Interesting HD file sizes

[JEFFinINDY]

Last night, I recorded The Pursuit of Happyness from Starz HD, watched it, and then moved it to my external drive. It turns out I had recorded and archived the same movie back on 11/17, but the file sizes were quite different:

Date: 11/17/07
Recording time: 2:00
Size: 4524 MB

Date: 1/27/08
Recording time: 2:05
Size: 4055 MB

Not only was last night's recording five minutes longer, but it was over 10% smaller than the same movie a few months ago.

That said, I thought the picture quality on last night's recording was excellent. It's not really a high action movie, but still it was an enjoyable viewing (and the movie was good too... <g>).

Jeff

 

[rockymtnhigh]

The five minute difference probably came from a change in your timer, in terms of how long you recorded.

Dish's encoders may be a bit more tweaked today than 2 months ago.

I had several movies archived from when the External HDD first went live, and they came in at 10-11GB; I re-recorded a few of them several months later, and they dropped to 5GB. gotta love Mpeg4.

 

[smoeke]

maybe dish is continually compressing the signal more and more
maybe next year our HD will look like SD

 

[sdschramm]

maybe dish is continually compressing the signal more and more
maybe next year our HD will look like SD

I was about to say almost the same thing.

I understand the compression in movies like this one (I have also seen in on starzHD), but with high action moves, the HD can look as bad as SD with all the artifacts.

Maybe once Dish gets some more birds in the sky, they can cut back on the compression because they will have more room for the channels.

 

[Hall]

Sounds like over-compression isn't the case here though....

"I thought the picture quality on last night's recording was excellent."

As far as Dish's encoders, I wonder how much engineering work they're putting into the MPEG2 side of things. Given their plans, I'd suspect they'd leave things alone on MPEG2 and continue to tweak the MPEG4 stuff.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Pretty sure Starz is one of the mpeg-4 channels.

I think the argument of over-compression does not fly with this particular issue. Its not all about Hd-lite...

 

[lakebum431]

Pretty sure Starz is one of the mpeg-4 channels.

I think the argument of over-compression does not fly with this particular issue. Its not all about Hd-lite...

That is correct rocky, it is MPEG4

 

[Hall]

Ahhh, didn't realize it was MPEG4. I thought all the premium HD channels were "older" MPEG2 channels. That probably explains the size reduction (and no visual degradation). I think these will save Dish's a** when it comes to available HD channels.

 

[lakebum431]

Ahhh, didn't realize it was MPEG4. I thought all the premium HD channels were "older" MPEG2 channels. That probably explains the size reduction (and no visual degradation). I think these will save Dish's a** when it comes to available HD channels.

That's an easy one to mess up hall. All three of the other premium HD channels are in MPEG2.

 

[tigerfan33]

That's an easy one to mess up hall. All three of the other premium HD channels are in MPEG2.

Max hd is MPEG4. HBO hd and Showtime hd are still MPEG2.

 

[DishSubLA]

It may have a more to do with statistical sampling. Meaning that the video on the same transponder may have had more or less demands, and so the precise size of the same movie that is streamed at different times or dates will vary, without a noticeable reduction in PQ.

 

[lakebum431]

Max hd is MPEG4. HBO hd and Showtime hd are still MPEG2.

Crap you are 100% right I just looked that up. See I screwed it up too! For some reason I was thinking that it was just Starz, but you're right. I honesting wish they would start moving everything to M4 so that we can start saving some bandwidth.

 

[digiblur]

They've made a few changes to the encoders lately. Glad to see the picture quality is the same.

 

[capman]

I just recently recorded wild hogs on starz hd and it looked like crap. The picture was VERY soft and didn't have all the exciting colors like the blu ray had. I was quite disappointed. I know that it won't compare to the blu ray, but I wasn't sure I was watching a hd feed