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DirecTV's 1st MPEG4 Satellite Launch Successful
tivoKlr writes "Looks like the 1st Spaceway satellite to provide "1500 channels of HD" has made it successfully into space. MPEG4 compression and local HD channels, something that the cable company can't offer in my area." Unfortunately the new satellite obsoletes the HD Tivo, and there's no word on when there will be a new one.
Of course the content will have to be in HD as well. But this always has been the chicken and the egg problem, without a network to broadcast HD content, why create it?
jason
Managed Hosting
Tin foil hat is firmly secured. Bring it on.
Why does it obsolete the HD TiVo?
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Do they encode regular NTSC signals as HD even though there's no visual benefit, to simplify production, operation, and tuning at the client end?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Note that comm satellites are just 'bent pipes'. This keeps them simple and independent of changing technology. So, there likely isn't any MPEG4 technology on board the satellite. Rather, the technology will be in the ground station. Therefore, DirecTV could have used an existing satellite in orbit, or even shared space with someone else on a satellite...
Well, I'm not sure if I'm simply uninformed or what, but I'd say today's receivers don't support MPEG4 by default. What are DIRECTV's plans on giving their consumers new receivers? Are they going to upgrade everyone or charge big bucks for HDTV?
My old DishPlayer 7100 had Doom and You Don't Know Jack on it. With the wireless keyboard, they weren't half bad.
Has anyone had a chance to personally see MPEG4-encoded HD? Is the quality acceptable compared to the original MPEG2 stream?
I have to imagine that by recompressing into MPEG4 from MPEG2 (the format the signals are provided in, at least currently), some quality would be lost. The question is, how much quality is DirectTV prepared to sacrifice in order to say that they have the entire country covered with HD locals?
Personally, I'm sticking with cable because I want the original MPEG2 stream passed through without any recompression, and I don't want to watch TV without DVR features.
"something that the cable company can't offer"...
We have had both cable and sat. to compare the quialty difference on a HD television set. Sat. is very pixelated and generally quite bad quality...even the PPV channels which are supposed to have better quality. Cable is quite clear all the time (except for some lower number channels 70) - not to mention, in my area, cable is alot cheaper than sat service.
Also with cable, I can have interactive (On-Demand) service that's impossible for sat. to provide.
The "killer technology" on the Spaceway birds are their ability to form tight "spot beams" using Ka band (~20 Ghz) downlink signals.
The spot beams are formed using a 1500 element phased array. The array can form as many as 780 downlink spot beams and 112 uplink spot beams across the US. Compare this with a typical Ku-band (~12 GHz) satellite which has a single beam over the entire US.
Spaceway uses digital regenerative switching of up to 10 Gbps, as opposed to the analog transponders of most geosynchronous communications satellites (despite the fact that most of those transponders are used with digital services these days).
Spaceway was originally supposed to provide satellite point-to-point and point-to-multipoint IP connectivity, but that was dropped in favor of providing massive localized HDTV capacity using spot beams.
Unfortunately, Ka band is more sensitive to rain fade outages than Ku band.
If only the UN regulated orbital paths and governments collected huge sums of money from the people using such paths, presumably for the public good -- oh wait, that already happens.
I agree with this. Cable is going to kill satellite when it comes to HD. Satellite in the end might have more total capacity, but most if it is going to be wasted in the replication of the same content around 300 times (1500 local channels).
Cable doesn't have to provide 1500 local channels, they have to provide around 6. This leaves them plenty of room for actual HD content. My local cable company already offers me all of my locals in HD plus about 10 more HD channels than either sat company offers.
Cable companies still have the advantage in the fact that they tend to offer broadband internet service in addition to TV channels -- I know you can get satellite-based internet service, but they all seem to be from separate companies like StarBand, as far as I can tell. And they suck compared to cable internet, at least where I live, though I'll admit I've seen some pretty crappy cable internet providers as well...
I would love the concept of hundreds or even thousands of HD content. But time warner can't even give me 15 without the "HDXtra" package that's another $9 a month.
With HD "supposedly" defined to be 16:9, I sincerely despise all those major networks - CBS ABC and NBC that broadcost most of their HD content in 4:3. Only Discover and PBS has true 16:9 HD around the clock.
Watching Olympics opening ceremony on HD is simply gorgeous. The only thing I need now is CNN HD.
yeah, lets all become commies too and have our government own everything!!
This thing is over Hawaii I wonder if it will be viable in Australia. If so it would be nice to be able to get shows a bit early. Most new sats have a huge number of spot beams which makes it tricky to pick them up outside of their transmit pattern. Does anyone know where to find the details?
Burn the land and boil the sea. You can't take the sky from me.
I live in the NY/NJ area, cablevision is out of control. I pay close to $130 for cable and a cable modem, those scumbags don't even offer any package discounts. Not to mention the other day I get a letter from cablevision saying that I have been getting an introductory rate and I was going to have to pay an extra $25 a month. But I have to disagree about cable having better quality pictures. From what I've seen sat has a much better picture, the only downside is the 20 minutes you have to wait when changing channels and having to pray for clear skys during the mets game.
Hoo-Ray
Would I be correct in assuming that it's H.264 that will be utilized?
Who actually asked for higher resolution? Are they acting on customer demand or have they just decided that we should have it? The reason I say this is that I would rather have higher bandwidth channels than higher resolution ones. Compression artifacts annoy me much more than a low resolution picture does. They don't seem to be able to transmit TV in the current resolution without severely degrading the picture. Any "visualphile" will know that a decent analogue signal usually looks a lot better than it's digital equivalent (ref: I'm comparing Digital Terrestrial to Digital Satellite and Cable services available in the UK).
Perhaps I'm biassed because I'm in the UK and therefore have 625 lines instead of the appauling 480 line TVs the poor Americans have to put up with (no wonder they're screaming for HDTV!).
My worry is that even with MPEG 4 (which will probably be recompressed MPEG 2 sources anyway for quite a while) they may not have enough bandwith to send me a 1080 line picture without artifacts...
Maybe with Fiber To The Home we might actually get enough bandwidth to watch the channels we want at the resolution we want, without thinking that it looks like your TV has gone though 4 copes of RealPlayer...
Just buy some of their stock and you too can own a piece of the litter in the sky.
Man, I'd like to have your cable company. SD D* was superior to all the cable channels on my old network, and about the same cost as D*, if you count the TiVo service.
I've seen my (new) local Adelphia service, and SD looks about the same. I can't say how reliable it is vs D*, as I don't subscribe to cable (a friend has it). If it's anything like the cablemodem sevice, I can live without it. I probably lose 10% of my surf time in any given month to cable outages. In five years with D*, I've lost signal four times - twice due to monstor thunderstorms, and twice with the local feeds died in CO.
I haven't seen HD yet to compare, as I'm not up for dropping money on an HD D* set right now. Adelphia wants about $45/mo for basic cable service and $55 for digital cable (not including HD). Real TiVo is $13/mo extra and I don't get multi-channel capability. I've got two DTiVos with service for $55/mo from D*.
Cable can kiss my scrawny white ass already. If the rumors are correct about the new D* system, I'm staying with satellite. 4 tuner headend recorder plus HD or SD set top boxes for the TVs? I'm there, no question. THough I hope that TiVo will have a hand in the interface, it sounds like I'km going to lose that feature, but then it will be no worse than Adelphia's home-grown ungly-child DVR, so the prize still goes to D*.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"These markets represent nearly 36 million homes or 32.8 percent of all U.S. TV households."
"DIRECTV, Inc. is the nation's leading and fastest-growing digital multichannel television service provider with more than 13.9 million customers."
Okay that means that DirecTV has (3x36) / (13.9) = 7.77% of the market. I wonder how much that will increase with this new HD satellite? I don't know if the price for DirecTV will go down, but I will assume it will temporarily so they can increase their market share.
Now excuse me, I am going to climb up to my roof and manually adjust my dish so I can watch 'the Simple Life' in HD.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I know all this new tech is really exciting, but I haven't taken this plunge yet and I'm on basic ole cable with my basic old tv. But yet, just about every channel these days suffers from macro blocks at any given time. It's really damn annoying. Analog didn't suffer from this. So I assume it all has already switched to digital and just being sent the last mile as analog, but still, you'd think if they were sending it as analog you wouldn't see this crap.
Oh and btw, the animated logos are bad enough, but the volume changing from the actual show to commericals is just plain evil. For years I've fallen asleep to tv using it's timer but the volume difference has made that impossible now.
Of course, given the previous slashdot article about the Bush adminstration's policy on IATC meeting attendees, only Republicans will be allowed to watch HD satellite tv. And only if they donate $1000 to the GOP.
Judging by the area of coverage that satellite claims, it seems to me that even when the 2nd satellite is launched most of the US heartland won't be covered.
Since I live in the US heartland, I find this very disheartening...
If it were up to me, I think satellites would only be owned by government bodies so that the services that were provided by these planetary companions would be made available to all citizens.
I honestly just don't even know where to start with this comment. Other than maybe, who let the troll in?
Casca
Well, since we are all already in a cynical mood about this. Think about how much more money it would cost for the government to launch and manage the satellites vs. a private company. Private companies always has to answer to the bottom line. Would you really want your tax dollars going to this? The debt from the Iraq war is a leading example of how the government really sees the bottom line as merely a starting point. And on top of that, it would still be the largest corporations who would lobby for control of the satellites. Think how much time and money would be spent on the sessions of congress dedicated to this. I mean, I see your point and I'm a little bit discouraged to look into my crystal ball and see the future where space is lined with flying garbage, but really some the alternatives discourage me more.
I bet I can.
Say a satellite is 10 feet wide, you could fit over 11,000,000 in a straight line from the earth to orbit and still probably wouldn't be able to see the line.
You can only fit under 8,000 1/64 inch pieces of lint in a straight line on a 10 foot bed sheet
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
This satellite will be great--when there's a good HD PVR solution to replace TiVo for DirectTV customers....
Best Buy can have you arrested
1. I can and do get HD locals already on my cable system in addition to a dozen other HD offerings.PROBLEM: Neither I nor over 75% of my neighnors can afford HD televisions currently and those who can are only getting the same content as the SD people just sharper picture. FURTHER PROBLEM: Lossy compression whether MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 especially when done repeatedly in line from content originator to my television means HD gives me excellent viewing of MPEG artifacting. EVEN FURTHER PROBLEM: This only plays into the retail equivalent of crack addiction in poorer areas: rent-to-own stores. In the name of getting what the Joneses have now we spend two to three times the retail cost in the long run and finish paying just in time for the thing to crap out at its normal end-of-life.
2. Satellite cannot give me high speed internet or phone service. In fact, I can get phone over cable or voice over IP or both simultaneously.
3. Satellite cannot give me interactive video-on-demand including gaming and information services such as those being rolled out now in various systems which will become the normal across the US in a few years.
Yeah, I really need Murdoch to give me DiVX-style video over satellite loaded ongoing with DRM and compatibility issues and on top of it I have to buy a box that I will need to replace at my cost when they change the technology; and that's going to make me just drop everything else that cable has to offer that DBS doesn't, right? I don't think so.
I'm a DBS and cable installer as well as support tech and after over a thousand installs, would never switch to DBS so it isn't as though I don't have direct exposure to the technology. It just doesn't appeal to me. I'll wait till we see the fabled LEO constellation of birds giving me high bandwidth and lower latency to portable devices wherever I go, but I won't hold my breath.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
This is just insane... This sat. will _only_ be broadcasting... or re-broadcasting Local Network Channels. They are already available with an antenna - there has to be some great irony in this... Would not it have been cheaper to simple purchase and install antenna's for every customer? DirectTV is a competent company... I have to assume they have done their marketing... Local channels direct to the sat. must be an important marketing point. I have an off air antenna with a DircectTV HD tuner... It works great, it's like the off air channels are part of the sat. channel line-up. My recepetion is awsome... I get multi-channels from almost every station in town, and even pick up some digital channels from out-lying towns I could _never_ pick up with analog reception. People, buy an antenna, buy a digital receiver, even if you dont have HD TV ... You'll get awsome reception.
You make an interesting point, but after considering it carefully, I respectfully disagree with everything you just said.
They provide a service that I'm willing to pay for -- media content delivery. If you don't want it, don't pay for it. I don't want the government launching these satellites, because I don't want the government controlling the content. Furthermore, since governments don't own satellite airspace, governments don't get to license it. This leads me to some other questions for you: Because airplanes fly over your airspace, should they be made available to all citizens? It's really only wealthy citizens, businesses, and governments who can own and operate these vehicles -- very similar to satellites. What's the ultimate difference between a company launching a dozen satellites in geosynchronous orbit versus building a vast terrestrial distribution network? Should only governments be allowed to build these networks? In both cases (satellite and wired), the businesses own the infrastructure, and the consumer simply pays for service. It covers both media licensing and distribution costs. This way, the networks are able to get around government censorship of what they broadcast -- terrestrial television and radio broadcasts are still subject to this censorship. I generally do not patronize those services due to this censorship. Personally, I find the censorship far more obscene than the content they are trying to protect me from.
As far as the service rendered, it's entertainment. Does it benefit us? It depends on how much you value entertainment. One man's junk is another man's gold. When we buy it, it's a choice. When the government provides it, we're all paying for it whether we like it or not.
Finally, as far as I know, the sky is open to anyone who wants to put something up there (providing that they acquire the necessary licenses from whatever applicable aerospace governing administration for their launch vehicle). There are two problems: building these communication devices is very expensive and putting them in place is extremely expensive. The only groups who seem to have the cash to do such a thing are goverments and businesses. It sounds an awful lot like you're begrudging them of their money and their ability to send up satellites on their whim.
-Turkey
No kidding, 22000 miles from earth makes for a whole lotta room. I'm not going to do the math, but we could go for 1000's of years without worrying about space "litter". Worring about that is just dumb...
Who cares what the difference is between sat. and cable? Who cares how high quality the image is? What matters is the content itself and right now it sucks big time. It amazes how much people are willing to pay for utter crap and the privilege of being advertised at. Take the guy who replied to you and stated that he pays close to $130 for TV and internet... I won't call him a fool because it could be worth it to him, but I wouldn't dream of spending a quarter that.
So we can have 1500 high def BBC channels?
The launch can be seen at the Sea Launch website www.sea-launch.com This was the heaviest launch for Sea Launch to date.
Note that that launch vehicle was a Zenit, a Russian rocket. Nice that they're doing good commercial work. Shameful that NASA has dropped the ball.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Same here in Austin TX. Time Warner want $54.88 for entry level digital cable, plus $7.99 for the box, plus $6.35 for program guide, plus $9.95 for the DVR, for a grand total of $79.17.
That's before you even get any HD channels, half the channels are still analog, and you can only record/watch one channel at a time.
So I went with DirecTV with TiVo. $47.99 to get everything in digital quality, and I can watch 1 show while recording 2 more.
I paid to have extra coax and phone lines run in to a 4-way wall socket, and paid up front for the TiVo box, because frankly you'd have to be smoking crack to pick the lousy cable around here, unless you're satisfied with analog basic cable.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
On non-HD, I found that Sat has a better picture, and for the full package, costs less. Are the differences you note limited to HD channels? The on-demand feature is certainly a plus.
"Is the benefit from space travel and those little bits of metal flying around the planet only available to those who pay a fee to private companies?"
Yup. Well, I gotta go pay my GPS bill before they turn my service off. Toodle pips.
Great idea there. If governments control the satellites you are bound to be censored many times over.
Unlike governments corporations are out to provide what people will pay for. Governments are out to provide for themselves.
Hell in the US talk radio didn't exist because of a government imposed law called the "fairness doctrine". China regularly blocks content it doesn't like. Other countries are bound to have similar concerns.
The last people I want dictating what I can and cannot see are politicians. At least with a corporation I can choose another, they don't beat down your doors with guns or such.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Um, where you watching HD channels from the Sat connection?
Cause if there where just standard broadcast, that would be the reason for the pixilation when displaying it on your HD TV.
Yes, but two geosynchronous satellites spaced less than 1 degree apart operating on the same frequency might as well be one, as that is how close you can point a dish from earth and resolve each satellite. (The distance depends on frequency band,
There is also station-keeping. Geosync satellites keep their position within an accuracy of approximately one-tenth of one degree, giving a maximum of 1,800 satellites in orbit without posing a navigational hazard to others, regardless of frequency used.
The UN operates the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to regulate the use of geosynchronous orbitals. Slots are dispensed on a first come, first served basis with some consideration given to the country making the request and the country the slot is over.
So thats why hd tuners are so expensive!
So far the number of channels doesn't seem to be a problem. What to fill them with seems almost insurmountable, at least to date.
You know you're in trouble when the best thing on is the weather channel in french.
Whatever happened to the free online version of You Don't Know Jack? Man..that was fun. Tried looking for it a few years ago...wasn't around any more...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'll have to back this story up about 5 years because that's how long we've had an HDTV and HD service from Dishnetwork. In 2000 our TV's were between 25 - 30 years old and in various stages of kicking the bucket so for christmas we bought one large 65" HDTV. Also I say we, but I was in college and even now only get to enjoy it on holidays or when I am at home, so really its my father that gets to enjoy it.
My mother died 6 years ago and he lives alone and opted for the 500 channel package with all the movie networks. For most of the first couple years all we got were HBO and Showtime in HD. I can remember seeing the Matrix in HD vs SD vs DVD and the HD quality kicked the snot out of even the DVD.
We did have a brief period where Dish changed their HD broadcasting format, without really telling us....poof whatching a movie in HD and the channel dissapeared...and then wanted us to buy a $100 add on module for the model 6000 reciever because "That model is old". We also paid $800 for the damn thing because it was the first HD receiver on the market. Took dad 5 minutes on the phone bitching that, "Look we didn't do anything, your the ones that changed it. We paid the premium for getting it first, and last time I checked if you change things mid-course, you have to make it right!" Two days later we had the module free of charge.
The other major factor is we cannot get HD over our cable lines. It is in fact, impossible. Why? We were one of the first areas around to get cable circa 1982. All the lines in this area are not digital capable. They should have all the lines upgraded by the end of this year, but we can't get digital if we wanted. That little fact, that 5 years ago we didn't know if or when they would upgrade the cable lines, was the major factor for switching.
I think Dad pays about $200 a month now and that includes his phone, cell phone, DSL, and Sat package with 500 channels +HD package. Dish has a deal worked out with SBC, local phone provider anyway.
We'll loose signals during large storms, but usually only for a few minutes at most. Other than that "We decided to change HD broadcast formats and you now need another $100 part for your $800 revicer to make it work again" incident, we've been pretty pleased with our HD service. Just wish there was more content.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Why would you want to receive a TV service designed for optimum picture quality through a lossly algorythm?
that MPEG-4 is passe now? Who will be the first DBS company to support H.264?
MPEG-2 is lossy and that's been used for years for DBS and satellite video redistribution in the form of MPEG-2/DVB (like DISH Network and Bell ExpressVu use as well as news agencies, etc), DigiCipherII (as used by the rest of the news agencies, VOOM, Star Choice DBS in Canada, etc). What's your point?
1500 channels and STILL nothing on....
Remember, it's not about the number of available channels. It's what goes ON them that counts.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
What makes its compression better? I thought that they didn't define any kind of standard for a codec, which practically guarantees incompatibility problems forever.
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Rupert Murdock.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Nuff said
The DVD standard is MPEG2 at either 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL). That's 480 or 576 lines, respectively. DirecTV is (currently) MPEG2 at 480x480.
HDTV is 720 lines or more. DirecTV is converting to MPEG4 so it has the bandwidth to broadcast more channels at HD resolutions. At least initially, only HD channels will be broadcast with MPEG4.
Surely they can just upgrade the software...
Not in a hardware-based solution like their current chipset... and don't think that my HD TiVo and I don't wish otherwise.
You can bet I'll be on the phone with a CSR to get some free, upgraded equipment and/or hefty credits. I'm not too worried, though. DirecTV been pretty fantastic about that sort of problem in the past and their publicist has already said they're going to attempt to make everyone happy about the changes.
Obviously you can always argue Mpeg2 vs. Mpeg4, and i question the artifacts that may be introduced (but 10Mb bandwidth is quite a bit). Does anyone know which Mpeg4 codec they will specifically be using. I would guess they would get a proprietary one so that they have increased security beyond their encryption.
I wonder if there are any plans to improve DirecPC/DirecWay for those who cannot get cable and DSL Internet services? Currently, it is expensive and very slow (not really broadband service in today's Internet technologies).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm curious about what MPEG-4 technology in HDTV means for computers in the near future. I have a Alchamey TV card installed in my G5 which I used to watch cable. Will we be seeing HDTV cards coming out soon that take advantage of the fact that both Apple and Direct TV seem to be using the same technologies?
Wait, what if he goes NOT as the wolf?
to finance the HDTV technology, they raised the rates of all Non-HDTV subscribers. This is because they want to offer lower HDTV rates than Cable does. Only one TV set in my house is HDTV ready.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
But i just checked the website and they're closing the end of THIS month..
hopefully DirecTV can afford what they're getting into.
I just got off the phone with DirecTV. I was told that there will be a firmware download that will allow MPEG-4 datastreams to be handled. There will be no cost for this. My question to the /. hivemind:
Since the HR10-250 is basically a Linux machine, is there any reason that the hardware would have to be changed? Isn't this just a codec?
I did away with HD cable because of the content. Its such crap. All the good content (sports for me) is on CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX and guess what, you can get all that HD for FREE with an antenna. I save $$$ a month I even signed up for unlimited Blockbuster online rentals for $15 and I still come out WAY ahead. You can get a Over the Air HD box off Ebay for $100! Pays for itself in 2 monthes.
Facts: QuickTime 6 uses MPEG4, and AC3 and other stuff. QuickTime 7 can do H.264. Apple has said this is "the year of High Definition Video". Apple has signed up with Blu-Ray. TiVo isn't going to do any development for the Macintosh. DirectTV has MPEG4 plans.
Rumors: TiVo is on it's last legs and may fold in the next couple of years. Current TiVo HD units may not be compatible with MPEG4. Apple has a contract with Broadcom for multimedia chips, probably for cell phone or other portable product but could be for H.264 video device. Apple has a tight relationship with IBM and a growing relationship with SONY. This may bring CELL processors to the Mac. This would definitely make encode/decode of H.264 and MPEG4 faster.
Speculation: It doesn't seem far fetched that Apple may be working a deal with DirectTV for HD devices and possibly some kind of "online video" version of the iTunes Music Store. Let's call it the Apple HD Video Store.
Actually, the article says 154W:
the equatorial launch site at 154 degrees West longitude
My map of the world shows precious little at W154. Not Hawaii: Hawaii is roughly 140W to 145W. Some sprinking of islands from Alaska are (at 47N latitude). Good place for an international date line. I wonder if they really meant this number. Note that the final position is 103W:
DIRECTV expects to begin offering services from Spaceway F1 from the 102.8 degree West longitude orbital slot in the fall
Assuming they are placing the satellite over the center of the US, that's over the Rocky Mountains -- far from Australia -- so I wouldn't expect service there.
It's fine for the govenment to launch and own satellites that they pay for with approved tax money. In other words, hopefully, for things that protect or benefit tax-paying citizens fairly universally. Military satellites, Earth Science research, GPS, etc. But govenment launching and owning entertainment satellites? That's a silly idea if I ever heard one. If I ever see a "space-based entertainment" tax added to my tax bill, I'll be one upset citizen! And don't even get me started on public television.
So, if the video is compressed, does that mean they will charge less per month?
Ad Astra Per Asper
Flicker isn't a problem. 25fps is slightly more than what movies are projected in (24fps), and I don't see crowds walking out of movie theatres complaining about the awful flicker. And the FPS figures are the frames per second ratings; both PAL and NTSC are interlaced, so the number of vertical scans down your CRT per second is actually double that; one for all the odd-numbered scanlines, and one for all the even-numbered scanlines.
The reason for the different framerates is that PAL countries have 50Hz power, and NTSC countries have 60Hz; the TV framerate is selected to avoid problems caused by beating with the mains power frequency. On modern sets this doesn't seem to be a problem, however.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
So much misinformation to reply to, so little time.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Without a WB or UPN in my area it's NOT ALL LOCAL TV then, is it?
DTV is not dropping Tivo. DirecTV was purchased by NewsCorp which is owned by Rupert Murdoch as we know. One of his other companies happened to be working on a DVR already. So yes, they will be offering that as an option as well.
But... the NDS DVR isn't out yet and DTV is still actively promoting Tivo both on-air and through combo deals to sign up for service. DTV's contract with Tivo lasts through 2007, and even then they can't just drop Tivo overnight. By the end of January, Tivo had signed up 3 million subscribers, and approx 2/3 of those are DTV subscribers. DTV would be foolish to drop support for something that 2 million of their customers know and love, especially since even if the NDS box is free, if it has problems or just doesn't live up to Tivo, there will likely be a customer backlash.
Take for example Comcast's own foray into DVR land. Users were less than satisfied [login required] and as a result, Comcast recently struck a deal with Tivo to co-develop a DVR based on Tivo technology.
Meanwhile Tivo has released a SDK and encouraged Java programmers to develop applications to make Tivo even more useful. Imagine shows like Survivor! that auction off props at the end of the season for charity being able to send you directly to Ebay on your Tivo!
There are also rumors of a partnership or aquisition of Tivo by Google for an as yet announced Video search/play on-demand product. Tivo already has a partnertship with Netflix to explore and develop technology for on-demand movie downloads.
Tivo needs to work hard in the coming months, but overall I think rumors of Tivo's imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Dunno what atlas you're using but every map I've looked at has Hawaii ranging 155W to 160W.
Some sprinking of islands from Alaska are (at 47N latitude).
Are we talking about 154W 47N?
Good place for a launch then. RTFA: "The Boeing 702 model satellite lifted off from the ocean-based Odyssey Launch Platform aboard a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket at 12:31:30 a.m. PDT from the equatorial launch site at 154 degrees West longitude".
Really???
$130 / 4 = $32.50
So, where do you get your TV service, and internet access from, that it all comes in vastly under ~$30? I'd be quite happy if I could just get high-speed access for under $40/month without an annual contract.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
My apologies -- my global imagery dataset which I thought was well geo-referenced, was wrong. Way wrong. Dataset courtesy of http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarb le/, geo-referencing courtesy of me. So you're right, Hawaii is not in the range of 140-145W -- it is at longitude W154, and must have been the launch location.
Sorry for the confusion -- I should have double-checked my numbers.
I'd have to disagree. I have both cable and DirecTV and the quality of DirecTV has always been far superior to cable's pixelated and compressed feed. I added cable specifically for the Red Sox games in HD on Comcast just during the baseball season. Granted some channels on DirecTV look pixelated, but overall when i compare the HD quality DirecTV is far better. Same for about 90% of the SD channels.
The article says the launch site was on the equator (around 154W 0N), not Hawaii (around 157W 21N).
Federal law cannot be superceded by HOA, local, country, or State laws.
You are able to put a satellite dish up if you have the physical, proper orientation to do so. You can also put up a fixed wireless antennae for local telecommunication services (ie Internet) and your local condo tyrants cannot stop you.
Of course they could possibly make your life miserable in other ways for raining on their control parade, but you are legally within your right to install these things.
Cutting and pasting from elsewhere:
Section 207 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 directed the FCC to create the "Over the Air Reception Devices Rule". This rule is cited as 47 D.F.R. Section 1.4000 and has been in effect since October 14, 1996. It prohibits restrictions that impair the installation, maintenance, or use of antennas used to receive video programming. The rule applies to video antennas including satellite dishes that are less than one meter in diameter.
Effective January 22, 1999, the FCC amended the rule so that it also applies to rental property where the renter has an exclusive use area, such as a balcony or patio.
Darin