As far as I know it still does. I just got it less than a week ago and it came with all of the movie channels and RSNs.
DIRECTV Announces New HD!
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As far as I know it still does. I just got it less than a week ago and it came with all of the movie channels and RSNs.
Yes, you'll have to delete all of your old series links for any program you were recording on the old SD channels and recreate them for the new HD channel. Series links are tied to a channel, not the highest resolution of a particular program. Some people still want to record the SD versions of some stuff to save storage space.
Before you delete the old SD ones, make sure theres guide data to make the new HD ones. If the show doesnt start for a month or two and isnt in repeats, there wont be anything in the guide to make a series link out of.
What Hd will launch next week and what day? I'm behind on my news. I just got Directv back and will never stray again for sure!
No word yet on IF they will turn on any more HD this week.
That said, they normally turn new channels on, on Wens.
I wouldn't expect any additional national HD channels for at least two or three weeks. D10 just arrived at the repair slot early Monday morning, so I would guess it will be however long FCC approval, remediation and about the same return time take before they can begin adding national HD channels in earnest.
Resolved the problem. Tuner 2 wasn't getting a strong signal on 103ca. Swapped BBCs...no problem with them. Started checking all cables and connections from tuner 2 back to the dish. The connection coming off the multiswitch was the problem...corroded. Cleaned it and that was that.
All is well in the McCoy household now.
You've got it right, mpeg4 generally uses less space than mpeg2, sometimes quite a bit less space. But the mpeg4 SD stuff takes a lot less space than mpeg4 HD.
I record some of my sons animated stuff in SD instead of HD. I can barely tell the difference and he sure cant, but it takes less space.
Yeah I'll bet a lot of the SD stuff is still in mpeg2, depends on what sat its coming from I think. I think a fair bit of the SD content on MPEG4-only locals is going to be a lot smaller than on the HD channel. Maybe it isnt. We dont have any real visibility into how much space is taken up by stuff on the disk.
My locals are mpeg4. A lot of what my son watches is on the local PBS channel. I record the low grade animations off the SD version of the channel.
My locals are mpeg4. A lot of what my son watches is on the local PBS channel. I record the low grade animations off the SD version of the channel.
IIRC, all SD national channels are MPEG-2 and almost all SD LiLs are MPEG2. Just a few SD LiLs are MPEG-4.
I'm pretty sure I'm in an mpeg4-only market for locals.
I'm also pretty sure that an mpeg2 encoded SD show is smaller on disk than an mpeg4 encoded HD show with the same content. Especially if its kids animations and talking heads.
My thinking along those lines is that I own a bunch of movies in both the mpeg2 dvd format and the blu-ray format. Sizes of the dvd format movies are generally 4-8GB. The same movie in blu-ray is generally at least twice the size and sometimes quite a bit more than that. Mpeg2 really does a good job with static backgrounds and low motion.
Hmm...I'll have to take a 1080i and 720p high quality mpeg4 video and transcode it to 480 SD mpeg2 and see what the file sizes are. Maybe someone has already done that and published the results. Might be interesting.
Of course, since Directv drops the bitrate on a lot of their stuff to fit it in, it might not even compare that well.
I'm also pretty sure that an mpeg2 encoded SD show is smaller on disk than an mpeg4 encoded HD show with the same content. Especially if its kids animations and talking heads.
My thinking along those lines is that I own a bunch of movies in both the mpeg2 dvd format and the blu-ray format. Sizes of the dvd format movies are generally 4-8GB. The same movie in blu-ray is generally at least twice the size and sometimes quite a bit more than that. Mpeg2 really does a good job with static backgrounds and low motion.
Hmm...I'll have to take a 1080i and 720p high quality mpeg4 video and transcode it to 480 SD mpeg2 and see what the file sizes are. Maybe someone has already done that and published the results. Might be interesting.
Of course, since Directv drops the bitrate on a lot of their stuff to fit it in, it might not even compare that well.
That wasnt too hard. I found a pretty good chart that showed some good looking data.
Looks like within the same resolution (480, 720, 1080) mpeg4 is about half the bitrate of mpeg2. But SD mpeg2 bitrates are about half that of 720p/60 and 1080i/30 was a bit higher than that.
The raw numbers (for the sample video the test used) was 4Mb/s for SD mpeg2, 2Mb/s for SD Mpeg4, 8Mb/s for HD mpeg4 @ 720p, and 10Mb/s for HD mpeg4 @1080i
So from that analysis an SD mpeg2 show should take half the space on disk as an HD mpeg4 equivalent @ 720p and less than half if the HD show is 1080i. If you have mpeg4-only locals, the SD version will take one quarter as much disk as a 720p broadcast and only 20% the size of an mpeg4 1080i one.
From that, unless directv is really throttling the bitrate on their HD stuff and not doing much to the bitrate on their SD stuff, recording in SD regardless of encoding method should result in significant disk space savings.
Quality wise, I think that all this stuff is originally encoded in mpeg2 somewhere along the line and its transcoded to mpeg4 after that, so the mpeg4 can never really look 'better' compared to its source material than the mpeg2 version. Some of the mpeg4 artifacting and tools used to smooth that out or correct it might be pleasing to the eye, but its not technically closer to the original. In fact unless you're using fairly high bitrate mpeg4 it almost has to look a little worse, at least at the same resolution.
Looks like within the same resolution (480, 720, 1080) mpeg4 is about half the bitrate of mpeg2. But SD mpeg2 bitrates are about half that of 720p/60 and 1080i/30 was a bit higher than that.
The raw numbers (for the sample video the test used) was 4Mb/s for SD mpeg2, 2Mb/s for SD Mpeg4, 8Mb/s for HD mpeg4 @ 720p, and 10Mb/s for HD mpeg4 @1080i
So from that analysis an SD mpeg2 show should take half the space on disk as an HD mpeg4 equivalent @ 720p and less than half if the HD show is 1080i. If you have mpeg4-only locals, the SD version will take one quarter as much disk as a 720p broadcast and only 20% the size of an mpeg4 1080i one.
From that, unless directv is really throttling the bitrate on their HD stuff and not doing much to the bitrate on their SD stuff, recording in SD regardless of encoding method should result in significant disk space savings.
Quality wise, I think that all this stuff is originally encoded in mpeg2 somewhere along the line and its transcoded to mpeg4 after that, so the mpeg4 can never really look 'better' compared to its source material than the mpeg2 version. Some of the mpeg4 artifacting and tools used to smooth that out or correct it might be pleasing to the eye, but its not technically closer to the original. In fact unless you're using fairly high bitrate mpeg4 it almost has to look a little worse, at least at the same resolution.
Today they moved the D10 channels to D12, so they are starting their work on D10.
I wouldn't expect new HD for a few weeks until they try fixing D10 and get it back in place. Famous word insert: soon.
I wouldn't expect new HD for a few weeks until they try fixing D10 and get it back in place. Famous word insert: soon.
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