Posts Tagged ‘HD’

Digital Video Transition–Almost complete

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Jul 22, 2011 at 4:01 pm

It’s been a long hot summer, though not over yet by any means.  WOW!’s video teams have been very busy with the digital video transition, which is complete in Michigan and Ohio, and in full swing in Illinois and Indiana.  The transition should be complete in Illinois by the end of August, with the Evansville market complete the following week.  We anxiously await the completion of this massive undertaking, which will allow expanded programming options for our customers.  High Definition channel lineups particularly will be beefed up as a result of this process.

I admit that I’m a selective TV viewer–part of this selectivity is that I seldom watch a program that isn’t in Hi-Def anymore.  Just can’t hardly bring myself to do it.  I relax that standard, obviously, as I enjoy some older content that didn’t have the benefit of HD technology when it was filmed, but even here, there are some pretty amazing HD transfers of older, film-based content.  The stuff that can’t be helped much is that which was shot  with analog standard-def video production techniques in the 70’s and 80’s.

Interestingly, video took a significant uptick in quality in the 90’s, driven by improvements in professional video gear that supported upwards of 540 scan lines.  Most of the video produced in the 20 years previous to that was between 240 and 300 scan lines–read: “not that great”.  These aforementioned production upgrades may have been as a result of anticipated demand for analog “Laserdisc” recordings that were offered to consumers in the 90’s.

Considered obsolete in this digital age, Laserdiscs looked pretty amazing on “enhanced definition” sets of the time.  Based on optical disc technology, the Laserdisc was, nonetheless, an analog format that had been refined to a “fare-thee-well”, and it still looks pretty good on present day HD sets, for that matter.  It was the pinnacle of analog-based consumer media.  I still have, though do not use, a Sony player and about 20 discs–big 12 inch diameter numbers that could be used as lethal weapons if thrown like a frisbee at an unsuspecting target.  DVD’s and Blu-ray are much more convenient–and safer ;)

So as WOW! officially retires its analog lineup with the completion of the digital transition, I may put my LaserDisc collection up on ebay to celebrate.  I hope that you find a way to celebrate the new HD content and viewing options this transition enables.

Until next time….

1
VN:F [1.7.4_987]

Rate Me

Rating: 2.4/5 (7 votes cast)

Tags

, , , ,

Motion-JPEG2000 vs. H.264 (MPEG4)

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on May 17, 2011 at 4:09 pm

Once in a while I come across a technical debate that fires me up.  Usually I’m just mildly so.   I’ve always subscribed to the idea that there are always alternatives to “the way we’ve always done it”, and generally I find that thinking outside the box is a virtue as an engineer.  There are times, though, when manufacturers or others in the business push ideas or standards with the primary purpose of selling new equipment, rather than to enable a substantive improvement over the status quo.

For several years, the movie industry has used a digital video codec called “Motion-JPEG2000″ to transport digital files of first run movies to theatre facilities.  It’s been several years since actual “film” has been used in the most modern theatre complexes.  Older projections systems do still exist, but they are a dying breed.  Most modern theatre projection systems are digital, and use data much in the same manner as your digital television set to produce picture and sound.  Motion-JPEG is a very good codec, particularly at high bit rates with mild compression, and this is why the movie industry uses it so extensively.  A single download to a movie theatre is then shown many times with very high quality.  This codec however,  does less well at higher compression levels when trying to conserve bandwidth or disc space.

The television industry has largely used “MPEG2″ or “MPEG4″ compression for distribution, chosen largely by embedded technology in a given system.  Most distribution companies (cable, satellite, or fiber) have been moving to the newer “MPEG4″ technology because it’s a very effective codec that has high quality and lower bandwidth requirements. (See the discussions on MPEG here and MPEG4 specifically here).

Now a number of manufacturers are strongly proposing moving the JPEG standard into television distribution as well–a bad idea on several counts.  First, Motion-JPEG, while a great standard, is not materially better than the H.264 MPEG4 codec at the moderate levels of compression required to minimize bandwidth constraints or conserve digital storage space.  Second, the distribution model is fundamentally different in that cable and satellite systems carry multiple digital streams in real time, thereby requiring judicious use of available bandwidth.  Third, adopting this standard would instantly obsolete a great deal of the infrastructure present in the television distribution industry.

If the JPEG codec were a quantum leap in quality or efficiency, that would be a different story.  But this doesn’t appear to be the case.  Opinions vary, of course (see this highly technical discussion if you’re interested), but in my opinion, this appears to be a technology in search of a new home, and I’m not sure the landlord is on board.

Until next time…

2
VN:F [1.7.4_987]

Rate Me

Rating: 4.9/5 (7 votes cast)

Tags

, ,

Followup on All Digital Transition

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Feb 17, 2011 at 8:28 am

There have been quite a number of comments on the Facebook page of WOW! which run the gamut from excitement at the potential of additional channels and HD content to concern about what this all means.  I thought I would take a few FAQ on the digital transition and address them here.

Question:  Is this technology going to translate into a rate increase?

Answer:  Absolutely not!  The move to all digital is prompted by numerous requests from customers to increase our content options and HD line up.  It is all about getting additional bandwidth on the cable system to allow increased content options for our customers.  Here’s the thing:  The same bandwidth required to carry a single analog channel can carry between 3-6 standard definition digital streams, up to three HD streams. or a combination of the two types (one HD channel and 3 standard Def channels, for example).  So moving to an all digital line up is absolutely the thing to do to allow future customer options.  Rate increases will occur from time to time as content providers increase their rates to WOW!, but not as a direct result of this transition activity.

Question:  How about the Digital Terminal Adapters?  Are we going to be charged a monthly lease?

Answer:  Up to two DTA’s will be furnished by WOW! at no charge to the customer until 2013, at which point a $1.99/month per DTA will be charged.  Additional (more than 2) DTA’s requested will be charged at $1.99 per month from day one.  But here’s the thing.  If the DTA is placed on an old analog set, it will be as if nothing changed–all basic cable channels would be available.  Further, if for some reason you do not want a DTA on a particular analog set, the set will still be able to receive a limited basic line up  which will include your local broadcast channels and public access channels. as well as other content (approximately 20 channels).  This effectively extends the useful life of these older technologies either way you go.  While we can’t furnish customer equipment for free, we’ve endeavored to build a value equation that multiple TV households will embrace.

Question:  If we have digital televisions for our 2nd and 3rd sets, will we need the DTA or other customer equipment?

Answer:  If you have a cable card equipped QAM digital tuner, you would be able to receive not only the basic tier but other services to which you’ve subscribed.  If the set is not cable card equipped, but has a QAM digital tuner (not just an ATSC tuner), all unencrypted content would be available (including local HD content) without any additional equipment.  Most cable channels these days are encrypted, so you would require a digital set top box to view these channels, even on the digitally equipped sets.

I hope this has been helpful in further explaining this transition.

Until next time…

35
VN:F [1.7.4_987]

Rate Me

Rating: 3.3/5 (9 votes cast)

Tags

, , , ,

Ultra HD Television–A CES peek at a new technology

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Jan 12, 2011 at 8:00 am

Well, the CES show in Las Vegas is now in the history books.  As predicted last week, there were lots of 3D video demos and lots of new “tablet” computers on display.  Lots of “me too” plays in both of these areas, as most thought there would be.

One technology that had some floor space this year was Ultra HD video.  While this technology has been “on the books” for a while now (originally proposed by NHK of Japan and the BBC of the United Kingdom in the early part of the last decade), it’s had some trouble being embraced by technology manufacturers, although that appears to be changing.

First, let me explain briefly what UHD is as the proposed standard–ultra HD is essentially a similar standard to the current 1080P standard in that it embraces 60 frames/sec, a 16:9 screen format, and a progressive scan technology.  The big difference is the number of pixels displayed.  The UHD standard is sometimes known as “4K”, referring to a horizontal line resolution of 4320 pixels, or four times the horizontal resolution of 1080P. The total pixel resolution of a UHD display is 4320 X 7680, a total pixel count of 33,177,600 pixels.

Now, as you can imagine, this type of resolution would result in an absolutely stunning picture, particularly in large displays greater than say, 60″ or so.  The problem is simply that the data flow required to sustain an Ultra HD picture is staggering.  Uncompressed, UHD requires a 24 gigabit per second data stream to sustain video and audio at the proposed standard (10-bit pixel depth).  Said another way, a 20 minute program would require 4 terabytes of storage and a fiber channel technology to sustain throughput to the display at 24 gig per second.

Now these specs are certainly not as scary as when the standard was first proposed, but support technologies to sustain this standard aren’t really mainstream yet either.  With mpeg 4 compression, it would be possible to compress the data stream to somewhere between 250Mb and 600Mb per second, depending on the content–that’s still a lot of bandwidth and/or storage to sustain a program of any length.  Current cable, satellite and fiber systems to homes do not presently support this type of throughput (even compressed), and terrestrial “over the air” broadcast would be out of the question.

All that said, Toshiba, LG, Panasonic, and others demonstrated UHD displays at the CES show, and created quite a buzz.  Most of these displays were massive– for example, the Panasonic version was 152″, and of course, in these very large displays the advantage of the additional pixel count was obvious.

There was one related technology at the show that bears mention.  Sigma Designs demonstrated a “VXP chipset” that will take a full HD (1080P) picture and extrapolate the extra pixel information required for a UHD display.  This is something like the “upconvert” algorithms that are used in modern Blu-ray players to enhance the quality of standard def DVD content to something resembling 1080P.  The demo was pretty stunning according to at least one correspondent.  Sigma plans to make this technology available to manufacturers in the 3rd quarter of 2011, so this will bear watching to see if the technology is widely adopted and lives up to the hype.

High Dynamic Range Video, VXP processing, and/or Ultra High Def…the next few years in video look to be very interesting indeed.

Until next time….

2
VN:F [1.7.4_987]

Rate Me

Rating: 4.0/5 (5 votes cast)

Tags

, , ,

High Dynamic Range Video: Part 2

In: Technology

By: Steve Stanfill on Sep 01, 2010 at 8:37 am

Last week we discussed briefly the production of still photographs in high dynamic range.  Just recently, there has been some activity in doing ultra high fidelity video, using all the pieces of hi-def, plus increasing dynamic range and color bit depth.  Whether these technologies will make it into our living rooms in the near future is anybody’s guess, but they probably will see some type of implementation in the long term.

The upside we’ve already covered a bit in last week’s post.  Moving video to a dynamic range that more closely resembles what the eye is capable of perceiving is a good thing.  In the case of TV, it would resemble more “looking out the window” rather than at a TV screen.

The short video sample I posted last week was produced literally as a series of still HDR photographs (processed as I described last week), resembling more time lapse photography (which it truly was) rather than actual video.  If the same technique were to be used to produce video, the camera would need to take at least 3 pictures 24 times a second, or 72 frames per second to equal the current cinema standard of 24 fps.  (See discussion on this frame rate in this previous post.)  Then, that data stream would have to be processed in real time combining the over and under exposures of the same frame into one and sending it down the wire 24 times a second.  That’s alot of processing horsepower, and because of the complexity of the process, I do not think that this technique will ever be used for serious video production.

There are, however, those out there who are experimenting with High Dynamic Range capable CMOS sensors and associated A/D codecs.  There are some prototype sensors out there that are flirting with the 12 f-stop dynamic range specification, which is very close to the dynamic range of the eye.  But even with this vastly simpler technology, because of the additional digital information required, changes will have to be made.

One such camera is in the hands of Professor Alan Chalmers of the University of Warrick, UK.  With a 1080p resolution, his camera produces 24 meg of digital information per frame.  By my calculations, that would mean that a minute of footage would require 36 gig of storage space, and the superfast network architecture to support that storage/transmission.  This is 27 gig more per minute than standard uncompressed 1080p HD video.  Transmission and storage over existing infrastructure would require compression algorithms of nearly 100:1.  (See discussion of video codecs here.) That kind of compression, while theoretically possible, is certain to come with its own artifacts and compromises.

Production would also have to change.  As we all know, some actors and actresses have not benefited from the increased resolution of HD video.  This problem would be exacerbated in HDR.  More care (read money) would also have to be exercised in production of HDR; the guy behind the Rockefeller Center studio window making hand signals will be seen.

I personally hope that some of these technologies do take hold.  Increasing picture resolution through HD technology over the last few years has made a vast difference in the viewing experience for most of us.  I suspect that these next iterations of ultra high fidelity video have the potential to be at least as significant as hi-def has been in the last decade.  Present examples of this technology actually compress the tone-maps to make them viewable within present media constraints.  When/if genuine HDR television comes of age, we will see that HD was just the beginning.

More examples to view

Until next time….

0
VN:F [1.7.4_987]

Rate Me

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

Tags

, , , , ,