7mate

[DrP]

Seeing how you believe you know exactly what I'm doing and that my equipment is substandard and that to you I must be a mental defective and that you further reckon that I must be blind deaf and dumb amongst the million and one other put-downs you can manage to assemble to denigrate my opinion regarding the latest changes to the FTA DTV signal, there is nothing further that needs to be said. You know it all...

Yes Steve C, that's precisely it. Your equipment is substandard by your own statements. 7 has decided to make a change to its broadcast and has provided ample notification of doing so.

The reason for 7 doing what it has done has been explained to you by me and others many times now. Since you still appear to fail to grasp the details of the issue and since you have demonstrated elsewhere that you are an otherwise intelligent person it has to be assumed that you have some sort of mental defect that is preventing you from comprehending what has been said. That or you are deliberately putting such advice aside simply so you can continue to bleat like a lost lamb.

Now would you please set about saying nothing more as per your post as I'm sure the forum will be a better place without your continual whining and continual restating of the same thing.

Edited September 30, 2010 by DrP

[DrP]

Why do you need to be a millionaire?

Its simple. Only a millionaire could afford to subscribe to Foxtel. That one can afford to purchase a nice new HD TV and therefore clearly have the disposal income to afford to rent discs or subscribe to Foxtel is beside the point!

[Wags69]

Why do you need to be a millionaire?

It costs too much IMO, there is nothing on foxtel that I would pay money for. 50 bucks a month for weird sports I don't care about and reruns of 60's tv shows..........I can see them for free now!

And I don't even know how much the HD channels cost, or what specs they are broadcast in, I assume its more than that though.

[Dyllip]

Out of curiosity, how much a month is Foxtel HD for a basic suite of channels in HD?

Edited September 30, 2010 by Dyllip

[Al Leece]

This is a most confusing tributary off an essentially very simple thread. Seven have pushed their HD channel into a small-market area that broadcasts to males aged 25-50, allegedly. Out of that content, only films, moreover films made very recently, or live sports coverage is going to have any chance of being HD; even then it is likely to be 1080i and not 1080p. I do think they ought to be shuffling material around, though, and showing whatever sports they do broadcast in HD - if the AFL final is not on 7Mate this week, there are likely to be ructions I would think!

(As a matter of fact, do Foxtel broadcast 1080p? Is that even possible currently, or are they simply relying on higher data rates than FTA to give better quality picture on 1080i content?)

For any - ANY - TV company, Foxtel included, 99.5% of all content available to be broadcast is not HD; much of it is sub-PAL standard (NTSC) since it originated in the States, therefore buying any HD tv purely for better broadcast quality over SD would have been a misunderstanding. Buying an HD TV to take advantage of an up-scaling DVD or Bluray player while having a pretty good picture on broadcast TV (with a decent tuner) is the realistic reasoning behind having an HD TV.

I agree, the gov. of the day was happy to let companies sell surplus SD equipment to an unsuspecting public in full knowledge that the purchasers would have to go out and buy again when HD came in (and knowing, of course, that HD broadcasting was in the pipeline). That is the disappointing aspect of digital roll-out for me.

But really, even watching re-runs of corny 70s and 80s shows on my TV gives better quality pictures than I saw when they were first broadcast.

FWIW I think Foxtel charge far too much for the HD channels (they tend to be in the top-end packages) and the amount of HD broadcast material does not warrant that cost - for me. Besides, although I have an HD TV I don't have money to throw at Foxtel every month. I also prefer quantity *and* quality, but the balance point for me is having more choice of channels rather than a few HD channels that can only currently show a small amount of HD content.

Kerching! 2c.

Cheers,

Al.

[davmel]

Its simple. Only a millionaire could afford to subscribe to Foxtel.

Wow! There are 1.6 million millionaires in Australia! I must check with my accountant because I never knew I was a millionaire even though my bank account clearly showed otherwise the last time I checked. What about all the people who blow many times the price of a platinum subscription on smokes and booze, are they billionaires?

Thanks to Foxtel I have saved an enormous amount of money by never needing to buy or rent DVD's or go to the movies for a decade now and had access to a far larger range of legal content than I could ever select from in DVD's or the movie theatre.

[keiron]

It does seem strange that 7 aren't showing the AFL Grand Final rematch on 7mate in HD. It's not as though 7mate have any worthwhile content in the timeslot, either. Seems like a bad case of "can't be bothered".

[davmel]

It does seem strange that 7 aren't showing the AFL Grand Final rematch on 7mate in HD. It's not as though 7mate have any worthwhile content in the timeslot, either. Seems like a bad case of "can't be bothered".

Why would they waste a simulcast to show an upscaled SD screening on 7mate? The channel is not yet capable of showing any native HD yet and who knows how long it will be before that changes.

[DrP]

Wow! There are 1.6 million millionaires in Australia! I must check with my accountant because I never knew I was a millionaire even though my bank account clearly showed otherwise the last time I checked. What about all the people who blow many times the price of a platinum subscription on smokes and booze, are they billionaires?

Thanks to Foxtel I have saved an enormous amount of money by never needing to buy or rent DVD's or go to the movies for a decade now and had access to a far larger range of legal content than I could ever select from in DVD's or the movie theatre.

Perhaps a few sarcasm icons are needed in my post.

[davmel]

(As a matter of fact, do Foxtel broadcast 1080p? Is that even possible currently, or are they simply relying on higher data rates than FTA to give better quality picture on 1080i content?)

The data rates on Foxtel are lower than FTA but the picture quality looks much better than FTA due to H.264 encoding. There is no 1080p on Foxtel as yet but there is little benefit to gain over 1080i.

For any - ANY - TV company, Foxtel included, 99.5% of all content available to be broadcast is not HD

Bunkem. A huge amount of content on Foxtel now is native HD. It's rare to see a movie on the HD channels that isn't HD and a substantial portion of the sports on the HD sports channels is HD.

[Wags69]

Thanks to Foxtel I have saved an enormous amount of money by never needing to buy or rent DVD's or go to the movies for a decade now and had access to a far larger range of legal content than I could ever select from in DVD's or the movie theatre.

Gee, thanks foxtel!

Just my opinion champ, but I prefer to rent a Blu-ray or two a month and watch it how and when I want to in much better quality that crappy foxtel!

BTW, Blu-ray rentals from "Joes servo" around the corner are $2 overnight, although some are $1.50.

But thats just me mate! I'm happy you love foxtel and for all the money you are saving.

[doodlefeatures]

Why would they waste a simulcast to show an upscaled SD screening on 7mate? The channel is not yet capable of showing any native HD yet and who knows how long it will be before that changes.

?? The GF was on 7mate last weekend, I though the issue was they weren't filming it in HD

[davmel]

Just my opinion champ, but I prefer to rent a Blu-ray or two a month and watch it how and when I want to in much better quality that crappy foxtel!

Much better quality? There is hardly any noticeable difference between Foxtel HD and Bluray. And that difference is completely moot when you can get vastly more HD content on Foxtel than you ever could through blu-ray. You can't watch any LIVE HD broadcasts on Blu-ray so you're more than welcome to stick with your crappy plastic discs if you want to have a fraction of HD content viewing.

[davmel]

?? The GF was on 7mate last weekend, I though the issue was they weren't filming it in HD

No it wasn't. The 7mate multicast only started AFTER the GF at 6pm. That's why the GF was the very last native HD broadcast from Seven as it was still the 7HD simulcast.

[Wags69]

vastly more HD content on Foxtel than you ever could through blu-ray.

Not stuff i want to watch though.

Edited September 30, 2010 by Wags

[doodlefeatures]

No it wasn't. The 7mate multicast only started AFTER the GF at 6pm. That's why the GF was the very last native HD broadcast from Seven as it was still the 7HD simulcast.

Interesting, so their story about all of the HD equipment being sent to Delhi this weekend and that's why it won't be HD is bullcrap?

[davmel]

Not stuff i want to watch though.

Well your niche is best served with plastic discs then, but it's still a niche and the majority would have better access to content they want to view from sources other than Blu-ray.

[davmel]

Interesting, so their story about all of the HD equipment being sent to Delhi this weekend and that's why it won't be HD is bullcrap?

Well it's not just Delhi but the NRL this weekend in Sydney that is taking up much of the national capacity for HD/3D equipment. There just isn't time to set up everything for Melbourne on Saturday and have everything set up in Sydney on Sunday.

[ckent]

Out of that content, only films, moreover films made very recently,

Have you not been watching the Bond films on 7HD the last few months? All of them were in native HD, going back to Connery.

Some of the most interesting HD I've seen on FTA or Foxtel has been the old films. The original TV transfers just made them look like rubbish but the new transfers give a strange modern feel to them. It's bizarre and entertaining.

even then it is likely to be 1080i and not 1080p.

[...]

(As a matter of fact, do Foxtel broadcast 1080p? Is that even possible currently, or are they simply relying on higher data rates than FTA to give better quality picture on 1080i content?)

The only 1080p that I've ever seen (that I haven't made myself) is 24 or 25fps. This includes everything on BluRay.

Since 1080i50 is perfectly capable of carrying 1080p25 using segmented frames (ie, 1080pSF25), you're almost certainly waiting for Godot if you're "waiting for 1080p broadcasting to start", like some people have said here.

Go to the "HD Formats" subforum on this site for more in-depth discussions on this. The greatest benefit of 1080i50 broadcasting instead of 720p50, is that films will appear as 1080p25 instead of 720p25.

The only advantage BluRay has is greater bitrate. On slower and/or less detailed scenes, FTA MPEG-2 will look almost as good as this, and better than Foxtel's HD generally. (Their movie channels suffer from less bitrate starvation though).

For any - ANY - TV company, Foxtel included, 99.5% of all content available to be broadcast is not HD; much of it is sub-PAL standard (NTSC) since it originated in the States,

Oh that's a load of bolshoi ballet. Since the NTSC shutdown last year, somewhere between 75% and 90% of new content out of the US is created in HD. It may not *arrive* here as HD, but that's not their fault. Mostly.

therefore buying any HD tv purely for better broadcast quality over SD would have been a misunderstanding. Buying an HD TV to take advantage of an up-scaling DVD or Bluray player while having a pretty good picture on broadcast TV (with a decent tuner) is the realistic reasoning behind having an HD TV.

Um, also: HDTVs make excellent SDTVs. This was always true since the first HD CRTs appeared on the market -- I always recommended them for picture quality. Well, except for the Panasonic Qintrix TVs; they were an insult to technology.

Similarly, 3DTVs make excellent HDTVs. With the surprisingly small price premium, I would buy one if I had to replace my TV today.

Then there's the fact that (surely) all TVs are HDTVs now?

On that basis, it's important to restrict the FTA networks to having 1 HD + 2 SD. Without that, they would try to squeeze too much SD in there and set expectations too low for picture quality. If this gets deregulated after 2013, at least expectations have been set. Have you noticed how Seven are too squeamish to go back to 576p now that they've seen how good 1080i is?

I agree, the gov. of the day was happy to let companies sell surplus SD equipment to an unsuspecting public in full knowledge that the purchasers would have to go out and buy again when HD came in (and knowing, of course, that HD broadcasting was in the pipeline)

Er no, HD was always an obvious part of the roadmap from the beginning. The HD quota was part of the original regulatory framework in 1998-1999.

The SD + triplecasting concession was added at the last minute in 2000 as part of a great public misinformation campaign by News Corp and one or two vested interests in the retailing sector. Then the ABC helped them by a mixture of not fact-checking that propaganda before repeating it, and also having their own ideas to follow the BBC's multichannel portfolio.

[fredofrog]

Isn't foxtel hd better PQ due to mpeg-4 compression and no mpeg-2 as fta have at the moment?

To add HD to foxtel subscription you need to include IQ2 costs $200 standard price plus about $10 per month to whatever package is sought.

As to value, it's a subjective notion that it is cheap or expensive or anything in between. In my present financial position it's very affordable if not a waste since i don't have (or look) for time to watch it and the content is mostly not my cup of tea in the way I must subscribe to a suite of channels but only have an interest in some of them.

Many people work and still struggle to make payments (loans, education, etc) and general expenses so think to yourself if you sbscribe now could you afford it if your income halved since many people are there in that position through no fault or desire to be there. A choice is made and food/housing usually ouweighs discretionary entertainment.

[fredofrog]

as undiplomatically as Dr P does say things it doesn't take much effort to rescan and get on with things. there are plenty of system gapos in fta tv in Australia and the fact that hd channels are used for niche programming or SD content is an example. 2013 as said many times is the time when things are scheduled to be done regarding transition to digital. right now it's effectively a beta version.

[keiron]

Well it's not just Delhi but the NRL this weekend in Sydney that is taking up much of the national capacity for HD/3D equipment. There just isn't time to set up everything for Melbourne on Saturday and have everything set up in Sydney on Sunday.

But 7 doesn't have the NRL rights or the Commonwealth Games rights, so why would their HD equipment be needed for such things?

[fredofrog]

But 7 doesn't have the NRL rights or the Commonwealth Games rights, so why would their HD equipment be needed for such things?

don't think they "own" the HD equipment, rather is contractor ie.g. global supply it as required. stand outside the stadium and see trucks with tv equipment which are not marked 7,9,10

[Steve C]

Yes Steve C, that's precisely it. Your equipment is substandard by your own statements. 7 has decided to make a change to its broadcast and has provided ample notification of doing so.

The reason for 7 doing what it has done has been explained to you by me and others many times now. Since you still appear to fail to grasp the details of the issue and since you have demonstrated elsewhere that you are an otherwise intelligent person it has to be assumed that you have some sort of mental defect that is preventing you from comprehending what has been said. That or you are deliberately putting such advice aside simply so you can continue to bleat like a lost lamb.

Now would you please set about saying nothing more as per your post as I'm sure the forum will be a better place without your continual whining and continual restating of the same thing.

Gosh; thanks for the well mannered and considerate response DrP.

I'll take your request regarding how I should respond and file it in the relevant receptacle.

Have a much better day than how it's been going for you so far...

[ckent]

Isn't foxtel hd better PQ due to mpeg-4 compression and no mpeg-2 as fta have at the moment?

It's not that simple. Their MPEG-4 AVC is configured with a lower (average) bitrate than FTA's MPEG-2. All else being equal -- which it ain't -- sure, yes MPEG-4 looks better.

What Foxtel's HD is better at is handling challenging high detail / high motion scenes, and what MPEG-4 gives you is a tiny bit more detail but most importantly it degrades far more gracefully. Blocking and ringing is removed through newer techniques. You'll never notice the typical "omg bitrate starvation" problems on Foxtel HD.

But careful comparison of the same documentaries on 9HD vs Nat Geo, or Vancouver Olympics, shows that on slower and/or less detailed scenes, FTA MPEG-2 will look better than Foxtel's HD. Thanks to a combination of a higher bitrate and a less "stretchy" VBR, these scenes will get more detail on FTA MPEG-2 HD.   So, typically you'll see more grass on the field in a football match on ONE HD versus Fox Sports HD.

Like all these things, there's always more to it. It's never as easy as "MPEG-4 vs MPEG-2", because it's actually possible to make an MPEG-4 encoder that sucks so badly, that it's worse than a good MPEG-2 encoder. So you could have them both at 1920x1080, and the same bitrate, and it's still possible to get an unexpected result.

CK.

Edited September 30, 2010 by ckent