S2 transcoder for 4DTV

[Kb Cool]

Been talking a little about this over at Satforums. What do you guys think? Would you want one? If someone could actually get it de-commercialized and to the consumer for home use. A Hdd-200/201/1000 will be required. I myself don't even know it will work. But..........................
Here's a letter i sent to Mike Kohl. Who i heard works for Skyvision. And, we all know Skyvision came up with the Dsr 410 out of the blue. So who knows?

Hello,
We got word that Motorola is building a transcoder to allow cable head-ends still using Mpeg2 set-top boxes to utilize the new S2 DC2 feeds by transcoding the mpeg4 feeds into mpeg 2 . I'm thinking this transcoder could be slaved and intergrated into a 4dtv system seamlessly and with very little headaches. In fact it would operate no different than a current 4DTV system and HDD-200 decoder. Only, the transcoder feeds the data into Hdd-200/201/1000 instead of the 4DTV. Mapping of the channels will still be handled by the 4DTV. So when you land on the S2 channel shown in the 4DTV guide. The transcoder starts feeding the S2 data into the Hdd-200 and then the Hdd-200 displays the picture on the users TV. The AC3 audio can also be outputted by the HDD-200 to the users Home theater system. See this link for more information. http://irdrollout.com/StarzHD/includes/install_guide.pdf A de-commercialized transcoder will be ideal and most likely less expensive as the end users will not need 8 lnb inputs, aux relays for alarms and what not. Most likely it won't even need a front panel or even a on-screen display.

I realize subsciption cband is fading fast due to lost channels and very limited HD. But, the FTA hobby is growing as more and more people turn to Cband for High Quality HD feeds. I think those same people would pay for it too. If there was a means to access the current S2 DC2 lineup. Rather than just settling on Dishnet or DirecTV for their main TV fare. Maybe Skyvision could look into this?


Thank You


If anybody wants to throw around this idea to the programmers like STARZ, HBO, ect.......Feel free to email away.
I think we need the programmers behind this too. They might even collect a higher sub fee from us cband users. Because, i doubt Charlie and DirecTV pays them much per subscriber.

 

[tvropro]

Interesting, Im for anything to help c band subscription stick around or get better. Please post your reply from Mike Kohl. He posts here every so often and is a guest on Access America's radio show every Friday night.

 

[Kb Cool]

Unfortunatly, I'm afraid we'll need Motorola behind this too.
But, i've heard their set top box division maybe for sale

 

[photoman76]

The new DVB-S2 DC2 signals used by HBO, Starz and many others can be easily tuned with the AZBox and TT S2-3200. These devices are relatively cheap. The problem is the encryption and authorization system. I doubt that Motorola is interested in a consumer product. There is really no need for a transcoder. I think most cable systems send out QAM to their set top boxes, so I don't think these transcoders would work with 4dtv or HDD 200.

 

[Kb Cool]

It doesn't need to work with 4DTV. Only with the HDD-200. I'm under the impression the 4DTV just passes the Mpeg2HD feed that it can't decode to the HDD-200. Isn't the Transcoder just converting an S2 Mpeg4 HD feed to the same Mpeg2HD data stream that the HDD-200 can decode. Also why would cableco's be equipped with HDD-1000 which is basically the same thing as a Hdd-200 if a decoder isn't needed? It may not work. But, i'm just say'n.

 

[pendragon]

Existing 4DTV tuners handle the decrypting and pass this to the HDD units for rendering. What the HDD units do can be done easily and better with newer off-the-shelf units. For example the Nextcom R5000 outputs the digital transport stream decrypted from a 4DTV tuner and sends it over a USB cable to a PC. With this scheme HD can be watched without a HDD unit, and in fact it is better because it is an all digital path compatible with any kind of video output including HDMI. The HDD units can only output analog component.

As pointed out by photoman, we already have access to encrypted DCII transport streams with existing DVB-S(2) tuners. That part is chicken feed to design. There are also readily available parts for rendering transport streams and/or sending them to a PC. The missing piece is the DCII decryption chain and Motorola would have to be involved to make that happen, and most importantly with an infrastructure to authorize the units. I suspect there is little interest on their part in the latter and none in the former. I hope I am wrong, but the quantities involved simply don't justify the development costs for a consumer product. Commercial receivers live in a different space. There aren't that many made, but they cost a lot. To some degree they may not even have to be profitable because they enable the infrastructure fees that Motorola collects.

The best hope would be to find a lower end commercial receiver that could be repurposed for consumer use. This is unlikely to happen.

 

[Kb Cool]

The transcoder i believe handles the encryption process. Our 4DTV displays the guide, moves the Dish, switches polarity and the last time i checked the analog component out of my HDD-200 is much better than the HDMI on my Dish VIP 211. (it used to be about the same until E* went to what? 8 channels per TP? )
Your right though. A whole new receiver would be best. But i think this would be better than fumbling with a Starchoice side car. If a whole new receiver is out of the question. But, some sort of add on is a possibility. Wouldn't you want that "add on" to work seamlessly as possible with your existing receiver using only one remote and the same guide?

 

[pendragon]

The transcoder i believe handles the encryption process. Our 4DTV displays the guide, moves the Dish, switches polarity and the last time i checked the analog component out of my HDD-200 is much better than the HDMI on my Dish VIP 211.

The HDD component only looks better than the 211 HDMI because of the high compression that Dish uses compared to most 4DTV master feeds. If they were being fed the same data, the HDMI would be at least as good or better than analog component.

Your 4DTV tuner does the decryption. The HDD only renders a decrypted digital stream. I know because I scoped the chips inside my 920 when I installed my R5000.

 

[tvropro]

Unfortunatly, I'm afraid we'll need Motorola behind this too.
But, i've heard their set top box division maybe for sale

I heard on the news this morning that Motorola is trying to sell there STB division for 4.5 billion. If I had the cash the first thing I would do when bought is make a new receiver for C band that did everything. I would use profit from the cable STB area to fund it.

In all honesty if M gives it up maybe the new owners may be more receptive to a new receiver for us. Lets hope.

 

[tvropro]

The transcoder i believe handles the encryption process. Our 4DTV displays the guide, moves the Dish, switches polarity and the last time i checked the analog component out of my HDD-200 is much better than the HDMI on my Dish VIP 211. (it used to be about the same until E* went to what? 8 channels per TP? )

So Charlie is up to 8 HD channels per transponder that has to look real good. Bet he's going to push the envelope even more. Let's see the future of HD lite... Worse picture than SD pizza and cable now :up.

 

[Kb Cool]

Your 4DTV tuner does the decryption. The HDD only renders a decrypted digital stream. I know because I scoped the chips inside my 920 when I installed my R5000.

Exactly, Just like the transcoder decrypts it too. From the PDF,
" a DSR-6050 Receiver/Transcoder will decrypt one (1) MPEG4 HD service and convert it to an MPEG2 HD Single Program Transport Stream."

 

[Kb Cool]

So Charlie is up to 8 HD channels per transponder that has to look real good. Bet he's going to push the envelope even more. Let's see the future of HD lite... Worse picture than SD pizza and cable now :up.

HBO is doing eight too. So maybe thats where charlie got his idea from? But, we all know a cband transponder running at 29270 SR and 5/6 fec has more bandwidth than a DISH tp. running at 21500 SR and 2/3 fec. HBO on cband is probally running 8mb per channel. And charlies running around 5mb per channel. Maybe even a little less. .

 

[tvropro]

HBO is doing eight too. So maybe thats where charlie got his idea from? But, we all know a cband transponder running at 29270 SR and 5/6 fec has more bandwidth than a DISH tp. running at 21500 SR and 2/3 fec. HBO on cband is probally running 8mb per channel. And charlies running around 5mb per channel. Maybe even a little less. .

5 mb per channel thats what should be run for SD. Heck SD DVD runs 8.

 

[Kb Cool]

5 mb per channel thats what should be run for SD. Heck SD DVD runs 8.

Yep, And that's why DISHHD looks just like upconverted SD DVD. Which is not bad. But could be alot better.

 

[pendragon]

Exactly, Just like the transcoder decrypts it too. From the PDF, " a DSR-6050 Receiver/Transcoder will decrypt one (1) MPEG4 HD service and convert it to an MPEG2 HD Single Program Transport Stream."

Sorry, I didn't notice your link. However a quick price check came back with a DSR-6050 going for $4000. Even if you could get it authorized, I doubt there would be many takers in our world. There simply aren't enough people left with the dishes to design a consumer unit that would get the cost down for quantity pricing. Putting that aside, I would be happy to get a H.264 transport stream. That's very easy to deal with using today's hardware. No reason to transcode it and suffer another generation of decompression/compression. We get too much of that already.

I'm no fan of Dish's HD lite, but some of the numbers quoted fail to incorporate the fact that part of their channel cramming has been enabled by switching all HD to H.264 and a gradual migration to 8PSK. This raises their 'effective' bit rate by 2-3X over what they were doing before. It's also a little specious to compare a C-band transponder to the packing and overlap employed for DBS. Nevertheless I heartily agree that we've been heading the wrong direction with HD on satellites for a long time and it's become a joke.

 

[Kb Cool]

This raises their 'effective' bit rate by 2-3X over what they were doing before.

3X? I'll take a MPEG2 feed running at 15mb anyday versus a Mpeg4 running at 5mb. Also a DishHD 8PSK tp at 2/3 FEC and 21500 SR gives it a total of around 40 mb to go around. That will never change. Unless the FEC is upped. But then the small dishes would need to made larger to compensate. An HBO cband 8PSK TP comes in around 67mb. According to a bit rate calculator.

 

[truckracer]

charlie will give them 5000 shopping channels and 5000 more HD overcompressed channels for 29.99 for the first six months *before it goes back to "full subscription price" with a 2 year committment. what a deal and everybody loves it..

 

[tvropro]

Yep, And that's why DISHHD looks just like upconverted SD DVD. Which is not bad. But could be alot better.

But wait a minute here it's being sold as HIGH DEFINITION. And it's NOT, that's false advertising, look's like a lawsuit could be in the works.

 

[tvropro]

charlie will give them 5000 shopping channels and 5000 more HD overcompressed channels for 29.99 for the first six months *before it goes back to "full subscription price" with a 2 year committment. what a deal and everybody loves it..

Sucker born every minute

 

[pendragon]

3X? I'll take a MPEG2 feed running at 15mb anyday versus a Mpeg4 running at 5mb. Also a DishHD 8PSK tp at 2/3 FEC and 21500 SR gives it a total of around 40 mb to go around. That will never change. Unless the FEC is upped. But then the small dishes would need to made larger to compensate. An HBO cband 8PSK TP comes in around 67mb. According to a bit rate calculator.

3 = 2 (approximate H.264 compression gain over MPEG2) x 1.5 (8PSK vs. QPSK). Of course this depends on FEC, which depends on the link margin in terms of the satellite's ERP and the economic best choice for the dish size. Lots of variables. An interesting metric might be what is the commercial cost per Mb/s, including receivers, dishes, LNBs that HBO expects a cable company to expend compared to what Dish is willing to expend on a single customer.

I would probably prefer a 7.5 Mb/s H.264 feed over a 15 Mb/s MPEG2 if forced to make a choice. Both would be of comparable softness, but the artifacts will be generally less noticeable with H.264 because the algorithmic techniques have been considerably refined since the standards for MPEG2 were established. Don't get me wrong. MPEG2 can look incredible, especially at 30-40 Mb/s. But 15 Mb/s is often middling in quality.

Comparing transponders in this manner is a bit of apples-to-oranges. Last time I looked C-band transponders were generally 36 MHz in bandwidth and spaced every 40 MHz on the same polarization. Dish I believe uses 24 MHz transponders spaced every 29 MHz. Both approaches fill a 500 MHz slot. I don't even see what the two have to do with one another. Master feeds are master feeds and DBS is DBS. Providers have to decide what is reasonable in terms of link margins and the cost of ground facilities. HBO could get bragging rights by throwing up 32PSK with a 9/10 FEC on every transponder. But that would drive a lot of expensive upgrades.