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VIDEO-ON-DEMAND PPV with Sky+HD - Pg. 3 (November 2005)

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BR
Brekkie
I think though with HDTV many people won't be as bothered as other countries, where the switch to HDTV has co-incided with the switch to widescreen, while here in the UK the switch to widescreen was sold as one of the benefits of going digital.
JH
Jonathan H
james2001 posted:
I wouldn'tbe suprised to find even HDTV will be an overcompressed mess. Heck, DAB & normal Digital TV is.


DAB overcompressed? You must be using a duff tuner. DAB clearly sounds better than FM! As regards digital TV compression, it is a fact that a perfectly set up PAL analogue picture is technically (and asthetically) better than most of the digital ones we get nowadays, certainly at the compression and bit rates that the majority of channels output.

How the broadcasters will output their images is still a matter for debate. But if you watch native HDCAM on an HD monitor, you cannot fail to be blown away by the quality and resolution.
JA
james2001 Founding member
Jonathan H posted:
james2001 posted:
I wouldn'tbe suprised to find even HDTV will be an overcompressed mess. Heck, DAB & normal Digital TV is.


DAB overcompressed?


Yup 128Kbps using MP2 compression is hardly impressive. And when several stations are only 64k mono, you know something's wrong.
JA
james2001 Founding member
Gavin Scott posted:
james2001 posted:
I wouldn'tbe suprised to find even HDTV will be an overcompressed mess. Heck, DAB & normal Digital TV is.


You should perhaps watch it first before casting a stone James. It's really quite impressive.


I'm not saying it isn't- what I'm saying is I wouldn't be hugely suprised they go down the same route of DAB & normal Digital by squeezing loads of channels on rediculously low bitrates with awful quality. Compare a DVD which uses something in the region of 6-8Mbps, and then look at digital TV which is around 2-4 Mbps.

DAB's the same- I don't know anyone who downlaods & rips music at less than 198kbps with MP3 compression. The fact that most stereo DAB stations are 128k and use inferior MP2 compression says it all- as does the fact that several stations are only 64k mono. Mono? It's the 21st century for god's sake. It's probabally a good job many DAB recievers a tinny ktihen portables. Even a mid-range Hi-Fi would show up how inferior it sounds to a CD.
HA
harshy Founding member
james2001 posted:
Gavin Scott posted:
james2001 posted:
I wouldn'tbe suprised to find even HDTV will be an overcompressed mess. Heck, DAB & normal Digital TV is.


You should perhaps watch it first before casting a stone James. It's really quite impressive.


I'm not saying it isn't- what I'm saying is I wouldn't be hugely suprised they go down the same route of DAB & normal Digital by squeezing loads of channels on rediculously low bitrates with awful quality. Compare a DVD which uses something in the region of 6-8Mbps, and then look at digital TV which is around 2-4 Mbps.


Yeah I am hoping there's some quality control procedure not allow any tom dick and harry channel launch an HD service, a channel should only be allowed to open a HD service if the content is of a high quality.

12 days later

JA
jay Founding member
Some more developments on Sky HD today...

Firstly, a new Sky HD website: http://hd.sky.com

Secondly, an article from MediaGuardian...

Sky gears up for HDTV launch

Dominic Timms
Monday November 21, 2005



Movies Spider-Man 2 and Kill Bill: Vol I, US dramas 24 and Bones and sport including Premiership football will spearhead BSkyB's move into high definition television early next year.
The satellite broadcaster said today it would launch initially HD versions of four channels - Sky One, Artsworld, Sky Sports and Sky Movies - when it introduces the enhanced service during the "early side" of next year.

Brian Sullivan, the BSkyB director of new product development and sales, said the company was "getting close" to both an official launch date and pricing for the high definition service, which he promised would launch as a "mass market offering from day one".

BSkyB's HDTV channels will be broadcast to a new HD Sky+ box capable of storing and time-shifting programmes and offering a picture quality around five times better than that of normal TV.

The Sky HD service will come with a version of the latest sound system used in cinemas, Dolby 5.1, which Mr Sullivan promised would make watching live football matches akin to "sitting in the stadium".

"You'll be able to sit at home and hear the crowds singing on both sides of the pitch," he said.

In addition to offering four HD channels, Mr Sullivan added that Sky would also offer pay-per-view, video-on -demand content to the HD Sky+ boxes, which will come with a broadband connection.

Sky One HD will have a mix of standard and high definition content, the latter mostly provided by US imports including 24, Rescue Me, Stargate and Bones.

The HD sports channel will offer Guiness Premiership club rugby union and international cricket, as well as Premiership football.

The broadcaster will convert, or "up-res", programmes shot in standard definition to improve picture quality, Mr Sullivan said.

"Everything that looks good in HD we'll put on it."

Mr Sullivan said research showed that the number of HD-ready sets sold in the UK was rising faster than expected.

"We believe that by this Christmas there will be 700,000 HD-ready sets in the market; by next Christmas that will have risen to 2m and by 2020 there should be around 12 million."

He declined to comment on plans by rivals such as Telewest, the BBC amd Discovery to launch HD services, saying only that Sky's would be "the first and only national HD service in the UK for a couple of years".

Admitting Sky would like other broadcasters to launch HD channels, he said "they would be absolutely free to do so" on Sky Digital.

"At the launch we hope to have one or two HD channels that aren't produced by Sky," Mr Sullivan said.

The BBC has been running HD tests since a demonstration unveiled at the technology exhibition IBC in Amsterdam in September.

The BBC director of technology, Caroline Thomson, said last week the BBC was looking to develop HD on all digital platforms - terrestrial, satellite and cable.

Ms Thomson suggested digital terrestrial service Freeview would be able to broadcast HD versions of the five main terrestrial channels, but that HD versions of BBC3 and BBC4 would have to go out on satellite only.
AN
Ant
I bet Telewest's cringing now with this VOD feature coming to Sky!
JA
james2001 Founding member
Where does it say there is a VOD feature coming to SKY? It says it in the thread description, but I can't see it anywhere in this thread.
NI
nidave
james2001 posted:
Where does it say there is a VOD feature coming to SKY? It says it in the thread description, but I can't see it anywhere in this thread.


How can you have Video on demand with sky? didnt think its possable. one of the benifits with the cable transmission system is you can send a stream to just one user - this is not possable with sky as its brodcast to the whole country.

With VOD on cable you send a message to the local headend, where a server is located - it sends the feed to your box. you use the remote to pause rewind and fast forward (this is all done by sending a message to the server and the server doing all the work).

the only way I can think of this working with sky is the hard disk saving the VOD content overnight and using that as a local server.
MR
mromega
Sky will be using two sources for VOD, satellite download to hard disk and Sky Easynet Broadband.

See also...

http://www.sky.com/skybybroadband/home
NI
nidave
mromega posted:
Sky will be using two sources for VOD, satellite download to hard disk and Sky Easynet Broadband.

See also...

http://www.sky.com/skybybroadband/home


Thats not going to be easy to achive and will take years to roll out - they will have to complete the LLU throughout the UK first, presuade people to change phone providers, set up national infeastructure.

Its a HUGE task - they will move from centraly located equipemnt to national located equipment.. I think it will be quite a eye opener for them.
JA
jay Founding member
For those that haven't bothered to read my post above, I have highlighted the relevant VOD section in BOLD.

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