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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.
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...
Digital TV has 18 different formats (resolutions), 6 of which are considered "HD". A couple of them are equivalent to NTSC resolution; 640x480 pixels. So NTSC stuff would presumably be broadcast in the standard appropriate digital format, taking up less bandwidth than one of the HD formats.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
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.
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.
yeah, lets all become commies too and have our government own everything!!
I believe they have an upgrade/replacement plan where they pay a nominal amount to replace your current TiVo, reciever, or HD TiVo when you exchange it for a new one. The way I read it (which was somewhere else on Slashdot in another TiVo story) was that they obviously won't pay you waht you paid for the HD TiVo, but the newer receivers would be significantly lower in price, and that 'new ' price would pretty much match what they give you for the exchange. Surely they don't want to alienate customers, especially those that are obviously willing to pay for premium hardware/content.
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...
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.
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.
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)
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
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.