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.

Comments

Full HDTV Finally

[blackmesh.com]

Finally something that can compete with Comcast's 15 HD channels. This might actually push local cable providers to finally offer HD service for all of the channels.

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

For someone not hip on the lingo

[Enigma_Man]

Why does it obsolete the HD TiVo?

-Jesse

Quality of MPEG4 signals?

[jfmerryman]

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.

Re:Who does the sky belong to?

[Ucklak]

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