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HEVC based DVB-T2 in 1080p50 starting in Germany on 2016-06-01
  • karlkarl

    Two days from now we'll know what the "theoretically best terrestic over-the-air TV broadcast service" announced so far will look like.

    I'm writing "theoretically", because on paper the specifications look promising: HEVC encoded 1080p50 video - that's better than the existing 1080i format broadcasted over DVB-T2 in other countries. And up to 26.56 Mbit/s per channel would, theoretically, be enough for very good quality.

    But then of course we all know that cost reduction will dictate that not quite the possible quality will be seen in pratice. They will certainly squeeze multiple programmes into those 25.56 Mbit/s, and at least one moronic TV-station (ZDF) has already announced that they will feed the broadcast from their 720p50 production infrastructure, only "upscaling" right before HEVC encoding. (And yes, ZDF mostly gets 1080i material, which they first have to downscale, de-interlace and frame-interpolate to 720p50 - so we can be sure that at least that channel will look like crap.)

    But still I'm curious to see what this will look like and tune my LG OLED TV to the new terrestial signal, just for the fun of it.

    (To anyone already receiving 4k channels via sattelite, this is certainly boring news - but even not many of those send progressive 50 frames per second.)

  • 3 Replies sorted by
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    I think their idea is to use HEVC to put more channels into same space.

    It is some form of irrational behavior. May be they expect that if you put pile of shit it will turn into pile of gold?

  • karlkarl

    The HEVC based DVB-T2 broadcast has started, and it is as crippled as expected: 6 "1080p50" programmes squeezed into one 25.56 Mbit/s transponder. The image looks blurred (like it's 720p) and has visible compression artifacts (especially color banding in low-contrast areas).

    I was surprised they use Dolby Digital Plus as their only audio format.

    Of course, this is still much better than the pixel mush that DVB-T(1)/MPEG-2 delivered over the low rates used.

    I guess the stations now only need GoPros to provide what they consider adequate picture quality...

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    It is and will be always such in capitalism.
    They look for profits and top management always considers that more channels - more profits. It is like stupid fisherman who go fishing with 10 grenades, just to be sure.

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