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All posts by Christopher Webster

Below are all of Christopher Webster's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.


@MikeP

I just did the math and currently over the 9 muxes the capacity is a total of 231.1 MB/s, when the switch to all DVT-T2 coding occurs (reducing to just 6 muxes) the capacity will be a total of 241.2 MB/s. (assuming they all use DTG6 (40.1 MB/s) ).

This will give a gain of just 10.1 MB/s capacity (enough for say 2 HD or 5 SD channels), obviously h.264 is way ahead of mpeg2 in terms of efficiency, but many channels at present are ridiculous frame sizes and bit rates (Sky News for example is a mere 544x576i anamorphic at an avg of 1.3 MB/s)

I can see the broadcasters maintaining these ridiculous frame sizes and bit rates just to cram more channels on to the muxes, maximizing ad revenue.

I was watching the cycling on ITV4 last night and even though it is 720x576i anamorphic the picture quality was pretty much unwatchable due to pixelation and the fast motion.
It was no better than some dodgy illegal stream using flash or a youtube video in 240p from 2008 :)

I hope h.264 addresses these issues, but I fear we will see the same poor PQ just in h/264 instead of mpeg2. I hope to be proven wrong.

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