MPEG 4 coming to Dish?

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie just mentioned on the Earning COnference call that they were looking at using MPEG 4 next year...

Let the speculation begin.

 

[WJMorales]

Charlie is taking over VOOM!

 

[Neutron]

When he means next year he really means the year 2238.

 

[hancox]

I'm guessing a plug in card for the 811s. Yeehaw. Maybe we'll see this before the NEXT MPEG standard is out

 

[hancox]

Charlie is taking over VOOM!

heh, or that. Motorola POS boxes here we come (Be careful what you wish for 811 bashers!)

 

[GaryPen]

Digeo baby. Digeo.

 

[MikeD-C05]

I wonder if the mpeg 4 will be the way he expands hd channels . But my question is how will they do this ? Well it require a swapout of existing receivers or is this a software upgrade thing that can be done ? The bad thing if they do use mpeg4 , they will most likely make it look as bad as it does on mpeg 2 by compressing the hell out of the existing channels. For the customers we will notice nothing in pq improvements and really no change.

 

[Wishbone]

I couldn't imagine that this could be fixed with a software patch.. To be able to record two channels and watch two pre-recorded shows simultaneously, the MPEG decoding must be done through hardware (what do I know, though..)

If they do this, they ought to be able to make the PQ perfect... Unless they try to squeeze more crap in.

 

[Cyclone]

This is as exciting as the existing codec.

 

[mike123abc]

Changing to MPEG-4 would be pretty interesting. I suspect that they could upgrade the 921 but what a pain to have to do an exchange swap on them all... Maybe sweeten the job by adding a second disk to double/or more the disk space. It would not be so bad to have to send in the 921 to get MPEG 4 and a drive upgrade at the same time.

The 6000s and the 811s would be interesting. The 6000s would probably go the way of the 5000. I wonder if the 811 could be upgraded?

 

[MikeD-C05]

Changing to MPEG-4 would be pretty interesting. I suspect that they could upgrade the 921 but what a pain to have to do an exchange swap on them all... Maybe sweeten the job by adding a second disk to double/or more the disk space. It would not be so bad to have to send in the 921 to get MPEG 4 and a drive upgrade at the same time.

The 6000s and the 811s would be interesting. The 6000s would probably go the way of the 5000. I wonder if the 811 could be upgraded?

They can't even get the 811 to work like it is supposed to so I imagine no upgrades on it either.

 

[JohnC]

MPEG-4 for E* and VOOM?

Voom has indicated that they might use the slot in their receivers to implement MPEG-4. Sky Rreport.com reported today that they lost $81.5 million in the second quarter on revenues of $2.7 million and that they had 25,000 activated customers on June 30. It really does not sound that they are going to make it, but it seems that they could provide the bandwidth E* needs to provide us with a very good HD service. Using their space on the 61.5 dish would give E* the bandwidth for the East and E* apparently has plenty of bandwidth on the 148 dish to duplicate the service for the West until they have the bandwidth on a central dish.

E* could probably develop a plug-in module for MPEG-4 to replace the present 8PSK module on my 6000. The 811's and 921's would be more complicated. They might have to be replaced with 942's that could have a built-in MPEG-4 module, which might be a blessing to E* in the long run since they seem to be having an extremely difficult time getting them to work properly.

This is probably wishful thinking, but I would sure like to have more HD and would like to stay with E*.

 

[John Kotches]

The thing with MP-4 or WM-9 is that in either case you've got to decompress and recompress the MPEG-2 stream. So you would gain additional bandwidth but degrade overall picture quality.

Whether that has a visible effect on the final decoded picture is one question to ask, the other question to ask is would any added artifacts be desirable or not. It is theoretically possible that a very slightly softened image would be preferential to some.

Cheers,

 

[mike123abc]

The thing with MP-4 or WM-9 is that in either case you've got to decompress and recompress the MPEG-2 stream. So you would gain additional bandwidth but degrade overall picture quality.

Whether that has a visible effect on the final decoded picture is one question to ask, the other question to ask is would any added artifacts be desirable or not. It is theoretically possible that a very slightly softened image would be preferential to some.

Cheers,

Well the real issue is if a degraded picture overall is better than no picture at all. If they can add more HD with MP4 with a slight loss of PQ, I think most people would prefer more channels to the alternative of a few with better PQ.

 

[les017]

Well the real issue is if a degraded picture overall is better than no picture at all. If they can add more HD with MP4 with a slight loss of PQ, I think most people would prefer more channels to the alternative of a few with better PQ.

at least in this case Mike, you are WRONG!!! :shocked

personally I am drawing the line in the sand right here...I really do not want my HD to look any less gooder than it does right now. There's no doubt that we need more channels but if the pq starts looking much less like true HD than it already does I would have to call this all a failed experiment.

 

[ComcastOgre]

I don't think you'll have to worry about PQ being affected. Dish's ability to get new programming deals with their mindset is next to impossible. LOL. With all of the new "space" they will have when they switch to MPEG4, I bet it will stay empty for a LONG time or fill up with even MORE internationals and B.F.E. locals.

 

[hancox]

wait - you're BOTH wrong! The big win here would probably be on the SD LIL's, as they could compress those more aggressively, while losing almost no PQ. That opens up everything.

 

[RBBrittain]

wait - you're BOTH wrong! The big win here would probably be on the SD LIL's, as they could compress those more aggressively, while losing almost no PQ. That opens up everything.

Exactly. In fact, I think the big thing that may have Charlie looking at this is congressional deadlines to end the "two-dish solution". In many two-dish markets (Little Rock is one), if he can just squeeze a few more SD channels onto the main transponder, he can easily get rid of the second dish. This would free up wing-satellite transponders to handle the remaining markets.

Yes, it would mean replacing millions of receivers, assuming they can't be software-upgraded (which may be possible with some, especially the newer ones). But which is more palatable: E* shipping out millions of new receivers with self-install instructions (and return instructions for the old ones where appropriate), or installers scheduling millions of appointments for new dishes (meaning few new customers, angry customers asking why their system must be redone, possible charges, disruptions in service, etc.)?

 

[John Kotches]

Hmmm.. this makes me wonder. Are the network feeds coming into Dish (with the exception of HDTV) already encoded as MPEG-2 streams?

If not, then they could actually gain transponders by switching over their SDTV stations by encoding at MPEG-4.

Here's a key point though... THey have an installed base of > 10 million units, probably on the order of 25-30 million units. The cost to get everyone compatible with MPEG-4 would be astronomical and likely prohibitive.

Cheers,

 

[dispatcher_21]

I guess I'm confused. I didnt think that they would compress the MPEG2 with the MPEG4, I thought that the original feed Dish got was uncompressed and that MPEG4 would be an end to end solution on its own, totally replacing MPEG2?? Also, how can DBS providers think of doing WM9?? The pc requirments for watching HD-DVD's using this codec are monster, I have a hard time believing a STB could produce that much horse power.