# new rumors about U-Verse compatibility?



## bsmith1051 (Nov 15, 2009)

I has in an AT&T retail store this weekend and the salesman said there was going to be an announcement 'soon' about Tivo compatibility with U-Verse. Anyone know anything about that? I haven't been able to find anything online. It didn't seem like a false comment either as he had nothing to gain by it.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

They always say this when their relentless marketeers come to the front door. They would have to have a completely new box for it or port their software to their box.


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## JimboG (May 27, 2007)

Lies, all lies.

Ask the AT&T retail store drone when U-Verse will replace their HD-lite channels with actual HD channels. 5-6 Mbps is fine for DVD video, but it isn't enough space for unmolested HD programming.


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## bsmith1051 (Nov 15, 2009)

@ zalusky, this was in their retail store, not someone coming door-to-door

@ JimboG, actually I think 5-6 MBps is plenty for HD since it's h.264 compression (not MPEG2 like on a DVD). It's obviously not BD quality but it should look clearly better than DVD.

Anyways, back on topic, so apparently no one has heard anything? I was hoping that maybe AT&T really was porting something to the Tivo...


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

perhaps they are planning to annonuce that they aren't ever going to make their service compatible.

(sorry couldn't resist)


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## JimboG (May 27, 2007)

bsmith1051 said:


> @ JimboG, actually I think 5-6 MBps is plenty for HD since it's h.264 compression (not MPEG2 like on a DVD). It's obviously not BD quality but it should look clearly better than DVD.


U-Verse's muddy, messy image "clearly" looks worse than Fios, DirecTV, over the air HDTV, and most cable systems.

Lousy picture quality and no compatibility with Tivo makes U-Verse a non-starter.


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## TheWGP (Oct 26, 2007)

MichaelK said:


> perhaps they are planning to annonuce that they aren't ever going to make their service compatible.
> 
> (sorry couldn't resist)


This is actually more likely than any other outcome!


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## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

Does someone have a link or details on this claimed inferiority of U-verse HD? My understanding is that they transmit HD in full 1080i. The vast majority of the content on my cable service is 720p with a handful of content in 1080i (almost exclusively sports).

I believe there is a bandwidth limit preventing more than a few concurrent streams, but I haven't heard anything about the video quality being downgraded. Is it an FPS thing?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

bsmith1051 said:


> @ JimboG, actually I think 5-6 MBps is plenty for HD since it's h.264 compression (not MPEG2 like on a DVD). It's obviously not BD quality but it should look clearly better than DVD.


While H.264 does have significantly better compression then MPEG-2, 5-6Mbps is still pretty low for HD resolutions. It _might_ look OK if they use 720p, but if they attempt to cram 1080i/p into that bandwidth it's going to look terrible.

H.264 has a 30-40% compression advantage over MPEG-2. Most 1080i MPEG-2 channels are broadcast at 13-15Mbps. So they'd need at least 8Mbps to duplicate the same quality in H.264. In fact in the UK the BBC recently started using H.264 for their HD streams. They use a resolution of just 1440x1080, rather then the full 1920x1080, and they still broadcast at around 10Mbps. H.264 is great, but it can't produce miracles.

Dan


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## Fassade (Apr 8, 2004)

Grakthis said:


> Does someone have a link or details on this claimed inferiority of U-verse HD? My understanding is that they transmit HD in full 1080i. The vast majority of the content on my cable service is 720p with a handful of content in 1080i (almost exclusively sports).
> 
> I believe there is a bandwidth limit preventing more than a few concurrent streams, but I haven't heard anything about the video quality being downgraded. Is it an FPS thing?


I do not have numbers, but my experience as a relatively recent switcher to Uverse is that the HD quality is worse than my previous provider (TWC). Uverse transmits in 1080i, but the compression really shows, especially with fast movement. For many programs, it makes little difference, but for fast movements -- explosions in movies, camera panning to follow a long pass in football, and so on -- the picture very noticeably pixellates until the motion calms down.


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## nmiller855 (Sep 26, 2000)

We had Uverse & I used my Series 1 Tivo with it. I had to set up a recording for 5 minutes every 4 hours to keep it from going to sleep but it worked. So it is not totally incompatible.


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## deandashl (Aug 8, 2008)

Original HD resolution (720p vs 1080i) is based on the channel not the provider. There are people out there that can list off the resolutions for different companies (ABC/Disney/ESPN, NBC, Discovery Networks,etc.).

Now you "may" have all channels the same resolution to your TV. Your cable/satellite box/DVR "may" have a set resolution that converts every channel to a set resolution so your TV doesn't have to change conversions all the time. My Comcast DVR did not allow native resolution passthrough and you were forced to pick 720p or 1080i.

My TiVo is set to "native" resolution and it changes resolution all the time depending on the channel. I do this to avoid one more "item" re-processing the picture again.

Excess compression (all video has compression, but it doesn't HAVE to reduce picture quality) is a whole different thing that I'm NOT commenting on, in this case.


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## deandashl (Aug 8, 2008)

Grakthis said:


> My understanding is that they transmit HD in full 1080i. The vast majority of the content on my cable service is 720p with a handful of content in 1080i (almost exclusively sports).


My previous post was based on this comment


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## aforkosh (Apr 20, 2003)

Uncompressed 1080i and 720p have similar data requirements. (don't forget that 1080i actually only sends 540 lines in any transmission). Each transmission is about 1 million pixels. I would assume that they compress similarly.

So the transmission type of the original signal (720p or 1080i) should have no bearing on whether Uverse's compression degrades the quality or not.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

Dan203 said:


> While H.264 does have significantly better compression then MPEG-2, 5-6Mbps is still pretty low for HD resolutions. It _might_ look OK if they use 720p, but if they attempt to cram 1080i/p into that bandwidth it's going to look terrible.
> 
> H.264 has a 30-40% compression advantage over MPEG-2. Most 1080i MPEG-2 channels are broadcast at 13-15Mbps. So they'd need at least 8Mbps to duplicate the same quality in H.264. In fact in the UK the BBC recently started using H.264 for their HD streams. They use a resolution of just 1440x1080, rather then the full 1920x1080, and they still broadcast at around 10Mbps. H.264 is great, but it can't produce miracles.
> 
> Dan


Interesting, Dish is supposed to be using sending out 1440x1080 for its 1080 channels (720P channels are sent out at 720P). The 1440x1080 looks really good on dish--still stunning on my Sony; in fact, OTA and Local into Local via sat look virtually identical. So, if done properly, this is one way of conserving bandwidth and still providing great HD.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Dan203 said:


> .........H.264 has a 30-40% compression advantage over MPEG-2. Dan


Interesting how the predictions of compression advantages of H.264 seem to slip downward with time (and with practical use?). I can remember reading glowing characterizations that H.264 would enable a 3X to 4X advantage. I suspect a major factor behind this is the computation effort one is willing to expend on compression. The CPU time required to get even 2X compression is very high, even on high-end personal computers. (Context here is assuming constant quality.)

What about the 1080i vs 1080p question raised by an earlier poster? Shouldn't 1080i allow lower bitrates for equal encoding computation effort and quality?


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

It would be nice to take the cpu out of the equation and have a commercially available h264/ac3 hardware encoder that you just plug into a free pci slot. I see some h264/aac encoder cards and USB sticks using a quick google search, but haven't dug into it much.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

If they encode the video at 1440x1080 interlaced then it might look OK. However, like I said above, the BBC uses 1440x1080i and they still run at a bitrate of 9-10Mbps. And they only run interlaced video at 50 fields per second, versus the 59.94fps we use here.

I honestly don't know what they are going to do, but from my experience 5-6Mbps is not going to be enough to do 1080i properly. It may not even be enough to 720p properly unless they cut the frame rate down to 29.97fps. Then again Netflix uses [email protected] and just 4Mbps for it's HD content and it looks OK, so maybe it wont matter.

Dan


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

orangeboy said:


> It would be nice to take the cpu out of the equation and have a commercially available h264/ac3 hardware encoder that you just plug into a free pci slot. I see some h264/aac encoder cards and USB sticks using a quick google search, but haven't dug into it much.


Hauppauge makes one called an HD-DVR which takes component video and optical/coax audio and encodes to H.264/AC3. Don't think it's internal though.

Dan


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## davezatz (Apr 18, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> Hauppauge makes one called an HD-DVR which takes component video and optical/coax audio and encodes to H.264/AC3. Don't think it's internal though.


They exist... before there was the HD-DVR, we bought Black Magic cards. Perhaps folks still do.

http://www.amazon.com/Blackmagic-Design-Intensity-Pro-Editing/dp/B001CN9GEA/


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

aforkosh said:


> Uncompressed 1080i and 720p have similar data requirements. (don't forget that 1080i actually only sends 540 lines in any transmission). Each transmission is about 1 million pixels. I would assume that they compress similarly.
> 
> So the transmission type of the original signal (720p or 1080i) should have no bearing on whether Uverse's compression degrades the quality or not.


I DONT know- but isn't it supposed to be easier to compress progressive? So theory being you could be more efficient with that?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

aforkosh said:


> Uncompressed 1080i and 720p have similar data requirements. (don't forget that 1080i actually only sends 540 lines in any transmission). Each transmission is about 1 million pixels. I would assume that they compress similarly.


They'll probably choose the encoding format based on the source. It's difficult to convert 1080i to 720p gracefully, so they'll probably just stick to the format of the source. They may reduce 1080i content to 1440x1080i, but at lower bitrates that'll actually make the perceived quality better since it will increase the bits per pixel, which will be easier to perceive then the slight loss of resolution.

That being said I still think 5Mbps is pushing it. Especially if they're using a realtime encoder. You can probably get away with that using a double pass encoder on a standalone file. However doing a real time encode typically requires a higher bitrate to avoid macroblocks and other encoding artifacts.

Dan


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

Microsoft sues TiVo again

Unless they are just playing hardball to get a better deal, I don't know that i would expect an AT&T deal anytime soon unless they come to an agreement.

Also being discussed in this thread.


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## MitchW (Jun 5, 2002)

Fassade said:


> I do not have numbers, but my experience as a relatively recent switcher to Uverse is that the HD quality is worse than my previous provider (TWC). Uverse transmits in 1080i, but the compression really shows, especially with fast movement. For many programs, it makes little difference, but for fast movements -- explosions in movies, camera panning to follow a long pass in football, and so on -- the picture very noticeably pixellates until the motion calms down.


I have used ATT Uverse for 2 years now and its near perfect quality. However, I use three 32" Sony LCD Bravia TV's and larger screens could be different.

Plus, I can access all my favorite HD movie channels at once in multiview windows. Same with HD News channels.

In addition I have total control of all my TV programming at their Internet Remote Access site.

However, I can only get internet speed of 17 Mbps since I am too far from the VRad for 24 Mbps. They are supposed to build another VRad soon in my neighborhood which will allow me to upgrade.

I'd like to be able to get Tivos with ATT Uverse instead of the Motorolas at present. I used to use a Tivo for years and enjoyed it.

The only downside of ATT Uverse is that I just had to buy a Sony Blue Ray player to get Netflix. For some reason ATT won't let us access Netflix directly.


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