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Abc1 Soon To Be Hd ?


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9 hours ago, davmel said:

Digging deeper they appear to still be using dual stream audio on many terrestrial HD channels with AC3 DD5.1 in addition to MPEG-1 layer 2 (like some of our Australian broadcasters did many years ago). But the UK also transmits their channels on Freeview SAT and they appear to have identical (mostly dual AC3/MPEG) audio streams as on terrestrial, see transponder 10847 V:

Certainly use dd5.1 and mpeg decoding [MPEG-2/MPEG-1 layer I & II ] in Iceland davmel ; a typical stb ;

http://tv.fo/content/DVB-T2-MPEG4-HD-2.pdf

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41 minutes ago, alanh said:

CWT,

You need to read more than the titie on the front. The specifications (at the back), are not DVB-T2 at all it is the same as our old STBs. It is a DVB-T box with HD and SD and no Dolby 5.1

Alanh

what titie ? i dont see no tities

after making me scroll through a manual with lots of articles and no tities i found

MPEG-2 layer ii which supports up to 5 full range audio channels and an LFE-channel (Low Frequency Enhancement channel)

 

Edited by mello yello
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Mello yello,

You need to read more than the titie on the front page. The specifications (at the back), are not DVB-T2 at all it is the same as our old STBs. It is a DVB-T box with HD and SD and no Dolby 5.1

Video Decoding "MPEG-2 & MEPG-1 compatible" MPEG-1 has never been used for broadcasting vision. There is no MPEG-4 which is required by all broadcasters who transmit DVB-T2.

There is no mention of AC3 which provides the Dolby 5.1 signals. MPEG-2/MPEG-1 layer I & II is incapable of surround sound. If this STB was MPEG-4 capable, it also has to provide AAC sound compression which is also surround sound capable.

Alanh

Edited by alanh
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14 hours ago, alanh said:

CWT,

You need to read more than the titie on the front. The specifications (at the back), are not DVB-T2 at all it is the same as our old STBs. It is a DVB-T box with HD and SD and no Dolby 5.1

Alanh

Good to see you checked the specs carefully Alan ; even had a diagram showing the dolby ac3 5.1 sp/dif if you bothered to read the pdf :rolleyes:

btw was referencing what davmel said  

Quote

Digging deeper they appear to still be using dual stream audio on many terrestrial HD channels with AC3 DD5.1 in addition to MPEG-1 layer 2 (like some of our Australian broadcasters did many years ago).

didn't even mention mpeg4 ...

Quote

Rear Panel Description 
 
1 TERRESTRIAL IN Terr. input of the digital tuner. 2 LOOP OUT Terr. output for cascading to others devices. 3 VIDEO CVBS video output for TV AV in. 4 AUDIO HiFi output for stereo set. 5 COAXIAL S/PDIF Coaxial output for digital audio (AC3) 6 USB To connect with USB disk. 7 HDMI HDMI output for the connection to a TV set. 8 AC IN Mains input cable.


 
 

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  • 4 weeks later...

So when are the ABC going to convert their studios to make HD programs?

They already have a distribution network which can transmit HD programs in MPEG-4 to all Australians. They are busilly upscaling their current SD programs of which there are many up to HD, but this does not improve image sharpness.

If they were to reequip their studios, then the transcoding would become unnecessary except for downscalling to the internet and mobile devices.

Then again if they were to be innovators and convert to DVB-T2 they could not only transmit more channels of HD but also to mobile devices from the same transmitters. There is millions of mobile phones in India which receive DVB-T2 from the broadcasters for free, and not the telco. Again this would make much of the transcoding irrelevant.

Alanh

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A bit more news from a very obliging Audience and Consumer Affairs lady in the ABC - no surprises here though - as there appears to be an increase in native HD programming over the past couple of weeks.  Some more bit rate on the HD channel would be nice though.

 

"Dear Sir,

 

Thank you for your email.  ABC Reception Advice have passed your email to Audience & Consumer Affairs for response.  Please accept my apologies for the delay in doing so.

 

It is correct that on Dec 7 we were only airing upconverted SD content until all our technical processes and requirements were completed (in mid Dec). In addition, not all of the content owned by the ABC is HD quality. When the ABC has HD quality programs, these are broadcast in full 1080i HD, which is higher resolution than the previous ABC News24 HD, which was 720p. The ABC is working towards increasing the number of programs it owns in HD, and expects to be fully native HD in the future.

 

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

 

Regards"

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ABC HD Sydney has ditched Dolby Digital audio (AC-3), which was only stereo, and replaced it with MPEG stereo @256kb/s.

So I guess that means any chance of providing some 5.1 AC-3 has bitten the dust.  It's 2017, and we're going backwards.

I'm amazed that pairing archaic MPEG stereo audio with h.264 HD video is even allowed in the DVB standard!

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Craig,

How many programs are they transmitting with surround sound content, not just the indicator showing? I suspect probably none. They are probably on the hunt for more spare data rate. They could have got surround sound using HE-AAC audio compression  https://www2.iis.fraunhofer.de/AAC/multichannel.html which is in the current Australian standard. It is backward compatible with stereo and mono and is part of the h.265 standards. Remember they are the last metro network to go HD 2nd time around.

Alanh

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The ABC are probably so desperate to save money that by moving to MPEG audio they don't have to pay royalties to Dolby or their license fee. Given that it's a MPEG-4 HD channel the audio should have been AAC rather than MPEG-1 because backwards compatibility isn't needed.

Oh, and Alanh, for bitrates of 128kbps and higher (whether stereo or surround sound 5.1+ channels) LC-AAC should be used. HE-AAC is preferred only for <128kbps streams.

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There is barely any HD content anyway, I remember when HD was a big thing all the stations began pumping out 1080 content everywhere and then it died down, quite a scam if you ask me when we have all these modern high definition TV's and cant watch anything nice on them unless we buy DVD Movies or pay for Foxtel.

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Whilst there is still a way to go, over the last couple of weeks, definitely more native HD content on the ABC. Some good viewing last night at, what to the naked eye, appeared a pretty reasonable bit rate (for FTA).  

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  • 3 weeks later...

The ABC 7pm News in Sydney on Ch 20 tonight looks terrible.  Have the ABC changed upconverters?  Looks really bad, like no intelligent interpolation is being used to upconvert 576/50i to 1080/50i.  Really bad scaling artefacts.

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14 hours ago, Craig M said:

The ABC 7pm News in Sydney on Ch 20 tonight looks terrible.  Have the ABC changed upconverters?  Looks really bad, like no intelligent interpolation is being used to upconvert 576/50i to 1080/50i.  Really bad scaling artefacts.

The ABC news on ABC HD looks terrible everywhere - had a look at all the state VAST channels last night and the quality was very poor.  In my post above, I was referring to general entertainment programming - some of which is native HD.  

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As I type, The Drum as received FTA in Brisbane on 2 (SD) and 20 (nominal HD)  is very blurry, below the usual standard for standard definition TV.

Why the ABC have allowed this to occur, I do not know.

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  • 2 months later...
On 16/12/2016 at 7:42 PM, pgdownload said:

Foxtel don't go all HD for many reasons (probably mostly technical) but SD legacy boxes isn't one of them. Foxtel realised a few years ago that getting an IQ box into a household dramatically reduced churn. They've been practically giving away IQ (HD) boxes to anyone and everyone for years.

That still leaves a lot of IQ1 boxes, of course.  No MPEG-4 on those babies.  The IQ1 reduced churn just as much as the IQ2.

That being said, we are now 11 years down the track.  I do expect the percentage to be far closer to 0% than to 100%, or even 50%.

I've met a couple of people that have IQ2 boxes without the HD package, so Foxtel can't be considering them to be *too* valuable to waste.

CK.

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On 20/12/2016 at 9:10 AM, pc9 said:

ABC radio continue to bang on about ABC TV in HD on new years eve commencing with the fireworks.  We live in hope.........

Things have definitely changed from the days of 1999-2000 when Four Corners released a special report condemning HDTV.

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So — let's talk upconversion.

The quality of ABC SD material has really taken a hit.  They're using a different upconverter than was used on ABC News 24 and previously on ABC HD in the MPEG-2 720p days.

This new upconverter handles the logo automatically but takes 100% of the news content and makes it really blocky.  Same goes for anything not sourced in HD.

The really interesting thing is comparing QandA from when it's in Sydney (studio 21, using the news department playout in pure SD) versus QanA on the road, when it's in HD.

So while we have some really good news-ish content in crystal-clear HD now — e.g. Media Watch, Four Corners — we're left with a downgrade for everything else.

And it's not like the other networks where the SD material goes out 'raw' on the SD channel — no, ABC upscales SD to 1080i, then back down again for 576i.

So the SD channel looks rubbish too now.

CK.

 

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3 hours ago, ckent said:

That still leaves a lot of IQ1 boxes, of course.  No MPEG-4 on those babies.

That's not correct. The very first IQ box was MPEG-2 and SD only (very very few of these are still working in the field). The more compact IQ1 released around the time of the IQ2 was very much MPEG-4 capable. It could even decode 720p HD as well. The IQ1 stores and plays back streamed content on the SD MPEG-4 version of the timeshift channel which saves space on the hard drive. The SD MPEG-2 timeshift channel has only been needed for the very old first gen IQ STB's.

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On 21/05/2017 at 0:41 AM, davmel said:

That's not correct. The very first IQ box was MPEG-2 and SD only (very very few of these are still working in the field). The more compact IQ1 released around the time of the IQ2 was very much MPEG-4 capable. It could even decode 720p HD as well. The IQ1 stores and plays back streamed content on the SD MPEG-4 version of the timeshift channel which saves space on the hard drive. The SD MPEG-2 timeshift channel has only been needed for the very old first gen IQ STB's.

Heh, cool.  I guess it doesn't make much sense to call it an IQ1 then really?  Just must be their internal designation.  So what CAN'T it do — 1080i?  HDMI?  Maybe it should be called the IQ1.5 or something.

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On 20/05/2017 at 8:52 PM, ckent said:

So — let's talk upconversion.

The quality of ABC SD material has really taken a hit.  They're using a different upconverter than was used on ABC News 24 and previously on ABC HD in the MPEG-2 720p days.

This new upconverter handles the logo automatically but takes 100% of the news content and makes it really blocky.  Same goes for anything not sourced in HD.

The really interesting thing is comparing QandA from when it's in Sydney (studio 21, using the news department playout in pure SD) versus QanA on the road, when it's in HD.

So while we have some really good news-ish content in crystal-clear HD now — e.g. Media Watch, Four Corners — we're left with a downgrade for everything else.

And it's not like the other networks where the SD material goes out 'raw' on the SD channel — no, ABC upscales SD to 1080i, then back down again for 576i.

So the SD channel looks rubbish too now.

CK.

 

Well well well, something seems to have changed in the last 7 days.  Or at least it impacted Sydney between yesterday (Sunday) and the Sunday before that.

I have a recording of the last two Insiders episodes — plus the news bulletins before that — and the one from the last 7 days is significantly improved.

I think we're more or less 6 months into ABC HD Take 2.  6 months seems to be how long it takes the networks to get their act together … we saw the same thing for HD content to appear on GEM and 7mate, and Ten HD went into a 6-month overhaul around 2003 before the quota came into effect.

We're into Take 3 of Ten HD now … but there's still no HD on it from TV series outside Australia.  I would love some new CBS content in native 1080i / 1080pSF one day.

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Slattery,

This is unlikely. The main suppliers of overseas ABC programs is the UK which has been purely HD production for a long time as has the major networks in the USA. The UK does simulcast SD versions of their HD programs, but the downscaling occurs just prior to transmission.All UK HD transmission is MPEG-4 where as in the USA it is MPEG-2.

It would cost them extra to make special SD version for the ABC.

The cost of satellite time is related to the data rate. The data rate for SD MPEG-2 is about the same as HD MPEG-4. However the ABC rarely does this because it cannot afford the program rights for the original program let alone the satellite time so no live via satellite.

The only live satellite programming is news which is distributed to many broadcasters from the same satellite at the same time which reduces the cost to an individual broadcater.

Alanh

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