[opendtv] Re: News; Dish to Expand HD Roster, Offer 1080p Movies

  • From: Albert Manfredi <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 01:28:07 -0400

John Shutt wrote:

> The only numbers I saw were given for Blu-Ray discs. I
> will guarantee you that Dish is not using anything close
> to 24 Mbps for any of their movie channels. I would be
> willing to wager that the average bit rate is under 10
> Mbps per stream, and from some demos I've seen (to
> be taken with a very large grain of salt,) could even be
> averaging under 5 Mbps using stat muxing .

But I don't find that to be the interesting comparison to make here. For one 
thing, DTT here can't use H.264 (yet). More importantly, we have no idea what 
bit rate DISH is using with H.264. All we know is that the numbers they gave 
for BD are unimpressive. (Then again, BD can afford to squander.)

The more interesting numbers to compare, IMO, are the bit rates needed for 1080 
at 60i with those for 1080 at 24p. I'll bet you a lot of money that 1080 at 24p 
(49.8 Mpels/sec) does not require more bit rate than 1080 at 60i (62.2 
Mpels/sec). Without stretching the imagination, I have to believe that 1080 at 
24p would fit in ~12 Mb/s or less of average bandwidth without a problem, using 
WETA-DT as a guide. And fast motion wouldn't even be such an issue at 24p, so 
that suggests that macroblocking should be less evident than it is with WETA's 
HD stream. (Since I know some will say the sample rate alone isn't a good 
comparison.)

So why aren't OTA broadcasters making a big to-do about this "full HD" they 
already have, that anyone can already use?

Bert

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