How low can you go?

On Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:59:30 -0700, JPG wrote:
I bet the bitrate goes up during the commercial breaks, otherwise
advertisers would complain.

If I am wrong then please correct me, but as far as I know, ITV-4 is
statistically multiplexed along with the other N stations on Multiplex 2,
so the amount of bandwidth available at any time, including the
commercials, will be determined by how much "action" there is in
the content of the other stations.

Since commercials are not usually fast moving sequences, then they
will not actually need as much bandwidth to maintain a level of quality
as is necessary for a rapidly changing soccer game.

Now the question that people should really be asking is this.

Since PSB-2 is going to be changed to DVB-t2/MPEG-4, COM-1 will no doubt
change over to DVB-2/MPEG-4 sometime in the future. This will mean that
there will be some spare bandwidth available due to the better compression
technology.

So when the changeover occurs, will Digital 3 and 4 use the spare
bandwidth to improve the quality of the picture on existing stations,
or sell off the spare capacity to cram in even more low grade
picture quality stations?

If you were a greedy, profiteering, ruthless multiplex operator,
concerned only with bonuses for the directors and higher quarterly
dividend cheques for the stockholders, which option would you be choosing?

"Let the market decide ..." ?????????

Rob Horton wrote:
Paul D.Smith wrote:
This is just "pants". I flicked over to "Battlefield Earth" on ITV4
last night and even on a 28inch set, it was completely unwatchable.
The slightest "action" and the screen disintegrated into an array of
coloured squares.

Can we get some of the people in charge of Freeview and force them to
watch this crap for an evening?

Paul DS.

I thought this post was going to be about a mail performance enhancing
pill.

The Post Office could certainly need one!

"Paul D.Smith" wrote in message
...
that's what you get for watching such crap - you'd have been luckier if
you couldn't see it at all.

I sort of realised that people would choose to comment on the program
rather than the medium.

For those who care, I was channel surfing and found myself mesmerized by
the sheer poor quality of the media. As I reached this channel, I thought
my PVR had gone wrong because it was all yellow/brown boxes but as I
watched for a couple of minutes, I realised that it was simply the
incredibly poor bitrate and that as soon as anything moved, back they
came.


You've got to wonder how the BBC can manage six channels per 2D transponder
with 720x576 resolution at a reasonable bit-rate, yet ITV use 544x576
resolution and low bit-rates with ****e picture quality, also with six
channels per transponder. They've got no excuse for it to be so bad (except,
of course, that it's ITV we're talking about)