Magnet TV or Sky+/SkyHD

watty

2.5Mbps is miserable quality for BBC1 etc.
Also unlike real cable TV, Digital MMDS or Satellite dish you can't add multple receivers to record a different channel or two people watch different channels. I have a QUAD LNB feeding 3 receivers and 2 other LNBs for two other satellite on the one dish.

For a TV solution Magnet sounds a bit brain dead.

BBC at full quality needs about 5Mbps.


Digiweb's metro wireless uses SEPARATE bw for phone, TV and 3Mbps down 0.5Mbps up. Though TV hasn't launched yet. It seems capable of delivering similar content to NTL digital Cable, which does over a 100 TV channels, 2MBps and phone separately.

bk

cormac_byrne wrote:

So by my estimate the tv stream consumes about 2.5Mbps

Oh wow, that is really bad, they are using MPEG2, so they should be using at least 4Mbps VBR to get even a decent PQ. Digital cable TV uses about 4Mbps VBR, it can go up to as much as 6-7Mbps using statistical multiplexing and even at that the PQ isn't quiet as good as Satellite.

The problem with DSL is that it isn't really designed to use VBR, most companies want to use CBR, but the encoders just aren't there for that.

For people who are interested, there is a very good article here on the major challenges faced by the IPTV over DSL industry:
http://www.screenplays.bz/sp705e.html

cormac_byrne

watty wrote:

2.5Mbps is miserable quality for BBC1 etc.
Also unlike real cable TV, Digital MMDS or Satellite dish you can't add multple receivers to record a different channel or two people watch different channels. I have a QUAD LNB feeding 3 receivers and 2 other LNBs for two other satellite on the one dish.

For a TV solution Magnet sounds a bit brain dead.

BBC at full quality needs about 5Mbps.


Digiweb's metro wireless uses SEPARATE bw for phone, TV and 3Mbps down 0.5Mbps up. Though TV hasn't launched yet. It seems capable of delivering similar content to NTL digital Cable, which does over a 100 TV channels, 2MBps and phone separately.

"2.5Mbps is miserable quality for BBC1 etc."
dunno I only get RTE1, RTE2, TV3, TG4, UTV & channel 4
use Sky Box for BBC1-4 ITV1-4

what I do know is that when the stream is uninterrupted the sound / picture quality is good. Much better than my attic aerial (echo shadows). not far off what I get from my digibox. (which also glitches)

also possibly the stream is bigger than 2.5Mbps, am only guessing from what I see on irishisptest.com (i.e. the amount that it appears to be robbing from my broadband d/l)

I'm paying €40 pm for 3Mb broadband + 6 'experimental' tv channels (and soon VoD). That's only €5 more than Smart or Digiweb would charge me for 3Mb so I think I've got an ok deal.

What you say about Digiweb & TV is interesting, where are you getting that from?

I don't think I'd want to depend on Magnet for a full TV package unless I had a fibre connection.

Having said that I reckon that another 1 or 2 Mbps on my line would give solid tv streaming (if a change to QoS settings won't fix it now)

That still leaves the problem of viewing/recording a second channel.
A PVR with non-real time download would go a long way to fix that.

"Where the network bandwidth, or quality of service is insufficient for direct access to on-demand video streams, premium video content can be uploaded in non-real time to the AmiNET500 for subsequent playback..."

If they kept all programs for even 24 hours, that would allow non real time recorders to grab them (overnight when there's more spare bandwidth)