First Look: DishONLINE

[dvbfan]

IMO, if Dish can make DishOnline box works well over minimum typical broadband connection (like 384kbps to 512kbps per channel stream) for standard TV quality broadcasting.. it could increase Dish revenue even more because:

- Dish doesn't incur additional cost for antennas installation on site or cable run. (esp. good for apartments tenants and complexes)

- Consumers pay for their own broadband circuit to get content.

- Cuts down piracy (yes, they install software to report number of boxes inside the household on same LAN with unique ID, not necessarily by IP addresses)

- No rain fade issues, less service call.

 

[kstuart]

IMO, if Dish can make DishOnline box works well over minimum typical broadband connection (like 384kbps to 512kbps per channel stream) for standard TV quality broadcasting.

I don't think you can get picture quality that looks remotely like an SD DBS channel with 512kbps.

You need about 900kbps to get decent quality with MPEG4 - and most E* SD receivers only have MPEG2 hardware, not MPEG4.

AFAIK, IPTV set-top boxes use MPEG4.

(UPDATE: I see that only VIP receivers have Ethernet, and they all have MPEG4, so that is a moot point.)

 

[Rlanham]

My slingbox streams my Dish signal at about 800K, on my connection and It is only acceptable in a 4x6" window.d

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Guess you guys have never used ITVN which produces as good of a SD signal over a broadband connection as many of Dish Networks SD channels. And with DishOnline since you are using it with a hard drive based system the picture can be BETTER then most Dish SD channels as it can be buffered for a bit before playing.

 

[kstuart]

Guess you guys have never used ITVN which produces as good of a SD signal over a broadband connection as many of Dish Networks SD channels. And with DishOnline since you are using it with a hard drive based system the picture can be BETTER then most Dish SD channels as it can be buffered for a bit before playing.

The ITVN is generally considered to be worse quality than Dish Network SD channels - it is often stated to be halfway between Internet streams and SD channels.

Still frames that I have seen of ITVN are not as good as Dish Network SD channels.

And some ITVN streams exceed 1,000 kbps.

Buffering cannot make a stream better quality, it can only prevent gaps in playback. Higher quality generally comes from:

- Higher Resolution
- Higher Bitrate
- Better quality encoding software and hardware

PS Although I seem to be somewhat dubious about this service, nevertheless it seems to clearly be an opportunity for some Dish Network subscribers to have access to additional programming - which is always good.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

You must have saw ITVN using a bad ISP.

Some of the channels on ITVN look better then they do on Dish.

BTW I do not believe ITVN has a 1000 kbps stream. So not sure what you were looking at.

Buffering CAN make a stream look better, Let's say you have a 30 minute show, while you could stream it at 300k lets say that instead a much higher datastream is reached, 900k, now instead of instantly playing you would built up a buffer. The buffer could be a couple of minutes depending on the buffer size. When the buffer is built up enough the higher quality 900k stream would start playing. So it would not be an instant stream, but a higher quality stream.

DishONLINE will be different for each customer, depending on their ISP and other factors. But if you have a great broadband connection DishONLINE could be great as well.

 

[jdr01930]

DishONLINE will be different for each customer, depending on their ISP and other factors. But if you have a great broadband connection DishONLINE could be great as well.

Speedtest.net has been showing my download speed at 5000kbps consistently lately. (Comcast acquiring Adelphia was good thing!).

I say BRING IT ON!!!!

 

[kstuart]

Buffering CAN make a stream look better, Let's say you have a 30 minute show, while you could stream it at 300k lets say that instead a much higher datastream is reached, 900k, now instead of instantly playing you would built up a buffer. The buffer could be a couple of minutes depending on the buffer size. When the buffer is built up enough the higher quality 900k stream would start playing.

Well, if the file is downloaded to the hard drive, then the quality is only limited by the time available for downloading.

But, in your example, a 30 minute show at 900kbps quality downloaded at 300kbps would take 90 minutes. So, a buffer of a couple of minutes of programming would not do much.

I have not seen ITVN, only the screen caps. But, I've read a lot of desciptions by subscribers, such as:

Not as clean as the Setanta feed Direct TV customers are getting, but a step above my 500-700k stream from... [Internet Streams]

Another subscriber does claim that the Starz and Adult channels are roughly equivalent to Dish.
The top bitrate on the ITVN box is 1100kbps, and IIRC the other two settings are roughly 500 and 700.

 

[slick1ru2]

Comcast has HBO, Stars etc shows and movies on Demand for FREE if you subscribe to that premium service. Plus they have tons of free movies and lots of free extras like Sports recaps and speciality channel content like the History Channel, Discovery and TLC shows. They also offer for a fee newer movies and HD content. I am all for it, but to make it mostly a fee service would not attract many, if any, customers that can get the same from their cable company for free.

 

[kstuart]

Comcast has HBO, Stars etc shows and movies on Demand for FREE if you subscribe to that premium service.

Yes, it certainly does not make much sense to charge extra for HBO and Showtime On Demand, if the customer already subscribes to those channels.

But, this also points out another problem with DishONLINE.

On Cable, VOD provides SD programming primarily to people with SD sets. No Internet access is required (and some of the VOD users only have dialup).

DishONLINE requires two things: a VIP receiver, which is only owned by HD fans, and high speed broadband, which is generally the same segment of the populace as HD.

So, DishONLINE goes to great lengths to provide new SD programming to the same sort of people who have posted on this site, quote:

If it is broadcast in SD only, then I don't even want to bother to record or watch it.

... namely the HD fans.

Just the opposite group of people from those who primarily use VOD - people who don't even have DVRs...

 

[mrschwarz]

I am sure for this dish wont care, they will be making their money on the backend via the programming.

Is this because of their proven track record of not charging a fee for anything they can?

 

[Hall]

I see that DishOnline is projected for Feb '07. Isn't the full implementation of The Weather Channel, i.e. the on-screen pop-ups on ch 214, also projected for Feb ?? Are they related now ??

 

[navychop]

Best CES for DISH ever?

 

[GaryPen]

Just the opposite group of people from those who primarily use VOD - people who don't even have DVRs...

I use Comcast VOD all the time, and I have their HD DVR and an HDTV. So, you're not quite accurate.

E*s lack of true VOD the main thing keeping me from switching back to Dish at home.

 

[ChetK]

Yeah! More promises and more stuff they can deliver late. AWESOME!

 

[navychop]

Perhaps another way of looking at it is- other things have been late because they've moved resources to getting DishOnline out the door, more or less on time.

 

[MyDogHasFleas]

Challenge to all you smart people out there:

Reverse engineer the DishOnline protocol to create your own local server to mimic the Dish server, thus turning your 622 into a home media center .

Since you aren't modifing your equipment or receiving anything you shouldn't be, I don't see anything wrong with this. Its been done before with the Onkyo NetTune receivers (although less complex).

I'm a smart person and a computer/network engineer. I would be quite surprised if it were possible to do this, unless they designed it poorly.

If I were designing the download protocol, I would utilize a private key built into the set-top box to authenticate and encrypt the streams. This would be virtually impossible to break, unless you had some way of extracting the key from the box. This can be made arbitrarily hard to do, by making the key store tamperproof.

 

[MyDogHasFleas]

Downloaded movies COULD even be in 1080p (HD-DVD and Blueray level), but I don't think the ViP 622 can do that high. Might be something for Dish to consider in their next model. After all, if I have a HD-DVD or Blueray player and I'm paying for the movie, why wouldn't I do Netflix or Blockbuster and get the 1080p picture?

The dirty little secret of all this is that even though 1080p sets are selling, there's really no 1080p content, nor any way to get that content into the TV given the current connection methods (e.g. HDMI). Both the content and the connection types will need to be upgraded before any of this happens.

So, it'd really be useless for the ViP622 to download movles at 1080p resolution.

Maybe in a year or two 1080p will become useful.

 

[navychop]

1080p sets refer to the DISPLAY not the signal.

 

[Aqualung812]

1080p content IS here

The dirty little secret of all this is that even though 1080p sets are selling, there's really no 1080p content, nor any way to get that content into the TV given the current connection methods (e.g. HDMI). Both the content and the connection types will need to be upgraded before any of this happens.

So, it'd really be useless for the ViP622 to download movles at 1080p resolution.

Maybe in a year or two 1080p will become useful.

You might want to read up on HDMI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI

HDMI can push over 10gb/s of data. 1080p is only (ha, only) 3gb/s. That is totally uncompressed, and we all know that we don't see uncompressed HD anywhere, even OTA.

Everyone loves the HD demo channel at 20mb/s (correct me if I'm wrong there). Since it is 1080i, a 1080p stream that produced the same PQ couldn't be more than 40mb/s. That is WELL within the limits of HDMI's 10gb/s.

Keep in mind that 1080i and 1080p is the same RESOLUTION, just drawn differently. Both have 1,080 lines. 1080p just draws all of them in every frame instead of interlacing them.

Also, most content providers are looking at 1080p/30fps since it fits within the same bandwidth as 1080i/60fps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080p Also, movies are only 24 fps, so that isn't an issue. When you think of how many movies would be available for download, 1080p would be great. Many movies (Superman Returns, Star Wars 1-3) have digital masters in resoulution greater than 1080p.

However, like I said before, I don't think the ViP 622 can even do 1080p. I don't know if that is fixable in firmware though.