# So close! (Yay!)



## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Those of you that read my posts know that I b*tch a lot about the fact that my cable company still has a bunch of channels that they offer in analog only. Well every now and then I go through the channels on my Elite (now Roamio) checking those channels just to see if they're finally being simulcast. Well today I actually found some. It turns out that about 75% of the channels are now being simulcast. Unfortunately a couple of the ones that aren't are still important so I can't get rid of my Premiere units just yet. However this gives me hope. Maybe in the not to distant future I'll be able to finally get rid of the Premiere units and consolidate everything onto the Roamio. (fingers crossed)


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## uw69 (Jan 25, 2001)

Congrats on making progress!!


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## aztivo (Feb 23, 2005)

Your cable company would like to welcome you to 2005


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Man I really, really, hope they transition those last few channels I need to digital soon. I'd like to give my Elite to my Wife so she can have 4 tuners and have the Mini in her office hosted directly by her own TiVo.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yay! Looks like they converted the rest of the channels this weekend. I started watching The Daily Show and noticed the quality difference immediately. Tried tuning Comedy Central on my Roamio and sure enough it worked. Flipped through the remaining channels and all of them are being simulcast now.

Now I can convert my wife over to the Elite, get rid of the two Premieres and get a Mini for my office. And if TiVo ever adds user profiles we might even be able to consolidate everything onto the one Roamio Pro.

Also I talked to a Charter tech at my Sister's house the other day and he said this was only the beginning. Apparently they're planning on adding 140 HD channels by the end of the year. That would be awesome! We've only got 29 right now, and that includes the premiums.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

29 is sad unless they're the exact right 29 for your viewing habits.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

Nice. It sounds like they're doing an analog crush in many of their regions. Congrats.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

When I got my first HDTV in 2004 we had about 7 HD channels and had to suffer with a horrible Scientific Atlanta DVR.

So you had the welcome to 2005, now welcome to 2009. Can't wait till you get to 2013.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

In two weeks, we are going all digital. They will be adding almost 100 HD channels. After that we will have over 200 HD channels. Charter has been a good value although it is too bad their support sucks. But we can live with it with the channel lineup they are going to be offering.


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## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

Congrats. Same thing sort of happened here. BUT... My cable company (Cableone in Boise, Id), just sent me email saying all the Turner networks are offline because of a contract dispute. Of all the networks that are being blocked, the only thing that affects me is repeats of Smallville and Castle on TNT. No big loss.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

I wouldn't celebrate addition of many HD channels too much. When Cox did it a few years ago overall quality really got affected. Of course Cox here still has all the analog channels in addition to digital versions. So despite being a 1GHz headend with SDV they are still short on bandwidth and squeeze in 3 HD channels per QAM 256 in some cases which really affects quality. I've been told by Cox that part of the problem is in the national backbone they partly use Comcast feeds which already come over-compressed, and so it's not entirely the local headend that is screwing up the quality of many HD channels.

I still much prefer quality over quantity but it seems most consumers just care about quantity. There are maybe a maximum of 15-20 channels that our family actually records from.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

The local cableco here (Service Electric Cable TV in eastern PA) coasted along with about 30 HD channels until 2009. When Verizon announced they were bringing FiOS to the city, they woke up and suddenly brought their tally close to 100. Competition is good. 

Even today they still have around 70 analog channels, with a simulcast of everything. So their HD and digital SD channels are compressed to all hell. Internet uploads are stuck at 1MB (at the time it was 768kbps). It was irritating to see an explosion on Mythbusters (or whatever) be nothing but yellow and orange macroblocks. I was as giddy as a schoolgirl watching the FiOS build-out get closer to my street.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

moyekj said:


> I wouldn't celebrate addition of many HD channels too much. When Cox did it a few years ago overall quality really got affected.


It could happen but in my area we have never had compression issues. We will be all digital and we have SDV. There should not be a need to compress the channels measurably.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

We'll see, but I think over compressed HD still looks better SD.


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## gt7610c (Oct 5, 2002)

Why the eagerness to drop the Premieres for the Minis? Is it the speed or the dropping of the MRC for the cablecards? 

I have some Premieres and an Elite (and no Minis) so am curious what I'm missing out on.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

gt7610c said:


> Why the eagerness to drop the Premieres for the Minis? Is it the speed or the dropping of the MRC for the cablecards?
> 
> I have some Premieres and an Elite (and no Minis) so am curious what I'm missing out on.


I think that says it all for me. The Mini is much faster and also doesn't require a cable card. My only complaint is i can't access my Amazon content from my Minis.


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## t1voproof (Feb 6, 2010)

gt7610c said:


> Why the eagerness to drop the Premieres for the Minis?


Probably a reduced cost due to fewer cable card fees and/or additional outlet fees.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

gt7610c said:


> Why the eagerness to drop the Premieres for the Minis? Is it the speed or the dropping of the MRC for the cablecards?
> 
> I have some Premieres and an Elite (and no Minis) so am curious what I'm missing out on.


Mostly wiring. Right now I have the cable in that room split 5 ways between a modem, a MoCa adapter, the Premier, the tuning adapter and the power source for the amplifier. Without the Premiere I could eliminate two of them and maybe even eliminate the amp. In fact I might be able to just put the MoCa adapter right next to the modem and use it's pass through port eliminating the splitters altogether.

Plus with a Mini I can easily move it over into the guest room when my niece visits and she can use it to watch Disney channel. (previously Disney was analog and there is no cable run to that room, so she was limited to the Netflix app on the TV)

Plus there is the cost savings of less power usage and no CableCARD.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Dan203 said:


> We'll see, but I think over compressed HD still looks better than SD.


+1


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I moved my wife over to the Elite last night. CableCARD transfer took about 5 minutes. Was even faster then when I did my Roamio because apparently the woman I was talking to had privileges to unpair the card and did not need to have a supervisor do it for her.

So based on my recent experience moving a CableCARD to a new TiVo is cake, but setting up a new one is still a huge PITA.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Just got a robo call from Charter today warning me that they are switching to all digital soon and that if I have any TVs which do not have a box I need to get one. The best part of the call was they said the update would include 150 new HD channels. We currently only have about 20 so that's a huge step up for us. Can't wait for the switchover.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> Just got a robo call from Charter today warning me that they are switching to all digital soon and that if I have any TVs which do not have a box I need to get one. The best part of the call was they said the update would include 150 new HD channels. We currently only have about 20 so that's a huge step up for us. Can't wait for the switchover.


That is cool. We switched over 2 days ago to all digital. I was told the lines outside of Charter were wild. And it is taking forever to activate any device. If you plan on activating anything, you might want to do it soon or wait until well after the switch over. The issue in our area is the switch over is taking a month and a half. So some people switched this week and some will not switch until December. It is causing a lot of confusion.

But I am enjoying all the HD channels we got. I can't think of a single channel that we don't have in HD now that I ever watch.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

We don't have any devices that need to be activated. We have TiVos and Minis in every room, so the digital switchover isn't affecting us. (my Sister is being affected, her two kids' rooms were using straight analog)

I'm really looking forward to the new HD channels. I recently rewatched The Walking Dead on Netflix, ahead of the new season, and it was HD. Watching the last few episodes in SD has been pretty painful. Also since they started simulcasting the quality of Comedy Central has been terrible. Tosh.0, The Daily Show and Colbert all look worse then they did when I was recording them from analog.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Tomorrow is the the day! 

The TiVo lineup has already been updated to include the new channels, but none of them are functional yet. I'll try again after midnight and see if they come alive.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> Tomorrow is the the day!
> 
> The TiVo lineup has already been updated to include the new channels, but none of them are functional yet. I'll try again after midnight and see if they come alive.


I still have about 10 channels that are missing guide data after more than a month of being all-digital. However, all of them are obscure channels or VOD channels so it hasn't affected me. But the first day of guide data had many duplicate channels and channels listed with the wrong number. But they fixed all of them really quick.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I just rearan GS on a TiVo I don't really use much except for OTA. It seems to have all the important channels I want. Just need them to go live so I can actually watch them. 

Although they seemed to have done a pretty good job of keeping the current lineup as-is and squeeze in the new channels around them. (good planning? Or dumb luck?) So it shouldn't cause any problems with current SPs or recordings.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

moyekj said:


> I wouldn't celebrate addition of many HD channels too much. When Cox did it a few years ago overall quality really got affected. Of course Cox here still has all the analog channels in addition to digital versions. So despite being a 1GHz headend with SDV they are still short on bandwidth and squeeze in 3 HD channels per QAM 256 in some cases which really affects quality. I've been told by Cox that part of the problem is in the national backbone they partly use Comcast feeds which already come over-compressed, and so it's not entirely the local headend that is screwing up the quality of many HD channels.
> 
> I still much prefer quality over quantity but it seems most consumers just care about quantity. There are maybe a maximum of 15-20 channels that our family actually records from.


3 HD per 38 Mbps QAM is 12.67 Mbps per channel. Is that really that hateful? I suppose it depends on how well they're compressing, and maybe size (of your TV screen) does matter.

HD channels on my TWC system are 12 Mbps. I would have to have a larger TV and/or better eyes for that to be problem.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

dlfl said:


> 3 HD per 38 Mbps QAM is 12.67 Mbps per channel. Is that really that hateful? I suppose it depends on how well they're compressing, and maybe size (of your TV screen) does matter.
> 
> HD channels on my TWC system are 12 Mbps. I would have to have a larger TV and/or better eyes for that to be problem.


 Considering that some stations such as CBS use almost 18 Mbps for their OTA 1080i HD yes, I would say 12 Mbps in comparison is pretty bad. CBS bit rate via Cox is actually still pretty good here and doesn't suffer much rate shaping and thus on par with the OTA version. It is quite striking to me even on a small 40" screen how much better CBS looks compared to say USA, Discovery or some of the other national HD channels we get from Cox.
Remember we're talking mpeg2 compression here, not H.264. Good quality DVDs (remember those) with only 720x480 resolution can be almost 10 Mbps as a comparison point.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

moyekj said:


> Considering that some stations such as CBS use almost 18 Mbps for their OTA 1080i HD yes, I would say 12 Mbps in comparison is pretty bad. CBS bit rate via Cox is actually still pretty good here and doesn't suffer much rate shaping and thus on par with the OTA version. It is quite striking to me even on a small 40" screen how much better CBS looks compared to say USA, Discovery or some of the other national HD channels we get from Cox.
> Remember we're talking mpeg2 compression here, not H.264. Good quality DVDs (remember those) with only 720x480 resolution can be almost 10 Mbps as a comparison point.


Hopefully cable companies that are now all-digital will start switching to h.264 on more channels. If the compression is done right it will let them provide a better quality at a smaller bitrate. Of course being a cable company means they will find a reason to use that extra bandwidth and over compress the channels. But one can dream.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

rainwater said:


> Of course being a cable company means they will find a reason to use that extra bandwidth and over compress the channels.


Of course, because then they can add 15 more reality TV channels, several more non-English channels, four more shopping channels, and the watching paint dry channel. Then raise the bill another 20%.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

rainwater said:


> Hopefully cable companies that are now all-digital will start switching to h.264 on more channels. If the compression is done right it will let them provide a better quality at a smaller bitrate. Of course being a cable company means they will find a reason to use that extra bandwidth and over compress the channels. But one can dream.


 Yes, I'm still quite blown away by quality of Netflix H.264 HD streams considering they max out at ~ 6 Mbps. To me the Netflix HD streams look better than many "HD" channels Cox has in their lineup. Watching "The Killing" seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix was better quality than watching season 3 recorded from Cox AMCHD on my TiVos.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

moyekj said:


> Considering that some stations such as CBS use almost 18 Mbps for their OTA 1080i HD yes, I would say 12 Mbps in comparison is pretty bad. CBS bit rate via Cox is actually still pretty good here and doesn't suffer much rate shaping and thus on par with the OTA version. It is quite striking to me even on a small 40" screen how much better CBS looks compared to say USA, Discovery or some of the other national HD channels we get from Cox.
> Remember we're talking mpeg2 compression here, not H.264. Good quality DVDs (remember those) with only 720x480 resolution can be almost 10 Mbps as a comparison point.


It's actually over 19 Mbps for the ATSC spec. Don't think that just because its retransmitted over cable that's the only reason for them to use signal compression. The NBC affiliate I worked for as transmitter engineer also reduced the transmission bit rate from 19.6 to 12.x so they could squeeze in sub-channels for OTA broadcasting as well. Just consider yourself lucky if you're in a market that has a station that uses their whole 6MHz spectrum for one full bit rate HD Channel!


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

crxssi said:


> Of course, because then they can add 15 more reality TV channels, several more non-English channels, four more shopping channels, and the watching paint dry channel. Then raise the bill another 20%.


 I can't stop laughing!!!


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

moyekj said:


> Considering that some stations such as CBS use almost 18 Mbps for their OTA 1080i HD yes, I would say 12 Mbps in comparison is pretty bad.


Just numbers. Apparent PQ is what counts.


moyekj said:


> CBS bit rate via Cox is actually still pretty good here and doesn't suffer much rate shaping and thus on par with the OTA version. It is quite striking to me even on a small 40" screen how much better CBS looks compared to say USA, Discovery or some of the other national HD channels we get from Cox.


TWC here seems to mimic the OTA bitrates on those local channels. For example, PBS is 15Mbps whether via antenna or TWC cable. Cable-only HD channels are around 12 Mbps though.

I suppose if I viewed my 40" screen at 5 ft instead of 8-10 feet I might see a significant difference but in practice the 12 Mbps channels view fine for me. Perhaps your system isn't encoding the 12 Mbps channels as efficiently as mine. (?)


moyekj said:


> Remember we're talking mpeg2 compression here, not H.264. Good quality DVDs (remember those) with only 720x480 resolution can be almost 10 Mbps as a comparison point.


Fully aware of the mpeg2 vs. H.264 thing.

The spec for DVD is "up to 9.8 Mbps" (http://www.videohelp.com/dvd) but the actual bit rates vary dynamically and are more typically in the 2 to 4 Mbps range in my experience.


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

crxssi said:


> Of course, because then they can add 15 more reality TV channels, several more non-English channels, four more shopping channels, and the watching paint dry channel. Then raise the bill another 20%.


Don't underestimate the beauty of WPD Channel!


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

........as well as the ever popular WGG (Watching Grass Grow) channel!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

moyekj said:


> Good quality DVDs (remember those) with only 720x480 resolution can be almost 10 Mbps as a comparison point.


The DVD spec allows for up to 9.8Mbps, but most movies are actually encoded at about 6Mbps. For a short period there were a few movies released as "superbit" which had no special features and were encoded at the max bitrate, but the vast majority of DVDs are in the 6Mbps range.

If you use a bits per pixel calculation to extrapolate that out then the equivalent bitrates for HD would be...

720p = 32Mbps
1080i = 36Mbps
1080p/24 = 28.8Mbps

That's why we needed BluRay.

Now if you look at most SD cable channels they are actually about 2.5Mbps and only 704x480. If we use the same calculation to extrapolate that to HD then we get...

720p = 13.6Mbps
1080i = 15.3Mbps

Those are inline with what most broadcasters use for HD. They sometimes can go a little lower, but if you use longer GOPs and more B frames you can do that without sacrificing too much quality.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Dan203 said:


> 720p = 13.6Mbps
> 1080i = 15.3Mbps
> 
> Those are inline with what most broadcasters use for HD. They sometimes can go a little lower, but if you use longer GOPs and more B frames you can do that without sacrificing too much quality.


 Not here with Cox. 1080i for many channels is 11-13 Mbps and 720p channels lower than that. CBS HD is the only channel I record from that clocks in higher than 15 Mbps. At the end of the day though bit rate is only 1 measure of quality. TNT HD here has a fairly high bit rate (14 Mbps or so) but NBA games still look like crap because 30 frames per second just doesn't cut it for live sports. The Fox Sports channels are 720p which is much better suited for sports.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I haven't tested any of the new channels yet. They just went live last night around 2:00am. No matter the bitrate the channels I watch still look significantly better in HD then SD.

One thing I forgot to consider in my calculation is that BDs use H.264 encoding (or VC-1 which is similar) so they actually have better bitrates then the "superbit" DVDs when you account for the codec advantage.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

moyekj said:


> Not here with Cox. 1080i for many channels is 11-13 Mbps and 720p channels lower than that.


Yep, same here with Cox. Their "HD" bitrates suck and I get noticeably better video OTA compared to cable. This is one reason I was very unhappy to lose OTA tuning on the reasonable Roamio models (because I am used to "turning off" all the cable local channels and letting the TiVo record those OTA for higher bitrates and less conversion).


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

moyekj said:


> Not here with Cox. 1080i for many channels is 11-13 Mbps and 720p channels lower than that. CBS HD is the only channel I record from that clocks in higher than 15 Mbps. At the end of the day though bit rate is only 1 measure of quality. TNT HD here has a fairly high bit rate (14 Mbps or so) but NBA games still look like crap because 30 frames per second just doesn't cut it for live sports. The Fox Sports channels are 720p which is much better suited for sports.


Yep, Technically bandwidth performance is a function of how much motion is in the video content rather than the resolution/pixel count of the video.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/878886/which-requires-more-bandwidth-720p-or-1080i


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

HarperVision said:


> Yep, Technically bandwidth performance is a function of how much motion is in the video content rather than the resolution/pixel count of the video.
> 
> http://www.avsforum.com/t/878886/which-requires-more-bandwidth-720p-or-1080i


Kind of. Motion is encoded but so are unique macroblocks that can not be duplicated from previous frames. So if there are a lot of hard cuts thy can effect bitrate as well. And higher resolution means more macroblocks.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> Kind of. Motion is encoded but so are unique macroblocks that can not be duplicated from previous frames. So if there are a lot of hard cuts thy can effect bitrate as well. And higher resolution means more macroblocks.


Notice I said bandwidth "performance". I did that to explain why a lower bandwidth 720p signal can "perform" better than a higher 1080i one when dealing with high motion scenes like sports, as mentioned in my quoted post by moyekj.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

59.94fps progressive will always be more efficient then 29.97 interlaced at any resolution. Interlaced video isn't as easy to encode using temporal compression so it always going to require higher bitrates to maintain quality. That's kind of an apples and oranges comparison. If we were comparing 720p to 1080p then resolution would play a much bigger roll.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> 59.94fps progressive will always be more efficient then 29.97 interlaced at any resolution. Interlaced video isn't as easy to encode using temporal compression so it always going to require higher bitrates to maintain quality. That's kind of an apples and oranges comparison. If we were comparing 720p to 1080p then resolution would play a much bigger roll.


........and??? I don't understand why you're disagreeing with my agreement??? I'm not only talking about "efficiency", I'm talking about "performance", as in how good the image looks afterwards. (i.e. - fast motion sports). Did you read the link?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

You said...


HarperVision said:


> Yep, Technically bandwidth performance is a function of how much motion is in the video content rather than the resolution/pixel count of the video.


I was pointing out that the performance if 720p vs 1080i has more to do with interlaced vs progressive then motion or resolution. If we were comparing apples to apples (i.e. 720p vs 1080p) then the scale would be more linear and pixels would in fact be the biggest factor.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

.......and I was pointing out, agreeing with and furthering moyekj's comment that on his system 720p sports looked better than his channel with 1080i sports, and the fast motion in the sport (basketball) is a strong reason why. I don't think I was trying to compare as much as "add to". 

I think I messed up how I was trying to say it though. It was very late for me last night. I go back and read what I wrote and it confuses me too, hahaha!


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

Dan203 said:


> 59.94fps progressive will always be more efficient then 29.97 interlaced at any resolution. Interlaced video isn't as easy to encode using temporal compression so it always going to require higher bitrates to maintain quality. That's kind of an apples and oranges comparison. If we were comparing 720p to 1080p then resolution would play a much bigger roll.


Interlaced video is an abomination and should have NEVER been included in the HD standard. I hate it. Most people hate it. Oh well.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

crxssi said:


> Interlaced video is an abomination and should have NEVER been included in the HD standard. I hate it. Most people hate it. Oh well.


 THAT we can all agree on!!!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

crxssi said:


> Interlaced video is an abomination and should have NEVER been included in the HD standard. I hate it. Most people hate it. Oh well.


The HDTV spec was devised back in the 90s when CRTs were still the dominant TV technology, so it made sense back then. Plus ATSC doesn't allow enough bandwidth on a single frequency to support MPEG-2 1080p, so 1080i was the only way to get the maximum resolution. (actually 1080p/30 is in the spec, but no one uses it because the frame rate isn't high enough)

That being said there was a revision to ATSC back in 08 that added support for 1080p/60 using H.264. If broadcasters ever start using that then we may finally see the death of interlaced. However that's going to break a lot of existing equipment so I don't think we'll be seeing it any time soon. Maybe in a decade when the majority of TVs and equipment in the field have the ability to decode H.264.


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