All D* customers to migrate to MPEG4???

[rad]

According to http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/news/n_direct_tv-11.23.05.shtml there is this sentence:

Eventually, all DirecTV subscribers will be converted to MPEG-4, although the conversion likely will not be completed until mid-2007.

Now the story is about D*'s HD LIL efforts and the new H20 so maybe the author just missed adding HD to the sentence but maybe they know something we dont?

 

[boba]

MPEG4 will allow more compression than MPEG2 so it is probably over time going to be the norm, and all receivers will be converted. 2007 is probably overly optomistic for a MPEG4 only signal

 

[hdtvtechno]

MPEG4 will allow more compression than MPEG2 so it is probably over time going to be the norm, and all receivers will be converted. 2007 is probably overly optomistic for a MPEG4 only signal

yeah more like 2009

 

[LonghornXP]

They do have plans to upgrade all SD customers to MPEG4 by around that time. It will only require a box swapout only and I'm sorry to say this but when that does happen current SD Tivo boxes will no longer be supported and you will be forced to swap it out for free of course with the newest SD DVR box. I know many people won't like this but if they replace it for free you don't have many rights as far as fighting DirecTV to support your SD Tivos. The plan for this isn't to increase bandwidth but to improve picture quality for all SD channels in the future.

 

[rad]

LonghornXP, that would be nice, get SD PQ back to what it was when D* first started up.

I've lost track, is the R15 MEPG4 capable or will it also need to be replaced? If not what was D*'s reasoning in not putting in a MPEG2/4 decoder now and cut back on the number of STB's that would need to be replaced?

 

[Hogarth]

The R15 is not MPEG4 capable.

Reasoning? Don't do today what you can wait to do tomorrow.
They're cheap.

By the time they are ready to move SD DVRs to MPEG4, MPEG4 decoders will be much, much cheaper.