[TelstraClear] HDTV or improved MPEG2 quality?

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MrWombat

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#16659 22-Oct-2007 11:13

Hi,

I am now the proud owner of an HD capable television :p

Just from reading this @ http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/residential/inhome/television/digital-tv/whats_new.cfm

“We’re just completing a $1.3m transmission upgrade on our network, which allows us to expand our channel capacity and optimise the picture quality. By November our InHome TV customers will have 15 great new channels to view.”

I am a bit scared of the word "optimise". It sounds like it could be some new codec that actually reduces bandwidth, I read in the manual that the DVB-C signal has a video stream between 0.5-15 Meg/second.

I was just wondering if there is any news of a 720p or 1080i/p channels coming to inhome soon. Or if anyone has the 'good-oil' on the optimisations that are taking place...

Cheers,
Wombat

cyril7

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#91904 22-Oct-2007 11:30

Hi Wombat, from my understanding TCL have no intention at this point of doing HD, however as has been well publicised TVNZ/TV3 and Sky all intend to have HD offerings in the next 12months.

From my understanding TCLs upgrade is mainly to cleanup their current system so that it preserves the original digital qualities. Currenlty TCL takes most of its programming from Sky, however to achieve this they have a bunch of decoders and bring the signal back down to composite video (I presume composite based on the dot crawl I see) then reencode it onto the digital DVB-C HFC system. Concatenating two lower bit rate encodes like this produces the pretty shoddy results I have observed on TCL digital system.

I presume that TCL have spend a lot of the 1.3M on transcoders that take the original mpeg streams off Skys satellite feeds and without decoding (but with reencrypting) places those streams back on the DVB-C HFC. Buy doing this TCL customers will atleast get the same picture quality as Skys customers rather than something somewhat less than currently.

Cyril

sbiddle

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#91906 22-Oct-2007 11:36

There is no HD coming to TCL anytime soon. As part of their upgrade however the bandwidth of channels will be increasing and from what I've heard (unofficially) TCL could be looking at transmitting some channels in HD once Sky start their transmissions as this is still in MPEG2. There are apparently no plans to transmit any of the FTA channels in HD even though TVNZ and TV3 have indicated they will begin HD broadcasts using the DVB-T Freeview platform next year.

MrWombat

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#91908 22-Oct-2007 12:45

Thanks for that,

I am quite into audio compression and often read forums like hydrogenaudio. They talk about how bad recoding already compressed audio is. This from what I can see in Inhome is true for video also. It is a bit sad really that rather than being a leader in this sort of thing TC are followers. With their next-gen network you would think they could supply us with a HD signal, perhaps by removing some of the Pay-per view channels?

Hey it's better than analog television!!!

Cheers
Wombat

lchiu7

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#92248 24-Oct-2007 16:49

Remember that TCL is not a content producer or even owner. They just re-transmit content. So it's pretty hard for them to send HD down when their source isn't.

However once the source goes (say DVB-T) and TCL grabs that signal, I would hope they would re-transmit it. Of course we would then have to upgrade our STB's I guess

Larry

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cyril7

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#92259 24-Oct-2007 17:31

Which brings up an intereseting point, in the US cable operators send the 8VSB offair FTA muxs straight down their cables (they normally mix them to a suitable channel) so you dont need a DOCSIS/DVB-C decoder to see them just an offair ATSC 8VSB tuner which all TV's over a certain size have.

So can we expect TCL to pump the off air FreeView DVB-T muxs down their cable so you can just use a FTA DVB-T STB to get FreeView if you are in a poor coverage area? I mean they put the FTA analogs on the cable now.

Cyril

lchiu7

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#92265 24-Oct-2007 17:55

That's an interesting and somewhat coincidental comment.

I am currently in the US. My friends (where I am staying) have a HDTV ready TV (but it has no QAM nor ATSC tuner in it). They watch all their TV in SD just using the cable ready tuner in the set. They don't seem to want to rent a HD STB from their cable provider (Comcast).

In fact all the FTA channels are broadcast unscrambled down the cable as Cyril notes (regulatory requirement0 which means at least 6 or 7 channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW, PBS and some locals).

If they don't want to rent the STB they instead purchase a HD tuner which is bascially a QAM tuner that takes the HD signal off the cable and outputs a video signal over HDMI. Something like

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-DTBH260F-HDTV-Terrestrial-Tuner/dp/B000JV6TQY/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-5492133-4663252?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1193093850&sr=1-1

I might buy them that for a Christmas present! It's seems so unnatural watching stretched SD on a HD set when you have HD available!

As Cyril notes, if TCL sends the HD signal down the cable, when we just need to buy a DVB-C STB (if such items exist).

Larry

PS

As an aside the hotel where I am staying (admittedly an expensive one - a Marriott) has a HD TV in the room and I can watch up to 10 HD channels in the room :-)

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

cyril7

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#92281 24-Oct-2007 19:15

As Cyril notes, if TCL sends the HD signal down the cable, when we just need to buy a DVB-C STB (if such items exist)

Not quite, I was implying that TCL pump the raw DVB-T muxs (but shifted to a suitable channel) down the cable, so you could simply connect a DVB-T decoder (HD to boot).

It is my understanding that US cable operators acutally do the same, but pump the raw ATSC off air channels (once again translated to a suitable cable channel) down the cable. All ATSC tuners in the US now also support DOCSIS/DVB-C FTA decoding, which cable operators also use to transmit their own FTA stuff and obviously their ecnrypted paystuff, but I may have misunderstood that.

Cyril

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lchiu7

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#92362 25-Oct-2007 11:08

cyril7:
As Cyril notes, if TCL sends the HD signal down the cable, when we just need to buy a DVB-C STB (if such items exist)

Not quite, I was implying that TCL pump the raw DVB-T muxs (but shifted to a suitable channel) down the cable, so you could simply connect a DVB-T decoder (HD to boot).

It is my understanding that US cable operators acutally do the same, but pump the raw ATSC off air channels (once again translated to a suitable cable channel) down the cable. All ATSC tuners in the US now also support DOCSIS/DVB-C FTA decoding, which cable operators also use to transmit their own FTA stuff and obviously their ecnrypted paystuff, but I may have misunderstood that.

Cyril

Terminololgy confusion. Assuming TCL grabs the off air DVB-T HD signal, they would inject it down the cable, suitable frequency transposed or whatever. Then all we need is a small box (not a true STB) that can tune into the signal and output the HD signal over HDMI or whatever.

That would be cool assuming the tuner box wasn't too expensive.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

cyril7

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#92370 25-Oct-2007 11:30

No you would require a DVB-T box that instead of plugging it into your antenna you could pic it off the cable. Dont know what you mean by small box you still require a complete STB or an integrated once they appear on the market.

Cyril

lchiu7

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#92374 25-Oct-2007 11:57

Perhaps the same DVB-T box you would use for grabbing UHF transmissions assuming it could tune into the channels on the cable?

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

cyril7

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#92377 25-Oct-2007 12:08

Yes larry that is what I mean, if you live in a poor coverage area but have cable then you could obtain the DVB-T mux via TCL, assuming they were to put it down the cable, just as most US cable operators put the FTA 8VSB signals in addition to their DVB-C/DOCSIS signals down the cable.

Cyril