Reviews:
 ·Comcast
| reply to DrDrew
Re: [HD] FIOS Moving to MPEG-4 HD DrDrew it's probably more HD channels and/or better, sharper, clearer looking video and crisper audio. »www.thebuzzmedia.com/comcast-hd-···on-fios/
»www.avsforum.com/t/1008271/comca···eenshots |
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| reply to SpHeRe31459
Sorry to hear about the printer screwup, Hope you get the Ethernet working again. |
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1 edit | said by Mike Wolf:Sorry to hear about the printer screwup, Hope you get the Ethernet working again.
LOL, it has nothing to do with me personally. I think you misread that part of my post. It was at work, and there's no problem, it was just a silly user error, they attempted to put a USB cable into an Ethernet jack on an HP printer, it's no problem since it doesn't even make contact with the jack properly (so it didn't short anything out), and the jack was disabled in the printer's configuration anyway. It was just a recent anecdote that supports Dr. Drew's point about people not knowing their USB ports from their Ethernet ports from their HDMI ports, etc. |
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| Oh ok. Why isn't the Ethernet used? |
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| reply to JeepMatt
But again, I don't care if people don't know how to plug their device in. They just have to pay for someone to help them. That's how the world works.
If you don't know how to change the oil in your car, you have to pay a mechanic.
If you don't know how to unclog your toilet, you have to pay a plumber.
If you don't know how to hook up your TV, you have to pay someone to do it.
I don't know why people still act like this is a problem. |
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The Q
join:2008-06-26
Collegeville, PA | reply to Mike Wolf
Any links or information more current that 2008? I'm sure some things may have changed (better or worse) from both providers in the past five years... |
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| Don't think so unfortunately, bfdtv seems to have dropped off the internet for a while now. I'd love to find out if these issues have been resolved after all this time.  |
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2 edits | reply to The Q
said by The Q:Any links or information more current that 2008? I'm sure some things may have changed (better or worse) from both providers in the past five years... I would say the currently quality is quite a bit better than it was in 2008. Things aren't nearly as fuzzy and blocky as those demo images from the news article. Circa 2008 seemed to be a real low point for Comcast's image quality and they took a huge beating, even in the mainstream press, for it. I know they've been more careful about how they bundle their HD channels in their QAMs now, (i.e. combining one higher data rate channel with two lower data rate ones), and I think they've gotten better adaptive rate shaping encoders. However, they are definitely still quite compressed and fast motion still definitely breaks up into macroblocks, but it's generally not too bad. Discovery HD still seems to be pretty prone to it. Here's more recent comments in the same AVS thread about the quality from 2011, confirming Comcast has gotten much better/smarter with their HD channel bundling. » www.avsforum.com/t/1008271/comca···21122174 |
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 PaulGo
join:2005-01-29
Gaithersburg, MD | I agree Comcast has gotten a lot better. Part of the problem was they had new equipment that they fully did not optimize before deployment. I also believe Comcast uses less compression on VOD and the picture quality appears a bit better. I also think that a lot of the problems customers are now blaming on Comcast over compression may be attributable to other causes such as digital breakup caused by low signal strength.* |
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 DrDrewSo that others may surf.
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
kudos:8 | reply to mariod
said by mariod:I don't know why people still act like this is a problem.
The problem is that it slows down MPEG4 deployment because it slows down the box swap rate and increases the cost of box swaps. |
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BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH Reviews:
·Comcast
| reply to DrDrew
If they're that stupid, then they should pay a nice, fat fee to the cable company to come and swap their box.
Comcast would give the user the option of doing it for free, maybe even though the mail so the user does nothing, and they could even give them a free rental or something when they get the new box active, plus they'd get way more DVR capacity so they look like they are generous, and then offer a nice, hefty fee for the idiots who can't/won't do a simple cable box swap.
It's not hard to explain. You just say something like "We are transitioning from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 for HD channels. MPEG-4 allows us to fit 5 channels into the space that we currently use for 3 channels, so we can offer you even more fantastic HD programming. MPEG-4 also offers even better picture quality for today's advancing HDTV technology." Nothing hard at all, even if someone is clueless and has no clue what MPEG-4 actually is. You could replace "MPEG-2" and "MPEG-4" in that with gibberish words, and it would still make sense.
Better quality. More capacity. They could add more linear channels, they could offer faster internet speeds, sports packages, etc. They could even free up space for some HEVC 4K channels.
@SpHeRe31459... Exactly. Get rid of the MPEG-2 PQ issues while adding channels. Sounds like a win-win to me. Heck, I'd like to see the cable and satellite companies get higher bitrate feeds from the broadcasters, and pass those on... |
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BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH Reviews:
·Comcast
| reply to mariod
Yup. Pretty much.
@SpHeRe31459: Comcast's image quality took a nose dive when they rolled out more channels, as they started triple-channeling. They have done some things to tweak them like you say, but fundamentally, you can't get 3 good quality HD channels on a QAM using MPEG-2.
They are also fighting an uphill battle, as 5-8 years ago, that 46" RPTV looked fine with a lot of crap, but today the 60-70" 1080p LED-LCD is a whole different story. |
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| said by BiggA:Yup. Pretty much.
@SpHeRe31459: Comcast's image quality took a nose dive when they rolled out more channels, as they started triple-channeling. They have done some things to tweak them like you say, but fundamentally, you can't get 3 good quality HD channels on a QAM using MPEG-2.
Yep all the more reason why to move to MPEG4 
said by BiggA:They are also fighting an uphill battle, as 5-8 years ago, that 46" RPTV looked fine with a lot of crap, but today the 60-70" 1080p LED-LCD is a whole different story.
Indeed. The flaws in the compression became much more obvious when I moved from a 50" TV to a 60" TV.
I have to say at least Comcast isn't as soft as U-verse, my grandparents have it, and man is AT&T's idea of HD compressed to hell and very soft, it's more of a EDTV rather than an HDTV feed, and that's only a 42" TV. It also is prone to far more random macroblocking in motion and in general. So I'm thankful for the image quality Comcast has been able to retain even now. |
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| reply to DrDrew
said by DrDrew:Putting them on and off means constantly pushing out channel maps to the boxes or the boxes generate errors which generate trouble calls. Neither case is good for the cable operator or thier customers.
Often it also means reconfiguring large amounts of equipment across multiple sites and pushing it out to a large area.
It's prone to mistakes and doesn't really net the operator anything but problems and a scheduling nightmare.
You don't need SDV for sports. SDV is just a good way to handle bandwidth shortages at the edge by switching channels that aren't watched full time by a large number of users. It allows the operator to use that channel space on a dynamic basis for other channels customers may want to watch. It automates and manages all that on off switching you're suggesting on a much finer scale to the point where it's seamless for the vast majority of users.
I just came across this where a qam may appear overutilized and impossible to do in MPEG2 but it contains a mix of part time feeds where no every PID in the QAM is active.
For instance a QAM that contains all the Big Ten Xtra channels PLUS RedZone HD and SD, along with some other content. Since Big 10 games don't interfere with the NFL, they fit in the qam because RedZone HD and RedZone SD are not broadcasting, or vice versa. This is sort of 'back end' sdv though nothing really is switched. Maps are the same, you just get a temporarilly off air or channel will be available shorty message on the set top box if that pid is transferring 0 bytes. Nothing needs to be changed at the edge.
Its just the incoming source at the SHE where either a feed from (BigTen / Redzone / insert your exclusive sports ch here) is pushing data out its assigned multicast ip address/port or not. |
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BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH Reviews:
·Comcast
| reply to SpHeRe31459
Yeah, Comcast is walking a fine line with quality. AT&T just threw it totally out the window. I actually don't see U-Verse as being soft, but rather having fantastic resolution with absolutely horrendous compression artifacts to the point where it's unwatchable. |
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DrDrewSo that others may surf.
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
kudos:8 | reply to cypherstream
said by cypherstream:...This is sort of 'back end' sdv though nothing really is switched. Maps are the same, you just get a temporarilly off air or channel will be available shorty message on the set top box if that pid is transferring 0 bytes. Nothing needs to be changed at the edge.
Depending on how the gear is setup on the backend this either causes status alarms all over the place and they're ignored or the alarms aren't setup.
Leaving channels errored out on purpose for periods of time just seems like a bad idea for a variety of reasons to me. It gets to be difficult to tell whether it's out on purpose or it's an actual outage and video should be playing.
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Two is one, one is none. If it's important, back it up... Somethimes 99.999% availability isn't even good enough. |
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| So it's due to incompetence on whoever setup or was told how to setup these things? |
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| reply to DrDrew
I think the method I actually saw was something like Big 10 alternates and/or RedZone HD switching to 480i color bars. Because its stationary video with no audio, it uses less bps than even music choice. That way when 4 Big Ten Alternates go from say 10 mbps down to maybe 160 kbps due to the stationary colorbars, room is made for something like RedZone HD to go to 1080i .
Also what about using regroomers to more efficiently allocate QAM's? For example the ESPN PPV is delivered from ESPN in a package that is only 6 SD channels. Run that through a re-groomer and you can put even more on that QAM rather than wasting half a QAM. |
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BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH | Yup. They should think a little harder about how they are doing things... |
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| reply to Mike Wolf
Came across this. »www.homeboxoffice.com/to/Recentl···0916.pdf |
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