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telcodad
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telcodad

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[Comcast Equip] Comcast has begun transitioning to MPEG4

FYI - An item today on the Zatz Not Funny! blog site:

TiVo & Cable’s Inevitable MPEG4 Transition
By Dave Zatz, Zatz Not Funny! - August 28, 2014
»www.zatznotfunny.com/201 ··· nsition/
quote:
By way of a new TiVo support note, we learn that TiVo has indeed been preparing for the inevitable MPEG4 transition as cable operators look to reclaim bandwidth (beyond dastardly SDV).
In October 2014, Comcast will transition its system in Augusta, Georgia, from MPEG2 format to MPEG4. This transition means that cable channels in this region will not be viewable on older equipment that is incompatible with the new format.


SeattleMatt
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[Comcast Equip] Re: [Content] So does Comcast ever add channels?

That's awesome. MPEG-4 HD channels on FIOS look so much more vibrant and colorful.

camper
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camper

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The "awesomeness" would depend upon whether or not Comcast allots enough bandwidth to the MPEG4-HD streams, or whether Comcast limits the bandwidth to maintain approximately the same picture quality and have the ability to sell more HD channels.

In other words, will Comcast try to make its customers happier with better quality HD, or would Comcast want to increase revenue?

Let's see, do we have any past behavior of Comcast that would help us to determine which it would be? ...

cypherstream
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Wow that's cool news! So Augusta, Georgia will be rid of all MPEG2 HD boxes? Or will there be some kind of MPEG4 to MPEG2 trans-coder gateway installed in your house, and iGuide updated to talk to this gateway to say "Hey I want this channel", then gateway goes "Ok I will tune it, trans-code it to MPEG2 for you and broadcast it to you at xxx MHz". Then the old software in the MPEG2 box says "OK I got it, thank you!" Whereas native MPEG4 boxes don't have this software client and just natively go and grab the feed.

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said by cypherstream:

Wow that's cool news! So Augusta, Georgia will be rid of all MPEG2 HD boxes? Or will there be some kind of MPEG4 to MPEG2 trans-coder gateway installed in your house, and iGuide updated to talk to this gateway to say "Hey I want this channel", then gateway goes "Ok I will tune it, trans-code it to MPEG2 for you and broadcast it to you at xxx MHz". Then the old software in the MPEG2 box says "OK I got it, thank you!" Whereas native MPEG4 boxes don't have this software client and just natively go and grab the feed.

No transcoder, if something like that even existed it'd be prohibitively expensive and complicated for home use. Realize the MPEG streams are tranported on QAM channels, so the QAM would be tuned, the single video MPEG4 stream demuxed from the group of stream on the channel, the MPEG4 video stream transcoded to MPEG2, and then placed back on to a QAM channel matching the initial channel.

Comcast would just swap boxes.
Hooper
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said by SeattleMatt:

That's awesome. MPEG-4 HD channels on FIOS look so much more vibrant and colorful.

Yes, same thing on Directv as well.

Comcast should do what Verizon did and start with the Pay/ Premium tier channels to MPEG4. Highest reward on their investment.
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Re: [Comcast Equip] Comcast has begun transitioning to MPGEG4

Nice. I hope they do this nationwide. This could really help them add more HD channels, and I hope that they limit it to 5 HD's per QAM at most so that the PQ is decent. The ultimate would be 4 HD's per QAM, but that might be asking too much of Comcast! I'm glad they are doing it the right way, and not using SDV like TW.

I'm guessing that this is the result of the X1 push, as they not only have more MPEG-4 equipment deployed in the field, but now they have a ton of DCX series equipment that came out of X1 installs, so they don't have to buy anything new for this transition.

A side benefit would be that DVRs will approximately double in capacity when they go to MPEG-4! That 3TB Roamio is going to be a total BEAST when MPEG-4 is up and running!
Joe12345678
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Re: [Comcast Equip] Re: [Content] So does Comcast ever add channels?

but Comcast dumped most of added Pay/ Premium channels in HD but they can drop the SD feeds from them and just have HD feeds for them.

But what about part time feeds? will they add them when they get MPEG 4??

Comcast does loads of NON DVR HD boxes will they be swaped to MPEG 4 ones / get a NEW HD GUI? Will you need to buy DVR to get HD?

what about all the old SD boxes out there?

Series3/HD: Will only be able to receive local channels. All other cable channels will be incompatible. These TiVo customers must upgrade to a Premiere Series or Roamio Series DVR to continue to receive Comcast channels via TiVo.

Really Comcast other then locals all channels will be MPEG 4? so why is not more talk of mass hardware swap out for the OLD SD boxes and old SD DTA's?

Mike Wolf
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I'm hoping they do the same thing Verizon did it, with a message on the old equipment informing the customer that they need to replace the set top box to view the channel upon tuning to an MPEG4 channel. The RNG set top boxes and I presume the X series boxes supports MPEG4 which is awesome.
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Most of their non-DVR boxes are the equivalents of the DCX DVRs, so those should be ready to go, and older ones can be swapped out as well. I'd think most customers are using DVRs at this point, so that should be a small subset of customers...

It sounds like this is for HD, and SD will stay MPEG-2, as they have a ton of DTAs out there that are SD-only. Maybe channels above what the DTAs get will go MPEG-4, but very likely not the expanded basic lineup for the DTAs...

I wonder if this will push TiVo over the edge to releasing the MPEG-4 update for the Series 3's? They have it working in New Zealand, it shouldn't be that hard to make it work here.

Mike Wolf
join:2009-05-24
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Unless the DTA's that are out there supports MPEG4 from the get go.

Here's the TiVo page »support.tivo.com/app/ans ··· _id/2921
No it's not going to push TiVo over the edge to release an update for the Series 3. They pretty much said "get a new TiVo" on their website and they pretty much said it when Cox and Verizon FiOS (and a few other carriers) started converting to MPEG4 through emails to their customers offering discounts on new TiVo's. They want to sell new TiVo's and I don't blame them.
Joe12345678
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said by BiggA:

Most of their non-DVR boxes are the equivalents of the DCX DVRs, so those should be ready to go, and older ones can be swapped out as well. I'd think most customers are using DVRs at this point, so that should be a small subset of customers...

But don't you need an X1 box to get the GUI on the old NON DVR DCX boxes?

Knowing comcast they may not even have MPEG 4 software in the old NON DVR GUI for the old boxes.

telcodad
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said by BiggA:

It sounds like this is for HD, and SD will stay MPEG-2, as they have a ton of DTAs out there that are SD-only. Maybe channels above what the DTAs get will go MPEG-4, but very likely not the expanded basic lineup for the DTAs...

Good guess BiggA See Profile !

Just heard from a source that this MPEG4 transition is indeed only for the HD channels. SD ones will remain MPEG2.
telcodad

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MVM

Re: [Comcast Equip] Comcast has begun transitioning to MPEG4

An article about this on the MCN site now:

TiVo Braces For Comcast’s MPEG-4 Shift
MSO Transitioning HD Channels To MPEG-4 In Augusta, Ga

By Jeff Baumgartner, Multichannel News - August 29, 2014
»www.multichannel.com/new ··· t/383450
quote:
According to this customer support bulletin (»support.tivo.com/app/ans ··· _id/2921), first spotted by the ZatzNotFunny blog, Comcast is looking to transition its system in Augusta, Ga., to MPEG-4, a move that will mean that cable channels in that area will not be viewable on older TiVo equipment that is not compatible with the bandwidth-saving format.
:
A Comcast spokeswoman said Augusta is Comcast’s first “trial market” for the transition, pointing out that the operator is only transitioning HD channels to MPEG-4, not SD channels, which will remain in MPEG-2 format.
:
As for the move to MPEG-4 in Augusta, “[t]his will be a much more efficient use of bandwidth and make way for additional product improvements,” the Comcast official said via email.

Comcast has not announced when it plans to embark on similar transition and trials in other markets.
telcodad

telcodad

MVM

Karl has a news item up about this now: »Comcast Confirms MPEG-4 Shift [95] comments

gate1975mlm
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So with this news Comcast customers can expect a more vibrant and colorful HD picture on HD channels and also more HD channels being added to the channel lineup thanks to the extra bandwidth? Perhaps maybe a return of all the HD Premium channels that were removed a few years ago

Does that sound about right?

Also are the current X1 DVR boxes MPEG 4 compatible?

Wonder how long until this comes to Philly?
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said by gate1975mlm:

Also are the current X1 DVR boxes MPEG 4 compatible?

Of course. MPEG4 is just another feature that was incorporated into newer generations of the processors that these set-top boxes run. MPEG4 decoding has been in of all Motorola DCX series and the Cisco boxes from the same-era too.
dishrich
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Re: [Comcast Equip] Re: [Content] So does Comcast ever add channels?

said by telcodad:

Just heard from a source that this MPEG4 transition is indeed only for the HD channels. SD ones will remain MPEG2.

Not surprising, since the bandwidth savings between MPEG2 & 4 SD isn't that great...not to mention all the 10's of thousands of SD (MPEG2 only) DTA's out there.

1 question I wonder...there have been numerous "posts" here stating where CC was planning on moving toward (at least new) HD channels as IP-based - & not bothering with any MPEG4 upgrades like this. What happened to those plans???

OR, maybe with them trying to merg w/TWC, maybe they decided that in light of the more robust HD lineups that TWC has, maybe they needed to start transitioning to something more "practical" NOW (ie: that already works in the real world, & not in some lab experiments...) so that they can at least get THEIR own lineups inline with the company they're actually taking over. (& doing it this way might be faster than just starting to deploy SDV...)

telcodad
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telcodad

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said by dishrich:

1 question I wonder...there have been numerous "posts" here stating where CC was planning on moving toward (at least new) HD channels as IP-based - & not bothering with any MPEG4 upgrades like this. What happened to those plans???

Yes, like these recent posts: »Re: [Content] So does Comcast ever add channels?

I think this is just one step toward going all IPTV, as most IPTV-based systems (like AT&T's U-verse) use MPEG4-coded video streams.

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Re: [Comcast Equip] Comcast has begun transitioning to MPEG4

said by gate1975mlm:

So with this news Comcast customers can expect a more vibrant and colorful HD picture on HD channels and also more HD channels being added to the channel lineup thanks to the extra bandwidth

In theory, right? lol I just hope with mpeg4 they stop over-compressing. Sometimes certain channels now are noticeably blocky or look like bad jpeg quality.
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Re: [Comcast Equip] Re: [Content] So does Comcast ever add channels?

Haha thanks. It's more of a well-educated guess, based off of what I know about the equipment they have deployed out in the field. I have lived in both Moto and Sci Atlanta Comcast systems, although TBH, I know a heck of a lot more about the Moto side.
Joe12345678
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well dropping SD and moving SD only stuff to MPEG 4 can free up a lot of room.
dishrich
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said by Joe12345678:

well dropping SD

Well you KNOW with ALL the SD DTA's alone out there, that is NOT going to be happening (w/CC) soon, so it's a moot point...
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The DTAs get like half of the SD channels... They could move the other half to MPEG-4/HD-only... With more capacity freed up, if they killed off some of the SD duplicates, that would allow them to move even more channels to HD and kill off their SD duplicates. Expanded basic will definitely be staying available in MPEG-2 though.

telcodad
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said by dishrich:

said by Joe12345678:

well dropping SD

Well you KNOW with ALL the SD DTA's alone out there, that is NOT going to be happening (w/CC) soon, so it's a moot point...

Well, as I have said before (»[Content] So does Comcast ever add channels?), I know some newer SD STBs (like my Cisco RNG100s) can tune to and display (in SD) the HD channels, as well as those SD-DTAs that have the Broadcom BCM3545 chipset in them.

How many older HD-stream decoding-incapable SD STBs and DTAs would then have to be swapped out to be able to drop all SD (MPEG2) channels, I don't know.

Mike Wolf
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If Comcast starts rolling out SDV heads will roll, figuratively. Can't tell you how many of my customers loath SDV.
Mike Wolf

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But IPTV isn't compatible with TiVo, so that's a no-go from the start.
Mike Wolf

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Re: [Comcast Equip] Comcast has begun transitioning to MPEG4

So many are concerned about the SD DTA equipment, but it's possible that they're compatible with MPEG 4.
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It's not a big deal from a bandwidth perspective. They could even trim back some of the digital cable channels available to the DTAs and leave them with just a 60-80 channel lineup that's equivalent to analog cable, that doesn't use up much bandwidth for the amount of equipment that's deployed. That would also let them re-use old HD DVRs and HD STBs as SD equipment for the few customers left who are stuck in 2004.

telcodad
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Re: [Comcast Equip] Re: [Content] So does Comcast ever add channels?

said by Mike Wolf:

But IPTV isn't compatible with TiVo, so that's a no-go from the start.

Looks like TiVo is starting to address that though:

TiVo Facilitates Operator Migration to IPTV
Offering Full Hybrid and IPTV Solutions That Coexist With Operators' Existing QAM Footprints
TiVo Press Release - September 12, 2013
»investor.tivo.com/phoeni ··· =1854091