Comments about HD with DVB-T

Hi Ian

Not sure if I was missunderstanding something on your last show, but in it you were saying you don't believe you can do HD over DVB-T. In Australia will have all our free to air channels available in HD over DVB-T. Are u able to clarify if I am missing anything here, just a bit confused. Keep up the great work with the show, I watch my RSS every day awaiting the next show. Cheers again, Brayden 

When you sau HD what are the specs?

Cheers

Ian

Most channels are 1080i while a couple are 720p

Thats good to know, so in the UK if they send 720p at least we know DVB-T supports it

I can't believe the UK is not up to speed with this....here's a bit more on HDTV in Australia. Not all our free to air content is produced in HD but that's changing on a daily basis. I tell u what, HDTV looks great through the Xbox 360 extender.

Unlike every other country when rolling out DVB-T Australia opted for quality over quantity. Which is why they have about half a dozen HD channels whereas the UK has 40 indifferent quality channels.

The BBC has been running an MPEG4 HDTV DVB-T transmission trial from their Crystal Palace transmitter since last May. This can be received by anyone within range using either an MPEG4 DVB-T box or a standard DVB-T PC card or USB device plus suitable software & decoder. There is an extensive discussion about this service & what is required to receive it here http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=358960

It is my understanding that Australia is still using MPEG2 to deliver HDTV over DVB-T. Media Center 2005, or even Media Center in Vista only supports MPEG2. In the UK the BBC Freeview HDTV trial is using MPEG4 H.264 which Media Center 2005 (and Vista) do not support. (It is highly likely the rest of Europe will also use MPEG4 H.264 since they have already followed BSkyB's lead in doing this for Satellite.)

Therefore, it is possible to get DVB-T HDTV in Australia in Media Center, but it is not possible to do so in the UK/Europe.

Unfortunately, even though Microsoft have made some acknowledgment that their support for International TV standards sucks (see
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/9/5b97017b-e28a-4bae-ba48-174cf47d23cd/MED076a_WH06.ppt ) they have completely failed to mention support for MPEG4 even once.

Note: Despite what the above PowerPoint presentation may suggest (it was presented at WinHec 2006 by the way), do not expect to see any improvements in 2007, heck don't expect to see any improvements before 2010!!

At the speed of Microsoft software development, we will probably see a 'Personal Holo-Deck' on sale from Apple before Microsoft give us any variety of HDTV in Europe (they can't even do SDTV for Cable and Satellite yet, except in 'glorious' analogue fuzzy vision).

Note: The only reason the US is also able to get HDTV in Media Center is that the US is also still using ye olde MPEG2. 

good point on MPEG4 H.264

I hope we do see it included