DirecTV Plans 1500 HiDef Channels by End of 2007

Ka? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:14 · Score: 5, Funny

Oh no. My radar detector is going to catch fire.

Re:Ka? by Unnngh! · 2004-09-09 17:28 · Score: 1, Funny

Oh no. My radar detector is going to catch fire.
Sure, announce it to the world why don't you? Now every cop around here will start carrying a cable broadcast satellite in the back of the patrol car just to stop people like us. Way to go!
Re:Ka? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:39 · Score: 0

Invest in a better radar detector.

I reccomend the "Escort Passport 8500 X50" with "ZR3 Laser Shifter". Ooooh yeah.

Check it - http://www.speedzones.com/ for a detailed review of the X50 and http://www.radartest.com/ for a detailed review of the ZR3. Both basically "win" each of their respective reviews.

Valentine One and the K40 Difuser Plus both rate close to the escort products, and are very highly reccomended as an alternative.
Re:Ka? by blanks · 2004-09-09 23:53 · Score: 3, Funny

And there still wont be anything on.

--
TruePunk | Games
Re:Ka? by JFlex · 2004-09-10 04:54 · Score: 1

I HIGHLY reccomend the Valentine One. Worth every penny, mine has alraedy paid for itself twice over.

34Gbps by ravenspear · 2004-09-09 17:16 · Score: 1, Funny

How much pr0n is that?

Re:34Gbps by duggie · 2004-09-09 18:00 · Score: 0

Enough to make your palms hairy in seconds
Re:34Gbps by Rip+Van+Winkle · 2004-09-09 18:02 · Score: 1

mmmm...... 34Gbps of p0rn.... *drool*

--

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not the responsiblity of the user, as I probably stole them anyway
Re:34Gbps by Nos. · 2004-09-09 18:24 · Score: 1

Well, at that speed, I'd say get it all in Hi-Def, so from the story:
500 HD channels. Plus 1000 more HD local channels and 150 national HD
about 1650 HD channels. That's a lot of porn!
Re:34Gbps by The+Clockwork+Troll · 2004-09-09 19:22 · Score: 1

1650 HD channels. That's a lot of porn!
That's a lot of vulval pimples, anal stubble and silicone breast scalloping I could live without.
Let's hope the porn is just 16:9 480p.

--

There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Re:34Gbps by LinuxOnHal · 2004-09-09 19:55 · Score: 1

No, no, you've got it wrong...the real question is, how many LOC/s is it? (Libraries of Congress per second)

--
Trying is the First Step to Failing --Homer Simpson
Re:34Gbps by secretsquirel · 2004-09-09 20:35 · Score: 1, Funny

not much, most of its still all just infomercials

C-Band forever by Hansele · 2004-09-09 17:16 · Score: 1, Interesting

Well until then I'll keep using my C-Band/4DTV/MPEG2/DVB rig. I get a lot of cool stuff with this, lots of unedited goodies too.

Re:C-Band forever by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 23:38 · Score: 0

Only just recently got my bigdish to use the 4dtv with. How many goodies can I expect?

At the moment, we're making do with 3 small dishes, a twin pointed at the dishnet 110/119, an old primestar to pick up dishnet locals, and a third dish so I can see what canadian Bell ExpressVu is like (really repetitive, but the canuck mystery channel has The Prisoner on regularly!).

I'm also worried about tasking one of my tivos to Cband, looks like that'll have to be a custom job all the way.
Re:C-Band forever by Hansele · 2004-09-10 01:17 · Score: 1

go check out http://www.satforums.com/ for tons of useful information about 4DTV and MPEG2/DVB and what you can get with those.

Rain Fade by composer777 · 2004-09-09 17:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

I hope they've figured out how to adequately solve the problem of rain fade on the Ka Band. From what little I understand of satellite transmission, rain fade is an even bigger problem on the Ka Band than it is on the current Ku Band that Directv uses. It's not a problem at all on the C Band (big dish) satellites. Do they plan on getting around this by using more power? Or, do they think that more rain fade is an acceptable trade-off for the extra bandwidth?

Re:Rain Fade by the_denman · 2004-09-09 17:24 · Score: 3, Interesting

my understanding is that they will do it in the same way that they get away with using the little dishes, pumping a huge amount of power out.
DIRECTV 10 and DIRECTV 11, to be built by Boeing, will be among the largest and most powerful Ka-band satellites ever launched.
Re:Rain Fade by CityZen · 2004-09-09 17:36 · Score: 1

Hmm, and if you haven't got your tinfoil hat to protect you from all those high-power Ku DBS transmissions, now you'll have yet another thing to worry about?

Is it really good to be irradiating everyone like this with more and more RF energy? Just wondering...
Re:Rain Fade by Cramer · 2004-09-09 17:38 · Score: 3, Interesting

C band hardware doesn't have a problem with rain fade because the dish is over a meter wide. If you aimed a 1.8m dish at one of the DTV birds, you wouldn't have a problem with rain fade either. (you'd have a bigger problem keeping it properly aimed, btw.)
Re:Rain Fade by dougmc · 2004-09-09 17:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

my understanding is that they will do it in the same way that they get away with using the little dishes, pumping a huge amount of power out.
It's a satellite. Powered by solar cells. As much as they'd probably love to pump a `huge amount of power out', they don't have a huge amount of power to pump with. According to this link, the solar cells (which are huge!) of this satellite put out 4.3 kW of power. Which is a lot, but I imagine that's peak power, and the satellite cannot be in the sun all the time, so it's got to charge batteries for night time use, and it's transmitters are not 100% efficient ...
All in all, I doubt it can put out 1000 watts of RF power 24/7. Compare that to your local FM station that probably broadcasts with 100,000 watts and only serves an area with an 60 mile or so radius. At high frequencies, you don't need a large dish for high gain (doubling the frequency generally doubles the gain), so the little dishes do the job.
Still, that's pretty impressive. 4.3 kW of power for a satellite? And the new ones are likely to be even bigger. (For comparison, Voyager broadcasts with 13 watts of power. Of course, it's power source is probably nuclear.)
With 4.3 kW of power coming in at peak (and never mind that solar cells aren't very efficient, so there's several times that amount of heat being collected by the solar cells), I wonder how they keep it cool. In space, you can't just tack on a big fan ... you need to radiate your heat into space.
Re:Rain Fade by Elrond,+Duke+of+URL · 2004-09-09 18:01 · Score: 5, Informative

Let's not forget that these sats are geosynchronous, which puts them out at roughly 25K miles. The shadow cast by the Earth is much smaller than near the Earth. And, of course, these sats won't necessarily be in the path of that shadow at all.

So, I think it's fair to assume that they spend most of their time in the light soaking up power. Also, solar cell panels on large expensive satellites are usually computer guided. They deploy and then track the Sun so they'll get most of the power most of the time.

The link you gave only mentions the three existing satellites. They generate 4.3kW of power. Those sats, however, are almost 10 years old now. The article doesn't say, but I would guess that these new sats generate even more power (more efficient and/or bigger cells).

--
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
Re:Rain Fade by dougmc · 2004-09-09 18:03 · Score: 4, Interesting

I found another link which isn't what I'd call authoritative, but suggests that the (newer? Boeing 701 vs Boeing 601?) DTV satellites put out 3.5 kW of RF power. Which is still a lot, but still nothing compared to a single FM radio station. Of course, it helps not having to go through buildings, trees, etc. And having an antenna with a nice bit of gain over a simple dipole (if you're lucky) for the FM band.
I believe the systems used to talk to submarines using the extremely low frequency bands (ELF) use something like three megawatts of power ...
Re:Rain Fade by Wavicle · 2004-09-09 18:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

Which is a lot, but I imagine that's peak power, and the satellite cannot be in the sun all the time, so it's got to charge batteries for night time use

It is true that the satellites need battery power for when the earth eclipses its access to the sun. Fortunately the batteries never need to last much more than an hour, and this is only for a few weeks on either side of each equinox. Access to the sun isn't a huge problem for these satellites until the quality of the batteries declines from too many charging cycles.

I would think it reasonable to expect well over 1kW of power output 24/7.

--
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Re:Rain Fade by stuktongue · 2004-09-09 18:11 · Score: 5, Informative

C band hardware doesn't have a problem with rain fade because the dish is over a meter wide.

Actually, the primary reason for C band's superior performance w.r.t. rain fade is the reduced atmospheric attenuation associated with lower frequencies, in general, and, in particular, with C band's frequencies vs. K band's frequencies. The atmosphere has different effects at different frequencies. The reduced attenuation at C band allows for greater link margin and, therefore, greater link robustness vs. rain.

The gains of a 1.8m dish at C band and a DirecTV dish at K band are similar. (Higher frequencies require smaller dishes for the same gain.)

If you aimed a 1.8m dish at one of the DTV birds, you wouldn't have a problem with rain fade either. (you'd have a bigger problem keeping it properly aimed, btw.)

Very true. Of course, the dish (antenna, in general) would have to be designed to operate at K band frequencies. It's not a given that you can just swap reflectors around. Antenna design at microwave frequencies is complex.
Re:Rain Fade by stuktongue · 2004-09-09 18:18 · Score: 2, Informative

The power levels seen at the Earth's surface are exceedingly low, hence the need for highly sensitive low-noise amplifiers to retrieve the signals. Not a cause for concern.
Re:Rain Fade by Cramer · 2004-09-09 18:26 · Score: 4, Informative

I was gonna mention that (Ka/Ku is close to the vibration frequency of H2O, add in the scatter from lots of water droplets...) but I didn't want to get overly technical :-) I'll add, C band signals are encoded different than (DTV) K band stuff.

(DTV/DISH dishes larger than 18" are available -- up to 35" as I recall. But the aiming sensitivity makes them less desirable for general use.)
Re:Rain Fade by dougmc · 2004-09-09 18:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

Let's not forget that these sats are geosynchronous, which puts them out at roughly 25K miles. The shadow cast by the Earth is much smaller than near the Earth. And, of course, these sats won't necessarily be in the path of that shadow at all.
I guess I hadn't taken that into consideration. I was thinking that since it rotated along with the Earth (being geosynchronous and all) that it got 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. Obviously wrong, considering how far it is from the Earth.
Obviously, they must stay in the sun almost all the time -- which is good, because no battery would survive being charged for 12 hours and then discharged for 12 hours, day in and day out, for 10 years.
Still, impressive that they can make it generate and put out that much power. We've come a long way from Sputnik ...
Re:Rain Fade by NialScorva · 2004-09-09 18:39 · Score: 2, Informative

well, the Earth's shadow is pretty much the same size as the Earth, since sunlight is a rather pretty close to parallel by the time it travels the 93 million miles to get here. It's just that the orbital radius is 5 times the radius of the earth, so it flies through the dark area pretty quickly.
Re:Rain Fade by stuktongue · 2004-09-09 18:55 · Score: 5, Informative

Solar cells are small. They are arrayed to create solar arrays, or solar panels. These can be quite large, depending on the power requirements of the satellite.

Nominal power ratings for satellites assume sun-normal orientation of the solar arrays, which is actively maintained by the satellite. The satellite receives 100% illumination by the sun during most of the year, the exceptions being the spring and fall eclipse seasons, when the satellite transits the Earth's penumbral and umbral regions for up to a couple of hours per day. During these events, solar array power is augmented with battery power. Bus voltage drops and current draws increase, but transmitted powers generally stay the same. Yes, over the life of the satellite (10-15+ years) batteries degrade somewhat, though battery reconditioning techniques are employed to mitigate this. With today's designs, running out of fuel is usually what limits mission life.

The reason terrestrial radio stations require the power levels they do is that they typically transmit more or less omni-directionally (or at least toroidally), as opposed to how geo satellites use highly-directional (high gain) antennas for CONUS (or whatever) coverage. The effect of the differences between these two antenna types (tens of dB in gain) far outweighs the 20 dB power difference you mention (1 kW vs. 100 kW). The high gain antennas for DBS allow multiple channels of high bandwidth at reduced power vs. their terrestrial brethren. They're really two totally different kettles of fish.

Finally, thermal management is an important part of modern satellite design. Heat pipes, thermal radiators (mirrors), finishes, and other techniques are all used to collect, distribute, and reject heat. The effectiveness of these techniques can limit a design, and how capable a company is at dealing with thermal problems can determine the capabilities of its offerings relative to those of its competitors.

BTW, the current commercial satellite models offered by Boeing are based on the 702 bus, which supercedes the 601. Both of these designs were the product of Hughes Space and Communications Co. (part of the old Hughes Aircraft Company), now Boeing Satellite Systems (Boeing bought HSC in 2000).
Re:Rain Fade by Bill_Royle · 2004-09-09 19:11 · Score: 1

Excellent thread. Nothing to add really, but the parent threads provide good, clear insight that I'd never thought about.

Just thought I'd throw out a thanks for the insight!
Re:Rain Fade by sllim · 2004-09-09 20:48 · Score: 1

Stuktongue said:
'Finally, thermal management is an important part of modern satellite design. Heat pipes, thermal radiators (mirrors), finishes, and other techniques are all used to collect, distribute, and reject heat. The effectiveness of these techniques can limit a design, and how capable a company is at dealing with thermal problems can determine the capabilities of its offerings relative to those of its competitors.'

You seem to know what you are talking about. Mind fielding a question for me?

I know space is a vacum (duh). My understanding is that when people say it is quite cold in space this is kind of a misconception. Heat requires a medium to be conducted in (on the Earth air is most prominent) but without a medium, as in a vacum, heat cannot be conducted - hence space being cold is a misnomer because it is not possible for a vacum to be hot.

Therefore.... on a satelite that gets heated up there really is nowhere for the heat to be radiated too.

You mentioned that there are all kinds of tricks being used in dealing with heat in todays satelites. Is the subject of heat on satelites a big problem? Is it hard for them to cool the satelites? Or am I missing something?
Re:Rain Fade by johannesg · 2004-09-09 22:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

Heat can be transferred through conduction or radiation. You are right that there is no conduction in space, but radiation still occurs (that's how solar heat gets to us). The problem is that radiation is far less effective than conduction, thus temperature management of any spacecraft is indeed a major issue. For this reason any new spacecraft design undergoes thorough thermal testing in a specially designed vacuum facility.
While I cannot claim to be an expert on thermal analysis, I have been working as a software expert in ESA's spacecraft testing centre for the past six years, writing and maintaining the software used to gather, process, and present thermal data during thermal testing. The big device in the top-left corner of the image is ESA's Large Space Simulator, and the little room a little to the right of that is my office ;-)
A thermal test typically lasts a few weeks, and we would typically be gathering data from 1500-2000 sensors (mostly thermocouples and PT100's) on the spacecraft, plus another 1000-1500 from the facility itself (depending on configuration). This adds up to a couple of gigabytes worth of data.
Right now the first ATV (the Autonomous Transfer Vehicle that is scheduled to bring freight to ISS starting next year or so) is being prepped for testing, somewhere at the end of this year.
Since this is /., I should probably add that for presentation and control of the system we use a mix of HP-UX (for historical reasons) and Windows XP PC's. Our main server is an aging HP-UX machine, which we will soon be replacing by a Linux solution. I've been gently pushing Linux for a while now, but one of my problems is that many of the acquisition systems require GPIB support which is hard to find under Linux (there are no drivers available for HP cards).
There are guided tours from the Space Expo, if you are interested.
Re:Rain Fade by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 22:17 · Score: 1, Interesting

You can use a slightly (+10%) bigger dish and you get always a perfect signal even during heavy rain/storm.
(You see in Europe we are practicing in using bigger dishes in order to get signals that not supposed to be able to receive at all! There are a lot of satmaniacs in Greece that uses 3m Ku band dish to receive BBC beam -that points only to UK)
Re:Rain Fade by Admiral+Llama · 2004-09-09 23:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

The new 4 or 5 LNB dish is going to have about 70% more surface area. That should go some way towards dealing with the rain fade.

Speaking of rain fade, I barely ever see it. When the eye wall of Hurricane Frances went over my house, that wasn't enough to do it. It has to be a really thick drenching rain, and even then we're only talking about a few minutes of fade per year. Cable craps out more often than that, and costs more.
Re:Rain Fade by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-09 23:46 · Score: 1

They're finally going to use a toroidal then?
Re:Rain Fade by freshfromthevat · 2004-09-10 00:46 · Score: 1

Your local TV station is transmitting a single TV channel at 5000 watts or whatever. That's 5000 watts at 5 megahertz of bandwidth. An AM station at 10khz bandwidth and 5000 watts can go MUCH further to receivers that are really crappy. The satellite will be transmitting MANY channels of bandwidth with it's 4300 watts. The power output per channel is much less than your local station.

My point is that the power output, while relevent in this discussion, is by no means the only criteria to use while guessing signal strength or reliability of signal.

--
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
Re:Rain Fade by SETY · 2004-09-10 01:58 · Score: 1

GPIB or IEEE488.2 is a standard? Why not use National Instruements (or one of the many generic rip-offs) cards that can be had for a few hundred $$$ (or euros). I have seen linux drivers for the NI cards, but have never used them myself.
Re:Rain Fade by composer777 · 2004-09-10 03:02 · Score: 1

Yeah, but you're in the Southern US, closer to the satellite, it's more of a problem in the Northern part of the US. When I moved from Atlanta to St. Louis, there was a slight bit of signal loss. However, your point is valid, if you've got a perfectly aimed dish, it's not a huge problem, unfortunately, a lot of people have to deal with situations where maybe the dish is partially blocked, or they're very far North, etc.
Re:Rain Fade by johannesg · 2004-09-10 03:33 · Score: 1

GPIB or IEEE488.2 is a standard? Why not use National Instruements (or one of the many generic rip-offs) cards that can be had for a few hundred $$$ (or euros). I have seen linux drivers for the NI cards, but have never used them myself.
That's because we already have a large number of HP cards, and they work just fine under Windows. I can only argue for Linux if it presents an advantage, not if it simply costs extra money to replace existing hardware.
No worries though: I know about the NI cards, and we have already bought a batch of them for use in newer, PCI-only machines (the HP cards are ISA). It will be a couple of years to replace all of them, though - they will have to grind down through natural wear and tear.
Thanks for the tip anyway ;-)
Re:Rain Fade by jandrese · 2004-09-10 03:40 · Score: 1

My parents have an old Generation 1 RCA DirectTV setup (with the dog slow guide), and we basically never saw rain fade. The only times the signal went out (for no more than 2 minutes at a time) were overcast and hazy days. This happened maybe twice a year.

It's actaully kind of interesting to compare it to the cable system I have now. The major difference is that the cable company advertises a _lot_ about how Satellite systems suck, but almost none of their "quality of life" points ever ring true for me. It is true that we had to buy and install the equipment, but that was a one time charge, unlike the cable company boxes (which are far crappier than even the slow guide on the DirectTV system) that cost me $10/month. Also, the PPV stuff on DirectTV was great, it was $2.50 to rent a movie instead of the $6 my local cable company charges (I never use the cable company one, but we used the DirectTV one all the time). I've heard that DirecTV raised their rates though. :(

Ok, that's enough rambling.

--

I read the internet for the articles.
Re:Rain Fade by dougmc · 2004-09-10 03:50 · Score: 1

TV stations typically use a lot more than 5 kW of power. UHF stations in the US can use up to 5 MW (megawatts) of power, though the actual amount of bandwidth used is the same.
The old Boeing 601 satellites used 24 mHz of bandwidth. (No idea what the new ones do.) That's more than a TV channel, but not that much more.
Yes, as a general rule of thumb, doubling the bandwidth doubles the power requirements.
Really, the thing that makes this all work without a whole lot of power is good antennas. Even those little dishes have very high gains at the high frequencies used by DirectTV, and the satellite itself has direction antennas that beam their signal right down at the US, often being even more specific than that.
As for the AM band (550-1600 kHz), the reason you can pick them up from so far away is not so much the low bandwidth used (but that is a factor), but the fact that low frequency radio waves will bounce between the Earth and the ionosphere. Ham radio operators regularly talk all the way across the world using only like 200 watts. (Granted, they usually don't use much bandwidth, like 3.6 kHz for phone or less for CW, but still ...) [for the record, I dabble in ham radio. I'm AD5RH. Though I don't have much of a HF setup yet.]
This sort of skip (or ducting, which is different but has a similar effect) does happen with the VHF TV channels from time to time as well, which is why they aren't permitted to use so much power. That, and UHF just doesn't propagate as well around hills and such, so more power helps overcome that.
My point is that the power output, while relevent in this discussion, is by no means the only criteria to use while guessing signal strength or reliability of signal.
Of course. But the post I originally replied to said that the way that DTV works is by using lots of power. And I do guess that for a satellite, 4+ kW *is* a lot of power, but it's still nothing compared to what we use down here.
Re:Rain Fade by Admiral+Llama · 2004-09-10 03:57 · Score: 1

Partially blocked signal path? That's why they make rocket launchers!
Re:Rain Fade by CityZen · 2004-09-10 07:11 · Score: 1

The outages they experienced are solar outages, which happen when the sun falls exactly in line with the transmitting satellite and your location. The radiation from the sun overwhelms the satellite signal, causing the outage.

This happens in two periods each year, during the spring and fall. If you google around, you can find programs to calculate the exact times for your location.
Re:Rain Fade by bryan1945 · 2004-09-10 08:32 · Score: 1

I don't know much about satellites, but as for radio stations- there are 20-some 50kW stations around the country, and most other stations are 5kW or less. I don't know what frequencies Ka and Ku use, nor what kind of attenuation the signals will receive, but 4.3kW may be just fine.

--
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Re:Rain Fade by stuktongue · 2004-09-10 08:45 · Score: 1

You seem to know what you are talking about.

Thank you. Well, I work for Boeing Satellite Systems (nee Hughes), where I've worked since college graduation (17 years now!).

But on to your questions....

Yes, space is a pretty hard vacuum. There is a little dust, etc., but it's a vacuum. It is also quite cold, in general. As another poster below explains, there are several modes of heat transmission, including conduction and radiation. You are correct in asserting that conduction is not where it's at in space since there's no conducting medium. However, radiation is where it's at.

The sun radiates thermal energy; that's one of the things that keeps us all alive. :-) This radiated energy impinges on the satellite, heating its surfaces just as it heats the Earth's surface. The effect of solar heating can be easily seen when monitoring spacecraft temperature telemetry during eclipse. As the satellite transits the penumbral and umbral regions, temperatures drop since the Earth shadows the satellite from the sun's radiation. When the satellite emerges from eclipse and reenters the sun's light, temperatures rise again. (Incidentally, these cooling and heating transients can induce localized deformations as the satellite's structure expands and contracts with the heat. These deformations can even create attitude disturbances, which can be seen via satellite gyro telemetry.)

There are other sources of heat on the satellite,of course. Most prominent are any high-power amplifiers, especially TWTAs (travelling wave tube amplifiers, the primary technology used for high-power amplification), but all electronics boxes generate heat to one extent or another.

Another dimension is that the satellite is not uniformly lit by the sun; for instance, the "backside," i.e., the side facing away from the sun, is in shadow. These areas do not get the benefit of solar heating and would be quite cold if not for active heater control.

So, you have to manage heat and cold, making cold areas sufficiently warm for electronics (and mechanisms) to operate and keeping hot areas from getting too hot. This is where the various technologies and tricks I mentioned come into play.

Radiation is a big part of this strategy. Remember that, unlike conduction, radiation does not require a medium to work. Thus, radiators on the satellite can, in fact, radiate excess heat to space.

Hopefully, this sheds a little light on the subject. :-)
Re:Rain Fade by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 12:08 · Score: 0

You have to consider the fresnel zone I guess, which makes partial blocking by the ground an option when you're far enough up north and your antenna is not high enough from the ground... How big a hole did you plan to blast for your satellite reception? It's probably cheaper to ue a bigger dish (plus consider the side-effect: it's bigger thus it compensates!)
Re:Rain Fade by Performer+Guy · 2004-09-10 17:35 · Score: 1

It's also worth noting that receivers have a **DISH**, this basically makes required power levels for decent reception considerably less. You're not sticking rabbits ears, you're collecting a signal over the area of the surface of the dish and reflecting & focusing it towards the receiver. Moreover the satellite has a dish too that basically does the opposite with the transmitter, meaning that almost all its transmission power is directed Earthward, not randomly transmitted unlike a typical terrestrial station. So we're not really comparing apples with apples here.

We've heard this before... by nuclear305 · 2004-09-09 17:17 · Score: 3, Funny

"The bandwidth crunch for satellite providers is over, and the Ka band is the answer."

Such little insight...

Of course, next week we'll be hearing about KBv6 (Ka-Band v6)

Re:We've heard this before... by radio.cgt · 2004-09-09 17:32 · Score: 0

"The bandwidth crunch for satellite providers is over, and the Ka band is the answer."
Nor does it sound like someones copied and pasted the entire 'geek' section of the advertising blurb and posted it to be news.
Re:We've heard this before... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 02:28 · Score: 0
"Such little insight... Of course, next week we'll be hearing about KBv6 (Ka-Band v6)"
- Wouldn't that be foresight?

1500 channels and nothing to watch by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

1500 channels sounds good, but what are they going to do for content? If the crap airing now is any indication, there's going to be a lot of dead air in 2007. Maybe they can use the equipment for satellite internet.

Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by ac3boy · 2004-09-09 17:33 · Score: 1

It will not be 1500 channels for everyone. By law DirecTV and Dish and every other SAT provider have to provide all the locals to all the folks. Meaning if they offer locals to Atlanta then they have to offer all the locals to every other city they beam too. So this means they have to carry even the crap networks that are available via an antenna. 1500 channels quickly pair down to 5-10 locals for each city they provide locals too. This is one reason they created the spot beam tech. They can use the same transponder to beam Atlanta locals to Atlanta and refocus a new feed to Alabama cities.

This is a crude explanation but I am drunk right now and am to tired to explain further.

Cheers, John.
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by TGK · 2004-09-09 17:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

Bullshit. I work for Dish, we have 100 or so local markets but to say that we need to provide locals to everyone if we provide locals to Atlanta doesn't make any sense.

Plain and simple, there are people out there who don't get local channels. There are people out there who do get local channels. As no action has been taken, we can only assume you to be wrong on this point.

What you probably meant is that if Dish provides NBC, ABC, CBS etc for the Atlanta area, they have to make the same pricing scheme available to other local channels in the Atlanta area. They can't just carry the big names and shut the little guy out. They also can't charge lower interest channels a premium rate to be uplinked.

That does make for ugly bandwidth problems, but remember this is directional. Dish (for example) has satelites at the following orbital locations 119 110 61.5 148 121 105. The doubleing capacity attainable by opening up another band there is huge. More to the point though, is that those low demand channels aren't on the valuable realestate (119 110), they get shunted over to the wings (148, 61.5). There's not as much of a crunch as you think...

--
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by CityZen · 2004-09-09 17:56 · Score: 1

I believe it's the case that if they rebroadcast 1 channel from a given local market, they have to rebroadcast all the channels from that market (all the channels that meet or exceed a certain transmission power).

This does make for ugly bandwidth problems, which are mostly being solved by satellites with multiple "spotbeam" transponders. Still, every spotbeam requires an uplink, so it's still not the most elegant solution. I wonder how big Echostar's and DirecTV's satellite farms are these days?
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by CityZen · 2004-09-09 18:02 · Score: 1

Oh, regarding putting channels on the "wings": Congress was trying to force Dish (and other satellite broadcasters) to keep all the channels for a given local market on a single dish. How's that legislation coming along?
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by huxrules · 2004-09-09 18:36 · Score: 1

I don't know how the legislation is going- but the newer single dish setup from dish network picks up two sats on one dish. These new dishes have a funny shape and have two pickups. Take a look around town- the usually have a "dish pro" stamp on the front of them.
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by TGK · 2004-09-09 18:43 · Score: 1

Congress didn't get to terribly involved, at least not that I'm aware of. The FCC laied down the law, however, and required that, if Dish was going to pull that wing trick, we had to provide a 2nd dish (to get the wing stations) free of charge.

The official company policy is that we have to mention the channels you'd be missing if you don't get the 2nd dish, but that we shouldn't encourage customers to get this dish. ("Well Sir, you'll be getting all your local channels except a UPN station and a few independents which would require a 2nd dish to pick up. We'll install that dish for free if you want us to, but it will necessitate you staying home for a 4 - 5 hour span and some additional hardware tacked onto your house").

Incidently, we charge customers who want to get international channels almost $100 for the same dish pointing in the same direction with the same installation. We can't encourage those who want to get that 2nd dish for free to go the locals route, but if they figure that out on their own....

--
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by CityZen · 2004-09-09 18:48 · Score: 1

That "newer" dish has been standard fare for several years now (it's called "Dish 500", vs. "Dish 300" for the original single-satellite dish).

Dish's latest attempt to increase bandwidth into one dish is called "SuperDish". There are two versions, but each picks up one Ku FSS satellite plus the DBS satellites at 110 & 119 W longitude.

However, since it's 3' wide (Ku FSS satellites are much lower power than DBS satellites, and hence require a larger dish), it's not that popular. Dish seems to keep changing its mind about how it's going to expand its capacity.
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by NanoGator · 2004-09-09 19:02 · Score: 5, Funny

"1500 channels sounds good, but what are they going to do for content?"

The Star Trek Channel, the A Team Channel, the Quantum Leap Channel, the Will and Grace Channel, the Cowboy Neal Channel....

--
"Derp de derp."
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by CityZen · 2004-09-09 19:12 · Score: 1

Here's a link that mentions that one-dish legislation:

http://www.mofo.com/news/bulletin.cfm?MCatID=9312& concentrationID=&ID=1219&Type=7#11
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 20:12 · Score: 0

Who cares about local channels these days? I can understand if you can't get cable/dish but is there really anything on there worth watching?

Lets just get everyone a gige internet connection, and let us CHOOSE what we want to watch. With 1500 channels available, I'd pick maybe 10...

History International
SCI-FI Channel
HBO
Discovery Science
Some random eastern european channel
BBC World
Some random US cable news channel
Cartoon Network
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-09 23:49 · Score: 1

That could be a problem, if the person already wants HD content, and their main locals are on 105W. At which point they may already have reached their 4 satellite limit (3 with most switch setups), and if that stuff is on the other wing...
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by glesga_kiss · 2004-09-10 00:31 · Score: 1

It doesn't mean 1500 active channels, they will be used for interactive services. For example, when a new film premiers on digital here in the UK, it is usually done on a Saturday night with shows starting ever 15 minutes. For a two hour film on rotation, that's 8 channels alone. You tune to the "official" channel that it's on, and the set-top box branches you onto the channel that is next about to start showing it.
Add pay-per-view channels, interactive services (BBC has a good set up here), and that bandwidth can be soaked up easily.
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by Gorm+the+DBA · 2004-09-10 02:03 · Score: 1

Yes, there is... your local weather and news, for one. Satellite uplinks of the Weather Channel are marvelous...if you live in Atlanta... It's handy to be able to get the updates on that big storm as it's coming through.
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by TGK · 2004-09-10 03:03 · Score: 1

Not really, geographic considerations make a 5 satelite setup almost impossible save in specific areas of the country.

Dish recently produced a DP44 (that's Dish Pro 4 Input 4 Output) switch which is being beta tested by select retailers. The DP44 allows the installation of four satelite locations, usualy 119, 110, (105 or 121) and (61.5 or 148).

Four locations is more than enough as is, though the locals market is the single bigest consumer of Dish's bandwidth.

If we go to a dual band system as mentioned in this article, it will necessitate some new tech, probably involving retooling the LNBF (reciving gear on the dish) for all satelite locations. Given company history, if that happens, you're probably looking at 24.95 with a 1 year commitment to service (but obviously this is all conjecture).

--
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 03:32 · Score: 1

I would have thought that foreign language was... you certainly have directv beat on that front.

Don't happen to have a spare power inserter and supply for a sw64 do you? ;-)
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by jerw134 · 2004-09-10 05:00 · Score: 1

No, it does mean 1500 active channels, most of them being locals.
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 14:17 · Score: 0

What's this thing you keep talking about "wings" and two dishes? I currently have DirecTv with their fancy triple-sat dish. Why doesn't Dish network use the same dish style?

Is there some good historical reason for this, or just poor planning?
Re:1500 channels and nothing to watch by CityZen · 2004-09-10 19:15 · Score: 1

> What's this thing you keep talking about "wings" and two dishes?

The FCC requires that DBS satellites be spaced ~9 degrees apart (to prevent them from interfering with each other, I believe). Therefore, the FCC designated the various spots, and various companies have acquired the rights to the different spots, or some portion of the frequency space in each spot. (In addition, the spots are also subdivided between USA, Canada, and Mexico.)

DirecTV got all of the 101 spot, plus small portions of the 110 and 119 spots. Since these spots are contiguous and only 18 degrees apart at most, a single dish can be used to receive signals from all 3 spots.

Dish got major portions of 110 and 119, plus portions of 61.5 and 148. The 110 and 119 spots can be received with a single dish, but a separate dish must be used to get 61.5 or 148. Those outliers are called the "wing" satellites.

Some of the other spots are used by ExpressVu in Canada (82 and 91), while the other spots are unused at the moment (assigned to Mexico). I believe both Dish and DirecTV are negotiating with the owners of the other spots (and the FCC) to get at some of that frequency space.

Dish has acquired some rights to the 157 spot, and in addition they are using some Ku FSS spaces at 105 and 121 (these are not DBS satellites).

According to my calculations, DirecTV has a total of 46 transponders at 101+110+119, while Dish has 50 transponders at 110+119. In addition, Dish is using 15 at 61.5, plus 22 at 148, plus 24 at 105, plus 28 at 121, plus 3 at 157.

Perhaps you can see why DirecTV is looking to make some big changes.

Looking at Dish's 110/119 satellites, I see up to about 12 regular channels or 3 HD channels being crammed onto a single transponder. This is really pushing things, and the result is a lot of compression artifacts. Way back when (before locals), only ~6 regular channels or 1 HD channel would take up a transponder.

(Most of this info was acquired from www.lyngsat.com.)

1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by penginkun · 2004-09-09 17:20 · Score: 5, Funny

I shudder to think how they're going to fill 1500 channels.

The Survivor Channel. The Paris Hilton Sex Tape Channel. The Dixon-Ticonderoga #2 Pencil Channel. The Slashdot Channel.

Etc, etc...

Re:1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by DarkHelmet · 2004-09-09 17:30 · Score: 1

The Slashdot Channel
Cowboyneal in hot grits? Those sick, sick bastards!

--
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Re:1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by CityZen · 2004-09-09 17:33 · Score: 1

Easy. Rebroadcasts of local HD channels. It's not like all those channels will be broadcast everywhere.
Re:1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by ac3boy · 2004-09-09 17:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

It will not be 1500 channels for everyone. By law DirecTV and Dish and every other SAT provider have to provide all the locals to all the folks. Meaning if they offer locals to Atlanta then they have to offer all the locals to every other city they beam too. So this means they have to carry even the crap networks that are available via an antenna. 1500 channels quickly pair down to 5-10 locals for each city they provide locals too. This is one reason they created the spot beam tech. They can use the same transponder to beam Atlanta locals to Atlanta and refocus a new feed to Alabama cities. This is a crude explanation but I am drunk right now and am to tired to explain further. Cheers, John.
Re:1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:37 · Score: 0

You forgot the Lincoln Moneyshot Channel.
Re:1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-09 23:53 · Score: 1

There is some debate over whether porn should be hidef or not. It sounds like a good idea to you and me, but those that have seen it say that current airbrushing techniques are dependent on the low resolution...

Wouldn't want people to be turned off by the track marks they can no longer hide, or the pus-filled giant pimples on these skank's asses, you know?
Re:1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by benzapp · 2004-09-10 01:28 · Score: 1

That just left a sick thought in my head.

those whores in porn are just disgusting.

what I do know is low-res is necessary for not just porn. Lots of older women will look much worse in hidef. facial wrinkles and lines will be much more apparent.

On the plus side, I think this could potentially alter the culture of hollywood. There is a certain depraved decadence that infests that culture, and by proxy our own culture at large. As beauty and physical attractiveness is a major aspect of that culture (and the business) I imagine many of these folks will have to live healthier lifestyles to maintain their beauty for a longer period of time. Perhaps with that change in lifestyle will come greater moral virtue as well.

--
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Re:1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by Nuge · 2004-09-10 04:07 · Score: 1

Well if you'd read, you know that most of those will be local stations. Only around 150 will be national.
Re:1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 05:40 · Score: 0

HiDef porn already exists, although it's probably scaled up versions of DVD content as I don't believe any films are shot in true HD yet.

Voom.com provides Playboy HD (and spice channel) in its premium service as an addon package:

http://www.voom.com/see_it/programming.jsp
Re:1500 channels and STILL nothing on... by jelle · 2004-09-10 12:15 · Score: 1

A lot of 'locals' are networked anyway, so they have a lot of the same programming, so if dishnetworks makes their 'receiver' include a harddisk, they can just transmit the network shows only once and transmit only the local news/ads separately and mix that in with the data on disk to rebuild the 'local' channel...

Of course, a system like that is going to fall apart if there is a major news item and each of those locals switch to 100% of their own custom news coverage... Plus it may add a couple of minutes of lag...

btw, does the law require them to carry the locals in HD, or can they downsample them to regular... because that would mean a total capacity of 6000 local channels...

--
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.

DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2004-09-09 17:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

Even today DirecTV is compressing their HD signals to fit more channels in the same bandwidth. They OUGHT to be maxing out the 19.8Mbps that ATSC allocates because for some scenes, 19.8Mbps isn't quite enough to fully resolve high-motion without ugly macro-blocking.

But, HD shows on DirecTV (and a lot of the other satellight providers) are being squished down into 14Mbps or less. It's like they don't get it - HDTV is about the HIGH DEFINITION not the LSTCTV (lots of stupid channels tv). People who pay for high def want the best possible picture quality, not the most possible crappy looking channels.

Leave the crappy picture quality to the standard def channels where people have already given up on ever getting it look good again (once upon a tv, early in the mini-dish era, the standard-def channels had so much bandwidth available that they often looked at least as good as DVD and lots of times they would even look better, but it hasn't been like that for years).

--
When information is power, privacy is freedom.

Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:31 · Score: 0

But, HD shows on DirecTV (and a lot of the other satellight providers) are being squished down into 14Mbps or less. It's like they don't get it - HDTV is about the HIGH DEFINITION not the LSTCTV (lots of stupid channels tv). People who pay for high def want the best possible picture quality, not the most possible crappy looking channels.

No, the fucking idiots of society want high def to keep up with the Jones' hidef. They're feeding the composite output into a modulator to feed thier shitty Magnavox TV. Or maybe they have money, so they're feeding it into that 800x600 plasma TV they paid $3000 for. 800x600*, I mean, WTF?

* I know 800x600 is not a standard plasma TV resolution. There is a resolution in that ballpack (?x576 maybe?). Whatever, it seems like a ripoff to pay $3000 for that crap.
Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by RzUpAnmsCwrds · 2004-09-09 17:49 · Score: 4, Informative

DirecTV won't have to recompress the channels at all. The 2 new SPACEWAY sats can easily deliver every current local HD channel, with plenty of room for expansion.

Estimates put the total capacity for SPACEWAY at around 500 full-bitrate HD channels. Multiply by two satellites (the third is a spare), and that's 1000 HD channels (note that this figure is based on a 25/75 mix of 720p to 1080i).

There are around 1800 channels in the country, but at least half of those (religous channels, shopping channels, etc.) have no plans to broadcast HD in the immediate future.
Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by PatJensen · 2004-09-09 18:42 · Score: 1

stat-muxing is not compression. that is all.
Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by bs_02_06_02 · 2004-09-09 20:03 · Score: 1

Compressed or not, DirecTV blows away Comcast digital cable. Completely. I have had both. I have an HD Mitsu TV. Comcast should be embarrassed for the product they put out. DirecTV, even in standard definition beats some of the "digital" Comcast channels. I never tried HD through Comcast, I got tired of waiting.

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-- No sig for you!
Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:41 · Score: 0

Yes, but what sucks is that the sats will do either SPACEWAY OR DirectTV and NOT both. Which if you happen to work for SPACEWAY kinda puts you in limbo about your job.
Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by SilentChris · 2004-09-10 01:31 · Score: 1

"It's like they don't get it - HDTV is about the HIGH DEFINITION not the LSTCTV (lots of stupid channels tv)."

Blame the content providers. Viacom offers massive discounts if a company gets their Nickelodean/Nick 2/Nicktoons/Nick at Nite over the standard Nickelodean package. In fact, it can sometimes cost more to just get the one channel. Viacom makes it up with having 4+ channels to advertise on instead of 1.
Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by SpiceWare · 2004-09-10 02:32 · Score: 1

19.8Mbps is the max for ATSC, which uses MPEG2 compression. I bet DirecTV will use a newer compression standard. like MPEG4, which will generate the same picture quality from a smaller bit stream.

The tradeoff will of course be faster CPU requirements for the decoder.
Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by Guppy06 · 2004-09-10 04:51 · Score: 1

"HDTV is about the HIGH DEFINITION not the LSTCTV (lots of stupid channels tv)."

So what you're looking for is FSCTV (few stupid channels TV) that just have higher resolution?

How much are you paying for those HD commercials again?
Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by TheSync · 2004-09-10 05:43 · Score: 1

Are you kidding? 19.34 Mbps ATSC HD is horrible. I prefer HD at speeds of at least 50 Mbps...but you take what you can get.
Re:DirecTV will compress the hell out of them by TheSync · 2004-09-10 05:52 · Score: 1

The Spaceway satellites have 48 spot beams of 125 MHz, to deliver at least 100 Mbps per spot beam, possibly more dependign on modulation scheme and FEC. The spot beams are created from a 1500 element phased array.

But classic syndicated shows aren't in HD, so.... by Dzimas · 2004-09-09 17:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

Wow. 1700 channels. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from changing the channel! The only problem is that there are relatively few good shows on at any one time, and none old the "classics" are HD. So the fancy 16:9 GasChromatographBlueLED flat-panel is going serve up 800+ channels of crummy-looking 4:3 interlaced NTSC or PAL "classics" like Mork & Mindy.

Ka-Band Report by NEOtaku17 · 2004-09-09 17:26 · Score: 4, Informative

# They will lead to a fundamental restructuring of the world's communications satellite industry and lead to the development of global satellite operators with integrated L-band, C-band, Ku-band and Ka-band systems, using geostationary and low and middle earth orbits.

# This will reinforce the dominance of the United States in the provision of space and ground infrastructure, information technology and services.

# It looks likely that either low earth or middle earth orbiting satellite systems will have a major competitive advantage over geostationary systems. Such Ka-band networks will, in the long run, be integrated with Big LEO mobile satellite networks.

# Geostationary Ka-band satellites will be ineffective in providing a platform for ATM services because of the time delay in a signal being transmitted from one ground station to another through such a satellite. The problem is likely to be addressed by using low or medium earth orbit satellites.

# Current regional or major domestic satellite operators will only survive in this market if they tie closely to the dominant global operators. Use of inter-satellite links will facilitate this.

# If they do not cooperate, they are faced with the option of getting into the US marketplace or getting out of the satcoms business altogether.

# There is no one clearly identified "killer application" for Ka-band satellites but provision of high speed Internet and associated services is likely to be a major short to medium term lead market. Ka-band satellites can provide the cheapest and most quickly available of all options (high speed cable modems, ADSL and ISDN) in providing such high speed access.

# Ka-band satellites are likely to find a role in the mass consumer markets with "Home-use VSAT" sales running into, perhaps, millions per year. Consumers are also likely to be offered combined Ku-band/Ka-band dishes capable of receiving digital satellite television services and providing two-way services.

# Ka-band satellites will offer the best of 21st Century communications services to underdeveloped regions of the world.

# The policy and regulatory issues behind Ka-band satellites are far more complex and demanding than those that have hitherto faced any form of satellite communications including DTH and DBS TV, VSATs and PCS mobile communications satellites.

# The United States is arm twisting the rest of the world to open up the global telecommunications market place to allow Ka-band satellite operators to compete with local telecoms and satellite interests.

# The Ka-band Report contradicts the conventional wisdom that Ka-band satellites will come later rather than sooner. Behind closed door developments facilitating Ka-band communications are happening right now - with the satellite operators, the

# European Commission, the World Trade organisation and elsewhere.

# The first orders for broadband Ka-band satellites are likely to be placed this year.

# There will be a considerable shakeout of the current number of plans for Ka-band satellite systems with only the stronger or more entrepreneurial projects surviving. Even so, some major satellite operators remain woefully unprepared for the Ka-band era.

# The world's satellite operators should be looking to Ka-band services, not digital satellite television, as their next great market opportunity.

# They will need to develop new marketing policies and customer bases and cultivate new partners both amongst existing and new telecoms operators.

# Europe remains way behind the United States in developing the appropriate satellite technology (on-board processing, switching, antennas) and ground stations (phased array antennas) needed for the Ka-band environment.

Source: http://www.mindbranch.com

--
Creative Demolition

Re:Ka-Band Report by bremstrong · 2004-09-09 21:33 · Score: 1

If you look at the report this came from you see it was released in October 1997. The Ka-band data services the report picked as being imminent has yet to happen.
Re:Ka-Band Report by ttys00 · 2004-09-10 00:13 · Score: 1

# There is no one clearly identified "killer application" for Ka-band satellites but provision of high speed Internet and associated services is likely to be a major short to medium term lead market. Ka-band satellites can provide the cheapest and most quickly available of all options (high speed cable modems, ADSL and ISDN) in providing such high speed access.

Maybe this will encourage telcos to hurry up and expand their terrestrial broadband coverage, lest they lose potential customers.
Re:Ka-Band Report by Sancho · 2004-09-10 02:51 · Score: 2, Funny

# It looks likely that either low earth or middle earth orbiting satellite systems will have a major competitive advantage over geostationary systems.

So /that's/ how Sauran saw everything....
Re:Ka-Band Report by illumin8 · 2004-09-10 04:26 · Score: 1

# They will lead to a fun ...

Dude, I tried to read your report, but every line was commented out and my brain just skipped right past it without executing it.

Would you mind uncommenting the sections you'd like me to execute?

--
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon

I hope there’s not a market for these new cha by AssProphet · 2004-09-09 17:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

Consider the cost involved in production of programming for television channels, and then add the cost of businesses paying for the marketing to pay for that programming. Now add all the people who are watching television because there is "nothing better to do."

It just saddens me to see such an investment in entertainment. Especially since entertainment doesn't have any kind of economic return for the individual. I'll agree that entertainment is necessary for humans to enjoy life, but 1500 channels is beyond excessive.

Ah! by iamdrscience · 2004-09-09 17:29 · Score: 5, Informative

I still haven't bought a satellite or digital cable subscription. Partly because I am cheap, but also in large part because MPEG fragments drive me up the wall. I mean, I'll deal with it when it's a uhh... legally downloaded movie I'm watching on my computer, but when I'm watching shows on my TV, I don't want them to be skimping on the bandwidth. If I can tell that you're using compression, then your bitrate is too low! Lord help the people with HDTVs, paying a boatload more for a better TV and HDTV channels and still getting MPEG fragments? Come on people, it's 2004.

Re:Ah! by Rosonowski · 2004-09-09 18:38 · Score: 1

No kidding. Whenever I go over to my freind's house, we might be watching one of the more "obscure" channels (in that very few people watch them) and there's times where the audio will drop to tinny crap, or the signal would just skip kind of like a scratched CD.

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01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
Re:Ah! by e40 · 2004-09-10 01:27 · Score: 1

I've had DirecTivo for more than a year. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen MPEG fragments. I live in CA and we don't have real weather, but even in the rain here I don't see any more. Perhaps you friend's dish is not aligned properly.
Re:Ah! by Stevyn · 2004-09-10 08:18 · Score: 1

I have digital cable and I almost never see fragments. The picture is a lot more clear than analog. I'd rather see a fragment once in a while than constant fuzz. Fragmentation does occur more on DirecTV, but digital cable from Comcast is pretty good.

Slam Dunk for Mark Cuban by loid_void · 2004-09-09 17:29 · Score: 3, Funny

I guess Mark Cuban was right, founding HDNet, the first national HD network to broadcast all of its programming in 1080i resolution, the highest-quality format of high-definition. And isn't it a coincidence that there is a Ku band?

--
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?

Re:Slam Dunk for Mark Cuban by wankledot · 2004-09-09 18:25 · Score: 1

There is some debate about 1080i vs. 720p and which one is really the higher quality sigal.
I just wish there was more content in HD right now. It's pretty sad how little there is, but those 5 channels sure are nice.

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My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Re:Slam Dunk for Mark Cuban by loid_void · 2004-09-09 18:38 · Score: 1

Yes that's so right. The point I tried to make was really his aptitude to see where it's going... and, I also failed to include that he has a hell of a lot of fun while he's doing it. =)

--
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
Re:Slam Dunk for Mark Cuban by evilviper · 2004-09-09 22:38 · Score: 1

1080i resolution, the highest-quality format of high-definition.

Actually, I'd take a 720p video over a 1080i video.

This is really the single biggest mark of stupidity in the HDTV standard... Just because many displays can't handle 1080p doesn't mean you should limit the standard to that... They should have made it 1080p, and just let the reciever convert it to interlaced and display it.

That way those of us with better monitors (projectors!) can get a great quality signal... and in 10 years when people upgrade, all HDTVs will be able to display 1080p, with no change to the standard.

Well, I'm ranting now... I'd just like to conclude by saying that interlacing sucks.

--
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Re:Slam Dunk for Mark Cuban by packeteer · 2004-09-09 23:39 · Score: 1

I think news is the best, because news right now is all about talking heads. It's "I'm in Iraq and the bombs are blowing up behind me." Whereas with our news, we have a show called HDNet World Report where we put cameras in all kinds of hot spots--Iraq, wherever. And when we show a firefight or some sort of bombing, we don't have the reporter say anything. They just say, "We're in Iraq, we're in Baghdad, and there's a firefight going on, I'll shut up and let you watch it." And being able to see it in wide-screen high resolution with 5.1 sound, if you have a tank firing, you hear it coming out of one ear and see it leaving out of the other ear. It's just incredible. Just to be able to see it like you're actually sitting there is amazing.

Wow i cant wait for the army chanel. It'll be great to get to vouyeristically watch our trips risking their lives, all from my sofa, with a beer in my hand. How is that the news? Thats entertainment, and i think thats sad that with all this new technology thats what its gunna be used for. I dont know if im more creeped out by this guy providing a news show like that or to (apparently) a country who wants that on TV.

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unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Re:Slam Dunk for Mark Cuban by CityZen · 2004-09-10 07:27 · Score: 1

> Wow, I can't wait for the army channel.

That kind of scares me, actually. When you consider how unreal and directed the "reality TV" programs are these days, can you imagine how warfare will change if entertainment value becomes a factor in how war is conducted?

Hmm, I wonder how much that's already happening, actually. Although, perhaps "political value" is still more important than "entertainment value". I've heard reports that right now troops in Iraq are being told to sit tight and safe until after the election is over. More dead soldiers are a liability for the current administration's re-election chances.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by silentbozo · 2004-09-09 17:31 · Score: 1

Basis HD is 10.95 a month.

Wait. Are you telling me I can get hidef programming for $11 a month, after I buy a receiver and a dish? Or do I have to subscribe to the regular package on top of that?

The Future is TiVo by Beller0ph1 · 2004-09-09 17:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

Sure there will be stuff on 1700 channels 24/7, but who is going to watch it? I bet the most views they will get will be from PVRs; either in people's computers, TiVos, or the combination thereof. Heck, even with regular digital cable, I wish I had a Tivo...who knew Law and Order was on at least 4 times a day. And that's only on 1 channel.

Then comes the fact that everyone will need to buy different equipment. And the manufacturers will either make a killing on it, or it will be a commodity, giving it away for free.

I would like to see dynamic pricing based on how much and what you watch. But then the networks wouldn't have the funding for the 1650 other channels nobody watches.

--
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams" -- Willy Wonka

Re:The Future is TiVo by Fnkmaster · 2004-09-10 04:42 · Score: 1

I split my time between HD content and my Tivo these days. It's hard NOT to watch HD when you have a 60" Sony Grand Wega set. Basically my TV watching algorithm looks like this:

1. Check Discovery HD Theater - if already seen or sucky show, proceed to step 2.

2. Check HBO HD and Showtime HD for decent movies. If not decent, or too far into movies, proceed to step 3.

3. Switch TV back to Tivo input and look at Now Playing list for latest Stargate, Monk, World Poker Tour, or cool History Channel stuff.
Re:The Future is TiVo by Beller0ph1 · 2004-09-13 16:17 · Score: 1

*drool* I can't wait till those 60" screens are as cheap as the 19" CRTs. Oh well, I guess if I wait a couple decades or something...

--
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams" -- Willy Wonka

Playboy in Hi-Def...... by theneb · 2004-09-09 17:32 · Score: 2, Funny

.......cant wait!

Re:Playboy in Hi-Def...... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:00 · Score: 0

I'm perfectly happy to watch my women in 16:9 when the TV is only 4:3. I like big butts, my name is Sir Mix-a-Lot.
Re:Playboy in Hi-Def...... by Temsi · 2004-09-09 18:54 · Score: 2, Informative

Forget Playboy... it's softcore (read: boring).

When will we get Hustler TV? Or SCORE TV? A real, no holes barred, hardcore porn channel with closeups, penetration and moneyshots?
How about a 24hr Pussyman marathon?
Why is it that a $10 PPV version of a porno shows almost nothing, when a $3 rented dvd version of the same porno is a full blown version that shows everything?
Since when do the FCC decency regulations apply to closed circuit PAID TV? And on that subject, who's idea of decency is the gold standard? What happened to the 1st Amendment?
What's wrong with these people?

If I want to watch boring softcore crap, I can turn on Cinemax...

--
-- This sig for rent.
Re:Playboy in Hi-Def...... by John_Allen_Mohammed · 2004-09-09 19:47 · Score: 1

I dont know the answer to this but I would guess it's because sodomy is illegal in many states yet... and money shots, might be illegal as well, classified under the same type of obscenity laws. *shrug*.

I'm not living in the u.s. though, their rules and laws I know not, very well. Can hard-core porn broadcast over cable ?

--

Skype Me! username: john_allen_mohammed
Re:Playboy in Hi-Def...... by CityZen · 2004-09-09 19:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

Wonder if it will be porn that drives new real-time image processing technologies:

- automatic zit removal
- wrinkle reducer
- cellulite softener
- razor burn & stubble removal
- etc.
Re:Playboy in Hi-Def...... by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 00:10 · Score: 1

GM, parent company of Hughes, was afraid to offend. Dishnet shows more (no holes barred), but still tends to be boring. Bell ExpressVu (canadian) shows even more, but be careful about the gay porn... it's not on any single channel, but randomly shows up on any of them (else I'd have already use parental lockout so that I wouldn't accidentally browse to it). Definitely recommend using the guide to select porn channels with BEV.

Some of the porn you can pick up with generic (non-dish) DVB equipment and 1 meter dishes looks good, but haven't gotten around to checking yet. Check out lyngsat.com, there's a package called "asiaafterdark" that looks promising.

Not much on Cband though, that I've heard of. May not get to install my 10' dish until next year though...
Re:Playboy in Hi-Def...... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 01:26 · Score: 0

No need to wait. DirecTV has been offering it for a while now. http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/imagine/HDTV_ppv.dsp
Re:Playboy in Hi-Def...... by Drestin · 2004-09-10 03:50 · Score: 1

It's available and better than Playboy. Spice HD Theater is on DTV now. Shows everything except anal.

Big numbers by iamdrscience · 2004-09-09 17:38 · Score: 2, Funny

I think whenever there's a really big number used in an article write-up we should just abandon metric prefixes. I mean, c'mon, which number looks bigger (and thus cooler)? 34Gbit/s or 36,507,222,016bits/s? This could also be extended further for data rates by not writing them per second. How about 131,425,999,257,600 per hour? 3,154,223,982,182,400 bits per day? etc.

The possibilities are endless.

Re:Big numbers by aduzik · 2004-09-09 18:55 · Score: 4, Funny

Do we have to say it? 1500 channels and nothing on.

--
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
Re:Big numbers by sr180 · 2004-09-09 21:46 · Score: 1

This is telecommunications, not computing. In telecommunications, 34Gbit/s is 34x10^9 bits/s.
Communications has always used 1000 bits per kilobit, unlike the 1024bits per kilobit (traditionally) used in computing.

--
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Re:Big numbers by Admiral+Llama · 2004-09-09 23:30 · Score: 1

On one hand that does sound more impressive, but if you make it sound too impressive you'll have people wanting to know which how many of those bits are going to give them cancer.

Re:But classic syndicated shows aren't in HD, so.. by CityZen · 2004-09-09 17:40 · Score: 1

Probably most of the channels will be rebroadcast local HD stations, so everyone won't be able to see everything.

Don't know if people said this... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:42 · Score: 5, Informative

But the 1500 HD channels is going have a majority of the channels devoted to local channels that you will only get in your respective local area. So, you won't have 1500 channels show up on your program guide, only the local channels all broadcast in HD plus the 200+ satellite-only HD channels.

Re:Don't know if people said this... by hey · 2004-09-09 22:46 · Score: 1

Yeah, I wonder why you won't be able to get LA channels in NY. Why not?
Re:Don't know if people said this... by dsanfte · 2004-09-09 23:48 · Score: 1

On Canadian satellite, we get all the local channels from across the country. Makes time-shifting easy.

Maybe your regulatory body sucks ass down there, and won't let them do this?

--
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Re:Don't know if people said this... by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 00:58 · Score: 1

Bell ExpressVu? Having just watched BEV here the last few weeks, I can say that it's nothing to brag about. Well, except for the porn...

Also, why do they do french channels? Wouldn't it be more effective to beam down seperate video and audio, and have the reciever combine them? It would nearly double available bandwidth, and the quebecistanis could still hear their dubbed over parlesvous.
Re:Don't know if people said this... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 02:56 · Score: 0

Sadly with DirecTV you *will* have all those other local channels show up in your program guide. At least that's how it works with SD now...
Re:Don't know if people said this... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 05:38 · Score: 0

The French channels have different video.
In hockey, they have their Quebec experts
and they talk to Quebec players in intermission, etc.
Re:Don't know if people said this... by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 06:03 · Score: 1

Fair enough, but the syndicated shows, what about them? I'll be watching Stargate SG1, turn the channel, and there the same episode is in french. Why waste bandwidth beaming the video twice?

This Quebecistani terrorism must end!

the early days by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:46 · Score: 0

All SD channels on DirecTV are 480x480. DVD is 720x480.

SD channels on DirecTV may have looked better at one time than they do now, but they were never anything like DVD, they have barely over half the pixels.

Also, 14mbps is a ton. Many local ATSC channels divide their signal between an SD and an HD channel. They aren't giving much more than 14mbps to the HD channel, and they look great.

I have OTA ATSC HD, and I have DTV HD. And I often have the same content on both systems. Rarely is there any blockiness on the DTV feeds (or the other). Yes, I can tell the difference sometimes, but not often. I would say the fact that HBOHD usually airs DVDs blown up to HD and pan & scanned to 16:9 hurts my HD experience more than a few missing megabits.

Re:the early days by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 19:42 · Score: 0

All SD channels on DirecTV are 480x480.
DVD is 720x480.

SD channels on DirecTV may have looked better at one time than they do now, but they were never anything like DVD, they have barely over half the pixels.

There are pixels and then are pixels. Do all DVD's have equal picture quality? No. The number of physical pixels is only one part of the equation. Similarly, it is entirely possible to have a 480x480 mpeg encoding that looks substantially better than even an average-but-good 720x480 DVD encoding, if you throw enough bits at it.

Macro-blocking, aka "blockiness" isn't all there is to it either, that is just one common obviously digital artifact. Other common, but not obviously digital artifacts include softness, reduction in dynamic range of contrast which results in white-clipping, squashed-blacks and loss of shadow detail, then there is reduction of the dynamic range of coloration which makes the colors look muted and lacking vibrancy. All of that, and more, happens when you run out of bits for your mpeg encoding.

As for HBO-HD running upconverts, they are NOT upconverts from DVDs. They are upconverts from D1 standard-def master tapes which are typically of significantly better quality than the actual DVD because they are often used as the master source for the DVD. For example, Finding Nemo on DVD is an overcompressed mess. Finding Nemo upconvert from D1 on HBO-HD looks pretty damn good -- it also had a datarate of about twice as much as the DVD did.

Think of upconverts as the same as oversampling in CD players. It helps to capture as much as possible of the original data. A top-notch upconvert will never compete with a top-notch native HDTV encoding, but a top-notch upconvert can easily best a half-assed, low-bitrate HDTV encoding.

This will be the killer application for satellite by barfy · 2004-09-09 17:46 · Score: 5, Interesting

First TiVo just works better with satellite than over the air, because it just copies the satellites digital signal rather than recompressing the stream.

Second, HD looks GREAT on a SD TV. I have been a satellite subscriber since day one because local cable was aweful. It used to have a great picture, but the channel squeeze forced bit rates down so low it was like watching a good streaming internet image (crappy).

But I now have HDTiVo hooked up to a very nice SD set (XBR2) and a very nice HD projector (NEC HT1000). The projector is great for movies, but is just too big for watching TV. But HD channels on the SD set are some of the best quality TV around.

This will benefit all subscribers by getting high enough bandwidth for all stations, and more HD than will be provided by my local provider. I am just disappointed it is going to take 3 years to get up and running.

Re:Yes but ... by DaedalusLogic · 2004-09-09 17:48 · Score: 1

They only show non-stop commercials for the cereal Trix.

Silly Coward!

They already have football in HD by weedenbc · 2004-09-09 17:49 · Score: 3, Interesting

This year Fox and CBS are carrying several games each week in glorious HD. If you are a HD subscriber and a Sunday Ticket subscriber you get several of those games in HD each, plus every game in SD, plus the Sunday night ESPN games.

I'm drooling already waiting for Sunday.

--

"Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer

Re:They already have football in HD by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:13 · Score: 0

Until someone breaks the P4/P5 though, who cares?
Re:They already have football in HD by The+Snowman · 2004-09-11 17:55 · Score: 1

plus the Sunday night ESPN games.

I hooked up high definition service a few weeks ago because one of my friends said "you can see football players' Nike swoosh on their shoes on ESPNHD." Bullshit. After three weeks I have seen ZERO high definition shows on ESPNHD, while every single PBSHD and DISCHD show has been broadcast in widescreen high definition with very few, if any, commercials. ABCHD has had a few football games and each one has been in awesome 1080i resolution with great detail. I got to see a little bit of my home team, Ohio State, win, and some of the SEC teams play but I really do not care. At the same time, ESPNHD had professional games broadcast in standard definition with the letterbox bars on the left and right side on my HDTV channel. Assholes. Give some HDTV! I am paying $10 per month!

Go Ohio State University! Michigan sucks :-)

--
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!

All the channels and only commercials to watch by Malc · 2004-09-09 17:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

Who cares how many channels it can support? Those are just marketing gimics. I have 70 channels on basic cable and I can flip through them all and find only crap or commercials. TV was better back in the UK with just four channels. There was either really good stuff on, or it didn't take long to discover cricket and horse racing only. More channels != better TV. More channels == dilution and lower quality.

Re:All the channels and only commercials to watch by hey · 2004-09-09 22:49 · Score: 1

But commercials in HD...nice.
Re:All the channels and only commercials to watch by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 02:08 · Score: 0

Go back to the UK then. ;) Seriously, if you don't like what's on TV these days, don't pay them any money. Or, get a DVR, and always watch what YOU want to watch. It's simple supply and demand. Right now, there is a rising demand for more HD content, and DirecTv is attempting to fill that spot (and to some extent, play catch up with Time Warner, etc). Alot of this bandwidth will be used to broadcast local channels in HD.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by Wavicle · 2004-09-09 17:53 · Score: 3, Informative

I believe $11 gets you the HDTV channels - there aren't a lot of them. I think you'll need another subscription to get everything else. The DirecTV page for their HDTV package is here.

--
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)

Re:But classic syndicated shows aren't in HD, so.. by bitingduck · 2004-09-09 17:53 · Score: 4, Funny

My mom already thinks her digital cable is like a time machine, because nearly everything she's ever watched is still on.

With 1700 channels, everything that was ever shown on TV could be rebroadcast on a regular basis-- there could even be multiple Love Boat channels, a channel for each Star Trek season, one for the good Star Trek movies, and one for the bad...

Police radar by LittleLebowskiUrbanA · 2004-09-09 17:56 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Any correlation between this and KA band police radar? Because I'd sure hate for police to move from the easily detectable KA band to Lidar laser detection.

--
This guy is way out there

Re:Police radar by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:51 · Score: 0

Sorry to double post this (I posted this in reply to the crappy funny modded post above), but there are laser jammers commercially available. Escort ZR3 and K40 Diffuser Plus are both very highly regarded. (And the ZR3 can be Shift+Link to a Passport 8500 X50 radar detector).

I'd welcome the move to laser.
Re:Police radar by flynns · 2004-09-10 03:00 · Score: 1

Hate to burst your bubble, but most of the cops [at least where I live - Okaloosa County, in Northwest Florida] have already moved to laser-based detection methods, which essentially turns your radar detector into an impending speeding ticket detector...

--
'If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.'

More HD! Who’s complaining?! I’m not. by RazorX90 · 2004-09-09 18:02 · Score: 1

Look, I doubt they will have that many HD channels, but at least it (should) mean a decent new chunk of HD, and HD is just cool period. I'm looking on the positive side, as long as they don't raise the bill, I'm very excited about this news.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by ckelly5 · 2004-09-09 18:05 · Score: 2, Informative

fyi Bravo HD also just started broadcasting on dtv and I believe is part of the HD package.

also, if you are an NFL Sunday Ticket subscriber, you get access to over 100 HD football games this year, even if you don't subscribe to the HD package.

Scientific Satellite Interference by bleckywelcky · 2004-09-09 18:06 · Score: 4, Interesting

I've worked on scientific satellite designs and the Ka band is quite frequently used for downloading data from satellites to Earth. I would like to know what specific ranges of the Ka band Direct TV will be allowed to use, the article does not mention this information. If media content providers are allowed to move in on frequencies that are typically used for scientific satellites (or even close enough to cause interference), costs for obtaining this data and processing it could increase immensely. Or even worse, communication time could be reduced or even eliminated. Hopefully Direct TV will be constained enough that they don't impinge on these scientific efforts.

Re:Scientific Satellite Interference by stuktongue · 2004-09-09 19:12 · Score: 4, Informative

Years ago, I processed reports from an organization known as the IFRB, which I seem to remember as the International Frequency Registration Board, or something like that. This organization received, circulated, and arbitrated RFCs for frequency bands made by the various satellite providers/manufacturers around the world. The purpose was to avoid interference between new systems and existing systems.

Many techniques exist for reducing or eliminating interference, not just frequency separation. Polarization schemes are a big part of the solution, but there are others (spatial isolation, of course, and coding schemes with digital systems).

If your data transmission is at all on the radar, so to speak, I think it'd be safe to say people are designing new systems to be compatible. Or so we think. :-)
Re:Scientific Satellite Interference by TheSync · 2004-09-10 05:38 · Score: 1

If your dish isn't pointed at their satellite, you won't get interference...

Oh great..... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:15 · Score: 1, Funny

Now I can watch Die Hard on channel 550 from 3-5, channel 551 from 5-7, channel 552 from 7-9, and channel 553 from 9-11. 1700 Channels and there still won't be anything on.

Yey, more television I'm not going to be watching by ThatWeasel · 2004-09-09 18:18 · Score: 1

I just hope they are going to broadcast the G4 network in Hi Definition. I absolutely need to see the latest cheats for Half Life 2 in Hi Definition so I can frag noobs super ultra fast.

--

TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television

500+ Channels of HDTV all sitting idle by wg0350 · 2004-09-09 18:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

Being a student, HDTV is a small part of that somewhat distant dream of a futuristic geek friendly home.

Yes there are those of us who regard the number of TV channels we can receive as a mark of our success. But there is one fairly obvious question: What are they going to show on all these channels?

1) Thousands of new, good quality, entertaining TV programs. - I should stop dreaming here.

2) Go the way of digital telivision and show repeats or shopping channels 24/7. - Nice idea, but there are two problems with this. Firstly the old classics will look just as good on standard analogue terestrial TV. Why would anyone pay the extra to get them on channel 1476 in HDTV. Secondly, there are only so many times you can watch a repeat of a Jerry Springer show. (Do they still show that on ITV2?)

3) More movies and more sport. These are two big success areas. But again, why HDTV? Won't the quality be the same (for 90% of things shown) on standard DVB.

I live in the UK where I make do with 5 TV channels. Even then, we are shown numerous repeats. Good programs are hard to find. Until they can give me a reason (GOOD TV) to pay for something with more channels, i'll stick with the 5 I've got.

Re:500+ Channels of HDTV all sitting idle by bmantz65 · 2004-09-09 19:28 · Score: 1

I'll take a 24/7 Nickelodeon Classic station, HD or not. The ratings are there!
Re:500+ Channels of HDTV all sitting idle by paedobear · 2004-09-09 19:30 · Score: 1

If you live in the UK, HDTV is far less impressive - the difference between PAL and HD (especially if you cheat slightly and use something like PALplus) is far less than the difference between NTSC and HD. (I am from the UK, I live in Japan, I have worked on HD technology etc etc)
Re:500+ Channels of HDTV all sitting idle by Troed · 2004-09-09 20:01 · Score: 1

I don't believe you - you've obviously never seen HDTV (american or japanese btw?). No, that tv-rips you download have "hdtv" in them does not mean that the resolution is 1280*720.

You could always go and try to find that Lord of the Rings version in 1280*720 .ts of course.

(Yes, I have an 110" HDTV-capable projector)

--
it's in my head
Re:500+ Channels of HDTV all sitting idle by Billy69 · 2004-09-09 20:02 · Score: 1

Indeed. Most of the American stuff I watch has a slightly fuzzy and annoying image quality.

Then, after missing the first episode of 'Dead Like Me', I downloaded a copy which said it was HD (from HBO?). Played back through my XBMCed XBOX the quality was much more like what I am used to in the UK.

--
#include "disclaimer.h"
Re:500+ Channels of HDTV all sitting idle by paedobear · 2004-09-09 20:07 · Score: 1

No, I spent a significant part of last year developing software that meant watching HD streams. You've obviously not had much exposure to PAL video.
Re:500+ Channels of HDTV all sitting idle by Troed · 2004-09-09 20:54 · Score: 1

I live in Sweden. Guess what system we use here.

Do you want to get into resolution approximations and calculations, including hidden lines on a normal signal compared to all lines available in HDTV etc?

--
it's in my head
Re:500+ Channels of HDTV all sitting idle by paedobear · 2004-09-09 22:19 · Score: 1

It should be obvious that the difference in clarity going from 576->720 is different to that going from 480->720. I realise that this is unfair as HDTV is a widescreen format, but PALplus allows PAL to approximate anamorphic broadcasts by using the hidden lines to broadcast more chroma information. There was the stupidity that was MAC, but one of the big reason there's so little pressure for HD is that it's not so big a jump. The UK is the world leader in iTV/DTV though.
Re:500+ Channels of HDTV all sitting idle by Troed · 2004-09-09 23:05 · Score: 1

Please, give up. It seems above you don't even realise that your comparing interlaced vs progressive signals in addition to the _extreme_ increase in discrete pixels (both vertically and horisontally, something you also don't seem to understand).

The difference between NTSC and PAL is _minimal_ compared to the difference between both of them and 720p (I don't like 1080i since it's interlaced)

I watch content in PALi, 480p and 720p every day. From your posts I conclude that you probably write about things you don't understand.

--
it's in my head

I'll say it now... by kubrick · 2004-09-09 18:34 · Score: 4, Funny

so people can quote me in the future as an example of how misguided our thinking was in the past.

34 Gbps should be enough for anyone.

--
deus does not exist but if he does

Re:But classic syndicated shows aren't in HD, so.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:49 · Score: 1, Interesting

going serve up 800+ channels of crummy-looking 4:3 interlaced NTSC or PAL "classics" like Mork & Mindy

Well, first of all, Mork & Mindy is a classic. ;-)

Second, aren't some of the really old shows actually recorded on film? There was a day before they could record on videotape. In theory anything recorded on film could be transferred straight to digital for potentially higher quality.

Four satellites and still nothing by ThatWeasel · 2004-09-09 19:04 · Score: 1

Four satellites and there is still nothing good to watch on television except Hi Definition Pr0n.

--

TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television

Re:DirectTV HDTV by charyou-tree · 2004-09-09 19:04 · Score: 5, Interesting

It's been a few months (April) since I've been able to watch the DirecTV HD package. Has it improved at all?

At that time,

ESPN
Sucked. 90% of their programming was SD upconverts. Worse, they streeeeetched the image to 16:9 which distorted the picture and made it physically painful to watch. They had some nicely done Sunday night football games last year.

Discovery HD
Nice, but incredibly repetitive. The channel was on a 4 hour loop most of the time.

HDMovies (Movie channel showing various movies from classics to recent favorites)
Sucked in a major way. 90%+ old retread movies. Sure, "Endless Summer" was cool to watch, the first of the 7,312 times they broadcast it.

HDNet - pretty much a worthless channel showing repeats of recent Nascar Races, Horse, Races, and concerts. They also have some original series on it (I think).
Good for MLS games, if you're into that, which I am.

Now they've added BravoHD to the $10.99 HD package, which was part of a deal they had with NBC over the Olympics. Rumor has it they're going to push some SciFi channel programming onto Bravo, which would be cool.

CBSHD - I live in Utah and they allow me to pick up the CBS HD feed from LA. This is great because I can watch my shows an hour later in HD without needing the off air ant.
Don't knock OTA antennas, if you can get a signal. A one-time expense of under $100 and a few hours installing an antenna in my attic got me perfect recepton of ABC, CBS, and NBC digital broadcast. The picture from local stations is typically compressed less than DBS signals, and it's free.

It's too bad that getting a waiver from a local station, even if you can't get their signal, is a nightmare most places. I can't get Fox, at all, and I'm not real hopeful about being able to get it over DirecTV, even when they start offering it.

I also enjoy watching Golf in High def on the weekends. You can tell a HUGE DIFFERENCE between the shows in HD and regular shows. People come over and just say WOW to the sporting events. Movies are not that much different.
I agree, HD is incredible. I could watch paint dry in HD, but I'm not sure if I could make myself watch golf. :-)

Cons:
No STINKING TIVO!!!!!! I can't wait for the HDTivo to be affordable.
Agreed. They need a standalone HD DVR model that doesn't force us to hock our existing HD STBs on eBay.

Screw DirecTV by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 19:07 · Score: 1, Interesting

There is no way I would ever sign up for this. They SUE THEIR CUSTOMERS! They are an evil company. If you read the link, you'll agree with me.
I am posting Anonymous because they scare the living crap out of me, and I don't want to anger them any more than I did for owning a smartcard reader. I can't afford to fork over money to them, and I don't want to have to defend myself in court.

Re:Screw DirecTV by mikeswi · 2004-09-10 00:07 · Score: 1

My first thought at reading the story was, "Cool, maybe I'll look into that." My second was, "Oh wait, these are the assholes running an extortion racket across North America."

I'm sure they couldn't give a shit about this one loss of a customer, but in the corporate world we vote with our wallets, so there's the one vote I'm allotted. I'll look at Dish Network instead when I move into my new place next week.

By the way, my third thought was "Oh shit, my radar detector's gonna go nuts!"

--
Only on /.
Re:Screw DirecTV by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 00:26 · Score: 1

Haha. You could also vote with your confocal microscope and extensive smartcard reverse engineering skills.

If you have to be legit though, check out Voom. They're the third US satellite provider (til one of the others buys them out).
Re:Screw DirecTV by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 01:54 · Score: 1, Informative

Don't be such a pansy. Just get an HD dish on eBay, then get a free to air (FTA) box. No card needed and you get everything including international feeds.

German shieser movies are zee best...
Re:Screw DirecTV by Myxx · 2004-09-10 07:00 · Score: 1

I am not trolling here, but I am curious about how they are extorting. I simply pay for the service they provide.`Are you saying they charge too much?

--

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Twisted Little Gnome - The Podcasting Network http://www.twistedlittlegnome.com
Re:Screw DirecTV by mikeswi · 2004-09-10 08:42 · Score: 2, Informative

No, although it is pricey.

By extortion, I mean that they are suing owners of certain programmable PC smart cards that can be used to hack a DTV receiver box to pirate the signal.

They are doing this with no regard to the actual use of the card. They've sued actual pirates, they've sued loyal customers who have always paid for their service and they've sued people who have never used DTV service at all, paid or pirated.

The card in question is perfectly legal and has numerous legitimate uses. Ownership or use is not a crime in any jurisdiction in the world (as far as I know), but DTV will sue anyone whose name/address they can find who has purchased one.

They start with a demand for money that is slightly less than the cost of defending against the lawsuit, with a promise that the "damages" they'll seek will be much more if it goes to court. That's pure extortion and I don't know why the FCC/FTC are letting them get away with it.

Read this site for more information about it

--
Only on /.
Re:Screw DirecTV by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 09:03 · Score: 0

what's FTA? links?

That's great actually by Sycraft-fu · 2004-09-09 19:07 · Score: 1

Why? Because then there's more chance of what I want to watch being available. I'm all for channel overload, they'll just need a box that's smart enough to let you categorize (which shouldn't be a problem).

For example I'm a Law and Order nut. It's my favourite show and I can watch the espiodes over and over. I would love a Law and Order channel, that just showed it 24/7. Then, whenever I decided I wanted to see it, I could sit down and do so.

You are right that as the number of channels go up, the crap will as well, but that's fine so long as they make a good way to find what you want (and they'll have to for it to succede). The Internet is a great example of that working. The Internet has a staggering amount of information, and most of it is utter shit. Yet I still love it. Why? Well because there is tons of good stuff too, and a way for me to find it.

The other side is, of course, that what I think is shit isn't true of all people. I happen to think that "reality" TV is retarded. It just doesn't do it for me. Well, there are lots of people that don't agree, and like it. So while I would consider 10 channels of reality TV to be "crap" others would consider it to be awesome.

The only thing that would make me happer is on demand TV, where I just tell it what I want and get it, but I realise that's not happening any time soon for a number of reasons. In the interm, a ton of channels will be nice. It's not like I have to watch the ones I don't want.

Re:That's great actually by corian · 2004-09-09 19:33 · Score: 1

For example I'm a Law and Order nut. It's my favourite show and I can watch the espiodes over and over. I would love a Law and Order channel, that just showed it 24/7. Then, whenever I decided I wanted to see it, I could sit down and do so.

They're not going to do that -- it'll cut into sales of the DVDs. The trend these days is to show fewer and fewer repeats. Look, for instance, at 24 and Alias. No repeats this year -- just realy quick full-season DVDs.
Re:That's great actually by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 00:00 · Score: 1

They've had a Law and Order channel for years, chances are you're already subscribed to it. It's called "TNT".

Also, please tell me that you only like the newer seasons with Jerry Orbach. His partner doesn't matter so much, but that first guy was just awful. Whathisname the DA, Jack Malone.. also superior to the original character. If only all lawyers were half as wise, or 1/100th as ethical...
Re:That's great actually by JerkBoB · 2004-09-10 02:23 · Score: 1

For example I'm a Law and Order nut. It's my favourite show and I can watch the espiodes over and over. I would love a Law and Order channel, that just showed it 24/7. Then, whenever I decided I wanted to see it, I could sit down and do so.

I know it's snarky to say, but for the reasonable sum of <insert_your_currency_here>, you could have your very own L&O Channel. I prefer the TiVo variant, but there are other options.

Really, though... Try a PVR sometime. There's always something good to watch when I turn the TV on. Red Dwarf marathon, anyone? (bless you, NH PBS!)

--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!

1500 channels: the Romans called it... by nusratt · 2004-09-09 19:15 · Score: 1

..."panem et circenses".
Or, in more contemporary terms, it's Neo's red-pill / blue-pill choice.

Preliminary Advertisement Carpet Bombing Figures by brainiac · 2004-09-09 19:17 · Score: 1

Hi,

I know that DirectTV has some (relatively) advertisement free premium channels, but ignoring those the initial figures come out as follows assuming a 33% Commercial Carpet Bombing Factor:

Non Commercial Programming: 22.678 GB/sec
Commercials: 11.322 GB/sec

Re:Ku ___ band by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 19:30 · Score: 0

I'm not sure how to work it in, but there has to be some joke you can make about calling the "Ku band" the "ku klux band" or something.

Kill yourself.

Re:1500 channels... by TCaM · 2004-09-09 19:32 · Score: 1

So shoot the TV already.

Re:Ahat about by nuclear305 · 2004-09-09 20:40 · Score: 2, Informative

C'mon now, since this is Slashdot nobody is expected to actually RTFA, but did you even read the summary?

"Plus 1000 more HD local channels and 150 national HD channels by the end of 2007"

Re:DirectTV HDTV by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 20:48 · Score: 0

I've been a subscriber to DirecTV's HD offerings since the beginning and it's been a tough ride with very few offerings but I personally believe things will get better starting now. The difference? 6-10 NFL games a week on NFL Sunday Ticket. Add to that the 1 game each week on ESPN, the 2-4 games per week on Fox & CBS OTA if you get 'em in your area, and the Monday Night Football on ABC OTA and you've got a ridiculous amount of HD football at your beck and call, especially if you have HD-TiVo. I suspect this will drive a lot more sales of HD receivers and especially the HD-TiVo this season.

Hopefully this will lead to more programming offerings on DirecTV and OTA in the future. Now, hopefully Rupert Murdoch doesn't sever ties between DirecTV and TiVo to use that crap he sells over in England for BSkyB.

Optimistic by xombo · 2004-09-09 21:27 · Score: 1

I for one am glad DirecTV is making this development since it will encourage companies to make the transition to HDTV and abandon their analog transmissions (since most will be required to do so anyway). Sure, the content offered right now may be sub-par as far as programming goes, but that's only because there haven't been many reasons for networks to make that push.

Wrong! by ostiguy · 2004-09-09 22:28 · Score: 3, Informative

Apparently Paramount studios' tv productions were shot on film. Some of their back catalog is being restore for HD syndication - Cheers is already being shown in HD on some local channels.

ostiguy

Piltdown Man by Graymalkin · 2004-09-09 22:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

I can think of a great use of 1500 high definition channels: video on demand (almost). As it stands services like TiVo are trying to take the traditonal watch-when-we-broadcast-or-else model used by television broadcasters and turn it into a watch-whenever-you'd-like model. This has proven to be very popular because there's plenty of people that honestly dislike having to sit down at particular times and watch a television show they like. If you love Adult Swim but have to be up at 7:00am you can tell TiVo to record it so you can watch it that evening when you get home.

This model is limited to offering what broadcasters want to air on their particular channel allotment. This stems from the fact they've only got a finite amount of bandwidth available. With a huge amount of bandwidth available DirecTV could really shake up the traditional broadcast model.

Instead of leasing channels to broadcasters DirecTV could instead sell bandwidth to content distributors. Say you wanted to watch a particular episode of the Sopranos. You'd tell your DirecTV DVR what episode you'd like to watch and it would consult a big broadcast content index. It'd find that episode 6 of the Sopranos would be downlinked from 6:45am to 7:45am on channel 751 on Monday. At 6:45am on Monday it would tune to channel 751 and record episode 6 of the Sopranos. You've now got an HD copy of the Sopranos, episode 6, on your DVR that you could watch whenever you wanted.

Instead of leasing a whole channel for HBO to use they could simply sell HBO a bandwidth alotment. HBO could then broadcast an entire season of the Sopranos on whatever channel and whatever hour they wished. Subscribers could pick and choose which episodes they wanted to watch out of those and have their DVR record them. Channel 751 later that day might be downlinking Gilligan's Island episodes for all HBO cares, they're only concerned with the bandwidth they paid for to distribute the Sopranos that week.

Any given week this proposed set of satellites could beam an obscene amount of data down to recievers. I think assigning such bandwidth to a rigid set of virtual "channels" would be a bit ridiculous. We're in the age of smart peripheral devices, televisions are no longer simply dumb boxes that convert radio signals to color pictures. Digital recievers can parse through a large amount of data to find specific things a person is looking for. There's enough computing power in my iPod to search through thousands of songs and pick out particular ones based on my criteria so it can't be terribly difficult to apply this idea to digital satellite broadcasts. Instead of looking through a miniature hard drive the system instead scans thousands of data streams.

--
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.

Re:Piltdown Man by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 03:20 · Score: 0

>> You've now got an HD copy of the Sopranos, episode 6, on your DVR that you could watch whenever you wanted.>>

Maybe, maybe not. DTV's next generation of DVR will very likely have an auto-expiration "feature" whereby you will no longer be allowed to DVR something and "keep it forever" to watch when you want.

Apparently it irritates the bejezus out of DTV that some DirecTivo owners use the things to store programs for months. I have programs on mine from 2003. Why this should bother DTV I have no idea but it does. And they're going to stop it.

How? The next DirecTivo DVR is being devloped in house by DTV. It will not be a Tivo product. Since DTV is making the box, they get to make the rules, which will include options to wipe the drive of any content they feel like killing at any time.

So you've had a week to watch Sopranos. If they think that's enough, poof, it's gone.

Suppose there's a halftime show or political debate or documentary that DTV doesn't like -they are part of Fox afterall. Push a button at DTV master control and it's as if nobody had ever recorded it.

Who needs big brother when DTV controls the remote?
Re:Piltdown Man by myrashka · 2004-09-10 05:49 · Score: 1

Not a horrid idea - but I can see several obstacles to overcome before anything like this could be practical (and let's exclude local broadcast channels for whom the rules don't apply):
- Most important is the fact that consumers demand content (loosely) and so the power is in the hands of the content providers, not the distributors. Thus in the current model, the distributors (DirecTV, Comcast, Dish, etc - DirectTV being a player but hardly a majority holder) pay the content providers. Now, for smaller content providers, this isn't a lot of power, but for the larger content providers - ESPN for example - this represents a huge amount of power to maximize revenue (and thus you see situations where the owners of said power content channels use them to leverage better deals for other channels in their portfolio)...you don't see many distributors says "I'm sorry ESPN, you have to pay us for us to carry you on our station" or "tough then, we just won't carry you". Further, if you do manage to switch the model (see my next point), you still have to figure out how the revenue model works (see point 3).
- As far as I can surmise (based on information available to me), no one distributor still has a lock on viewing households. Even Comcast has what amounts to a small fraction of the available audience. Only when a distributor holds a majority of households (I don't know if it's really a majority, but certainly close) will they have the power to turn the table on the big content players - even that will be a delicate balance since content will still be king -just less so(incidently, this is why there was a lot of concern around a Dish-DirectTV merger cause it would give the combined provider an edge over cable providers - subsequently, the combined content/distribution issue is what held up NEWS Corp's purchase of DirectTV because competitors feared with the combined distribution/content force would give Murdoch and uncanny advantage (can you say leverage) against rival distribution/content companies).
- And how would such a revenue model work? If companies are paying for bandwidth and customer's for shows - can either survive? Take HBO for example...currently they cost (roughlyl) $20 a month for a subscription to all their shows. Now assume the consumer only wants to watch the Sopranos - what's the value of that - $1 per showing?(no way - that might dig into DVD sales) - $15 per showing? (yeah, right...it's not that good)...even at pay-per-view costs ($3-4 per showing) that becomes expensive even for the casual consumer...yeah, there might be some demand for it, but the model wouldn't necessarily keep costs down for consumers. Ok, so you get a subscription for all of HBO's shows right now - ummm, then why not just take a channel...since essentially that's what a season of sopranos or a season of x or 10 movies might take up anyways. And I can't imagine how this would affect advertised supported models with incremental revenue of cable subscription fees. I'm sure we could come up with any number of variations, but I'm not sure I see one that really benefits the content providers switching - the fact is, TV works because it's relatively cheap (or at least not too expensive)....that will end if you have to choose your content piecemeal and the costs go up - even for in-demand content like the Sopranos or such (that's why they have DVDs).
- Not to get into the "signal to noise" debate about content quality, but if the funding model did change somehow (and I can't imagine how the content providers would benefit in any case), it could only worsen content. Fact of the matter is, for us to get any chance at "quality content", there needs to be large amounts of funding for even the crap - because unlike bits and bytes - content is highly subjective and one man's quality is another man's crap. Reduce the amount of funding and you don't improve the signal-to-noise ratio, you just reduce the amount of content....and in the long run, that will probably kill off lots of quality content that we
Re:Piltdown Man by True+Grit · 2004-09-10 19:03 · Score: 1

video on demand

Great, but before that can happen the current system has to be torn down first. The current system doesn't go by the individual content, it goes by the channel, and with the big players using bundling to pass on crappy channels with the half dozen ones everybody wants, we end up with "57 channels and nothin' on". An even bigger problem though is that video on demand would effectively prevent the media providers from controlling what we watch, they won't be able to push crappy shows by scheduling them to air just before a popular show for example. Oh, and you think video on demand will mean the end of commercials? Think again....

My point is, unfortunately, that I believe it will be a long while before the nirvana we seek will ever happen, certainly not within my lifetime (next ~30 years), because as we all now know, the content owners are trying very hard to *increase* their control over their content even after its left their hands (think DRM controlled PCs being a requirement to see any content at all). The effects of this "imbalancing of rights" (between content owner and consumer) will probably have consequences in the next generation that none of us can see now, but a lack of flexibility in the usage of content is inevitable and easily predictable.

Re:I hope there’s not a market for these new by evilviper · 2004-09-09 22:49 · Score: 2, Informative

Your whole point boils down to:

1500 channels is beyond excessive.

Which shows that you are confused on the issue.

You see, you aren't getting 1500 channels when you get DirecTV. In fact, most of them I wouldn't call "channels" so much as "placeholders". I say that because a great number of these channels are Pay-Per-View stations. They are nothing but placeholders because they are blank 99% of the time, and only once a week or so will you see any programming on one particular PPV channel.

In addition, a great deal of these channels are different areas' local stations. If each 100 miles have 5 local over-the-air broadcasts, well, you can see how that would add up to a huge number of total channels, but of those hundreds and hundreds of local channels, you are only recieving 5 of them.

There are quite a few that are 100% music channels. There are many that aren't even available to the public at all, but are used to relay video from the head office to branches of a major company. A satellite feed where you can pay a fee to DirecTV, rather than operating your own satellite, and contributing to the space junk...

--
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant

what about Canada by wes33 · 2004-09-09 23:06 · Score: 1

the anik F2 satellite was launched in July with the promise of providing internet services to all of rural (or otherwise underserviced) Canada. It's a Ka band sat.

but my question is, does anyone know about what internet connection services it will provide? At what cost? And, most important, when will it be available?

Re:what about Canada by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 00:17 · Score: 1

Pretty sure it's 90% video content for Starchoice. Could be wrong. Replaced their aging second satellite.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by Admiral+Llama · 2004-09-09 23:14 · Score: 1

I got my HD Tivo for $200 off at Sound Advice (Tweeter), and then got back a $150 service credit from D* just because I asked for it from customer retention. $650 more affordable?

What about the clouds? by BadluckShleprock · 2004-09-09 23:25 · Score: 1

Here in Florida, we get storms that are huge and come out of nowhere. As one of these thick storm clouds moves across the path of your digital satellite dish, the signal goes kaput. There is nothing you can do but wait for the storm to pass. This is the one thing that is keeping me tethered to Bright House networks (Time Warner).

Now, my question to DirectTV and Dish Network (or anyone in the know) is what are you doing to overcome this? Higher satellite power is the obvious answer, but a difficult solution.

--

------
There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.

Re:What about the clouds? by Detritus · 2004-09-10 01:00 · Score: 1
Your reception shouldn't be that flakey. There are three things that can affect the reception at your end.
- Antenna size/geometry
- Preamp noise figure
- Pointing accuracy
The first two are cost-sensitive. A cheap dish may not perform as well as a more expensive model. The last is dependent on the stability of the antenna mount and proper installation.
--
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Re:What about the clouds? by Maltheus · 2004-09-10 03:07 · Score: 1

I don't know about that. I get a signal in the mid-90s and I have a very stable mount. As for the dish type, I had assumed they were standard (at least for Dish Network). I live in Colorado Springs and we get Florida like thunderstorms too. A simple heavy rainstorm or snowstorm won't do much to the reception, but a true thunderstorm will take it out for all but the most minor blips. Given the benefits over cable and the fact that the quality is perfect most of the time, I put up with it, but if we had more thunderstorms, I'd probably go back to cable too. I don't think it has anything to do with the dish, it's just the electical interference. Actually, my friend's cellphone does the same thing too, but apparently only after he dropped it (can't be good).
Re:What about the clouds? by CityZen · 2004-09-10 07:38 · Score: 1

If uptime is important to you, you can always get a bigger dish (or dishes).

A cover to prevent water sheeting on the dish may also help some.

Re:But classic syndicated shows aren't in HD, so.. by Admiral+Llama · 2004-09-09 23:26 · Score: 1

Yes, 99% of it all is junk that you wouldn't want to watch, ever. However even compensating for the increased junk factor, 99.7% of 1700 is still lot more than 99% of 200 (or whatever). Toss in a Tivo and you'll never peel your ass off the couch.

Re:This will be the killer application for satelli by Admiral+Llama · 2004-09-09 23:33 · Score: 1

Actually, the cable card Tivos are a-comin' and they'll be able to hook straight into your local digital cable system.

Re:But classic syndicated shows aren't in HD, so.. by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-09 23:57 · Score: 1

Some of the oldest stuff was put on fancy film. Properly re-mastered (assuming the masters still exist, and aren't film-rotted) these could expose every bit as much resolution as modern films. Not that anyway will bother...

I'm sure they'll continue to overcompress HD by sdo1 · 2004-09-10 00:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

I have DirecTV HD. Part of the HD package allows me to get the HD feed of CBS from New York. I also get HD from my local CBS affiliate via over-the-air (OTA) antenna.

There is quite a difference in quality. Make no mistake, they both look great, but the signal over DirecTV is far more compressed. There's more compression artifacts, less detail, and a generally softer picture.

It's great that DirecTV is taking the lead in HD... and this will only accelerate my desire to pick up a DirecTV-HD-TiVo... but I hope they take quality very seriously rather than just trying to stuff as many HD channels in their bandwidth as possible, damn the consequences.

-S

--
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?

Re:I hope there’s not a market for these new by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 00:03 · Score: 1

Maybe not officially available, you just have to work a bit harder. Personally, I love the Fedex channel, and a few of the others I've found...

no more weather interuption!!! by the_2nd_coming · 2004-09-10 00:05 · Score: 0, Redundant

YAY for Ka Band!!!!

BTW, you can get Ka Band broad band internet access for like 40 bucks a month and they give you the dish for free.... I for get the name of the company.

--

I am the Alpha and the Omega-3

Re:I hope there’s not a market for these new by glesga_kiss · 2004-09-10 00:41 · Score: 1, Flamebait

It just saddens me to see such an investment in entertainment. Especially since entertainment doesn't have any kind of economic return for the individual.

It has a huge return for the advertisers. Stay tuned people! Consume!!!!

People watch TV because they don't know what else to do. I know a lot of people who cannot relax in a sitting room with the TV turned off. Most rooms are laid out to worship the TV.

You think this generation is bad? Wait until you see our kids generation! The internet might be the only thing to draw people away from the hypno-box*

*Studies have shown that watching TV produces the same brain patterns as hypnosis. This is why advertising is so effective. You take in the message without realising it and next time you are in a shop and see the brand, your subconcious mind recognises it and makes it feel familiar to you. People tend to go with what they know when choosing a brand.

Ob Pink Floyd ref by Cally · 2004-09-10 00:42 · Score: 1

I got thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from...

Who watches TV these days?

--
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe

Voom by caudron · 2004-09-10 00:51 · Score: 1

If you want HDTV there is really only one extant choice. Get Voom.

It's got many more HD channels than any competitor, good content, and the system is designed from the ground up to accomodate HD.

I had some installation problems (which are really the fault of the subcontractor who did the install) but once installed, I can now say that I wholeheartedly recommend them for anyone looking to have HDTV right now.

I love the Voom-specific channels. They basically get thier own HD content and make there own stations for content. You'd think it would suck, but they do stuff like broadcast good concerts in 5.1 HD, tour galleries in HD, play old (good!) movies in HD and stuff like that. It's great, dude.

Damn, I sound like a friggin' commercial. lol! Well, that's what a satisfied customer is supposed to sound like, I guess.

--
-Tom

Re:Voom by jrwillis · 2004-09-10 01:01 · Score: 1

I'm going to have to second this. I've had Voom since March, and though they had a few shortfalls, I'm VERY happy with their service. Oh, and as a side note to the geeks that looked into it before and skipped it because they didn't have Sci-Fi, as of 9/7/04, Voom carries Sci-Fi.

--
Keep Austin Weird!
Re:Voom by sparkchaser · 2004-09-10 02:58 · Score: 1

I also really like Voom. I also agree about the old movies. Watching "The Manchurian Candidate" in HD was amazing. Their exclusive programming is awesome. I really like the HD concerts. Good stuff. The selling point for me was there was no contract to sign! Month to month baby! I had a minor problem with OTA reception but that was fixed by an antenna upgrade.
Re:Voom by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 03:55 · Score: 1

If you were a real geek, you've have opened the thing and would be able to tell me if there were a BDM or Jtag interface internally. ;-)

Anyone know if the Voom/NDS card is a 3.5mhz card?

Hey, don't knock it... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:53 · Score: 0

640 channels should be enough for anyone...

Having said that, with 1500 channels, that's more than one per subscriber.

Re:I hope there’s not a market for these new by Azghoul · 2004-09-10 01:02 · Score: 1

Come on, where's your sense of economic benefit? Think of the jobs that will be created!

And it doesn't sadden me in the least: It's unbelievably great that we live in such a time where so much of our energy can be spent on entertaining ourselves, instead of fighting our neighbor, foraging or busting our backs for food, fighting off disease, etc.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by cblood · 2004-09-10 01:03 · Score: 3, Funny

I can't get Fox, at all, and I'm not real hopeful about being able to get it over DirecTV, even when they start offering it.

Are you kidding? that's a feature

Re:No No NO! by jcostantino · 2004-09-10 01:07 · Score: 1

I agree! There area few channels that I watch a small number of shows on and the remainder of my basic plus analog cable is wasted. I've wanted to go to dish or digital cable but it just isn't worth it to me.

Perhaps, if the FCC would require "ala carte" channel selection, I would bump up to a newer technology package but it's just not worth it. In fact, I believe Comcast is raising my rates next month.

--
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com

Re:No No NO! by AGTiny · 2004-09-10 01:14 · Score: 2, Informative

The point is to be able to offer many local HD channels, to compete with cable. I get my HD over cable for one reason: local channels for which I am too far away to receive with an OTA antenna. Our local ABC DT station in Pittsburgh (WTAE) broadcasts at a ridiculously low power, so it's the only option without a large antenna and unobstructed path to the city.

Oh yeah, cable also gives me a cheap HD DVR box. That'll trump the $1000 HD Tivo anyday. :)

Re:DirectTV HDTV by Zebbers · 2004-09-10 01:18 · Score: 1

I think VOOM has more HD channels than that.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by isfry · 2004-09-10 01:22 · Score: 2, Informative

As hote to ESPN. They stopped streching the no HD programming to 16:9 it is now croped with a HD logo on the sides. They have added more HD programming by doing sportscenter in HD and some of their other shows.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by SilentChris · 2004-09-10 01:26 · Score: 1

Got the HDTivo. Shelled out for it. Best decision I've made.

* 250 hours of regular programming. Phenominal. I still have episodes from when I first bought the thing.
* OTA HDTV. It picks up a lot of channels DirecTV doesn't carry. A nice bonus.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by MC+BoB · 2004-09-10 01:29 · Score: 1

"Cons:
No STINKING TIVO!!!!!! I can't wait for the HDTivo to be affordable.
Agreed. They need a standalone HD DVR model that doesn't force us to hock our existing HD STBs on eBay."
Don't hold your breath on that one, your existing STB would need to output the compressed digital stream it recieves inorder for it to be captured by the DVR.
If you think the HD TiVo is expensive then try bying real time encoders for the uncompressed signal. It's not going to happen.

Take the plunge and buy the HD TiVo, other than a slow guide, it's a WONDERFUL box.

Bah! they posted this at night! by doormat · 2004-09-10 01:31 · Score: 1

OK here is some more info...

http://www.dbsforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.ph p? s=&postid=314888

The boeing 702 satellite platfom has an end-of-life power output of 12kW. This is the spaceway and D*10 and D*11 platforrms.

Rainfade is dealt with by ramping up power, plus a little bit larger dish, plus the higher frequency band has more gain on the same size dish.

--
The Doormat

If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.

Re:Bah! they posted this at night! by TheSync · 2004-09-10 05:35 · Score: 1

I can assure you there is still rain that Ka won't go through, even with spot beams and power ramps, but I don't think it will be any worse than existing Ku-band DBS reception.
Re:Bah! they posted this at night! by doormat · 2004-09-10 08:03 · Score: 1

Yea, I think the goal is to get Ka band rainfade no worse than Ku band rainfade. Which isnt too bad, but then again I live in the desert with 300 days of sunshine per year.

--
The Doormat

If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.

Some Ka-band history by Baldrson · 2004-09-10 01:36 · Score: 1

When I was working on clearing the pioneer-preference hurdles for the first Ka-band license from the FCC the main problem was getting people to realize that with two high gain Ka-band antennas pointed at each other, you're not talking your normal "orbital slot". With phased array antennas you can beam-switch very rapidly and, with a large dish combined with a large phased array, the spot on the ground can be very small. It actually makes sense to have a number of such satellites in a small sector of the sky. This is related to what David P. Reed has been trying to say to the guys at the higher levels of the FCC for a while. Just getting it across to the lower level technical staff was hard enough during the first license.

--
Seastead this.

I love it when a plan comes together! by green+pizza · 2004-09-10 01:38 · Score: 1

A Team Channel

I would love this! Especially now that TNN/Spike no longer shows A-Team reruns in the afternoons.

I hope they skip the last season--WTF was up with that? It wasn't even the same show anymore, the A-Team turned B-Squad!

Re:But classic syndicated shows aren't in HD, so.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 01:48 · Score: 0

MST2K channel sounds great

Great. by bujoojoo · 2004-09-10 01:57 · Score: 2, Funny

Corti-Slim commercials in HD. I can hardly wait.

--
This space for rent

Re:But classic syndicated shows aren't in HD, so.. by mhollis · 2004-09-10 01:59 · Score: 1

Anonymous Coward wrote: aren't some of the really old shows actually recorded on film?

Depending on how old they are, many of the classic shows were shot on film using the Kinescope process, where the film camera shot the show on a television set as it was being produced live in the studio. That actually results in lower resolution than what NTSC broadcasts can currently support.

The series that were shot in 35mm color film, edited on that film and then transferred to videotape for playback by the stations will do well in being re-transferred to high-definition, though the aspect ratio that the 35mm film was exposed for was more or less the same as standard definition television. But don't expect Soupy Sales to look better than he does presently.

--
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.

Regarding HDTivo for DirecTv... by Shoeler · 2004-09-10 01:59 · Score: 1

Realize one thing: The Hughes HDTiVo has a built-in OTA decoder. So you can hock your existing HD STB. ;) http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/imagine/HDDVR.dsp

Re:Regarding HDTivo for DirecTv... by Admiral+Llama · 2004-09-10 03:55 · Score: 1

Almost correct, the HD Tivo has 2 tuners for OTA. It also has 2 tuners for satellite as well, but of the 4 only can be active at the same time.

Does this mean... by mwood · 2004-09-10 02:00 · Score: 1

...that there will, at long last, actually be some HTDV receivers in the stores? All I ever see is those incomplete "HDTV ready" boxes with the same crummy analog tuners we've had for decades.

Does this mean they'll have enough room now? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 02:03 · Score: 0

With 1,000 or more channels, you'd think they can find room to put my damn Trio back on?

This is the end of SpaceWay... by centuriman · 2004-09-10 02:16 · Score: 1

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet. Spaceway is (was?) a satellite based broadband internet system that it's developer, Hughes Network Services, pretty much bet the company on. The distintive feature of SpaceWay as to put a router on the satellite which had the promise of helping performance dramatically. With Murdock's purchase of DirecTV, they also got HNS. HNS is now on the chopping block. The only value of the Spaceway satellites had to Murdock was as DirectTV birds. The router will still fly, but I doubt it it will have much functionality. The industry way waiting to see if Spaceway was the revolution that HNS promised. The odds were maybe 50/50. But I think now we won't even see how well it worked. You can read what Spaceway was about at http://www.spaceway.com

Re:This is the end of SpaceWay... by CityZen · 2004-09-10 07:44 · Score: 1

How does the router on the satellite help? Or do you mean a caching proxy? I can see how the latter would help a lot, but not the former.

In related news... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 02:19 · Score: 0

Far right extremists have added broadcast capabilities to these satellites in the KKK band..

1700 channels, only on a hacked card by telemonster · 2004-09-10 02:21 · Score: 1

Don't forget, there is 1000 channels now but the avg subscriber sees like 130 of them. Many of the channels are duplicates from each local market, and you only get permission to access your local market if you are registered as living there. I saw a setup with a hacked card once, and it had access to all of the markets, it was insane and browsing the list of channels took forever.

Don't forget the upsell opportunities. Figure 700 of them will be pay per view, additional premium channels and the like.

So in the end, there might be 1700 channels, but you will get 100 of them, and even then 30 will be "Music channels" (Which aren't really TV channels at all). Our local cable provider does this. They claim 200 channels on the digital service, yet 70 are pay per view and 30 are music.

On another note, DirecTV uses a DS3 circuit and racks of gear in each market to encode and transport the video back to their uplink. It isn't easy to own your own TV channel, but if you had a nice 5 watt VHF or UHF transmitter setup, you could probably overpower your local TV channel using a directional antenna aimed at the DirecTV receiving tower for their local feed. This should allow you to take over the feed of the local channel to DirecTV? Probably not enough viewers to make it worth it, but you could be captain midnight 2.

--
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!

Re:1700 channels, only on a hacked card by CityZen · 2004-09-10 07:52 · Score: 1

With satellite spot beams, you won't be able to get every local market from a single location. The signal for far away markets won't be broadcast there.

Spot beams are really a necessary technology for satellite broadcasters to service lots of local markets. There's no point in sending NY signals to the whole country if the laws only allow NY people to watch them. Thus you can divide the signal spacially and only send the NY signals to NY, and use the same frequency to send other signals to other parts of the country.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by einTier · 2004-09-10 02:24 · Score: 1

They do. I'm not completely sold on Voom, as I realize I'm paying a lot for a lot of digital content that I don't watch. The problem with HD right now is that most of the channels don't carry much worth watching, and there's a ton of repetition (probably because there's not much HD content out yet).

Voom's lineup:

HDNews: Not a great news channel, but is 1080i.
HDCinema (6 channels): Lots of movies, but mostly either very old (pre 1970) or b-titles.
HD Classics: see above.
HD Epics: more of the same.
Divine HD: again...
Monsters HD: I watch this more than the others, but it's still rare to catch truly great movies here.
Equator HD: Mostly HD flyovers of foriegn countries, kind of like a travel channel. Interesting in small doses.
WorldSport HD: Usually international soccer matches. I hate soccer, so this sucks for me.
Rush HD: Usually X-games type material. Skateboarding, snowboarding, etc.
Rave HD: Concerts in HD. This can be very good, but there's a LOT of repetition.
Ultra HD: Some kind of fashion network. Can't say I've watched it.
Auction HD: High priced auctions that you can't bid on in HD.
Gallery HD: Art. Lots and lots of art. Expect to see a lot of museums.
MOOV HD: This is an odd one. It's a bunch of random HD video with an odd soundtrack. If I still did LSD, I'd love it. As it is, it's pointless to watch -- though Tank (a virtual fishtank) is kinda cool.
Animania HD: Sounds great, and they do show Voltron sometimes, but you'd be hard pressed to indentify much else.
ESPN HD: They've fixed the 'stretch' problem by putting pillar bars on 4:3 content, and this is actually a pretty good channel. I like watching ESPN, and I'd much rather watch their HD feed.
Fox Sports Net Florida HD: This must be new, I don't remember seeing it, but it's in the online guide.
Bravo HD: Not a Bravo fan, but if you like Bravo...
TNT in HD: We all know TNT, right?
Discovery HD Theatre: best of the bunch, usually interesting, always 1080i, great to look at, but again, lots of repeated content.

The following channels cost extra, so I don't subscribe, but here they are:

Playboy HD: HD Porn. I'm told it's great.
HBO HD East
HBO HD West
Cinemax HD East
Cinemax HD West
Showtime HD East
Showtime HD West
Starz! HD East
Starz! HD West
TMC HD
Encore E HD

Plus, I get about 10 more HD channels with the over-the-air antenna and reciever built into the Voom reciever.

--
-------------------------------------------------- $665.95 -- retail price of the beast.

1500 Channels? Hamm said it best.... by telstar · 2004-09-10 02:33 · Score: 1

Rex : Go back, go back, you missed it.
Hamm : Too late, I'm already on the 40's, gotta go around the horn, it's faster!

[Toy Story 2]

Re:DirectTV HDTV by jskiff · 2004-09-10 02:35 · Score: 1

This is great because I can watch my shows an hour later in HD without needing the off air ant.

Since the HD DirecTV receivers also include over the air inputs, you really should look at getting an antenna. Try going to Antennaweb.org to see what antenna will work for your area. It can be a pretty small investment for a pretty big payoff.

--
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?

Hey! Thats not fair! by lightdarkness · 2004-09-10 02:41 · Score: 1

If they can send crappy TV shows at 34 gbit/s, How come we can't get a decent internet connection that fast? Same cost per month! Who cares about DirecTV, I want Directinternet.

No way jose by WindowLicker916 · 2004-09-10 02:43 · Score: 1

I am a DTV installer and I tell my customers to just wait. Why pay $400 for a receiver or $1000 for a HDTivo when the price will drop in a year or two and DTV will actually have more HD programming to offer then.

I feel the prices for the equipment are to high and there is not enough service provided. Even Voom which specializes in HD service barely has any channels and most of them are only HD part of the time.

Thats awesome that DTV is going to expand its HD service though. I can't wait!! I bet prices will go down by then too.

Anyone who's read The Dark Tower..... by Ark · 2004-09-10 02:45 · Score: 1

Anyone who's read The Dark Tower can tell you that Ka is always the answer.

Or "Ka-ka" as Eddie Dean would say.

Long days and pleasent nights to you all.

And in 2007... by Fnkmaster · 2004-09-10 02:57 · Score: 1

I will still live in an apartment with the wrong exposure where I can't mount a satellite dish anyway. We need lots more HDTV content, but those of us in places (like Manhattan) without the satellite option need to be able to get this content from our cable companies. Of course, I still laud this move, since I think the competition will get Time Warner et. al. off their asses with respect to HD content.

Re:And in 2007... by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-10 04:02 · Score: 1

If your apartment manager weren't an asshole, everyone could share a dish on the roof, just use a commercial multi-switch and coax to each room.

I've seen switches that have 16 or even 32 outputs, a few of these with the right splitters so you could gang them all on one dish, and even the largest building would be taken care of. Split among the costs of the tenants, and it would be a cheap, one-time price.

500 Channels? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 03:08 · Score: 0

Great! Now all we need is 12,000 hours/day of HDTV programming to fill them all!

What do you expect. by blanks · 2004-09-10 03:10 · Score: 1

Of course they are doing this, they have been planning this sience the early 90's.

The cable industry has been trying to push away the idea of free TV for over 10 years now, why give away TV shows for free with commercials, when you can charge people for TV AND still show commercials.

By doing this and having no available free TV anymore, everyone will need to pay, and naturally with that many channels you will need to buy 1 or more subscriptions to try mixing and matching the stations you want to watch.

--
TruePunk | Games

Re:DirectTV HDTV by mp3zero · 2004-09-10 03:13 · Score: 1, Troll

Who are you kidding? I was reading this and thought it sounded familiar... its because I POSTED THIS message a few months ago! Why copy my post word for word? Is it because it got rated a 5 then so you thought you would see if you could rack up some points?

My post was on may 2. Get a life.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=106092&cid=9 03 4685

The feds need to do this! by egarland · 2004-09-10 03:13 · Score: 1

Why don't we, as a society, spend the money to put a few of these things up in orbit and let everyone have access to it like they have with regular over-the-air broadcasts. It would save an aweful lot of people $40 a month.

It would probably do a hell of a lot more good for the economy than a tax cut for the wealthy.

--
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination

Nice try retard... Direct copy of my post by mp3zero · 2004-09-10 03:16 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Nice try! http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=106092&cid=903 4685

My post from May 02. Come up with something of your own sometimes you retard.

two cents by garstka · 2004-09-10 03:23 · Score: 1

This is not meant as flamebait, and I'm also not saying that "1500 HD channels" doesn't sound sexy to the geek in me -- but doesn't anybody else think $40 dollars a month is too much to pay for television? Personally, anything is too much to pay for television but the wifey over-rides me on that issue.

Anyway, $40/month is the basic price, movie channels are much more and then when you add in the cost of a DSL/Cable modem connection the costs become absurdly high. But what do I know anyway, I still check books out from the library.

Re:This will be the killer application for satelli by Thieron · 2004-09-10 03:23 · Score: 1

How is the HDTivo? I know it has 4 tuners, but how many do you really use? How does it handle non-HD signals (different tuner?).

Specifically I'm wondering how many wires you are running from the Dish, or need to run. I've got mine in 2 rooms and I run 2 wires to my living room with the DTV/Tivo and 1 to the bedroom.

How many wires are needed to get the basic functionality from the HDDTV/Tivo?

Also, how easy is it to set things up to record different resolutions, so as to maximize the HD space on the unit?

Did you fork out the cash or find a deal? I'm really interested in HD and I've got a projection TV that is HD upgradable, but 1,000 is a lot to pay and I don't want to give up my Tivo.

Have you tried copying anything from the Tivo off to another media?

Re:This will be the killer application for satelli by Sketch · 2004-09-10 03:24 · Score: 1

Second, HD looks GREAT on a SD TV. I have been a satellite subscriber since day one because local cable was aweful. It used to have a great picture, but the channel squeeze forced bit rates down so low it was like watching a good streaming internet image (crappy).

I keep seeing people say this. I'm assuming you are all using DirecTV. Is it really that bad?

I had Dish Network before I moved, and I thought the picture quality was great...looked just as good as DVD on a high quailty SD display. Now I have Comcast digital cable and the quality really sucks compared to DN. I am thinking about switching to satellite again sooner rather than later. I was planning on waiting a bit, and switching to DirecTV rather than DN so I could get a HD DirecTiVo. Seeing all these comments like these, makes me wonder if I should go back to DN and stick with my standalone Tivo...

--
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com

The NAB can't be happy about this. by havaloc · 2004-09-10 03:27 · Score: 1

I wonder if the NAB is going to protest that having all this bandwidth is 'unfair competition', and not to mention cable/Comcast.

Re:This will be the killer application for satelli by barfy · 2004-09-10 03:37 · Score: 1

I use all 4 tuners... (Not at the same time but all 4 have been used). You can record 2 streams at a time, 2 of the choices are OTA, two are satellite.

It can only do Digital OTA, and it can record any Satellite.

I have three wires coming into the house, two satellite wires, and one wire for an OTA antenna.

It records the raw digital stream, so there is no setting about how to record various resolutions....

I have recorded to a recordable DVD. It only uses svideo in, but the quality is what I would expect.

And I forked out the cash, because, I simply cannot watch tv without TiVo, and now that I have HD too, I am very happy.

Re:This will be the killer application for satelli by barfy · 2004-09-10 03:41 · Score: 1

I started on Dish, and moved to DTV because they supported TiVo, and the Dish compression had gotten out of hand.

DTV was better, but it had gotten worse, and it is better now. But, yes it is really bad. (In that it is really noticeable). I have seen HD on my SD set, and it saddens me to see how glorious SD can actually be.

Satellites and broadcast TV... by Znork · 2004-09-10 03:59 · Score: 1

... are pretty much about to get killed by fibre and PVR/internet based desired-content-only distributon.

Satellite economics stink when all you have are the three customers living in the boondocks nowhere paying to support your entire infrastructure, as everyone else goes groundbased.

And 1500 channels are pointless as people with PVR's are discovering. What consumers want isnt something good somewhere maybe, on one channel, pretty _please_, but what _I_ want to see, _now_.

HBOHD upconverts by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 04:03 · Score: 0

I know about D1 and all that, but I can't agree with any of your other comments.

I have specific pictures I took from my TV screen of HBOHD's showing of "Down With Love" and the DVD of it, the HD picture is lower res and poorer looking than the DVD. The colors are dirtier too (this is a very colorful movie). And the DVD is also not cropped, as it is letterboxed. HBO instead chopped off the edges of the film so that they could make a 2.35:1 image fill a 16:9 screen.

As to upconverts, you never gain resolution when you upconvert, so just like 480x480 cannot best 720x480, there's no way 720x480 of data stretched to a 1920x1080 space can beat out an image with 1280x720 pixels. The latter image just plain has 3 times the data.

As to your comments about resolution, if resolution wasn't necessary, they never would have invented HDTV. All those pixels come at a high price, so I think they wouldn't have put them there for no reason.

Finding Nemo on DVD is not a overcompressed mess, you're crazy. I'm watching it right now with the bitrate meter up, and it's 8mbits in areas where there is a lot of motion, down to 3 in areas without a lot of motion (note that 448kbps of this goes to audio it seems). This is good use of bandwidth, and something HBO can't effectively do since they compress on the fly. Anyway, I watched in full motion and paused in areas of little motion and lots of motion and I can't see artifacts. No blockiness, no loss of color gradiations (posterization).

Now, I could pull out older DVDs, which by your mbit score are great, but MPEG2 compression techniques have gotten better over time. you have to be careful of measuring quality in mbits.

Reduction in color range is just plain going to happen on DVD and these other systems. When you go to 4:2:0, you're gonna lose color data, no matter how many mbits you allocate, it's lost before the compression, not during it.

Anyway, I have a friend who has had DirectTV from day one (literally), and I used to check it out in the stores all the time (I wanted it but couldn't have it, I had an apartment with no southern exposure). Anyway, the channels even in the beginning didn't look as good as the Finding Nemo DVD I'm watching right now. Large pans on DTV always turned to blocks (think of the crowds at sporting events), even in the beginning. Yeah, it had pure resolution (better than LaserDisc, but not nearly that of DVD) and it didn't have the typical analog noise in large areas of solid color. But really, it was clear even from day one that their signal had as much noise as my analog cable, just different kinds. Note that it was significantly better than digital cable, which was even worse in the early days than it is now.

Re:HBOHD upconverts by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 12:21 · Score: 0

> Nemo

If you are watching Nemo, and don't see the posterization then maybe your screen is too small, or your display does not have enough dynamic range, or your eyes do not have enough dynamic range. Either way the Nemo upconvert looks substantially better than the US R1 Nemo DVD. I've personally verified this and have had friends with projectors make such comments without any prompting at all.

> 4:2:0

Baloney. Know why? Because HDTV and DVD are both 4:2:0. So if your theory were correct, then HDTV and DVD encodes of the same transfer would always have the same dynamic range. Not true.

As to upconverts, you never gain resolution when you upconvert, so just like 480x480 cannot best 720x480, there's no way 720x480 of data stretched to a 1920x1080 space can beat out an image with 1280x720 pixels. The latter image just plain has 3 times the data.

Why do you argue with a point that I did not make? Let me say it in different words to make it more clear - all other things being equal, an HDTV upconvert mastered from the same source used to master the DVD will lose less resolution than that DVD does.

As to your comments about resolution, if resolution wasn't necessary, they never would have invented HDTV. All those pixels come at a high price, so I think they wouldn't have put them there for no reason.

Again with the arguing about something irrelvant. The point is that the number of pixels is an UPPER bound on the potential resolution. It is not in ANY WAY a lower bound. There are lots of other factors that come into play to keep both DirecTV and DVDs as well as HDTV from reaching that upper bound. It just so happens that once upon a time DirecTV was regularly very close to their upper bound while DVDs have only recently started to approach their upper bound.

One example of the upper-bound being missed by a mile is 1920x1080i HDTV, the vast majority of HDTV content encoded at 1920x1080i has an effective horizontal resolution of closer to 1440 because the equipment used to record it can't resolve much higher than 1440 in the horizontal.

Another example is the interlacing - whether it is 480i interlacing on DVDs or 1080i interlacing on HDTV, no commercially mastered material actually has a true 480 or 1080 lines of REAL resolution because the video signal is run through a low-pass filter to reduce the flickering effect that usually comes with interlaced playback. The low-pass filter blocks high-frequency signals above the cut-off and it is precisely those high-freq signals that are required for maximum detail. Different DVDs have different cut-off frequencies for the filter, for example Sony claims that their SuperBit series of DVDs use a much higher cut-off for their low-pass filtering than most regular DVDs. In the worst of cases, this low-pass filtering can remove over 30% of the effective vertical resolution. Typically it is closer to the 15% mark - i.e. a 1080i show is more than likely to have an effective vertical resolution of 750-920 pixels.

It depends: (Was Re:This is the end of SpaceWay) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 04:25 · Score: 0

SPACEWAY may get sold and revived. The router will have ZERO functionality if used as a DirecTV bird because you get one or the other, not both. However, other sats could be put up with the SPACEWAY technology if it is bought. The router in the sky concept IS a huge leap in terms of technology compared to other offerings. I can't imagine someone buying the old technology (ie Direcway) without buying the new.

Idiots by RzUpAnmsCwrds · 2004-09-10 04:36 · Score: 1

I've seen 15 comments talking about how we don't need 1500 channels.

That's not what SPACEWAY is about. It's about HD local channels.

SPACEWAY can't even broadcast 1500 national channels. It relies on spot-beam technology for it's immense bandwidth.

DIRECTV already broadcasts 1500 channels from 3 orbital slots. Most of them are local-into-local.

Re:DirectTV HDTV by adachan · 2004-09-10 05:02 · Score: 1

This is a major issue for many of us. Recording the HD signals is a major pain. I would like to bring up some issues here. Hopefully some of you that are in the know will see what I have to say here and spread the word. I get HD signals over air (antenna) DirectTV, and Cable (adelphia in WV and shaw in canada). I have tried various methods to record HD and I have found one major issue coming up every time --- the 5c copy protection. This is also known as the broadcast flag. It is the main roadblock as far as I can tell to recording HD boradcasts. We have the ability to use DVHS and various Tivo units but these systems are very expensive and are really not worth the cost. What I have found with the HD cable systems is that it is 100% perfectly possible to record the HD signal via firewire (ilink IEEE-1394, etc) to a standard computer. This can be accomplished using freeware and is very easy to set up. The problem arises is that the driver for the cable box (motorolla 6200) is not 5c friendly. This shows the box as being unknown and does not allow for any recording at all. The motorolla 6208 has an internal hard drive which does record the HD signal, but its only 80 gig. 80 gig does not allow for much HD recording as 1 minute takes up a around 150 meg. From my estimates this would give us roughly 500 minutes or roughly 8 hours of HD television. This is only enough space for 2 football games! Now I assume that the drive can be replaced with a larger one, however a much simpler way to do things would be to connect the firewire cable between the box and the computer and transfer the data either in raw format or compressed to divx (which does a pretty nice job with HD). However, this is all disabled becasue of the broadcast flag. I find this annoying. The components are perfectly capable of doing what I want, but I am not allowed to. I do not want to share a HD NFL football game on the internet. The file is too big and besides, how many people are gonna waste their bandwidth to download such a thing. I have heard that there is no 5c friendly driver in the works either. This seems like such a common sense thing, but yet it is seemingly illegal. This is my rant on the subject.

Cable aleady provides HDTV local channels by alain · 2004-09-10 05:07 · Score: 1

I subscribe to Charter Communications here in Glendale, CA, and they already offer NBC-HD, FOX-HD, and ABC-HD, with CBS-HD soon to arrive.

All of this content, time-shifted via their Scientific Atlanta 8000-HD PVR, which is no TiVo in terms of software capabilties, but has two tuners and works just fine. They have promised me Moxi in the next few months as well.

As for DirecTV, I don't like them for the following reasons:

Their indiscriminate lawsuits against anyone who purchased a smart card programmer.
They are about to drop TiVo in favor of their own crappy DVR.
They currently don't have local channels in HDTV (other than CBS-HD in select areas), and won't until 2005 at least.
If you have multiple TVs cable is simply more practical.
With the advant of Cablecard, cable is poised to be more useful in a PC, via a TV card with cablecard support.

By the way, all of the above said, I would dump cable in a second if DirecTV got Sci-Fi channel in HD and my cable provider didn't. Sci-Fi channel should have been the first channel in HiDef!

- Alain

more infomercials, I love it by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 05:10 · Score: 0

My rating of infomercial people:

Anthony Robbins (TM) - pretentious bastard.
We gotta dump that Dean Graziosi guy.
Chuck Norris - who cares
The twits with the buying and selling notes are annoyingly deceptive.

Ron Popeil is the man. Gotta love that set it and forget it roaster.
Carlton Sheets is kinda cool... wish I had his voice.
We need Joe Sugarman from Blue Blockers again. He used to have the best geek stuff when he owned JS&A.

I like Mathew Lesko with the question mark suits. The way he panders to the stupid reminds me of how intellectually superior I am to most of the world.

The most important thing is... Bring back those midgets that do the real estate seminars. I'd go, but I'd like a guarantee that they would dress up like Munchkins.

Re:I hope there’s not a market for these new by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 05:42 · Score: 0

wait, did i hear that right:

"entertainmment doesnt have any economic return for the individual"

um i dont know how you live your life, but that is the purpose of entertainment, the return is to be entertained.

not everything in life is about money, sometimes you just want to laugh.

with that # of channels by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 06:14 · Score: 0

You could waste the day away just trying to find something to watch

Receiver Swap? by KJACK98 · 2004-09-10 06:15 · Score: 1

Will they be doing a receiver swap, I imagine their current stream is probably some custom mpeg2 format, which means they could get more bandwidth if they switch over to mpeg4?

Compression by KB1GHC · 2004-09-10 06:33 · Score: 1

Actually, out of all the Major Satellite Providers,
VOOM uses the most compression, because they only have 1 satellite and very little bandwidth.
DishNetwork uses alot of compression, they only have 2 satellites
DirecTV actually uses the least compression out of all the Major Satellite providers, (they have 3 satellites and have the most bandwidth)

So just because something is HD, it can still be wicked compressed, and you might be better off with a standard signal.

Re:Compression by CityZen · 2004-09-10 06:53 · Score: 1

Actually, Dish Network has 7 satellites, and the largest selection of channels. The satellites are at 61.5, 105, 110, 119, 121, 148, and 157 W longitude. However, some satellites have only a few active Dish transponders, and some are low power Ku FSS satellites (105 and 121).

It is true that they try to squeeze most of their popular programming into their main satellites at 110 & 119.

For a listing of all Dish channels, see http://www.dishchannelchart.com/.

For a per-satellite listing of all US digital satellite broadcasters, see http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/america.html. Clicking in the third column will show the channels on that satellite.

RE: nothing better to do? by King_TJ · 2004-09-10 07:22 · Score: 1

I think you're overly paranoid, actually. The younger generation seems to be watching much less TV than my own generation did!

The Internet absolutely *is* competing directly with TV watching time. Furthermore, gaming consoles take even more away. Instead of watching canned programming with commercials, people are *interactively* playing games on their TVs with a PS2 or X-Box.

Also, I know that when *I* sit down to watch TV (fairly rare), I'm usually pretty exhausted and just looking for a *passive* form of entertainment. Maybe I'm not quite ready to go to sleep, but just want to relax and be "spoon fed" something mindly entertaining for a little while.

If they studied my brainwave patterns in that state, they probably would find it similar to a hypnotized state - but that doesn't mean commercials are brainwashing me, making me buy those products. Familiarity with a brand name doesn't equate with a desire to purchase it. Advertising has made me aware of quite a few products out there which I have little to no interest in ever buying. Other times, it might make me at least look twice at the box (say, for a particular brand of laundry soap), but the price is still going to determine the sale in the end.

OK, I realize that this is pathetic by multiplexo · 2004-09-10 07:56 · Score: 1

But did anyone else think it was incredibly cool when they set up their dish and started to receive satellite programs. You have this tiny (relatively speaking) piece of metal pointing at the sky that is capable of picking up an incredibly weak signal and amplifying it so you can pick up 500 channels of crap and the three DTV channels that you actually watch. It's cool that the same technology that can pick up signals from space probes billions of miles away has dropped in price to the point that normal people can buy it.

--
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.

Will this mean... by Uncle+Gropey · 2004-09-10 08:36 · Score: 1

...that the compression on so many of their channels will go away, so that they stop looking like internet-quality .avi's?

Cuz like, I'm sick of that.

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My blog can kick your blog's ass

What to do with 1500+ channels by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 11:08 · Score: 0

Okay the number sounds a tad ridiculous. Maybe more than just a tad. But what if network execs got creative with the extra channels? For instance, a TV show filmed from several POVs. Say a killer is about to break into someones house. On one channel, you see the killer working his/her way in. Another channel shows the person who is about to get wacked going about their daily routine. Yet another channel shows an FBI agent racing to the scene to save the person about to get wacked. Another channel shows the mastermind of the criminal organization watching the killer on channel 1 as he is about to whack the person on channel 2. etc. etc. ad naseum. eh? eh?

Re:This will be the killer application for satelli by BBF_BBF · 2004-09-10 14:39 · Score: 1

Remember we're talking about HD channels, (which is after all the subject of DirecTV's press release this article is based on) satellite holds no advantage over OTA or cable since all HD signals are digital.

Come Jan 1, 2007 (curiously enough approx. the same time DirecTV has scheduled the availibiliy of all of its channels), the OTA Analog shut off date, it won't make a difference if it's OTA or satellite, it will all be digital.

Not that anybody is still reading by kingpin2k · 2004-09-10 16:16 · Score: 1

I doubt that this comment will even be read (it's at the bottom of the list of stories at this point), but HD content will not save satellite. Cable has something that satellite will never (as far as I can tell) have...TV on Demand. The ability to watch programming on your time table is, in my opinion, one of the coolest advances in entertainment in my lifetime. Satellite can't do it, but cable can. Sorry, but the light at the end of DirecTV's tunnel is a train.

Re:This will be the killer application for satelli by barfy · 2004-09-11 08:52 · Score: 1

The advantage will be that satellite will no longer have crappy "digital" quality.

All channels will improve. Stations that remain SD will get more bandwidth as more channels move to HD.

For SD users, and there are a lot of them, this will mean higher quality (high quality SD looks really good on a regular old TV, better than analog cable, better than OTA), and the box will be free or near free.

Everyone wins here...

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DirecTV Plans 1500 HiDef Channels by End of 2007

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