Team Summit Discussion Thread

[Scott Greczkowski]

Gutter,

You know as well as I do that Scott is NOT the man for this job. He proved it previously. Remember what he said. He would rather see more content over QUALITY True HD! Don't look for him to carry that torch. He WON'T do it. Right Scott!!!!? He is there to just report.

This is correct I am just here to report. And I also have no problem with 1440x1080 resolution which I feel is very good especialy when you look at what DirecTV is offering.

However I would like to see the VOOM channels raised to that level and have been expressing that here and the reply is that VOOM needs to supply them the signal that way and they would pass it that way.

 

[Kirby Baker]

Scott,

Thanks very much for photos of the new dishes. Can you put them in perspective though? Do they seem huge compared to current Dish 500/1000's? And when can we get one, because with the announcement of German channels on 119K, plus Detroit HD Locals there, I need a Dish 500+ ASAP! Like yesterday!

This is correct I am just here to report. And I also have no problem with 1440x1080 resolution which I feel is very good especialy when you look at what DirecTV is offering.

However I would like to see the VOOM channels raised to that level and have been expressing that here and the reply is that VOOM needs to supply them the signal that way and they would pass it that way.

So if Voom sent the channels at 1440x1080i, could Dish send them out at 1440x1080i, and not 1920x1080i? This way, we would be dealing with only 1 conversion (the HD box going to 1920x1080 or 720p). Can the receivers handle that resolution?

Err nevermind, thats what all the 1080i MPEG4 channels are being sent in now, correct?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Err nevermind, thats what all the 1080i MPEG4 channels are being sent in now, correct?

This is correct, the new Super Encoders they got can do full res however in fast scenes they tend to block, which is something that does not happen when they broadcast in 1440x1080.

 

[rdinkel]

So is the thought that once they get the next generation of Super-Duper Encoders, Dish will send full resolution?

 

[Poke]

Ok on the Super Encoders I thought the new receivers could handle that.

 

[David_Levin]

Thanks Scott.

622 ext hdd support:
From the screen shot it looks like we'll be able to play back archived content directly from the external drive (or "restore" it to the main hdd).

So, this looks like it should be a reasonable solution. It's sad that it's taking so long. Be great to have it when the TV season restarts.

 

[mlb]

So is the thought that once they get the next generation of Super-Duper Encoders, Dish will send full resolution?

I'd say more likely when the algorithms become more efficient for encoding MPEG-4 they will send full resolution. Doing on the fly MPEG-4 encoding takes a ton of processing power at the moment, the most likely scenario is better code, IMHO.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Thanks Scott.

622 ext hdd support:
From the screen shot it looks like we'll be able to play back archived content directly from the external drive (or "restore" it to the main hdd).

So, this looks like it should be a reasonable solution. It's sad that it's taking so long. Be great to have it when the TV season restarts.

I think the reason its going to take awhile is because they must jump through all kinds of hoops for the programmers to show them the data is secure on the drive. So they need to jump through those hoops.ou

And yes you can watch shows directly from the drive, this is how they were showing it off last night.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I'd say more likely when the algorithms become more efficient for encoding MPEG-4 they will send full resolution. Doing on the fly MPEG-4 encoding takes a ton of processing power at the moment, the most likely scenario is better code, IMHO.

On of the problems is they are still not getting the efficantcy of the new encoders, with MPEG2 they could get up to 3 HD channels on 1 transponder, with MPEG4 they want to get 5 or 6 per transponder, however they are only able to get 4 per transponder at this time.

 

[David_Levin]

On of the problems is they are still not getting the efficantcy of the new encoders, with MPEG2 they could get up to 3 HD channels on 1 transponder, with MPEG4 they want to get 5 or 6 per transponder, however they are only able to get 4 per transponder at this time.

I'm not sure the mpeg4 is getting them much at all...

The were getting 3 channels of 1920x1080 mpeg2.

So with mpeg 4 they are getting 4 channels of 1440x1080. I'm not sure they've gained hardly anything.

 

[sathd]

Scott have you heard anything this morning on the new hd lineup dishnetwork web site is showing the new hd lineup hope its this morning

 

[David_Levin]

622 external hdd:
Took another look at that screen shot...

Wow, see that 463.4 GB available? Wow, so they probably have a 500 GB HDD in that puppy.

I wonder if they are supporting NTFS? Or, I suppose it could be a linux file system.

security: this isn't really much different then what the pocket dish does. The security must be trusted there as well.

 

[hzhao]

I would think they would using the Linux file system since the entire 622 is based on. It will be asking for toruble if they had to deal with multiple files systems. Besides, it will be easy for Dish to encrype the files as well.......

 

[dimi1963]

Can anybody check if these channela are up? Unfortunately I am at work and cannot check myself. Please....

 

[gdarwin]

Not yet.

 

[John Kotches]

I'd say more likely when the algorithms become more efficient for encoding MPEG-4 they will send full resolution. Doing on the fly MPEG-4 encoding takes a ton of processing power at the moment, the most likely scenario is better code, IMHO.

Or newer ASICs with more power

The downside of real time encoding (aka online) is you get one shot and if the encoder makes a bad guess visible artifacts occur.

The DVDs, HD-DVDs etc are not real time encoding and these offline encoders can utilize multiple passes to get the best results.

Cheers,

 

[John Kotches]

I think the reason its going to take awhile is because they must jump through all kinds of hoops for the programmers to show them the data is secure on the drive. So they need to jump through those hoops.ou

This is almost certainly the case.

If you can, ask them about the possibility of migrating an external drive from 622 to 622. You don't want to lose the data on your external USB drives due to a 622 failure that has to be replaced. It would also be nice to move the drives around physically if you're lucky enough to have > 1 622.

Speaking of which, you can migrate from USB to internal. Can you take the external drive and back it up via another machine so that you have some measure of backup?

And yes you can watch shows directly from the drive, this is how they were showing it off last night.

There's certainly sufficient bandwidth with USB2, and all you're doing then is feeding the captured datastream to the internal decoder.

Best,

 

[Dave1997]

The new HD Channels are on now.

 

[waltinvt]

I'm not sure the mpeg4 is getting them much at all...

The were getting 3 channels of 1920x1080 mpeg2.

So with mpeg 4 they are getting 4 channels of 1440x1080. I'm not sure they've gained hardly anything.

Maybe we haven't but Dish sure has.

It amounts to what many of us have been saying for months. Dish can pick up one more channel each with MPEG4 but at the cost of some resolution which they believe we can't see and our monitors can't detect. Plus they get the added bonus of marketing all this new MPEG4 hardware.

Some of you folks need to get out of denial. Like any business, Dish will do what's best for Dish. The difference with Dish however is that what they may have said previously doesn't carry a lot of weight with their decisions.

 

[Dish Roamer]

The new HD Channels are on now.

How do they look?

Wayne