4K FTA HD Receivers?

[goaliebob99]

Thoughts on the adoption of DVB-S2X as a standard? Has the backing of the DVB committee, initial SOC development and fully backward compatibility.

Now that I think about it, would 4:4:4 have to be apart of the compression standard for 4k considering its in the HVEC standard? I am assuming that the new IRD's will have some sort of HVEC decoder in it as well as I would think if it can do 4:4:4 it would be backwards compatible with 4:2:2 content and 4:2:0 content. I also am very interested to see where the transmission standard is going to go. DVB-S2X looks promising but I almost wonder if we need to be looking beyond that.

 

[eurosport]

4k? Really? Regular old HD (that's not that old) still isn't transmitted in it's full bandwidth on the pizza dishes & now they talk about this? Let's get one standard at a time right before we jump into the "next big thing". Like maybe getting everything in the proper aspect ratio?

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[swampman]

At least in my house, FTA gives better PQ than my OTA

Better than OTA....THAT I find difficult to believe. If that's the case...there is something wrong with your OTA setup.

 

[Jim S.]

The something wrong with his OTA setup is probably that the broadcaster has stuck all sorts of other channels in the mux.

 

[gpflepsen]

Better than OTA....THAT I find difficult to believe. If that's the case...there is something wrong with your OTA setup.

Do you watch PBS or OETA on 125W ku? LPBS HD from 87W rocks. Do you watch NBC from 105W C-band? That's what I'm talking about. Try a 4-2-2 CBS sporting event off 97W C-band, no comparison. Those specific feeds will blow away most anyone's OTA signal. If you're not seeing these at better than OTA, better check your FTA setup and display, or you are very fortunate with your OTA situation.

 

[gpflepsen]

The something wrong with his OTA setup is probably that the broadcaster has stuck all sorts of other channels in the mux.

Bingo. How many OTAs do not run subchannels? I have one CBS that now runs the NBC HD feed on a subchannel. Yuck...

 

[T134]

I think several people took my post the wrong way. I did not say 4k isn't going to work, I said it has a lot to prove and a few years ago it was the same promises for 3DTV. I want to see some big delivery and some tech issues taken care of before I throw away good money on a 4K TV personally. I am not going the walmart cheapie route, if I buy one I am buying mid to high.

Movies have been filmed in digital 4K for sometime, so Netflix has a growing library as does Sony. Granted, it's not a massive amount of content, but it high quality. As with most TV innovations, I suspect the real driver will probably be premium sports. Fox is already using 4K cameras, but that's so it can take a wide shot of the field and then zoom in to a 1080 or 720 window for replays to catch action while keeping HD quality.

Martyn, no offense but you proved my point. Your quote above is/was the 3DTV sales pitch. "growing library", "high quality", "the real driver will be premium sports", "already using 4k (3D) cameras. All that evaporated to nothing with 3D and "they" sold 3D at least as hard as the current 4k sell.

Why does it have to use an MPEG-2 based standard? No one is talking about that. The bandwidth needs are too great. The industry is moving towards MPEG-4 HEVC for 4K.

4k won't use MPEG-2 it is technically obsolete. Unfortunately ground based Cable TV services such as Comcast use giagantic POS STB's that look like 1980's satellite boxes. I've looked at the entire Xfinity TV system, it is MPEG-2 as are many cable providers. They are wasting 75% of their limited bandwidth because of this. They can't just launch another satellite to add bandwidth. For cable and terrestrial to adapt 4k widespread in USA one of 3 things has to happen:

1. STB's must be swapped for modern technology. To at least get to y2k the STB's and the signals must be H264. If they wanted to get close to current, H265. In any case this is a super duper expensive swap and cable companies don't like to spend money.

2. They will have to transcode, de-res and compress the sh*t out of 4k. It would end up looking like what DISH Network calls "HD" lol.

3. ATSC is in the same boat, it is an obsolete MPEG-2 standard. But America likes to be different instead of having modern things like DVB-T2 like even ghetto countries enjoy.

4k? Really? Regular old HD (that's not that old) still isn't transmitted in it's full bandwidth on the pizza dishes & now they talk about this? Let's get one standard at a time right before we jump into the "next big thing". Like maybe getting everything in the proper aspect ratio?

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Compress the crap out of it, that is the solution!

At least in my house, FTA gives better PQ than my OTA or DISH service.

Better than OTA....THAT I find difficult to believe. If that's the case...there is something wrong with your OTA setup.

Sorry swampman, gpflepsen has it right.

Case in point, NBC sends down content in H264. The terrestrial stations must transcode this to MPEG-2 for ATSC (OTA) broadcast. You are going to lose something anytime you transcode. The original source (FTA satellite in this example) will always be better when any type of manipulation is involved.

 

[N6BY]

...
Case in point, NBC sends down content in H264. The terrestrial stations must transcode this to MPEG-2 for ATSC (OTA) broadcast. You are going to lose something anytime you transcode. The original source (FTA satellite in this example) will always be better when any type of manipulation is involved.

Yes. That's why I watched the Super Bowl using my Mini HD SE (NBC 105W) instead of OTA on KCRA. It looked a lot sharper coming direct from the source, and it was a few seconds sooner from there vs. OTA.

I ended up using my Tivo (OTA) for the sound and the Mini for the video (had to time shift it a bit to match the delayed sound). With the Mini I couldn't find a way to get both the foreground and background audio at the same time. Just one or the other, but not combined. Maybe there is a way to do that?

In terms of AV quality, that was the best Super Bowl I've ever seen. Exciting game too.

I look forward to watching it in 4K resolution.

 

[bigg t]

If I had to choose between local channels on ota vs. Dishnet I would choose ota every time. Some of the hd from DN I find hard to believe it is really Hd. Heck some of the sd channels off of fta come very close to the quality of a compressed hd feed.

 

[gpflepsen]

FTA Movies! Has great pq for SD. The SAME usually goes for METV1. Anyway, back on the tracks?

 

[Martyn]

Martyn, no offense but you proved my point. Your quote above is/was the 3DTV sales pitch. "growing library", "high quality", "the real driver will be premium sports", "already using 4k (3D) cameras. All that evaporated to nothing with 3D and "they" sold 3D at least as hard as the current 4k sell.

You won't cause any offense by debating me!

I do think though that selling better picture quality is a solid base for 4K. I don't think the jump to 4K will be quite a big as the jump from SD to HD - but better picture quality is already a driver for new TV sales. 3D didn't provide a better picture.

There is a risk that consumers get hit by fatigue over all these new features and, if things are delayed too much, talk of 8K coming in 2018 and beyond.

 

[Cham]

Wonder if these 4K signals will be targeting high end $$ users such as sports bars, high end condos, etc... and end up being scrambled for FTA... Like was previously mentioned, DBS providers won't change out hardware to be compatible, their shareholders wouldn't allow it. Makes for a two tier audience/society.

Agree the various FTA and DBS video aspect ratio is all over the place... Constantly adjusting the TV to remedy "squash-vision, or "squish-vision"... drives me nuts!! Some channels even broadcast one program in 3X4, then the next in 16X9! So often you walk into a hotel or restaurant and their TVs are showing squash-vision. It's insane!

 

[ZetaMale]

I see a lot of advertising about TV resolution and very little about addressing motion-blur. Plasma sets had the best scan rates but no one wants them anymore. Anyway, it's too expensive to try to keep up with the advances in technology. But, if they come up with holodeck or holosuite technology, I'm all in.

 

[Dee_Ann]

As a photographer (I own a Canon 5d MarkII) I have a deep appreciation for high resolution and quality. And I have an extreme hatred of lossy compression and HD Lite.
I would buy a 4k or even an 8K BIG screen TV if they would

1. Become more affordable
2. Produce more content
3. Transfer films to 4k - 8k
4. Develop a delivery system for said content that doesn't mangle it via compression down to unwatchable garbage.

I don't see 4k - 8k ever becoming a broadcast staple until everyone has gigabit fiber into their homes.

 

[Mr Tony]

Better than OTA....THAT I find difficult to believe.

not necessarily. If he is watching the network feeds from FTA it is possible. Also if his OTA stations pack on the subchannels that bandwidth can be taken from the main station. If I put up the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis up against the FTA feed the FTA feed would win every time. Why? The ABC affiliate uses 1/2 its bandwidth for mobile. Throw in a subchannel and that "HD" feed looks like hell when watching sports or anything with fast movement.

 

[Mr Tony]

Bingo. How many OTAs do not run subchannels?

even without subchannels some stations dont run their full bandwidth. My local FOX (KQDS) doesnt run their full bandwidth (and they have no subchannels)

I have one CBS that now runs the NBC HD feed on a subchannel. Yuck...

smaller markets it will do that to get the full compliment of networks

 

[kofi123]

My local FOX (KQDS) doesnt run their full bandwidth (and they have no subchannels)

Fox is a unique situation due to the "splicer" system they use for delivering network programming to stations. Fox's fronthauls, unlike the other networks, are designed to simply be routed through the station without additional re-encoding or handling, unless doing so is necessary, like in cases where the Fox station runs another HD service or where Fox itself is on a secondary subchannel. In both cases, though, the Fox bitrate would be lowered, not increased. As these things don't apply to KQDS, what you see on that station is the best you're going to get from Fox.

 

[Cham]

I suspect some TVs don't decode the ATSC data as they should, or maybe the stations don't encode the full bandwidth as Ice mentions, likely due to some of their equipment and transmitter setups. Many are designed to have at least two full channels of video and audio, but when only broadcasting one channel they don't bother to reconfigure to allow that channel to have the full capability. Kind of a waste. The receivers in TVs are not really prioritized when costing out modules for manufacturing TVs since very few consumers these days actually use RF from an antenna anymore.
Another thing, DVB and especially DVB-S2 are so much more efficient bandwidth-wise than ATSC. They keep telling us about how much less frequency bandwidth the ATSC signals are and how that are so efficient. Looking at their signals on the on the spectrum analyzer most are actually wider than their analog predecessors. Same with 2-way commercial digital communications... many are way wider than analog NBFM when using FSK, a rather antiquated format of digital transmission. Not sure why they didn't go to PSK right off the hop. Maybe that's just progress...

 

[goaliebob99]

As a photographer (I own a Canon 5d MarkII) I have a deep appreciation for high resolution and quality. And I have an extreme hatred of lossy compression and HD Lite.
I would buy a 4k or even an 8K BIG screen TV if they would

1. Become more affordable
2. Produce more content
3. Transfer films to 4k - 8k
4. Develop a delivery system for said content that doesn't mangle it via compression down to unwatchable garbage.

I don't see 4k - 8k ever becoming a broadcast staple until everyone has gigabit fiber into their homes.

You couldnt be more wrong.

1. 4k TV's have already come down in price and are dropping like a rock even now.
2. Content has been produced in 4k for 5 years already, (30 + years for movies shot on film) Most media companys are building up for one giant release so they have enough content to feed the masses. They are there now, just waiting on Directv, and other cable company's to launch 4k live content. This will happen this summer and into next year.
3. Already done and was done during the HD transition when they transfered everything to digital.
4. H.265 (HVEC) is where 4k is going. Unfortunately you will never see uncompressed 4k unless you are actually in the movie house, or production facility. Also, HVEC with a great bit rate will be just as good as uncompressed 4k. The algorithms have gotten so good that compression isnt like what it was 3 years ago. They are now getting the encoders that do it live as good as file based encoding. Its going to be nuts where they are at in a few years from now.

5. I can do 4k now with my 100 meg cox connection and still have room for games and hd video. All is needed is a min stream of 30 megs and the HVEC codec. Gigabit is not needed, but nice to have. Also, with DOCSIS 3.1 rolling down the pipe this summer bringing everyone with a cable modem to gigabit connections, I dont think this will really matter. 4K is already here and will grow like super crazy. It's not like 3d. I think adoption will be quicker than HD and we will start to see strong growth in Feb of 16. What's going to push it is when the Superbowl goes 4k next year.

 

[BigRyan]

So now it is almost September, any one have a 4K HEVC FTA receiver yet? I'm still doing this with PCI-E card > Roku4 solution or straight from GTX950 to TV. Sure would be nice to have a BOX to do this.

ALSO K9SAT said "Unfortunately you will never see uncompressed 4k unless you are actually in the movie house" Are UHD Blu-Ray compressed? If so that would defeat the purpose of Blu-Ray.