite" 1440*1080i/60 frame is less than 47Mpix/sec. If one assumes that 1920*1080(i)*60 is the best you can do, and requires 19Mbit/sec of bandwidth, and you cut that frame down to 75% of it's intended (bitmap) width, you could fit way more than one 480i stream for free. Hell, you could fit a full 1080p/24 and a 480i side by side and still use less bandwidth than a single 1920*1080i*60 frame, and that's without changing any compression codecs.

If every HD channel in a market is allocated a full 1080i channel, and isn't already multicasting, it's totally practical (though expensive) to add a 1080p/MP4 stream to a 480i/MP2 stream and carry on, business as usual. In Kansas City, we only have a few high-def multicasters (PBS-19, CW-29, and NBC-41), but every major network is represented (Univision and Daystar are still analog-LP, though). PBS isn't going to do anything, and CW can't afford it, but it would be in NBC's best interest to broadcast whatever they can in 1080p.

It's completely possible, but I'm not holding my breath, nor do I want to pay for it out of pocket.