O Canada! > Canadian > Canadian Broadband > VMedia Launches

reply to GeorgeBurger

Re: VMedia Launches

Well, cable around here in Cogecoland certainly isn't doing any 1080p, let alone anything high bit rate. I suspect Rogers might be doing something like that for their VOD, but it is exceedingly doubtful that they're doing it for for every single one of their channels.

Nothing beats off-air full bitrate ATSC straight from an American network feed. The quality is instantly recognizable and blows away anything even off-air Canadian television delivers, let alone BDUs. Quite simply, it's like looking at a photograph and makes it difficult to watch anything off even Shaw Direct which has one of the better HD PQs out there for a BDU. Still, I would take the detail loss with 2Mbit/s H.264 over the incessant macroblocking that occurs with typical BDU transmissions MPEG2 high-def content any day. "Typical" cable is not 28Mbit/s, no bloody way.

reply to GeorgeBurger
All the audiovisual details on resolutions and compression can be seen here:

»illicotech.com/NumMtl.html

It's all MPEG-2.
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Developer: Tomato/MLPPP, Linux/MLPPP, etc »fixppp.org

I saw a few that were 17, none that were 24. But yeah, those are some impressive bitrates. I believe Rogers maxes out at 8 or so at the best of times and Bell is doing 4-7 third-generation 720p on their MPEG2 channels. They used to be higher until they started cramming more channels into QAMs and transponders in the last few years.

Rogers is over 10. Here are some recent numbers...

»www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showpos···count=98

Channel / Bitrate (mbps)

497 - Animal - 15
498 - Sci - 14
501 - SN1 - 15
506 - TSN - 19
514 - CBC - 16
525 - PBS - 10
528 - CBSW - 12
532 - PBSW - 14
534 - DW - 14
535 - NG - 12
550 - TMN - 14
563 - TCM - 10
574 - Discovery - 15
583 - CityW - 15
586 - TWN - 11

I have a hard time believing 2Mb/sec is going to look very good but to each their own.

For what it's worth, 10 still looks like shit in MPEG2.

reply to GeorgeBurger
Has George confirmed the bitrate yet? All he said was 2Meg but he never said if that's for just SD or everything.

While 2Meg may be passable (you'd be surprised just how many people settle for really shitty quality pirated stuff), it certainly isn't a quality level I'd want to pay for.

1080p stuff should start off at minimum 8mb/s with H.264 imo, NetFlix's 5.8Mb/s is getting there but not really enough. The issue is the surprising number of people that still stuck on 5/6Mbps DSL.

George, the DSL 6 packaged should not be offered period with IPTV service, you're just asking for trouble. That or have a way to restrict HD if someone is only on 6Mbps.

reply to GeorgeBurger
Well, for whatever reason most stuff on Videotron looks pretty bad. People generally agree that Bell is better quality, both on ExpessVu and Fibe.

Fibe is probably VC-1, though, which is similar to h.264. It has an in-loop deblocker. MPEG-2 doesn't, and so h.264 doesn't suffer from macroblocking artifacts (that part of the picture just gets less and less detailed). I think that even if you just took MPEG-2 and added an in-loop deblocker you'd see a pretty big improvement there, but of course that wouldn't be MPEG-2 anymore, and nothing would decode it.

Videotron originally promised when they launched digital HD cable that they'd only put two HD channels per QAM, giving them something like 19 Mbps each, but that idea went down the crapper due to the spectrum crunch (they still have lots of analog channels and haven't fully migrated to SDV), so now they do three.

Also of note is the list where the entire cable spectrum from 57 to 861 Mhz is broken down:

»illicotech.com/NumMtlRes.html

The west island (where my parents live) would be MGM-Montreal-Ouest, I think, while all of downtown Montreal where I live would be Montreal-A. MGM stands for, translated, "Modernization of Greater Montreal", the areas that have moved to FTTN. That apparently bought then another 12 QAMs by pushing from 789MHz to 860 MHz, and that in turn was enough for 8-channel bonded DOCSIS 3.0 (up to 200Mbps), while those of us downtown are stuck on 4-channel bonding at 60 meg.

EDIT: Also, huh, apparently we now have a CityTV Montreal as of a few months ago.
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Developer: Tomato/MLPPP, Linux/MLPPP, etc »fixppp.org

Yeah, the lack of macroblocking on MPEG4-related codecs is what makes a big difference. Even a "lower quality" stream is visually easier to deal with due to the lack of the macroblocking.

I believe Fibe TV is VC-1. Shaw Direct and Bell TV use H.264 for what isn't MPEG2.

reply to Guspaz

reply to TypeS
Hi TypeS sorry about the delay in responding but been really swamped with pre- and post-launch stuff. We are using HLS adaptive streaming with H.264 codec & custom optimization algorithms which allow us to deliver HD quality with an average (not a constant) bitrate of 2 Mbps. Bitrates range between 1 and 2 Mbps for SD and between 1.5 and 2.5 Mbps for 720p HD. Hope that helps. The picture looks terrific, if I do say so myself.

reply to GeorgeBurger
What's your ETA for launch in Ottawa? And is it possible to use your service with another ISP?

reply to GeorgeBurger
I go live in North Bay on April 11th. I'll let you know how it goes! I'm subscribing to the 35Mbs Cable service.

reply to GeorgeBurger

reply to GeorgeBurger
There's a few things that I think Vmedia should be looking at. Provide only the ABSOLUTE BASIC PACKAGE that they are legally required to have. Everything else you should be able to do al-la-carte. I also feel the requirement to only use your ISP isn't exactly the point of IPTV. It should be like Voip, where it doesn't matter. I realistically would like to jump over, but being forced to use a different ISP, and being forced to take/pay for channels I don't want, just looses it's appeal to me. The LOCALS are CTV, CTV2, Global, CBC, TVO, CHCH, etc I can see being on a basic package, but Vision, french channels, (or english if you only speak french) etc etc don't make sense. Not worth the change.

reply to GeorgeBurger
Vision is required to be on basic, as are many other channels. It's not vmedia's fault or decision to make. As for the rest of the stuff being a la carte, dream on. Much of that is controlled by the channels and the contracts you have to sign.

reply to koreyb

reply to travisc