2 edits | reply to jasontaylor
Re: [HD] Is Verizon lying about HD? Very very nice posts by almost everyone. I'm very thankful. My rexpectations were high, then let down by the 1st post, and then surpassed by wide margin with that internal verizon gif. I guess, correct my quick skimming please, but the short answer is that yes, verizon was pulling the wool over my eyes again, all this pq stuff is bs, since the fiber to the curb is irrelevant, with the coax network being the real bottleneck. I should have known, since, if it is at all possible I'm being duped, it has to be the case that I'm being duped, since I'm extra gullible. (Jason's law.) (I'm selling my livestrong tees on ebay as we speak. I was the 2nd last person to get the news.) So it is sorta moca actually since that's related. (I was meaning by moca=retarded coax network, including qam crap, since they interfere and both take bandwidth anyways.)
I'll nver understand any of this. Gave up long time ago. But, if I try, just to please those kind enough to respond to my post, I'm still confused. I mean, if it were me, and I were verizon's presdent, I'd ditch the coax bs network, all this QAM BS, all this moca bs, and just allow fiber into the home, so we have each set top box with a pure IP TV. Unlimited boxes, no problems with any limits, no bs. High enders would pay $$$ to get everything in HD. No mess. Perhaps I'd watch japanese anima in hd all night long. Simple. VZ rakes in $$$$. CEO smokes cigars, orders hokkers, pizza, retires to island, pays off fat divident, etc., everyones happy and his hokkars can eat.
Clearly I'm an idiot, since they aren't doing that. Please explain. What am i missing. Are onts just too $$$?
Jason |
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 DrDrewSo that others may surf.
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
kudos:8
3 edits | Verizon FIOS is using as much existing end user equipment and known distribution methods as they can. Just rolling out fiber last mile infrastructure was expensive. Had they redesigned and waited for everything else to catch up would've guaranteed FIOS DOA.
Fiber networks IN the home is still almost non existent. Ethernet is picking up but still way less than 25% of homes. More than 75% of homes have coax networks in home.
The boxes and coax cable was a known system with equipment and technicians available at the time of launch to support it. The boxes and coax can still handle WAY more channels then what Verizon sends out.
Just changing from broadcast to a IPTV system can work with the same end user equipment and allow for more channels. There is no reason why every channel has to be broadcast into the pipe at the same time like FIOS and much of Cable currently does. Only the channels watched need be transported but smart clients are needed to do that.
IPTV isn't quite ready to supplant broadcast TV. Almost... but not quite. Content owners are finally warming up to smart TVs, streaming video, and high speed internet in a large percentage of places.
Coax isn't the real bottleneck. Legacy hardware configurations and content owner expectations are. Given enough time and money, both will change
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If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes. |
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| reply to jasontaylor
said by jasontaylor:Clearly I'm an idiot, since they aren't doing that. Please explain. What am i missing. Are onts just too $$$? QAM is the industry standard, and it allows compatibility with 3rd party products (TiVo, Windows Media, etc) for those of us who are unsatisfied with the garbage hardware cable companies lease to the masses. |
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Reviews:
 ·Verizon FiOS
| reply to jasontaylor
You dont need fiber in the home, or cat5, you just need the video signals to be delivered over IP, then the possibilities are endless, and coax within the home would be AOK.
DrDrew, I dont see any way that Dblock spectrum could be used. 5-900Mhz splitters dont even pass Moca properly with the current setup, Ive removed about 1000 of them in my life on installs. |
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1 edit | reply to jasontaylor
Verizon has started muxing more channels at 3:1. They're not "compressing" the channels per se, but the channels they're pairing 3:1 were already being delivered at lower bitrates (12mbps), making the negative side-effects mostly negligible. Until this past year or so they were fitting them at 2:1 regardless. So this has given them more room to play with.
The .tv channels are 3:1, for example. As well as most or all of the movie channels.
The bottom line is, HD channels additions are 95% about contracts and 5% demand. There are very few if any highly-rated channels left, so their motivation is small to put any rush behind anything at this point, even with some room to spare. |
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| reply to nascar
said by nascar:In the works...
But hasn't it been "in the works" almost since year 1?
I mean it has always been a part of their multi-generation network plan, and we've heard no hints on any progress. |
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| I thought we had it on pretty good authority (JeepMatt's insiders, IIRC) that IP was never going to happen and the plan had changed to MPEG4. |
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| Many of the new channels in the sports/language packages are mpeg4, so they weren't incorrect. They're just apparently not going to transition existing channels to mpeg4 for the time being. |
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| reply to knarf829
"QAM is the industry standard"
Retarded standards are made to be improved.
Never once in my life have i seen a cable company lift a finger to help 3rd party people store or copy tv shows or movies. Why would they start caring now? Anyway, potential problem with your reasoning (pls correct me if I'm mistaken): there's nothing stopping an ONT set top box from outputting whatever tivo et al want, including qam crap, mpeg2+, hdmi, vga, etc. |
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DrDrewSo that others may surf.
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
kudos:8 | reply to ITALIAN926
said by ITALIAN926:5-900Mhz splitters dont even pass Moca properly with the current setup, Ive removed about 1000 of them in my life on installs.
I haven't seen any NEW 900Mhz splitters in 10 years. Alot of the ones I saw and replaced gave me issues with 860mhz signals.
The 1000 Mhz splitters I've put in haven't given me issues with MOCA.
I've definitely seen a quality difference between what was rated 900 Mhz and what is now rated 1000 Mhz, more than the 100 Mhz rating difference would explain. Full soldered backs, internal circuit boards, and power blocking capacitors make a difference.
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If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes. |
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1 edit | reply to jasontaylor
said by jasontaylor:"QAM is the industry standard"
Retarded standards are made to be improved.
And there's nothing stopping an ONT set top box from outputting whatever tivo et al want, including qam crap, mpeg2+, hdmi, etc.
Well, you know the technology behind those ONT set top boxes better than most of us and how they can best deliver your 7 million 4 mpbs HD channels. I defer to your expertise. |
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DrDrewSo that others may surf.
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
kudos:8
1 edit | reply to jasontaylor
said by jasontaylor:"QAM is the industry standard"
Retarded standards are made to be improved.
And there's nothing stopping an ONT set top box from outputting whatever tivo et al want, including qam crap, mpeg2+, hdmi, etc.
QAM is just a way to transport signal on the wire. It's not the real bottleneck. MOCA certainly isn't either as that just handles the networking with in the home.
How much of that 5 Tbps pipe does a home need to watch a few HD channels at once?
FIOS and most cable just doesn't use the pipe very efficiently because legacy distribution methods and contracts are holding it back.
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If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes. |
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| reply to jasontaylor
"Coax isn't the real bottleneck. Legacy hardware configurations and content owner expectations are. Given enough time and money, both will change"
Thanks. But aren't we ONLY talking about inside the home equipment ("cap ex") expenditures? And aren't ALL customers fully paying all costs of all equipment via rental fees? So there's no cap ex cost to verizon. Even the installs are not free to customers. Can you explain what I'm missing? |
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DrDrewSo that others may surf.
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
kudos:8 | reply to jasontaylor
said by jasontaylor:Never once in my life have i seen a cable company lift a finger to help 3rd party people store or copy tv shows or movies. Why would they start caring now?
The cable company doesn't own the content. They aren't allowed to freely distribute or allow it to be freely distributed without written permission from the content owner. So they lock it down all the way to the display.
said by jasontaylor:Anyway, potential problem with your reasoning (pls correct me if I'm mistaken): there's nothing stopping an ONT set top box from outputting whatever tivo et al want, including qam crap, mpeg2+, hdmi, vga, etc. Content owners, encryption requirements, and copyright laws prevent Tivo from just outputting content any which way, just like they do with cable providers. There are a few more options but it's still locked down.
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If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes. |
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Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
| reply to DrDrew
I understand that 1Mhz splitters dont give issues, thats what FiOS installs currently. I just dont see a 1150Mhz to 1500 block of spectrum work with 5-1000Mhz rated splitters. Aside from that, increased attenuation for that higher spectrum opens up new problems within the premises.
And let me ask you something, thats a pretty big pipe FiOS uses in order to make all those channels available. GPON internet allows ~2.4Gbps downstream to be shared by 16, or 32 subs. If they did away with QAM and went IPTV, would they be able to use GPON equipment to deliver a ton more bandwidth for internet use? Im sure the answer is no.... lol |
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DrDrewSo that others may surf.
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
kudos:8 | reply to jasontaylor
said by jasontaylor:"Coax isn't the real bottleneck. Legacy hardware configurations and content owner expectations are. Given enough time and money, both will change"
Thanks. But aren't we ONLY talking about inside the home equipment ("cap ex") expenditures? And aren't ALL customers fully paying all costs of all equipment via rental fees? So there's no cap ex cost to verizon. Even the installs are not free to customers. Can you explain what I'm missing?
It takes upgrades in equipment on the headend side too. Those 1 Ghz signals, MPEG4 video streams, and/or IPTV distribution systems don't just come out of nowhere to feed those rented boxes.
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If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes. |
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DrDrewSo that others may surf.
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
kudos:8
4 edits | reply to ITALIAN926
said by ITALIAN926:I understand that 1Mhz splitters dont give issues, thats what FiOS installs currently. I just dont see a 1150Mhz to 1500 block of spectrum work with 5-1000Mhz rated splitters. Aside from that, increased attenuation for that higher spectrum opens up new problems within the premises.
And let me ask you something, thats a pretty big pipe FiOS uses in order to make all those channels available. GPON internet allows ~2.4Gbps downstream to be shared by 16, or 32 subs. If they did away with QAM and went IPTV, would they be able to use GPON equipment to deliver a ton more bandwidth for internet use? Im sure the answer is no.... lol
The IPTV would be delivered over the GPON or BPON bandwidth, so there would be less of it available for internet use.
The path FIOS uses for video broadcast would take some serious re-engineering and equipment changes for it to be used for internet... since it's a tree and branch downstream broadcast architecture and it would need a upstream path for it to be two-way communications able. It could be some sort of hybrid split path system like early DOCSIS was, but that's a new un-created protocol at this point.
XPON would probably be a cheaper, easier, upgrade path.
[edit] FIOS could also run a SDV system like TWC, Charter, and Cox does. It allows video stream switching over QAM (so unwatched channels could be switched off and the bandwidth made available for other channels) and can be controlled through an IP back channel. Verizon's headend would need some redesign and the boxes would need SDV client software to do it though... but at this point it's a well known and working system.
They could also do IPTV just for niche channels just like others use SDV.
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If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes. |
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| reply to DrDrew
said by DrDrew:said by jasontaylor:Never once in my life have i seen a cable company lift a finger to help 3rd party people store or copy tv shows or movies. Why would they start caring now?
The cable company doesn't own the content. Exactly. I'm glad we agreed that the reason for not having more HD channels can't be blamed on the needs of tivo et al. (as was implied by one poster). |
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| said by jasontaylor:said by DrDrew:said by jasontaylor:Never once in my life have i seen a cable company lift a finger to help 3rd party people store or copy tv shows or movies. Why would they start caring now?
The cable company doesn't own the content. Exactly. I'm glad we agreed that the reason for not having more HD channels can't be blamed on the needs of tivo et al. (as was implied by one poster). You should really start reading for comprehension rather than skimming for inroads to start an argument that no one is having.
I said it is in Verizon's interest to adhere to industry standards (the ones you crassly called "retarded") because it broadens their potential customer base. It's not a matter of caring, it a matter of business. Without this, they'd never have a chance of drawing customers who use these other standard methods of recording content away from their competitors. |
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2 edits | reply to knarf829
said by knarf829:You had me until your defense of OWN, which is a nothing vanity channel created to feed one large woman's equally massive ego. I'm glad we don't have it in HD.
Every channel is a vanity channel created to feed someone's massive ego.
My defense of OWN was in response to the hypocrisy of that post by guppy_fish.
Just be thankful that Oprah only has one network instead of seven like Byron Allen...
I will take OWN HD over Byron Allen's 7 .TV networks any day.
said by nowayout:Verizon has started muxing more channels at 3:1. They're not "compressing" the channels per se, but the channels they're pairing 3:1 were already being delivered at lower bitrates (12mbps), making the negative side-effects mostly negligible. Until this past year or so they were fitting them at 2:1 regardless. So this has given them more room to play with.
This is not true.
The bulk of the 12 Mbps networks are not being received like that.
Verizon is receiving MPEG-4 signals and instead of re-encoding them to MPEG-2 at 15+ Mbps they are now re-encoding them to MPEG-2 at 12 Mbps.
As most things Verizon receives now are MPEG-4 they are re-encoding just about everything. For some reason they also re-encode AXS.TV in most VHOs (Distributed as MPEG-2 @ 17 Mbps bitrate) to MPEG-2 again at the same bitrate, introducing additional compression artifacts for zero bandwidth savings. This makes little sense. |
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