The premium channel HBO announced that it will introduce HD versions of all 26 of its channels in MPEG-4 format. HBO said that it had no choice because of the bandwidth savings of MPEG-4 over MPEG-2. This transition will start in the fourth quarter of 2007 and complete in the first quarter of 2008. HBO will transmit the HD channels using 8 Mbps of bandwidth for each.
This is good news for the TelcoTV providers virtually all of whom will used MPEG-4 as their native format for HD programming. They can take these MPEG-4 feeds and use them directly.
It is not as simple for the cable companies. They will have to transcode these MPEG-4 feeds to MPEG-2. This involves extra expense for the transcoders and potentially some loss of quality.
Showing posts with label HBO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HBO. Show all posts
Saturday, June 23, 2007
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