[opendtv] Re: Spectrum is too valuable

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 08:53:46 -0500

On Nov 9, 2015, at 9:43 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


That's false. When cable system broadband transfers streaming media, it uses
H.264. So clearly, any numbers you do to estimate the capacity of repurposed
cable bandwidth, repurposed for Internet streaming, only needs to consider
H.264 (and eventually H.265).

Stop changing the subject Bert. We are talking about cable STBs. We are talking
about recovering channels that use MPEG-2 TS and MPEG-2 decoder a in the STB.

When you use your PC you are still hung up about FLASH, not h.264.

Clearly the Internet avoided MPEG-2, primarily because of the onerous licensing
terms. H.265 could suffer the same fate if they don't resolve the licensing
issues...

The issue is still quite simple: delivering TV programming of equivalent, or
preferably better quality, than the MPEG-2 TS streams that will be replaced.
Rather than championing the improved quality of HDTV that you were stuck on for
more than a decade, you are telling us now that it's fine if we take a step
backwards to bit starved SD or HD, just so we can turn the higher quality HD
streams off.

You got lost in this thread, Craig. We are talking about gains to broadband
deployment which can be achieved if cable systems convert their broadcast
spectrum to 2-way Internet use. You old mantra does not apply. (Plus,
parenthetically, there's no reason in principle why codec upgrades can't be
transmitted over ATSC 1.0. There's already a standard that covers that. It's
not used, but that's not because the standard can't handle it. You've been
confused for years on this point.

Please read the paragraph above.

And the paragraph I wrote in the previous message about using advanced codecs
with ATSC 1.0.

Not at all. Instead, you ask subscribers of the broadband service how much
quality they want to pay for. A home with 5 Mb/s service can get very decent
H.264 HD, in fact.

Not really.

A single person living alone can get excellent Internet streaming image
quality, with 5 or 6 Mb/s of broadband.

Depends on the content, and the broadband provider. DSL was not up to the task.

And cable broadband has blown past the 5-6 Mbps limits. The slowest service Cox
offers here is 15 Mbps. What happens when someone on a 15 Mbps link asks a
server for a program? The devices negotiate for the best service possible.

Here is a chart from a company that does high quality h.264 encoding for OTT
streaming:

http://www.lighterra.com/papers/videoencodingh264/

The exact bitrates chosen are...

Name Resolution Link
(Mbps) Bitrate
(Mbps) Video
(kbps) Audio
(kbps)
240p 424x240 1.0 0.64 576 64
360p 640x360 1.5 0.96 896 64
432p 768x432 1.8 1.15 1088 64
480p 848x480 2.0 1.28 1216 64
480p HQ 848x480 2.5 1.60 1536 64
576p 1024x576 3.0 1.92 1856 64
576p HQ 1024x576 3.5 2.24 2176 64
720p 1280x720 4.0 2.56 2496 64
720p HQ 1280x720 5.0 3.20 3072 128
1080p 1920x1080 8.0 5.12 4992 128
1080p HQ 1920x1080 12.0 7.68 7552 128
1080p Superbit 1920x1080 N/A 20.32 20000 320
These rates are aggressive, and probably do not reflect high action content, as
frame rates are not mentioned.

And so on, with increased capacity required depending on how many
simultaneous HD streams that household expects to use. The 5.7 Gb/s of
capacity now broadcast into every home is wasted for the most part. Internet
streaming works on a different principle.

Wasted on you, but not on real paying customers.

I'm tired of playing this game. I've given you the real numbers. More than 80
million homes are paying for the higher quality TV services they get from the
legacy system. More than 40 million are paying for Netflix.

Both will co-exist until there is both demand and the capacity to turn off the
legacy systems.

This just proves that the cable part of the infrastructure in place today
*can* be used for Internet streaming.

Obviously it IS being used for Internet streaming. All we are arguing about is
when the legacy services will disappear.

It is, if anything, the mirrored server aspects that have to be improved.
OBVIOUSLY the cable companies can improve both. Just don't try to make us
believe that we're decades away from this being possible.

What you are asking for is certainly "possible" before the end of this decade.
What will actually happen is a different discussion.


Regards
Craig

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