Verizon FiOS HDTV - Page 346

My hope is that they're just being lazy with things, and sending them out to all their subscribers (with their bills?). Maybe it's cheaper to insert/send solicitations to everyone, than to have targeted solicitations. That's just a guess from someone with no inside info.

However, it will be cheaper to do super-targeted notifications for an IPTV rollout. Too much notification to too many people will cause too much confusion among viewers, which could result in STBs being replaced when they shouldn't be. If a customer isn't affected by an IPTV rollout, they shouldn't even know it's happening.

It's not like when the system was being converted to all-digital, and Verizon couldn't possibly know who would need DCT700's, hence the TV announcements. Besides, not placing notifications on TV this time means more revenue from outside advertisers, anyway.

I'm sure that Verizon has a record of users who have a DCT700, and what packages they're subscribed to, somewhere. They absolutely should use it if and when IPTV comes to fruition.
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I assume 1080p VOD will require an MPEG-4 STB?


I was looking at the DCT700 on the Motorola website, and I noticed that it has a "90-860 MHz Tuner". This got me wondering: Does the Verizon 850 MHz system only transmit up to 850 MHz in frequency, or is the total bandwidth spectrum an 850 MHz wide "slice"?


IPTV will probably be less expensive to implement than MPEG-4. It's unlikely that Verizon, through SD bandwidth reduction alone, will be able to reclaim enough room for the amount of HD that will be coming. They've got it better in terms of available room than other cable companies. The real wild card is satellite. Does DirecTV, even with the soon-to-launch bird, have the room for 200 HD channels? What about Dish?

Requiring it might be a good way to start STB swaps for everyone who wants to utilize 1080p but doesn't have a newer 7100/7200 Moto STB. Almost no one will care that they offer 1080p VOD except the videophiles. Few of them will be able to take advantage since it will be 1080p24, and HDTVs more than a year old probably can't accept it. If and when they do offer it, as is the case with DirecTV, it'll mostly just be an advertising ploy.

As for the technical details, I'm not knowledgeable enough to really speak to the point. My guess is that 1080p24 downloads wouldn't be feasible on any remaining BPON systems, but would be possible for the newer GPON systems. I don't know what the upgrade schedule is for GPON, but it should be finished sometime next year if it's not already. Ultimately, since VOD is sent on the 1490 packet with Internet while traditional TV is sent on the 1550 packet, I don't think it technically matters whether it's MPEG2 or MPEG4, but obviously the latter would cut the size of the download significantly.


The latter. I'm not sure of the details, but I think each QAM slot gets 6 Mhz, and each slot carries two MPEG2 HD channels or between 6-10 SD channels. I think all the music channels fit on one QAM. Here's a map of the Washington Metro area to give you a better idea: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r217...n-Metro-Market.


DirecTV absolutely does. All their HD is transmitting in MPEG4 already. Assuming the new satellite is at least mostly dedicated to national HD channels, which it almost surely is, they'll be able to easily claim capacity for 200 HD channels, especially given how DirecTV likes to fudge the numbers.

I don't have knowledge of Dish's infrastructure.

The bottom line is, the MPEG4 transition will take several years, so they are hopefully thinking about it now. They are the only terrestrial based QAM system with the resources and the infrastructure to implement the transition across its entire footprint. The longer they wait and the larger the footprint grows, the harder and more expensive it will become.

I did want to respond to one other comment you made regarding MPEG4 and 1080p broadcasting. The latter is very far down the road--decades away. It is on no one's radar. MPEG4 is, in relative terms, a much shorter term goal. DirecTV put the wheels in motion for its MPEG4 switch years ago now. Verizon's will need to happen within the next ten years, and the sooner it happens, the less likely PQ will be compromised in the name of channel selection.

Anyway, by the time the first 1080p broadcast happens, Verizon will have already transitioned to the next compression standard--MPEG16, MPEG64, what have you.

Entry for X-HMC on 740 here (no programming yet) in the Boston area (moved HMC-HD to 739).

I'm not sure if that's really the case now if they've depleted their supply of 6xxx boxes since any new box that they deploy is going to be MPEG4 capable and they aren't exactly bringing new VHOs online that often.

It might even be easier as time goes on as people swap out the 6 series boxes for something else due to hardware failure or maybe a drive upgrade when the cisco boxes come out.

If the current HD VOD is 1080i MPEG-2 HD (averaging 16 Mbps), then MPEG-4 1080/24p (averaging 8 Mbps) would use less bandwidth than the current arrangement. So unless even a heavily underutilized BPON system would have some issue with the MPEG-4 codec itself (unlikely), then I doubt that BPON would be the issue preventing 1080p VOD. Even MPEG-2 1080p would use the same amount of bandwidth as the current MPEG-2 1080i. So it's unlikely that BPON is holding things up.


What would need to be replaced at a VHO to support MPEG-4 HD? I can think of MPEG4/MPEG-2 transconvertors. However, that only is needed if there needs to be transconverting. FOX has committed to MPEG-2 delivery of all (I think 75) of their HD channels, so if Verizon goes MPEG-4, those cross-convertors will cost a lot at all the VHO's. Will current Disney and Disney co-owned properties (including the A&E, Lifetime, and ESPN families) remain MPEG-2 exclusive? If so, that accounts for about 100 HD channels. Each headend would possibly need fewer transcoders if they remain MPEG-2, at least over the next five to ten years. I would assume that VZ would otherwise purchase equipment that could handle both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. So assuming there's enough QAM space for MPEG-2 HD, the system doesn't necessarily need an MPEG-4 overhaul anytime soon. Additionally, Matt, you earlier said,


So how would things get more difficult for Verizon as time passes, since you've said that the biggest technical and financial hurdle is replacing STBs, not upgrading the headends? Perhaps you thought that switching every Moto box would be the big issue. But now that I've thought about it, and as bull3964 inferred, Verizon wouldn't need to replace every MPEG-2 SD and HD box to go MPEG-4 for HD. They would only need to replace the Moto 6200 and 6400 STB's, and keep SD channels on MPEG-2. They've got the bandwidth to handle that configuration. That would be a good value for Verizon, although I still contend that IPTV is an even better value, in terms of box switching costs.

An additional problem with going MPEG-4 is that the TiVo HD and Series3 don't decode MPEG-4. Well, technically, they're software-crippled to do MPEG-2 only, but viewers will be at the mercy of TiVo here to update the firmware. If Verizon switches before TiVo updates their firmware, a lot of TiVo users on this forum, and elsewhere, will be pissed. When will TiVo move? Who knows, maybe when Comcast starts transitioning to MPEG-4, whenever that is? Good thing that VZ is in less of a bandwidth bind than Comcast, so they can wait.


Thanks for the link. An average of 8 SD's on a QAM? Goody; that means more cleared QAMs than I thought.

OK, assuming 8 SD's on a QAM, the 64 aforementioned non-movie channels will open up about 8 transponders. The movie channels probably do 9 on a QAM, so using that metric, the 76 premium movie channels open up about 8.5 transponders; the other half of the ninth can go to currently underutilized SD transponders, fully opening it up, too. So you add the two groups up, and you get 17 transponders opened by IPTV.

From there, SD bitrates/bandwidth can be reduced to allow more SD channels on a single QAM. Comcast usually averages 12 SD's per QAM, each at 544x480i: http://www.comcastmediacenter.com/hi...ing-lineup.asp

So of the remaining SD channels, average bandwidth demands can be cut by a third. Basically, three transponders worth of channels can fit into two. So let's add it up:

According to Matt's link, there are, by my count, 45 SD QAM transponders, including local channels. Four or so of those transponders are basically half-utilized, so I'll say there are 43 in the "official" tally. Of those 43 transponders, 17 can feasibly be sent to IPTV. That will mean 26 transponders remain. So from there, we'll cut by one-third, which leaves us with 17.333 transponders. We'll round up to 18 to give the channels a little breathing room.

So bottom line, how many HD channels will this mean? First of all, Matt's link shows us that there are only 134 transponders, not 141 as I originally thought. Assuming transponders 2-6 remain unused (a good idea if they're in the same frequencies as OTA channels 2-6), 129 transponders of the original 134 will remain. Subtract the 18 SD QAM's from that, and you get 111 transponders. This means there's room for a total of 222 HD channels. Assuming a crowded local TV market, 15 of those are dedicated to local HD channels and RSN's. So that leaves 207 national MPEG-2 HD channels. (Eat your heart out, DirecTV.) The only question from there is this: Is room for 207 national HD channels enough?

No idea. My only thinking was that there will presumably be more VHOs then than there are now, driving up the cost and the man hours. The most substantial "cost" to Verizon, even when it comes to swapping boxes, isn't really in money. It's in man hours. The more sprawling the FiOS network is, the longer it's going to take to reclaim boxes, and the harder it will be to continue expanding while also transitioning everyone to MPEG4, assuming that the folks you need to install MPEG4 hardware at all the head ends and nodes and what not have a good amount of technical expertise and whose abilities are fairly scarce.

On the other hand, STB swapping wouldn't have to be handled by Verizon techs since that wouldn't require much technical expertise. They could freelance that work out to some entity that would just schedule door-to-door visits and swap STBs.


It might be enough to go a decade. It would certainly be enough to go 5-7 years down the road. Right now, there are 142 national HD channels available. There are 10 remaining Showtime channels that are supposed to light up in HD this year, and there are about another 10 channels with known plans to go HD by the end of 2010. That gets you to 162 channels. Once all those channels are accounted for, the only remaining channels not in HD on the premium tier belong to Starz/Encore. As for basic cable channels, most, if not all, of the "first order" cable networks have already launched HD channels. New HD channels from here on out will probably come from the major content providers, like Time Warner, NBCU, Disney, and Viacom, looking to streamline their workflow and save some transponder space by going all HD and removing duplicate feeds, as Fox has already announced plans to do by the end of 2010. But even if they all did that in the next five years, they honestly don't have that many channels left to transition and I haven't counted but they probably couldn't bring the overall total to 200 channels.

Currently, Verizon carries 112 national HD channels, with seven more known on the way for Q4 2009. That would put us at 119 going into 2010. This year Verizon added about 20 new national HD channels. Even assuming they add 20 more next year, they probably couldn't do it in subsequent years because there probably won't be enough new channels. Of course, just 20 more next year would still max out existing QAM capacity.

couldn't the STBs be self-installed, requiring techs only for troubled cases?

Mark, you already know my opinion...FIOS is still the best with the largest 'pipe' and least degradation (none) to the incoming signal. I still see D* feeds that show motion issues I don't see on the same channel with FIOS.

I'm thinking of switching from Cox Cable to FIOS, the "Extreme HD" package, which does contain lots of regular channels as well as HD ones. Missing from the lineup, however, which are favorites of mine, are Indep. Film Channel, Sundance, The Movie Channel. My monthly bill will be roughly the same as for Cox, and with Cox I also get HBO (its also not on the FIOS lineup). Can any one tell me if the TV reception (on a Sony 52XBR6) will be greatly improved or about the same for HD? Also, what about the old "regular" channels? What would be superior (besides the faster internet connection)? Thanks for any word.

yeah!

Sure, they could mail the STBs just like they do for upgrades now. But I think you're overestimating how many people would successfully perform a self-swap. Unlike people who are actively seeking to upgrade to HD, DVR, etc., swappers would have no incentive to educate themselves or put forth the effort.

A lot of self swappers would probably just refuse to actually perform the swap and sit on the new STB until service failed at the MPEG4 transition. Then Verizon CSRs would drown in phone calls from angry customers.

Can't speak for Cox, but both HD and SD channels look better through FIOS than they do from Comcast on all my displays!

Is anyone noticing some weird sort of tearing at the bottom of the images for channels like USA HD and SciFi HD? I've seen it on Monk and Warehouse 13 lately, as well as a couple others I can't recall right now.

It's weird, and not all the time, but it's on sideways motion, and only seems to affect the bottom 20% of the screen.

Standard definition and high-def channels do look better on average than cable. Any improved picture quality occurs because Verizon uses more space to transmit their channels, at least over Cox.

Verizon offers the "Movie Package" option, which includes IFC, Sundance, and The Movie Channel. While IFC and Sundance aren't available in HD, yet, The Movie Channel has four HD selections (channels 885 to 888). Additionally, the "Movie Package" includes SD and HD versions of Starz, Encore, and Showtime channels. Showtime apparently also has a few good TV series, like Dexter, Weeds, and one from Penn and Teller, though I haven't seen any of them.

The Movie package doesn't include any HBO channels, although HBO is available as another optional package.

Over the past couple of days, I have slowly changed my stance on the need for IPTV. I now realize that there isn't a need for IPTV, because there's enough bandwidth to handle both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 HD in a hybrid fashion that will require minimal investment on Verizon's part. Under this plan, many peoples' MPEG-2 HD boxes would not need to be switched out at all.

Verizon can avoid the IPTV path, and simply QAM stuff all SD channels in the method I've already mentioned. By my calculations, this would turn 43 SD QAM's into 29. Subtract that from the 129 feasible transponders, and this leaves 100 QAM transponders, or 200 HD channels. From there, I'll reserve 20 of those, not the previous 15, for Saturday spillover coverage of Big Ten Network HD games (the latter of which is available in HD, though not yet on VZ), in addition to HD locals and RSNs.

Room for 180 MPEG-2 HD channels remains. However, this number could be increased, through the MPEG-2/MPEG-4 hybrid tactic.

For viewers with just the FiOS Extreme HD package, no discernible changes to MPEG-2 service would occur. But for HD customers with any premium movie packages, an MPEG-4 box would become required. That way, any channels delivered to Verizon in MPEG-4 format could be passed through to the viewer without being transconverted or otherwise recompressed, saving QAM bandwidth. Transconverting equipment that is currently being used on these premium movie channels could then be repurposed for general purpose HD channels yet to come online, saving Verizon money.

Two reasons that only premium movie channels would go MPEG-4:

1. It saves Verizon money on box switching costs, since not all HD users have movie packages.
2. Verizon doesn't insert local content on premium movie channels. Local content is inserted by something called a "splicer". To my knowledge, Verizon's splicer equipment only works with MPEG-2 content. However, the premium movie channels have no localized content, allowing Verizon to bypass the need for any splicers.

So let's say that there are 75 HD premium movie channels. Of these, 60 of them are in MPEG-4. These 60 HD channels would take 30 QAM transponders with MPEG-2, but they would only require 15 QAM's with MPEG-4. Those 15 freed-up QAM transponders hold room for 30 MPEG-2 HD channels. Adding these 30 channels to the 180 HD feeds already available, results in a 210 national HD channel capacity. That's more than the 207 channel IPTV-based estimate in the past, and all with no IPTV.

I've seen no problems here.

If FIOS went the IPTV route they would probably lose me as a customer for TV service. Even with the best to offer in HD, I will only be with a provider that allows me to use my TiVos.

As long as they stay with MPEG2/MPEG4, the TiVo should work fine since it can decode both those formats.

They can even easily get to 250-300 HD's capacity, adding to your ideas:

There's no reason to hold back QAM 2-6, & I doubt they're doing it "on purpose" ... ... Besides being in a closed fiber system that can't (& isn't even allowed to, per FCC) radiate any meaningful interference, There are barely any Broadcast stations on those Low VhF freqs since the digital switchover (not to mention all the QAM channels currently being used, that are "actually" in the current Broadcast populated high VHF & UHF now) ... There's , what, 20 MPEG 4 HD's right there ... They can also take "select" HD's, such as QVC/HSN/CNBC's, & like cable providers, 3-to -a-QAM them. Low bitrate HD's could also be given an SD or 2 on their QAM without changing the HD signal ....
Finally, The DCT-700's could eventually be limited to channels below ch 50, + any SD's with no corresponding HD feed, only, 2-49 + SD-only channels would be the only channels actually sent in SD, discontinue 2500 boxes, 7200 type HD boxes required for any other SD TV's that want 50-499, & therefore shut down all SD feeds, & freeing up all the QAMs used for chs 50-499, that have a corresponding HD channel .. Freeing up even more QAMS, getting close to 300 HD's without IPTV & without yet going total MPEG 4!
This may even save VZ money, since they may not have to pay for the SD feed seperate from the HD feed of their channels anymore.

I'm currently a comcast customer and have been itching to get FIOS. Currently the fiber is being installed in my neighborhood and hopefully it will be available in a few months. Naturally, i'm already deciding what to get.

I currently have 2 HD DVRs and want to get something similar with FIOS. I noticed FIOS has a HD DVR that can be played back to all boxes. I assume if I wanted to watch in HD on another TV, I would have to get a HD tuner.

So I have two options, get 2 HD DVRs for $16/mo each or get 1 multi TV HD DVR for $20 and 1 regular HD tuner for $10. Basically a difference of $2. It seems like having 2 HD DVRs would be better since I get twice the recording capacity. The downside is I can't view a recording from one DVR on the other. Plus, I understand reliability may be a big issue with the multi-room DVR.

What do you recommend? 2 DVRs or 1 multi-room DVR and 1 HD tuner?

The problem with FiOS is too many HD's LOL. You will want a larger hard drive in your DVR so switch to FiOS for sure but look at getting a couple of TiVo HD's instead of the FiOS DVR's.

Otherwise, the multi room feature with FiOS works very well. You're just extremely limited in the amount of HD programing you can record.

I switched from TWC to Fios in June. Picture quality is noticeably better on FIOS.

I went the 1 hd-dvr and one HD tuner route. Works for us. But note the limited recording space. We record and watch mainly for time switching (and ff past commercials). If you plan on using the dvr for archiving, one unit will not be enough, at least until external drives are activated, if ever.

The watch on any receiver feature is great, as is the media manager--watch home movies or downloaded media.

A question I can't answer is -- if you have 2 hd dvrs, can each watch programs recorded on the other?

GE

How does the setup with TIVO work? Is there a web site that explains it?

Tivo requires a cablecard installation, and paying for the Tivo service. You'll pay a monthly fee for the cable card(s).

After that, I leave it to the Tivo mavens to fill you in.... Aaron?

Try bkdtv's thread over at: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...d.php?t=419994

* The guy deserves an online Emmy for that one !

I'd do the multi-room DVR option. Next year, Verizon will introduce a Cisco multi-room DVR (pdf) that answers your issues (and may allow for an external HDD), so you can call to replace one of your DVR's at that point.

Or perhaps they may already be available when you get installed. Based on my grandfather's installation, the installers don't bring the set-top boxes when they first arrive, but on the second stop-over. So when they first get there, ask them if they have any Cisco multi-room DVR's available. If they don't know what you mean, they can always ask someone back at the headend.

Our initial install was a 7216 home media DVR and two non-DVR STBs. We decided to swap out one of the STBs for a HD-DVR and they sent us a 6416 for self-install. It appeared to be a used box, so they are still deploying the MPEG-2 boxes.

We switched from DirecTV with DVRs in two rooms to FiOS with the Home Media Server in our family room, and non-DVR STBs in other rooms.

Within a day we called Verizon and got a 2nd DVR to re-create our DirecTV configuration. The Home Media DVR set-up was nice, you can watch what you record on the DVR from any room, but we missed the convenience of having a second DVR in our bedroom. The fatal flaw in the multi-room DVR is that you can't record from other set-top-boxes, and you can't pause/RW from other set-top-boxes.

Hopefully the Cisco system will add these control capabilities to remote set-top boxes.

It appears to be gone as of this week, but it was there for the last couple of weeks (I've been getting caught up on Tivo).

It's not constant, but it's annoying...

This sounds like a deal breaker to me. I'll go with 2 DVRs.

It will probably be months before FIOS is actually available so i'll have to see what options I have then.

One concern is the motorola boxes look the same as the crappy DVRs that comcast has. I would fell better if they were the newer motorola boxes that have a rectangular appearance in front as opposed to the circular appearance. It took me about 2 years before I was able to get 2 reliable dual tuner DVRs from comcast.

If I have two boxes and go with tivo, I would pay $4/card plus $13/mo subscription fee. Total would be $21/mo. If I rent two boxes from verizon, I pay $32/mo. So Tivo saves me $11/mo. The two comparable Tivo boxes currently cost $259 each from Amazon. So I would spend $520 for them to save $11/mo. It would take me about 4 years to break even.

It seems Tivo is a better service, but most DVRs can do what Tivo does. Scheduled recordings for only new episodes, etc... .

If my Tivo breaks, I'm SOL. If Verizon switches technologies and I have an incomptable TIVO, I'm SOL. If Verizon upgrades to a better unit, I can call them and switch to another unit, no problem. With TIVO, I can't do this. With Verizon I can use their VOD, with TIVO, I can't. Not that I use VOD much. If for some unknown reason, things aren't working correctly, Verizon may blame TIVO and TIVO may blame Verizon.

I think I'll pass on the TIVO at first. Subject to change if I run into issues with the Verizon units.