# Voom and UHD to be HDLite in MPEG 4!



## glennh73 (Sep 5, 2005)

http://www.satelliteguys.us/showthread.php?t=51513&page=4

Well its clear that HD as we no it really wont be HD for long. If Dish can do it, Directv can do it, then so will Comcast and so forth and all HD programs will be HDlite.

Sad day for me as i cancel Dish Network and head back to regular tv.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

DirecTV did 1280x1080i first. Even VoomHD offered less than 1920x1080i resolution.

Satellite companies have been offering "SD Lite" for years ... compressing channels and altering the resolution of SD to be able to have more channels on their systems. It would have been nice to see "True HD" of 1920x1080i for all channels but the reality is that there is limited space available. They have chosen a path that will lead to more content instead of just a few "showcase" HDs.

JL


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## glennh73 (Sep 5, 2005)

This is what i dont understand, more content, why? Most of those stations never get watched, most are a waste of bandwidth, so why not drop the lesser ones and have the showcase channels?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

I think of the VoomHD channels as a video version of Sirius or the Dish CD music channels. If I'm in the mood for some flavor of music I can tune to whatever flavor I'd like at that moment.

The VoomHD channels are themed based on the various "mood" that a person might be in. Today there are 10 themes offered. When DishHD is released there will be 15. (Some are complaining that there are not 21, as there were when Voom had their own system.) More variety is a common request.

JL


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Is this article posted on the same forum where it was declared not too long ago that they had a campaign to get Dish to improve picture quality and they had definately won?

I never know what to believe when I read something there, because so much of the "I know this definately from my reliable source" stuff seems to not happen.


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## glennh73 (Sep 5, 2005)

This was from 
Scott Greczkowski who i think runs satelliteguys.us or part of it, anway he got this info from the CES and from Dish itself, so its real, sad, but truly real.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

glennh73 said:


> This was from
> Scott Greczkowski who i think runs satelliteguys.us or part of it, anway he got this info from the CES and from Dish itself, so its real, sad, but truly real.


Depends on how you look at it.

Gary, who has posted here and on the other forum a LOT about the "downrezzing" of the Voom channels and various technical updates over the last month or so has posted conflicting information here and on the other site.

I see he has now gone back to posting how crappy the Voom channels are and how he won't stand for it.... yet it was just a week or two ago that he himself posted screen captures from now and from a month ago before "downrezzing" and said he couldn't tell the difference.

So, if they were great before and crap now, how come his screen captures couldn't show the difference?

I think people are going nuts over stuff that they don't know much about, and things that haven't happened yet. IF the new channels and/or MPEG4 are showing comparable quality to what we were getting previously, how can anyone complain? Gary himself admitted that he couldn't tell the difference... but then realized Dish hadn't changed the resolution, and suddenly went back to calling it obvious crap even though it looked the same.

So I'm confused, and tend to not just believe things I see on the other site until I see it myself and hear it from the source (Dish) directly.


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## hazydave (Jan 7, 2006)

James Long said:


> DirecTV did 1280x1080i first. Even VoomHD offered less than 1920x1080i resolution.


Even if they did full HD resolution, chances are, just as with SD, they'd cheese out on the compression rate. Of course, even broadcasters are delivering well below the US maximum of 19.4Mb/s, even on full 1080i... that's where they stick their second (third, etc) feeds in SD. After all, it's far more important to give us their silly local weather report repeated 24/7, than to offer full HD.



James Long said:


> Satellite companies have been offering "SD Lite" for years ... compressing channels and altering the resolution of SD to be able to have more channels on their systems.


Well, sorta-kinda. SD as delivered is usually something on the order of 480x480; at least that was the de-facto standard on DVB a few years back when I was working on DVB systems. It's certainly capable of deliving a full 720x480/60i, at DVD rates. But no satellite company is going to worry about 8Mb/s for any SD channel. After all, you're basis for comparison hasn't been an existing digital system, but broadcast TV, somewhat south of VHS. Other than the nasty artifacting you get on the farm channel and other's in the high 9000s, they can get better-than-VHS easily with 480x480 and under 2Mb/s... similar to the old SuperVideoCD format.



James Long said:


> It would have been nice to see "True HD" of 1920x1080i for all channels but the reality is that there is limited space available. They have chosen a path that will lead to more content instead of just a few "showcase" HDs.


They could certainly do better, particularly in the switch to MPEG-4/H.264. In rough terms, the H.264 should give them less than 1/2 the bitrate at approximately the same quality (whatever that is)... I think Dish's current HD's run 12-14Mb/s, so at 41Mb/s per transponder channel, that's the current three per transponder we saw since the 8PSK update.... and I dunno, maybe they're squeezing even harder today. That three should change to something like 6-8 pretty decent HD channels per transponder, at quality of the original Dish HD stuff. Some of that's certainly a question of how good their encoders are, too.

Downconverting to 720p is still downconverting -- it's going to look worse on a real 1080i television, regardless of whether you re-upconvert to 1080i. It's like watching OTA on ABC versus most others... only, worse, since they won't start with the 60p material ABC, in theory, creates for their HD prime time stuff. They'll get away with it simply because most source material is 60i and most HD sets are generally at 720p or just slightly higher resolution; only a few (like mine, with the 12" rear projection tubes) run the full 1920x1080. So, fewer complaints on the resolution, more if they compress the crap out of it at 1080i.

And of course, people who don't know any better will say that 720p is fine. What they're missing, of course, is that in broadcast land, the arguments were over 720/60p vs. 1080/60i. When you downconvert from 1080i, you get 720/60i or 720/30p, neither of which is what the [few remaining] 720p proponents think they'll get when someone says "720p".

I've done lots of HD video work in MPEG-4 Part 2/Advanced Simple Profile, and while I've only played around with MPEG-4 Part 10/Advanced Video Coding/H.264, by all accounts it's The Bomb. Small devices like the Sony PSP and the Video iPod run this format, too. However, everyone's PC is too damn slow for H.264 in HD, so, not too much playing around for awhile. Plus, my DVD player only does the older HD formats (MPEG-2, ASP, WMA9).


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

hazydave said:


> After all, it's far more important to give us their silly local weather report repeated 24/7, than to offer full HD.


Not everyone has internet access, amd that is one feature that was requested a great deal. People want to be able to tune into a doppler radar map at any time. With the Weather Channel, it's only availale every 8 minutes. Also, it's part of their public interest requirements since it will also show school closings and important weather releated info.



hazydave said:


> Well, sorta-kinda. SD as delivered is usually something on the order of 480x480; at least that was the de-facto standard on DVB a few years back when I was working on DVB systems. It's certainly capable of deliving a full 720x480/60i, at DVD rates.
> Downconverting to 720p is still downconverting
> And of course, people who don't know any better will say that 720p is fine. What they're missing, of course, is that in broadcast land, the arguments were over 720/60p vs. 1080/60i. When you downconvert from 1080i, you get 720/60i or 720/30p, neither of which is what the [few remaining] 720p proponents think they'll get when someone says "720p". .


DVDs can only output as 30i to a standard TV that has a max res of 525 lines anyway. Only ED or higher TVs can do the Progressive scan modes. Also remember that it's really 24-30 frames anyway due to the AC setup and the projection of the TV There's no reason to have the picture at a higher res when it's a digital signal to begin with and that 80% of TVs are smaller than 30 inches and that the picture is much better than analog OTA or analog cable. It's only with the bigger and HD TVs that you have the problem. As for the 720p, the majority of HD TVs sold have been DLP type, and they are 720p anyway.


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## the_bear (Oct 18, 2004)

1280x1080i H.264 makes no sense. While 8PSK [email protected] looks better (IMHO) than [email protected], if the scene has motion, the same is not true for H.264. [email protected] H.264 looks just as good as [email protected] no matter how much motion is in the scene.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

the_bear said:


> 1280x1080i H.264 makes no sense. While 8PSK [email protected] looks better (IMHO) than [email protected], if the scene has motion, the same is not true for H.264. [email protected] H.264 looks just as good as [email protected] no matter how much motion is in the scene.


I can't speak to the details... but I am surprised if this turns out to be true with regard to MPEG4. Despite rumors and speculations, it seemed a logical assumption that MPEG4 would either be used to create more channels in the same or less bandwidth at the same quality OR provide better quality for the existing channels. Logic seemed to say that one choice or the other was the primary motive for switching to MPEG4 compression.

IF they choose to downconvert AND go to MPEG4... it seems like overkill, as once a conversion was done completely to MPEG4 there wouldn't be enough channels to fill all the extra bandwidth they would create, unless I'm missing something.

So it seemed logical to assume better quality on our existing channels in MPEG4 until they add some new channels, and then maybe the quality goes back down to what it was previously but with more channels.... it didn't seem logical that they would continue to downconvert even when they don't have that many channels to add yet.


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## kstevens (Mar 26, 2003)

larrystotler said:


> Not everyone has internet access, amd that is one feature that was requested a great deal. People want to be able to tune into a doppler radar map at any time. With the Weather Channel, it's only availale every 8 minutes. Also, it's part of their public interest requirements since it will also show school closings and important weather releated info.
> 
> DVDs can only output as 30i to a standard TV that has a max res of 525 lines anyway. Only ED or higher TVs can do the Progressive scan modes. Also remember that it's really 24-30 frames anyway due to the AC setup and the projection of the TV There's no reason to have the picture at a higher res when it's a digital signal to begin with and that 80% of TVs are smaller than 30 inches and that the picture is much better than analog OTA or analog cable. It's only with the bigger and HD TVs that you have the problem. As for the 720p, the majority of HD TVs sold have been DLP type, and they are 720p anyway.


I'm sure it was you or somebody else that spat this garbage out before, but a vast majority of the dlps that came out late 2005 and that are coming out in 2006 now support 1080i. Most smaller plasmas down to 50" in 2006 will support 1080i. The 1280x720 looks crappy on my screen which supports 1080p.

Ken


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## BFG (Jan 23, 2004)

If there was a current space issue on Dish Network right now MAYBE I could get used to it for the channels right now, but it looks pretty clear right now that that's not the case and dish has plenty of room to continue full HD in MPEG2, they are just getting away with a marketing crap scheme not to do so. Once the cable co in my area can get caught up in HD offerings I might go back to them or just drop to free TV only, since that's 90% of my viewing


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

BFG said:


> If there was a current space issue on Dish Network right now MAYBE I could get used to it for the channels right now, but it looks pretty clear right now that that's not the case and dish has plenty of room to continue full HD in MPEG2, they are just getting away with a marketing crap scheme not to do so. Once the cable co in my area can get caught up in HD offerings I might go back to them or just drop to free TV only, since that's 90% of my viewing


I'm not as mad or uptight as I think some people are at times over things... but I am frustrated myself at the thought we might continue down the road of lesser quality for no apparent reason than "because we can" from their perspective.

Right now Time Warner in my area seems comparable in HD quality for the channels I could semi-directly compare at my parents' house... but I also know of lots of technical problems with the service and the receivers in this area too over the better part of 15+ years now... so I'm reluctant to think I'll have a better option than Dish any time soon.

Contrary to popular belief, I don't like everything!  I just don't always get as immediately and obviously mad about it when I weigh the alternative... that being still having the same level of service and being mad vs trying to stay calm and not have head/stomach aches about stuff I can't change.


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## sampatterson (Aug 27, 2002)

glennh73 said:


> This is what i dont understand, more content, why? Most of those stations never get watched, most are a waste of bandwidth, so why not drop the lesser ones and have the showcase channels?


The biggest waste is all the duplicated local channel content from the networks. A HUGE waste of bandwidth - 105 markets all showing ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX during primetime with the same content (ok, with spotbeams and timezones it somewhat less than 105) but still a HUGE HUGE waste.


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## nospam (Sep 28, 2005)

In my area - San Diego, CA, the Time Warner Cable HD channel's quality is far, far more superior, then Charlie's HD.
But....
It costs around $60 for basic + HD channels.
No VOOM - that is sad.. ( I don't care much about all of these ESPNs, but I love VOOM)

But, IF Charlie drops a la carte HD package and/or provides no reasonable upgrade path to MPEG4, then... Bye, Charlie..


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

sampatterson said:


> The biggest waste is all the duplicated local channel content from the networks. A HUGE waste of bandwidth - 105 markets all showing ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX during primetime with the same content (ok, with spotbeams and timezones it somewhat less than 105) but still a HUGE HUGE waste.


I agree in principal.... but I haven't figured a better way to solve the two problems that result from only offering a network feed:

1. Local stations sell advertising time, and wouldn't be able to do that as much if their channel wasn't carried in its entirety.
2. Local stations have non-network programming at least half or more of the day besides the network programming, so you wouldn't be able to watch that if it wasn't uplinked.

There could be a significant reduction in waste, however, IF it were possible to cut out (not carry) markets where digital can be received well OTA. If they carry the rural areas first, thinking about locals in HD. they may find they don't need as urgently to cover the larger markets if most people can get them OTA.

I know some people will always have problems with OTA... but there will be less of them with digital I think than with analog in a couple of years... and then if there is a compromise of a network feed vs locals for some markets it may be less of a hard pill to swallow.

Not complete efficiency, but maybe better than trying to cover every single local channel via satellite.


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## AdamGott (Nov 30, 2005)

sampatterson said:


> The biggest waste is all the duplicated local channel content from the networks. A HUGE waste of bandwidth - 105 markets all showing ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX during primetime with the same content (ok, with spotbeams and timezones it somewhat less than 105) but still a HUGE HUGE waste.


I agree, they could save gigantic amounts of bandwidth if they dealt with this 'problem.' And it is going to be a much bigger problem when they have 105 HD market feeds showing the same crap at the same time.


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## larrystotler (Jun 6, 2004)

kstevens said:


> I'm sure it was you or somebody else that spat this garbage out before, but a vast majority of the dlps that came out late 2005 and that are coming out in 2006 now support 1080i. Most smaller plasmas down to 50" in 2006 will support 1080i. The 1280x720 looks crappy on my screen which supports 1080p.


Yeah, and how many DLPs were sold before that? DLPs only recently in the last 6 months were released that are 1080i and 1080p. There were MILLIONS sold that were only 720p before that and the MAJORITY of the HD sets are the 720p DLPs because of the price point. Do how is that garbage? Besides, I don't even have an HD set, and get tired of a lot of the WHINING down by the people that have them and think that they should be catered to for a cheap monthly rate. 95% of E*'s current subs are SD ONLY. Sure, I would like to have one, but it's not in my budget for the foreseeable future.


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## diver90 (May 1, 2005)

Well, I got VOOM in the last 3 months of their life and did an immediate switchover to DISH after it went Tango-Uniform. The difference was pretty noticeable right away. The VOOM picture was crisp and had a (perceived by me) depth. This DISH version was just softer, fuzzier, flatter... whatever.

I miss it and it wasn't even true HD :raspberry


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## BoisePaul (Apr 26, 2005)

kstevens said:


> I'm sure it was you or somebody else that spat this garbage out before, but a vast majority of the dlps that came out late 2005 and that are coming out in 2006 now support 1080i. Most smaller plasmas down to 50" in 2006 will support 1080i. The 1280x720 looks crappy on my screen which supports 1080p.


Yes, most of the prior DLP displays supported a 1080i input, as do most HD units. However, with the exception of CRT's (FP, RP and Direct View), almost nothing displayed 1080i natively; LCD's and DLP's downconverted the signal to 720p or whatever they could display. Consider that any digital (LCD, DLP, PDP) that can natively display 1080i can also natively display 1080p unless the supporting electronics do not support it - 2073600 pixels are 20073600 pixels regardless of whether the signal is interlaced or progressive - they all have to be present. Until Q405, units capable of displaying this number of pixels simply were not on the market, or at least easily found. Therefore, we can assume that market saturation is not very high for native 1080p digital displays, especially when considering the difference in price.

If you say that 1280x720 looks "crappy" on your 1080p capable display, there could be a number of factors involved. Are you using the scaler in the display, your receiver, or an external video processor? Do DVD's (which are produced at 720x480) look even worse? If DVDs are tolerable, but 720p is not, then I suggest that the resolution is not the cause of your anguish. It likely has something to do with compression or a sub-par scaler.

Strangely enough, I've found that for 1080i programming, it's best to allow my 811 to output 1080i and let my TV do the downconversion to its native resolution of 1280x720. I've also found that for those channels running at 720p, it's best to set the 811 to 720p. The scaler in my TV is superior to that in the 811. For this reason I wish the HD receivers would output the video in the resolution it is received so I wouldn't have to constantly switch it, but that would sure make 1280x1080i interesting. I'm not sure that my TV's scaler would have any idea what to do with that.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

BoisePaul said:


> ...I wish the HD receivers would output the video in the resolution it is received so I wouldn't have to constantly switch it, but that would sure make 1280x1080i interesting. I'm not sure that my TV's scaler would have any idea what to do with that.


I wish they would do pass-through as well since my TV natively displays whatever it receives (I have an RP CRT).

I would imagine that they could make receivers that not only allow the pass-through, but intelligently convert those 1280x1080 to 1920x1080 before outputting so as not to cause problems with the TV. Either that, OR the default TV's full-screen stretch might handle it fine by default.


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## Allen Noland (Apr 23, 2002)

At CES I had a conversation with an Echostar Representative and basically Dish is putting up what VOOM is sending them. It is a backhaul issue that will hopefully be resolved soon.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Thanks Allen for the "inside scoop" (as well as the other reporting from CES).

JL


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Allen Noland said:


> At CES I had a conversation with an Echostar Representative and basically Dish is putting up what VOOM is sending them. It is a backhaul issue that will hopefully be resolved soon.


Interesting... Could it be that a problem occurred one night around the time the downgrade occurred... and they've been trying things to keep it working in the meantime until they get a repair going?

That would be reasonable, if true... and I could see where a company wouldn't publically admit to such a problem because it leads to other slippery slope conversations.

It would be nice to find out this was the explanation OR even if we don't find out, if magickally one night things improve anyway.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Remember that six out of 10 Vooms were "1280x1080i" since E* first started transmitting them. The other four were "1920x1080i".

Hmm 1920 * 4 / 6 = 1280? Light up another backhaul transponder for the other three new channels? 

JL


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

James Long said:


> Remember that six out of 10 Vooms were "1280x1080i" since E* first started transmitting them. The other four were "1920x1080i".
> 
> Hmm 1920 * 4 / 6 = 1280? Light up another backhaul transponder for the other three new channels?
> 
> JL


Hmm... Since we're playing "what if"... What if the resolution problem has to do with Voom and not Dish, even if Dish owns part of Voom... Since others have pointed out that 3 per transponder at full-res is possible, so it makes no sense to downconvert them and still have only 3 per transponder...

Perhaps the actual problem is in getting the channels to Dish (or any provider). That could explain why some were already 1280 before, and they left the other 4 at 1920 because they didn't need the bandwidth... but now adding 5 more channels forces them to do it.

Keeping in mind that Voom was losing money hand over both fists... and are now trying to start up again as a service provider via other service providers... perhaps they don't have the equipment to do full resolution to get the signal to Dish?

Just playing what-if... but it is another side to the scenario that hasn't been discussed.

Of course, Dish experimenting (supposedly) with downconverted HD networks might make this supposition less plausible... but it is something worth thinking about. Maybe we'll hear more Monday night... or maybe not..


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

We most likely will not hear about specific resolutions on the Chat.

The fun part is that we initially assumed that Voom was doing a direct uplink to 61.5 from the old RainbowDBS uplink to Rainbow1. No backhaul difference there from when Voom was doing 1440x1080i HD channels on their own service. (The main difference is in the way they balanced the load between the 13 transponders they used mixing HD and SD throughout their system.) Aparently since Voom came to dish (even before the sale of R1 was FCC approved) there was a backhaul to E* involved and E* did the actual uplink to R1. Which may have been cleaner since E* has to add EPG and encryptions etc. to every transponder.

RainbowDBS had a deal to lease space at 77° which may be the backhaul. But if they are renting space someone is paying for it ... and in order to pay for the space Voom has to make money. RainbowDBS "Voom" didn't sell well enough to survive as a DBS provider. With Voom being a $5/mo plus $99 for a dish for 10 channel add-on it probably didn't gather enough subscribers to pay for the backhaul.

Now Voom is becoming part of "DishHD" packages. If you want ESPNHD/ESPN2HD surprise! you're paying for Voom. Perhaps that plan will gather enough HD subscribers to pay for the backhaul ... including the space needed to raise the resolution to E*.

All in the realm of "what if", of course.

HD Locals? I can see them stay at 1280x1080i or 1280x720p depending on source. I expect that in the long run (8PSK/MPEG4) we will see four HDs per transponder on a regular basis. E* has a lot of transponder space available - but that doesn't mean that they can't be frugal about its use.

The more HD they can fit on a transponder the more other markets can be uplinked. To most of the country it doesn't matter how good NY HD locals look --- they can't get them. What matters is if they can get their own HD locals. This is one place where the "do you want more channels or more bits per channel" question changes into "do you want more markets".

Anyways ... I'm rambling. Goodnight!

JL


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## trojanfan (Jan 11, 2006)

How do you guys tell what the exact resolutions and see all of these channels that we can't see.

Thanks
Chase


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