Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sevenlayermuddle]

Ref TV, I think what will evolve is much higher bitrates.  Didn’t somebody recently mention that Google, or was it Amazon, was moving that way?

Digital cinemas I believe usually operate at similar pixel resolutions to domestic TV broadcasts, but at a much higher bitrate, resulting in a vastly better experience.      I’ll reserve judgement as to whether WiFi will ever be fast enough, I have never placed much trust in it even for ADSL speeds, although it’s claimed to be keeping up.

I would hope (but have no idea if it is so) that modern buildings are being built with at least Cat 5e or better cabling, or even fibre, to avoid future reliance on WiFi?

[niemand]

Ref TV, I think what will evolve is much higher bitrates.  Didn’t somebody recently mention that Google, or was it Amazon, was moving that way?

Digital cinemas I believe usually operate at similar pixel resolutions to domestic TV broadcasts, but at a much higher bitrate, resulting in a vastly better experience.      I’ll reserve judgement as to whether WiFi will ever be fast enough, I have never placed much trust in it even for ADSL speeds, although it’s claimed to be keeping up.

I would hope (but have no idea if it is so) that modern buildings are being built with at least Cat 5e or better cabling, or even fibre, to avoid future reliance on WiFi?

Openreach strongly recommend at least 2 x Cat 6 or better wall sockets, one for CP router, another for smart TV, but what individual developers do is up to them.

WiFi is fine as long as your walls aren't too thick and your access point girthy - I get 700 Mb/s throughput in the same room as the router, 400 Mb/s from the home office, 1st floor and 300 Mb/s from the 2nd floor.

[Ronski]

Ref TV, I think what will evolve is much higher bitrates.  Didn’t somebody recently mention that Google, or was it Amazon, was moving that way?

Don't forget that compression techniques have improved vastly, I now use H265 thus resulting in much smaller file sizes. I really can't tell the difference from the original on 120" screen, it may be different if I could display the two side by side, but I can't and my eyesight isn't perfect either.

However 4k on Netflix and Amazon could do with a bit rate boost sometimes, and HD more often.

[Bowdon]

Ref TV stuff, I would like to see all freeview channels move over to cable/fibre downloads. Freeview as been good over all. But I wonder how many people actually get the full list of channels. I get most of them, though some of the channels distort. I've noticed some of the lesser known channels, like the 90s club music channel went over to being an internet channel and now it works well.

I'm not certain how much bandwidth 3 tv's watching different 4k streams would need?

[sevenlayermuddle]

Eek no, please don’t take away Freeview.   It’s the only way I’ll watch the commercial channels, recording first so I can skip ads on playback.

I'm not certain how much bandwidth 3 tv's watching different 4k streams would need?

4k defines the resolution, but bandwidth depends on bitrate.  As a rough guide I believe Amazon talk of 15Mbps while Netflix talk of 25Mbps for their 4K streams.  From a quick peek at Wikipedia,  4k UHD Blu Ray goes up to 128 Mbps.    Not certain but I think that commercial cinemas use bitrates of up to 500Mbps, at 2k or 4k.

@Ronski, yes, compression is getting more efficient.  But I don’t think I ever remember seeing a streamed movie in its entirety, in which I was unable to spot at least an occasional compression artefact.  I don’t have great eyesight, it’s just that I’ve a habit of looking for these things.

[PhilipD]

Hi

The sort of bitrates used by Netflix and Prime (and similar) for 4K isn't resolving to 4K resolution, no matter how good the codec is.  Really 4K on streaming platforms sees us actually viewing pretty good decent quality HD for the first time.  HD resolutions could look as good as 4K we see now if they just upped the bit-rates, we didn't need 4K TVs at all, but that then doesn't sell more TVs or in the case of NetFlix allow them to charge more.  Also for streaming services they can offer "4K" that isn't available via other means which gets more people signed up to them.

HD on streaming platforms (and Freeview/satellite/cable) is similar to decent quality DVD.

As for standard definition on platforms like Freeview, that is truly dreadful, more akin to Video CDs of the early 90s sometimes with any content mildly challenging to compress.   

Regards

Phil

[dee.jay]

I find it a bit amusing that you've branded a whole next step in technology merely a marketing push for new TV's and more expensive Netflix accounts...

I've owned a 4K display for 2 years and there is a huge difference between HD and 4K. Granted, I've never watched 4K Netflix, but 4K vs HD YouTube - there's a massive difference in picture quality.

[Weaver]

@7lm Same here, that’s the only way we can bear the commercial channels, we too would wait n * 3 mins until we were ‘safe’ with enough time difference so that we could zoom past all adverts in Sky Box. My wife now has a FreeSat box which I presume allows the same

[PhilipD]

Hi

I find it a bit amusing that you've branded a whole next step in technology merely a marketing push for new TV's and more expensive Netflix accounts...

I've owned a 4K display for 2 years and there is a huge difference between HD and 4K. Granted, I've never watched 4K Netflix, but 4K vs HD YouTube - there's a massive difference in picture quality.

Everything that we buy is marketed, 8K TVs our eyes can not resolve the difference between them and 4K on the sizes offered but yet here they are, bigger numbers sell more basically.  Streaming services would not be offering us 4K if they weren't making more money from it than they could otherwise.  I find it amusing that some people think these companies are so charity minded that they aren't doing anything for profit 

Cinemas have been running at HD resolutions for many years on super large screens and it looks pretty good because it hasn't been compressed to an inch of its life, so the fact we can tell the difference between HD and 4K on a TV is somewhat telling.

YouTube streaming rates for 4K is typically about twice that of other streaming services, and I never made any comparison to YouTube.

But YouTube proves my point though, on my computer 4K YouTube video does indeed look miles better than HD, which it shouldn't because my monitors are only HD.  The difference is 4K is streamed at a higher bit-rate, if they streamed the HD content at the same bit-rate and codec, you'd be thinking there wasn't much difference between the two, and they would need to increase the bitrate on 4K to make it look like a worthwhile improvement.

There is a reason UHD Blu-ray bitrate goes up to 100Mbps, compared to streaming services trying to deliver the same thing at around ~20Mbps, something has to give.  I bet if you watched a UHD blu-ray, then went back to your streaming service, you'd get what I mean :-)

Regards

Phil

[PhilipD]

Hi

@7lm Same here, that’s the only way we can bear the commercial channels, we too would wait n * 3 mins until we were ‘safe’ with enough time difference so that we could zoom past all adverts in Sky Box. My wife now has a FreeSat box which I presume allows the same

Same here, but we've even just given up watching something we've recorded because there are too many ad breaks and it just spoils the enjoyment of watching something if you have to skip past them all the time.  Also a lot of programs are just full of filler and rubbish even if no adverts in order to try and fill their slots up, so we record everything so we can skip the fillers, or the trend that now sees the program start only after 5 minutes of showing you what you are just about to see! 

Regards

Phil

[sevenlayermuddle]

It’s not just ads, its things like the annoying drumbeat sequence at the start of BBC scheduled news broadcasts.

I find what works best is a remote control configured to skip an integral number of minutes, with a separate button for fine adjustment of 30 sec increments.

The BBC drumbeat above always seems to be precisely two minutes, so that’s easily skipped.

Majority of advert breaks these days seem to be exactly five minutes, so simply skipping 5 minutes often works to perfection.  If adjustment is needed, individual advert length seems to have a granularity of 30 secs, a few presses either way on the ‘30 second’ button usually sorts it.

I actually use MythTV which is meant to be able to skip ads automatically.   It uses various tricks, including looking for a blank frame at start and end, or looking for aspect ratio changes, and other more cunning tactics.   But I’ve never taken the time to try and get it to work.

[Ronski]

I agree with 7LM, I wouldn't want to loose Freeview or Freesat, we always skip the adds, I find most are four minutes so have a button on the remote set for that, another is 15s, 30s, 1m, 3m and so on depending on how many times pressed.

YouTube 4k quality is far superior to Prime and Netflix.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Funny thing is, back in the day of VCR, I’m pretty sure advert breaks were generally no more than two minutes.   So I’d sometimes actually watch them live or, if watching a recording, not bother to skip.

But these days they are just altogether far, far, too long.   I wonder if the broadcasters’ bean counters know there are people like me, and that by selling less air time for advertising the advertisers might find ‘we’ actually watch them, and therefor the advertisers would pay more, and the broadcasters would get make more money not less.

[Weaver]

How does one skip precise time intervals?

Janet is using a box for Freesat made by Humax now iirc. Sky was binned a few years ago as just too expensive.

[sevenlayermuddle]

For my MythTV remotes...

...In more detail, the big ‘paddle wheel’ button on my remote...  hit left to go back 30 5 secs, hit right go forwards 30 secs.  So, just ‘->’ skips forward 30 secs.

Or...

Hit a numeric digit before hitting back or forwards, that digit being the number of minutes.    So, ‘4’ then ‘->’ skips 4 minutes, ‘10’ then ‘<-‘ goes back 10 minutes.

I can’t remember offhand if that’s standard MythTV option or something I customised. In the days I built my systems everything was customised.  Even the IR optical receiver is comprised of a light sensor and other bits, soldered to piece of Vero Board, connected to motherboard’s serial port.

Edit: See red markings, amended to be more accurate description of default skip/rewind functions.