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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
locke6854 @ Feb 23rd 2008 8:51PM
Boo. You know, when I heard that some broadcasters were switching from mpeg2 to mpeg4, i first thought
"hey great! better quality at the same bitrate!"
but they were thinking
"hey great! more stations at lower bitrate!"
not sure which is better.... i suppose more stations is worth it, when we actually get them.
As for multicasting... is this OTA only? or do cable and dish do this?
I'd think it'd be beneficial if one station had a commercial, they'd give more bitrate to the other station.... boost whichever program isn't in commercial. But that'd never happen...
Sean T. @ Feb 24th 2008 12:05AM
I don't know of any U.S. broadcaster using MPEG-4 (although I would love that!) since MPEG-2 is the defacto standard of the ATSC, 8-VSB system. Other countries (like in Europe) are starting to use MPEG-4/h.264 to achieve lower bitrates for their HD offering.
It is possible to send MPEG-4 packets through the U.S. 8-VSB system to 'special' receivers as a form of datacasting, but the standard digital TV in the U.S. would only pay attention to and decode the MPEG-2 packets described in the PSIP (metadata). The average digital TV would/will ignore MPEG-4 or IP data packets and throw them away.
In the future, if manufacturers build in the capability for MPEG-4 or h.264 decoding into the sets it is conceivable that broadcasters could upgrade their encoders and 'flip a switch' to be broadcasting in MPEG-4. However, it would make the present ATSC MPEG-2 receivers in people's homes go dark - sound familiar?