Can existing national birds handle a MPEG4 stream?

[Seanb61]

Someone who understands the tech please answer this.

Technically, can’t any of the existing national birds handle a MPEG4 stream, or are the new birds required for to send a MPEG4 stream? What I am getting at is with Sunday ticket over couldn’t the bandwidth used on a national level for that service be used to provide a few MPEG4 channels whilst D* waits for the launch of the new birds. When the new birds are up and running couldn’t they just migrate these MPEG4 streams over to them. This would allow them to provide MPEG4 HD channels nationally, now. I think I am correct that the compression scheme they send to the bird doesn’t matter.

 

[realplaya3tn]

that's the same thing i'm wondering, the mpeg 4 stream shouldn't matter, so i'm wondering why we're not seeing some more national hd channels right now, even with 10 sunday ticket games in HD they only cut two HD channels, tnt and ppv HD, so bandwidth wise they should be able to add 4 or 5 channels right now.

 

[boba]

Yes the existing satellites can carry Mpeg4. Your problem is Directv borrowed the bandwidth from PPV for a few hours out of the day not 24 hrs. per day.

 

[rad]

The satellites really don't care, as long as it's ones and zeros, they'll just pass them back down.

 

[bonscott87]

Yes the existing satellites can carry Mpeg4. Your problem is Directv borrowed the bandwidth from PPV for a few hours out of the day not 24 hrs. per day.

Exactly. Sure the current sats could carry MPEG4. Heck they could carry MPEG8 if it existed. Data is data.

But they really didn't have the bandwidth as it was for Sunday Ticket being they had to shut down most PPV channels and even TNT-HD channel. They just plain don't have the bandwidth until the new sats go up this year.

 

[HDTVFanAtic]

that's the same thing i'm wondering, the mpeg 4 stream shouldn't matter, so i'm wondering why we're not seeing some more national hd channels right now, even with 10 sunday ticket games in HD they only cut two HD channels, tnt and ppv HD, so bandwidth wise they should be able to add 4 or 5 channels right now.

They cut a number of the SD PPV channels as well to make up the bandwidth.

Remember that all but 3 of the HD Games (and all SD Games) were on 101W.

Look at the charts and try to find available bandwidth to do it any other way except killing a large number of SD PPV channels.

 

[rmmrph]

I think what the OP was implying that if they have the capacity to add all of those MPEG 2 streams, they would have enough bandwith to a couple MPEG 4 streams without have to resort to shutting anything off. The only real way I could see it happening is if they also converted the exisiting channels as well

 

[terryfoster]

Yes D* could do a hard switch to MPEG4 now, but a slower incentive based switch would be a better approach. So if they add new MPEG4 channels with high demand content, then you can expect people to request MPEG4 equipment to replace their MPEG2 equipment. This way people aren't "losing" anything, yet.

Then when they feel they have enough people using MPEG4 equipment they can convert the MPEG2 HD channels to MPEG4 and deal with a much smaller, unhappy population.

 

[Tower Guy]

Someone who understands the tech please answer this.

Technically, can’t any of the existing national birds handle a MPEG4 stream, or are the new birds required for to send a MPEG4 stream?

There's no doubt that the existing birds can handle MPEG4 using QPSK modulation. It's not clear that they could do 8PSK modulation. A higher signal to noise ratio is needed for 8PSK. Some of the 8PSK s/n penatly can be compensated by the use of turbo coding, but turbo coding causes slightly slower channel changes. 8PSK would work in most places during good weather but the rain fade problem would get worse.

 

[lou_do]

Just my opinion, but I think eventually all signals will go to MPG4. As more and more people buy 16 x 9 HDTVs, there will be less and less demand for the current MPG2 SD 4 x 3 signals. Once D* has all HD converted over to H20s and HR20s, it wouldn't surprise me to see them starting to changing over the older SD receivers to H20s, and all DVRs to HR20s. Then for analog 4 x 3 sets you would use letterbox mode with the A/V output. Like what we do now to view a 4 x 3 SD signal, putting it in pillar mode to view it on a 16 x 9 screen.

At some point, down the road, as the number of 4 x 3 sets declines, it just won't be cost effective to transmit the same signal in 16 x 9 and 4 x 3. Plus, it would be a big benefit to D*, having only one receiver and one DVR, for all customers.

 

[Todd Humphrey]

It will take many years to swap out MPEG2 receivers to MPEG4.

 

[Ramy]

Don't forget that the new birds from last year can only do spot beams right now. They would lose too many channels to do national on those birds.

 

[lou_do]

Don't forget that the new birds from last year can only do spot beams right now. They would lose too many channels to do national on those birds.

Many of the satellites can be set up in different ways.

DirecTV 9s launched last year is capable of providing up to 54 transponders for high-quality local and national digital video service broadcast into 27 beams. In an alternate configuration, the satellite will be capable of providing up to 44 transponders broadcast into 30 beams.

 

[Ramy]

Many of the satellites can be set up in different ways.

DirecTV 9s launched last year is capable of providing up to 54 transponders for high-quality local and national digital video service broadcast into 27 beams. In an alternate configuration, the satellite will be capable of providing up to 44 transponders broadcast into 30 beams.

That one replaced an older sat. It wasn't a totally new one. I was referring to the Spaceway sats that are setup for spotbeam.