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

Re:For someone not hip on the lingo

[er824]

I beleive it is because the new sattelites are going to use MPEG4, the existing ones use MPEG2. You are going to need a new receiver to receive channels from the new sattelites.

Re:For someone not hip on the lingo

[peterd11]

The HD Tivo only does MPEG-2, and the new local channels are supposed to be encoded using MPEG-4. However, I've wondered about this too. DirecTV has sent several updates to the HD Tivos since they came out. Can someone confirm that a software update could not be used to add MPEG-4 support to the HD Tivo?

Re:For someone not hip on the lingo

[MarkGriz]

"Can someone confirm that a software update could not be used to add MPEG-4 support to the HD Tivo?"

MPEG decoding in the DTivo boxes is done in hardware, so a software update isn't possible.
There are plently of $1000 HD Tivo owners pissed off about it.

Re:Quality of MPEG4 signals?

[mrand]

And a "lesser size" means a HIGHER compression ratio... so it'll be even more than the "insane" 55:1, as you called it.