Among the gazillions of demos at the Cable Show next week will be one in the Motorola booth for the TV pixel geeks. For those who fondly compare the video outputs of different compression schemes, Motorola will have displays up showing video quality comparisons of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 videos at various bitrates. The purpose is [...]
Filed under: Cable, HDTV, TV, Video | No Comments »
Apparently sightings started last week, but I just picked up on the news that AT&T is now rolling out a second HD stream to U-verse homes. Sounds like a good precursor to AT&T’s whole-home DVR service (on Motorola set-tops) promised for this year, yes?
From the U-verse Users forum:
It appears that St. Louis will be [...]
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A participant on the NCTA’s switched digital video (SDV) briefing call last week asked why the cable industry isn’t moving more quickly to all-digital broadcast given the bandwidth savings. Verizon’s making the shift, why not traditional cable operators? The answer is that cable companies as a whole have a lot more existing analog customers, and [...]
Filed under: Cable, DTV, HDTV, Switched Digital | 2 Comments »
Motorola has news on the wire this morning out of the NAB show, and much of it has to do with high-definition broadcasting. First, the company announced that its MPEG products will now support Active Format Description (AFD). Sounds technical, but the concept is exceedingly simple. By supporting AFD, the MPEG encoders and transcoders can [...]
Filed under: HDTV, Motorola News | 1 Comment »
Fred Dawson has an article in the March issue of Screenplays (registration required) on Comcast’s spending plans for 2008. Topping the cap ex agenda? Advanced advertising initiatives, set-tops, transitioning to an all-digital system and switched digital video. Apparently Comcast’s plans are in line with investor expectations, but that doesn’t mean the operator [...]
Filed under: Bandwidth, Comcast, HDTV, Internet | No Comments »
EngadgetHD ran a poll this weekend on how many HD channels readers have at home. Keeping in mind that the EngadgetHD audience is geekier than your average room full of people, I was surprised by the numbers as of Sunday night. More than half of the respondents acknowledged having fewer than 20 [...]
Filed under: Bandwidth, HDTV, Switched Digital | No Comments »
There was a lot of press coverage last week around HD set-top shortages at Cox and Verizon, and a lot of the blame seemed to fall squarely on Motorola’s shoulders. Naturally, I’m a bit peeved.
Here’s a little perspective and context. First, HD demand skyrocketed in the last few months, and that’s a good [...]
Filed under: HDTV | 4 Comments »
Plenty of people are covering the death of HD DVD so I thought I’d take a different tack here. Listening to NPR last night I heard a story that played tape from an old, old interview with a Sony executive on Betamax. Yes, Beta tapes died a sad death much like the HD [...]
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This is my official, one-year-until-the-digital-TV transition post. Consider it part primer, part Motorola perspective.
Why are we having a digital TV transition?
The original impetus behind moving to all-digital television was a regulatory push to reclaim broadcast channels for public/civic use. However, with the rapid growth of HDTV, on-demand television and streaming video on the [...]
Filed under: Bandwidth, Cable, DTV, HDTV, Internet, Networks, TV, VOD | 1 Comment »
EngadgetHD dug up a post recently from Rex Sorgatz on the first issue of Wired magazine. It’s a fantastic archeological dig, so if you have time, do read the whole piece.
The item I found most interesting was the reference to a feature article by Nicholas Negroponte. Negroponte (yes, the Negroponte [...]
Filed under: HDTV, Internet, TV, VOD | No Comments »
