Is "real" MPEG4 in use now?

[navychop]

No, the MPEG-4 chips we are talking about are the real-time ENCODER chips. The Dish boxes in our homes are decoders. They'll decode any degree of compression of MPEG-4 signals (and MPEG-2 also). The next STBs out will not be any better in decoding MPEG-4. They may have other features, such as stronger HDMI connectors or larger hard disks. The next out I believe drop the second tuner to make a very simple DVR.

The advances that need to be made are in the transmission, and in real-time transmission at that.

You could use an MPEG-4 box today to get all the HD.

 

[tnsprin]

...
The next STBs out will not be any better in decoding MPEG-4. They may have other features, such as stronger HDMI connectors or larger hard disks. The next out I believe drop the second tuner to make a very simple DVR.

...

I believe it has the same number of tuners but only ability to output to one TV.

 

[Cyclone]

The current 622 should last a very long time technology wise.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

However I believe the 622 is using slightly dated MPEG4 decoder chips. I read early this year that when the company producing these chips, Broadcom, released their one-chip decoder, that drew less power, that Echostar came in and bought up a lot of the remaining stock of the older two-chip decoders.

Here's one annoucement from Broadcom that mentions Echostar using the two-chip solution:

http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=743116

And here is their press release for the newer one-chip decoder, the BCM7411D:

http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=799861

This doesn't mean that the chips E* uses are any less capable.

 

[grooves12]

Yes, there are some "real" MPEG-4 channels (HD LIL and StarzHD for example) and yes, they all look "real" bad! (pixilation, macroblocking, lip synch, etc.) To all E* Engineers who care about quality: please, please, please fix the problem already.:

Brilliant Idea: Stop jamming four MPEG-4 HD LIL channels on a transponder - the Codecs can't handle it.

Well, in the SF market we had some VERY bad problems with Audio Sync and picture quality... and a group of us on another board was in contact with their engineers and gave the lots of feedback (harrassment) about the issue, and now it seems they finally have a solution that has gotten us to VERY close to OTA quality. Perhaps what they learned with these channels will spill over the the national HD channels.

 

[riffjim4069]

Well, in the SF market we had some VERY bad problems with Audio Sync and picture quality... and a group of us on another board was in contact with their engineers and gave the lots of feedback (harrassment) about the issue, and now it seems they finally have a solution that has gotten us to VERY close to OTA quality. Perhaps what they learned with these channels will spill over the the national HD channels.

We can only hope, but five months into the ordeal and our Washington HD LIL is still quite terrible. We have an ongoing Washington DC HD LIL thread and, so far, the problems have only morphed, mutated, and jumped from channel to channel. The problems do get better from time to time, but the fixes are temporary as the problems always return with a vengeance.

 

[Claude Greiner]

However I believe the 622 is using slightly dated MPEG4 decoder chips. I read early this year that when the company producing these chips, Broadcom, released their one-chip decoder, that drew less power, that Echostar came in and bought up a lot of the remaining stock of the older two-chip decoders.

Here's one annoucement from Broadcom that mentions Echostar using the two-chip solution:

http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=743116

And here is their press release for the newer one-chip decoder, the BCM7411D:

http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=799861

This doesn't mean that the chips E* uses are any less capable.

Probably not, but as an example you could compair this to a transister radio and a radio that uses vacume tubes. Both do the same thing, the quality is the same, however one is smaller using todays technology.

Knowing Echostar, they probably got a hell of a deal on the old chips and considering how much they subsidize the hardware for new customers, every bit of cost savings counts.

Eventhough the 2 chip solution draws more power, why should echostar care? Its the customer who is paying the electric bill to run the receiver.

Put both types of chips side by side, and 95% of your typical customers will choose the old chips if it means they do not have to pay anything extra. On the other hand, if you count the people on this forum, 95% will choose to pay for the new chip.

Sadly enough there are more typical el cheepo customers than smart tech savy customers out there.

 

[Smith P.]

As I reading Broadcom brief description the new chip designed for HD and BR DVD, not satellite STB.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

It should work fine for STB, no reason why it couldn't. It's just that the HD and BR DVD market was their primary target.

Perhaps one of the reasons why the 622 runs hot is due to the two chip decoder.

 

[HokieEngineer]

As I reading Broadcom brief description the new chip designed for HD and BR DVD, not satellite STB.

http://www.broadcom.com/collateral/pb/7401-PB03-R.pdf

There is also the 7401, which is their all in one chip meant for STBs. Looks like it can be integrated into cable DVRs as well as satellite DVRs.

Heres a quote from their press release:

"The first single-chip AVC/VC-1 HD SoC products available include the
BCM7401 and BCM7402. The BCM7401 is targeted at embedded hard disk drive DVR
and home gateway applications while the BCM7402 addresses non-DVR or networked
DVR client applications. Both chips support the widely adopted H.264 video
compression standard (also known as MPEG-4 part 10/AVC) and are also the
world's first AVC/VC-1 HD chips to employ integrated secure video processor
(SVP) technology. SVP technology provides an open platform for content
protection, which enables secure, digital content related interconnectivity
between consumer electronic devices over a home network."

Note that it does both AVC as well as VC-1. It can also handle up to 5 simultanious input transport streams. I would love to see a 3 sat input, 2 OTA input stb box

 

[Smith P.]

ViP752 ?

 

[HokieEngineer]

Yup . You see any beta firmware for it yet

 

[Smith P.]

I'll check tonight.