MPEG4 May Threaten HDTV Standards
Thursday March 17, 2005
The HDTV transition is well in progress as broadcasters continue to invest in equipment, while retail sales of HD-compatible televisions continue on a steady pace. However, all this investment by both broadcasters and consumers may encounter an obstacle as satellite providers embrace MPEG4 video encoding.
Currently, HDTV programming employs MPEG2 compression encoding and is the standard used throughout the industry to keep both the broadcast and viewing end of the HDTV equation compatible. However, satellite providers, in an effort to find a way to provide more HD channels, without having to launch a lot more satellites, are embracing MPEG4 compression encoding for HDTV signals, which takes up less bandwith space than MPEG2. This move may raise some compatibility issues with current HDTV equipment. For additional details on this potentially important development, and what it may mean for the consumer, check out the report from Audio/Video Revolution.
Comments
First it was Laser Disc then DVD now BluRay. The formats keep changing and we keep upgrading like suckers.
The HDTV specs are terrible, MPEG 2 and 19.8 mbps for broadcasting which ends up being terribly over compressed. 1080p doesn’t even fit and 1080i looks really bad.
Satellite companies moving to MPEG 4 is smart money but it won’t look very good on large projection TV’s. It works OK on computer screens were low bit rate is needed.
I understand your frustration over the bit-rates for broadcast HDTV - however, the bit rates used in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD are much higher (up to 36mbps) the results, especially in the HD-DVD format, are much better than broadcast HDTV.
I am not sure what you mean about 1080p not fitting - although it is not a current broadcast standard - it is available from native sources, such as Blu-ray Disc players, or from the result of upscaling, either from a separate video scaler or from an upscaling DVD player - on large screens, 1080p looks more film-like than 1080i - as it has minimal artifacts, if done correctly.
Robert Silva
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