Finally! HDTV in Europe!

[SatStorm]

Finally, HDTV in Europe!
A new channel with ID MPEG2 HD has started on Astra 19,2°E (12168 V, 27500, 3/4) and two American HD Net channels have started on PAS at 43°W (12536 H, 28080, 3/ 4). The video resolution of these HDTV channels is 1920x1088 and the bitrate is 24 MBit/s.
The Astra Channel shows music shows and Opera. Also, those channels ain't receivable without problems on all satellite digital recievers! Most of the "made in Asia" ones, are uncapable to show them right, you see frames and mosaics!
Thanks God, I don't have problems with my old trusty Nokia 9600 (the only minus, it needs the original firmware on most models or DVB2000 Ver2 beta 8....)

I think those news must be a site headline!

PS: You can grabb the stream of course the same way any DVB transmission, but it seems that you need very fast HDs! From the other hand, those transmissions are about 30min on DVD.
We need those blue Rays now...

[bugster]

sounds great, but how do these transmissions look on a standard TV?

[energy80s]

I have yet to find anyone that can view these txs. Existing digital satellite boxes and DVB-S PC cards can't cope with the high data rates. You can get access to the audio but the picture is all broken up. I don't know if an American box would decode a PAL tx, but it is looking like the only way to view this at present.

[SatStorm]

I already watching those channels, with no problems using nokia 9600 and DVB2000 ver2 beta 8!

They look like a DVD or a good DVB transmission. If I didn't knew that they are HDTV, I wouldn't guess that there are HDTV!
We need special screens to see those channels for real!

Of course, there is always the change my reciever do an on the fly picture convertion to standard PAL. I don't know yet if this is the case!

[energy80s]

Glad to hear that you can view these txs. At 19.5Mbps data rates they are way outside the spec of most existing digiboxes. I know a lot of people who have tried to tune in but can't get access to the video (just blocks or green screen) but the audio will decode OK.

[ronnylov]

Why would it be a problem for the harddrive? 24 Mbit/s is no more than 3 megabytes per second. Most harddrives won't have any problems with that. I can capture hyffuyv att 11 Mbyte/s without a problem so I don't think 3 Mbyte/s is a problem. Maybe the problem is in the DVB receiver or the software used to grab it? Have you been able to grab the strean without problems?

But it's above DVD specification both on resolution and bitrate. If you play it in real time from a DVD-R the DVD-ROM unit would need 3X DVD-speed to handle it and you can fit up to 25 minutes with 24 mbit/s. This would not be a problem with a good DVD-ROM drive and good DVD-R discs. Maybe you could transcode it to xvid or divx to get longer playing time and lower bitrate on the DVD-R but then you probably need a fast computer to decode it in real time. You'll need a good PC-monitor anyway to see all of this resolution so you can't see the difference on a normal TV.

[mmpentel]

Has anyone heard of any other HDTV in europe ?

I only have a DVB-T card in my PC, but would consider a DVB-S card (and dish) if HDTV were readily available.

Will they ever broadcast HDTV on DVB-T ? Maybe when analogue is turned off I guess.

[flaninacupboard]

current DVB-T only supports 15mbps and max D1 resolution. I don't think non-subscription HDTV is likely for many years to come.

[SatStorm]

There are only 2 satellite HDTV services in Europe currently: Euro 1080 (encoded at irdeto 2) and some french tests (TPS, Hotbird satellites).
From what I read, HDTV gonna get a push in 2005 and won't be mpeg 2. It's gonna be mpeg 4!