There are so many facts wrong in your post that I sincerely hope you don't work in the technical field of broadcasting. OTA uses MPEG-2 (same codec as on DVD's), which is a lossy compression technique. ABC NBC and CBS stations all take an MPEG-4 feed from their network and re encode it to MPEG-2; FOX stations get MPEG-2 video that they then "splice" is their network bug and local commercials and promos.
Getting a lousy picture on digital TV from a poor or unaligned antenna is a lie that salesmen use. If the signal isn't strong enough the picture will drop out, you'll see big blocks everywhere, its quite obvious. Anyways, I have an outdoor antenna with actual line of sight to the towers on top of Sandia Peak and I can very easily see compression artifacts on each station; some are worse than others because they have sub-channel. If you can't see them you don't know what is meant by artifacts, you need glasses, your TV is small, or you sit a long ways away.
Cable systems *usually* pass on the local stations exactly as they are. DirecTV and Dish Network re compress them back to MPEG-4. Thats right, when you watch ABC/CBS/NBC on D* its gone from MPEG-4 to MPEG-2 and back to (a much lower bandwidth) MPEG-4 video.
Is 4k/UHD pretty silly? Yes, because in the end we'll just get an overly compressed junk signal just like regular HD, because that means more channels crammed in and more cash for the providers.
Do you have any evidence of this? How exactly would a small car cause an SUV to roll over? Even in a side collision the small car will be impacting below the SUV's center of gravity. I've been in 2 wrecks involving an SUV, neither time did the SUV roll over. I wasn't driving either time. I also know of cases where there was a roll over, and no one died. That was from driving too fast on a curve, where SUV's are indeed much more prone to rolling.
Another dangerous situation in a small car is being hit in the side by a large SUV where the impact is above the door.
No, it's not comparable to DirecTV. Most of your DirecTV bill goes to the content providers, not DirecTV.
Does it really? http://allthingsd.com/20100308/hate-paying-for-cable-heres-the-reason-why/ I totaled every channel in the left column at about $19, the other 3 can't be more than $10 altogether. Once you get HD service for a couple of TV's and your promo pricing expires your looking at around $90 with D*. Of course that price list is an average of what cable/DBS services pay. But if anything Directv pays less.
If google is just looking to break even on TV cost as a bonus to their fiber service they could very easily offer a large number of channels for $50/month.
That's not really true. By the late 50's you could find a B&W TV for less than $200, roughly $1500 in today's dollars. The average new car in 1960 cost $2600. I doubt $200 would buy a car that could actually run.
http://www.tvhistory.tv/tv-prices.htm (See: '56 GE $129 (14"))
I'm an American, and I've gotten my grubby hands on a few BBC-HD rips (untouched not re-compressed). I can say that in both cases the video quality is better than any over the air channel in my market and MUCH better than the crap I get from Dish Network*.
I only wish we had HD broadcasts at that quality.
*Thats my subjective opinion.
How does your TOS read I wonder. Until recently I shared a 12mb/768kb DSL line with 3 room-mates from QWEST. I'm sure we nearly maxed the thing out most days during peak hours. *Most* of that traffic was actually legit. I pay thru the nose for it (~$70/month), but *gasp* somehow QWEST can afford to have a few customers actually use all of the service they pay for. I never received any sort of warning in over a year. How about ISP's actually giving their customers what they advertise. If you want to limit your customers, offer a plan for limited monthly bandwidth.
I don't know what sort of eye-sight you have, but on my HTPC I can certainly tell the difference between a DVD and broadcast HDTV. Thats on a 32" LCD and Blu-ray is supposedly better than broadcast HDTV.
That said, I'm in no huge hurry to upgrade to Blu-ray. Its appears ATI has a very cheap HDCP capable card on the market now (HD 3450). Once Blu-ray drives get down to ~$100 (seen one as low as $180 on newegg). I'll probably pick one up. Netflix' Blu-ray stock should be quite high by then.
Sorry, I meant everything but the locals. I have an ATSC OTA tuner for locals anyways. I wasn't using QAM but rather a firewire connection from the cable box.
QWEST & Comcast are my only two choices as well. And I have to say: thank god for QWEST! Sometimes I hate them. I feel $40/month for a 1.5mbps line is a bit steep, but compared to Comcast they're practically saints. My roommate and I typically download around 100GB a month. I really don't feel like that is all that much, as this is 2008 and everyone was promised 100mbs pipes years ago. Comcast would've terminated our contract months ago I'm sure.
Its obvious Comcast wants to reserve their bandwidth for their own VOD services. I will never ever be a Comcast Cable subscriber again. Paying $100/month for a few HD channels and then they went and 5C encrypted everything so nothing worked with my HPTC, guess I'm getting OT.
Actually a furlong is 220 yds, 660 ft, or ~201m.
It's really not that hard people 3 ft to the yard, 5.5 yards to the rod, 40 yards to the furlong, 8 furlongs to the mile... I thought everyone knew that.
Can someone explain how this program cost them roughly 260 million USD? Seems like one of the biggest wastes of money in history. All of their recent programming was already digitizes, how else could it have been broadcast on freeview? All they needed were a few "geeks" to re-encode them to a higher compression tech (xvid or x264).
Here's how you can make your money back. Sell your back catalog to people not in the UK. I really like a lot of programs on BBC (& ITV and a few Channel 4 shows). I'd gladly pay $1/hour for older programs and $2/hour for anything less than one year old. Heres the catch though. I demand something thats at least nearly DVD quality (720x576 2mbs x264 would be nice), and I demand to be able to play it on any device of my choosing, so no DRM. Or (wink wink nudge nudge) DRM that is easy to strip.
Here here!
Right now the Cable Co's are getting their asses handed to them by sat. The reason being is satellite services are all digital (at least the major providers in the US). That means they can send out more channels, and more importantly (to me) more HDTV channels. If cable pushed their digital signals out unencrypted, customers would not need a box for every TV! That would be a major selling point.
Furthermore its almost outright criminal that Comcast (at least) charges the same amount for a cable card per month as a box.
I'm OTA (antenna) only at the moment and looking into getting a satellite system. Maybe if you dipshits at comcast hadn't decided to 5c encrypt everything over firewire from your cable box you would still be getting your $80/month from me.
I use Showanalyzer to detect commercials on my PVR. I would estimate the latest version is well over 99% accurate if the network displays their logo during the show and not during commercials.
So my advice to the networks, stop displaying your annoying channel logo, or display it during the commercials.
My other advice, show commercials in HD. Hell, I actually look FOR HD movie trailers on occasion.
I dont know that the USB port does anything. However you should have a firewire port on that box (I do). The way i capture video with it is thru a program called SageTV. However its a rather "advanced" install, one must manipulate the stream coming from the box with an external program. You have to dig around the forums to figure out how to do it.
Then you only get true digital channels (incl Hi def). Thats channel 101+ with Comcast. Then they can decide (at random it seems) to 5C encrypt a channel. For instance I can watch ESPN-HD fine, but not ESPN2-HD. And not HBO. Most other channels work incl locals.
They do have a linux version in dev. I dont know how far along it is.
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There are so many facts wrong in your post that I sincerely hope you don't work in the technical field of broadcasting. OTA uses MPEG-2 (same codec as on DVD's), which is a lossy compression technique. ABC NBC and CBS stations all take an MPEG-4 feed from their network and re encode it to MPEG-2; FOX stations get MPEG-2 video that they then "splice" is their network bug and local commercials and promos. Getting a lousy picture on digital TV from a poor or unaligned antenna is a lie that salesmen use. If the signal isn't strong enough the picture will drop out, you'll see big blocks everywhere, its quite obvious. Anyways, I have an outdoor antenna with actual line of sight to the towers on top of Sandia Peak and I can very easily see compression artifacts on each station; some are worse than others because they have sub-channel. If you can't see them you don't know what is meant by artifacts, you need glasses, your TV is small, or you sit a long ways away. Cable systems *usually* pass on the local stations exactly as they are. DirecTV and Dish Network re compress them back to MPEG-4. Thats right, when you watch ABC/CBS/NBC on D* its gone from MPEG-4 to MPEG-2 and back to (a much lower bandwidth) MPEG-4 video. Is 4k/UHD pretty silly? Yes, because in the end we'll just get an overly compressed junk signal just like regular HD, because that means more channels crammed in and more cash for the providers.
Do you have any evidence of this? How exactly would a small car cause an SUV to roll over? Even in a side collision the small car will be impacting below the SUV's center of gravity. I've been in 2 wrecks involving an SUV, neither time did the SUV roll over. I wasn't driving either time. I also know of cases where there was a roll over, and no one died. That was from driving too fast on a curve, where SUV's are indeed much more prone to rolling. Another dangerous situation in a small car is being hit in the side by a large SUV where the impact is above the door.
No, it's not comparable to DirecTV. Most of your DirecTV bill goes to the content providers, not DirecTV.
Does it really? http://allthingsd.com/20100308/hate-paying-for-cable-heres-the-reason-why/ I totaled every channel in the left column at about $19, the other 3 can't be more than $10 altogether. Once you get HD service for a couple of TV's and your promo pricing expires your looking at around $90 with D*. Of course that price list is an average of what cable/DBS services pay. But if anything Directv pays less. If google is just looking to break even on TV cost as a bonus to their fiber service they could very easily offer a large number of channels for $50/month.
That's not really true. By the late 50's you could find a B&W TV for less than $200, roughly $1500 in today's dollars. The average new car in 1960 cost $2600. I doubt $200 would buy a car that could actually run. http://www.tvhistory.tv/tv-prices.htm (See: '56 GE $129 (14"))
I'm an American, and I've gotten my grubby hands on a few BBC-HD rips (untouched not re-compressed). I can say that in both cases the video quality is better than any over the air channel in my market and MUCH better than the crap I get from Dish Network*. I only wish we had HD broadcasts at that quality. *Thats my subjective opinion.
How does your TOS read I wonder. Until recently I shared a 12mb/768kb DSL line with 3 room-mates from QWEST. I'm sure we nearly maxed the thing out most days during peak hours. *Most* of that traffic was actually legit. I pay thru the nose for it (~$70/month), but *gasp* somehow QWEST can afford to have a few customers actually use all of the service they pay for. I never received any sort of warning in over a year. How about ISP's actually giving their customers what they advertise. If you want to limit your customers, offer a plan for limited monthly bandwidth.
I don't know what sort of eye-sight you have, but on my HTPC I can certainly tell the difference between a DVD and broadcast HDTV. Thats on a 32" LCD and Blu-ray is supposedly better than broadcast HDTV. That said, I'm in no huge hurry to upgrade to Blu-ray. Its appears ATI has a very cheap HDCP capable card on the market now (HD 3450). Once Blu-ray drives get down to ~$100 (seen one as low as $180 on newegg). I'll probably pick one up. Netflix' Blu-ray stock should be quite high by then.
Sorry, I meant everything but the locals. I have an ATSC OTA tuner for locals anyways. I wasn't using QAM but rather a firewire connection from the cable box.
QWEST & Comcast are my only two choices as well. And I have to say: thank god for QWEST! Sometimes I hate them. I feel $40/month for a 1.5mbps line is a bit steep, but compared to Comcast they're practically saints. My roommate and I typically download around 100GB a month. I really don't feel like that is all that much, as this is 2008 and everyone was promised 100mbs pipes years ago. Comcast would've terminated our contract months ago I'm sure. Its obvious Comcast wants to reserve their bandwidth for their own VOD services. I will never ever be a Comcast Cable subscriber again. Paying $100/month for a few HD channels and then they went and 5C encrypted everything so nothing worked with my HPTC, guess I'm getting OT.
Actually a furlong is 220 yds, 660 ft, or ~201m. It's really not that hard people 3 ft to the yard, 5.5 yards to the rod, 40 yards to the furlong, 8 furlongs to the mile... I thought everyone knew that.
Can someone explain how this program cost them roughly 260 million USD? Seems like one of the biggest wastes of money in history. All of their recent programming was already digitizes, how else could it have been broadcast on freeview? All they needed were a few "geeks" to re-encode them to a higher compression tech (xvid or x264). Here's how you can make your money back. Sell your back catalog to people not in the UK. I really like a lot of programs on BBC (& ITV and a few Channel 4 shows). I'd gladly pay $1/hour for older programs and $2/hour for anything less than one year old. Heres the catch though. I demand something thats at least nearly DVD quality (720x576 2mbs x264 would be nice), and I demand to be able to play it on any device of my choosing, so no DRM. Or (wink wink nudge nudge) DRM that is easy to strip.
Here here! Right now the Cable Co's are getting their asses handed to them by sat. The reason being is satellite services are all digital (at least the major providers in the US). That means they can send out more channels, and more importantly (to me) more HDTV channels. If cable pushed their digital signals out unencrypted, customers would not need a box for every TV! That would be a major selling point. Furthermore its almost outright criminal that Comcast (at least) charges the same amount for a cable card per month as a box. I'm OTA (antenna) only at the moment and looking into getting a satellite system. Maybe if you dipshits at comcast hadn't decided to 5c encrypt everything over firewire from your cable box you would still be getting your $80/month from me.
I use Showanalyzer to detect commercials on my PVR. I would estimate the latest version is well over 99% accurate if the network displays their logo during the show and not during commercials. So my advice to the networks, stop displaying your annoying channel logo, or display it during the commercials. My other advice, show commercials in HD. Hell, I actually look FOR HD movie trailers on occasion.
Obviously banning guns made it impossible for teenagers in the UK to get one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manches ter/6617697.stm
Yes, your murder rate is lower than ours, but it always has been.
Cost per BD disc is NOT .22/GB. The newegg link you gave is for a single 50GB disk, not a 3-pack.
The cheapest I could find http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16817130011 comes to .44/GB, but thats a 25GB disc.
I dont know that the USB port does anything. However you should have a firewire port on that box (I do). The way i capture video with it is thru a program called SageTV. However its a rather "advanced" install, one must manipulate the stream coming from the box with an external program. You have to dig around the forums to figure out how to do it. Then you only get true digital channels (incl Hi def). Thats channel 101+ with Comcast. Then they can decide (at random it seems) to 5C encrypt a channel. For instance I can watch ESPN-HD fine, but not ESPN2-HD. And not HBO. Most other channels work incl locals. They do have a linux version in dev. I dont know how far along it is.