Posts tagged DVB-T

Windows 7 and RiksTV

Jul 5th

Posted by frankps in Broadcasting

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Windows 7 RC has already been out for some time, but I have only recently started discovering the changes since the public beta. I wrote a longer introduction to Windows 7 when I got the hands on the beta. The introduction is still worth reading. Also information about DVB-T and HDTV seems to be some of the topics that are most interesting for my readers.

Get yourself a cup of coffee and read the rest of this article.

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Introduction to Windows 7

Jan 14th

Posted by frankps in Security

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It’s two months since I got the first introduction to Windows 7 (code named Vienna) at Microsoft Tech-Ed 2008 in Barcelona, and this week Microsoft released a public beta of their next client operating system. I have installed it on my MacBook Pro, and plan to install it on an office machine in AD and on my home machine.

I have been using Windows Vista for about 3 years now, through some of the betas and later with the released product. At the department where I am the sysadmin, more of then half of our computers are running Windows Vista (three of them x64) and Office 2007. All in all, I can say that we are very satisfied. This is not the situation many other places, as I often hear of companies that have decided to continue with Windows XP and not implement Vista in their organization. At our department we have only ran in to a few problems, most of them have been software not following Microsoft’s coding guidelines.

Watch the video on NRKbeta video – Direct link to this video

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RiksTV on a Mac?

May 12th

Posted by frankps in Broadcasting

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It’s a long time since I wrote about DVB-T with H.264, and I must admit that it is by far the most read article on my blog. I recently also written that people should not consider RiksTV when the analogue signals are turned off, so I guess some of you are a bit surprised when I wrote about them again.

The reason is simple, I am a Mac guy. Yepp, honestly I am. MacBook Pro, AppleTV, Time Capsule, iPod Touch and an iPhone on it’s way … Elgato is one of the companies only delivering software for the Mac platform that I admire most. I loved their EyeTV software, and have tried both their first and second version of it. Elgato recently launched EyeTV 3, sadly I have not had the ability to try it out yet and I was suprised to see that they in a bugfix release x.0.2 (EyeTV 3.0.2) added full support for H.264 digital broadcasts in standard-def and HDTV resolutions. For a Norwegian with a H.264 terristical sendings, this must be Christmas all over again, well that is if you are using a Mac!

Norwegians will be just as sad to see that the new version only provides QuickTime exporting of ATSC / NTSC Closed Captions for use on iPhone, iPod and Apple TV devices, cause that is for North America only. Other then that users will find a few new deinterlacing options, improved on-screen menus and a handful of bug fixes to boot.

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The Analogue Signal Is About To Vanish …

May 4th

Posted by frankps in Broadcasting

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The analogue TV signal has or is about to vanish in many counties across Norway, and people are confronted with advertisement on TV, newspapers, Internet and posters on bus and subway stops of various digital solutions. One of the most active providers is RiksTV, the company that has the license for digital terrestrial/ariel broadcasting. I find them to be to aggressive and not telling the consumers that most of them don’t need to do anything. Most consumers in Norway either own a satellite dish or are using Cable-TV. It is only the analogue terrestrial signals that are to stop. Hack, even some friends of me have called me to ask what they have to do something.

I would come with a small suggestion to the ones that have cable tv and satellite dishes, and it is simple: Do nothing! You should never even consider RiksTV, simply cause of the limitations that digital broadcasting over terrestrial have. We are about to enter a revolution in TV broadcasting, and my bet is that RiksTV will not be part of it. I have earlier been writing positively about RiksTV choosing MPEG-4 for broadcasting. The Cable TV companies have so far been using MPEG-2, but are now also moving to MPEG-4 (the same standard for compressing the TV signals). The reason why Get customers can choose between about a 100 channels and RiksTV customers only about 25, is available bandwidth. Yes, bandwidth in the same way as when we talk about Internet connections. The terrestrial net that RiksTV today is operating in, has a total capasity of 66 Mbit, and when the analogue net is closing another 44 Mbit will be made available. In other words, RiksTV for the future will have a 110 Mbit in total. Get on the other hand has available about 6 Gbit, just about 60 times more. It should of course be said that some of this bandwidth is used for VoIP and Internet, but there is plenty left for TV signals.

So dear reader, what kind of TV do you have? HD Ready or Full HD? Thought so, you are one of the many Norwegians that have already bought a LCD screen and you now are missing high quality content? Who are you turning to? I hope your answer for the time being NO ONE. Cause they all lack content. I can only talk about Get, as they are the ones providing me with TV signals. They have just introduced their first four HD Ready channels, plus Canal Digital HD. I didn’t sign up, as the channels plus a PVR is way to expensive. They are following a good tradition of milking the enthusiast market first. Having said that, other channels will be added already this spring and a digital receiver without PVR will probably be introduced, and then I guess I will jump on the wagon myself as well. 

When it comes to RiksTV, I had to laugh when I read the following news: ViaSat has taken over NRK’s rights to send the Olympics in HD. NRK will only be sending the opening and closing ceremony of the Olympics in HD. What the article doesn’t mention is that they then have to close NRK2 or NRK3 to get the needed bandwidth on RiksTV. Something to consider for the digital future that is upon us?

One last word, I have nothing against RiksTV. I just want to state that their solution is about to become obsolete, a solution that was good yesterday isn’t neccessarily enough tomorrow. More and more people are buying themselves LCD and Plasma screens, and then comes the demands.

Medietilsynet has made a site (information in English) informing about digital TV transmission in Norway (ariel, cable, satellite and broadband).

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Digital Radio

Feb 9th

Posted by frankps in Broadcasting

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In Norway we have for a long time had an ongoing debate about digital radio, and then DAB. It is hard to see that DAB will succeed, sales figures says it all. Last year there were sold about 60. 000 DAB radios and 725.000 FM radios in Norway. I don’t doubt the numbers being correct, just imagine all the mobile phones that today are equipted with a FM radio! Recently I also read that also Germany is haivng doubt about building out their DAB network.

I was an early adopter to DAB, I really like the quality of the broadcasts of the channels I listen most to. They have all gotten decent bandwidth, and that is where the main problem is with DAB, there isn’t enough bandwidth available. Endusers demand more channels and more bandwidth (better quality) for the channels. We can see the same about arguments being made about digital TV, RiksTV isn’t something for the future. Satelite and cable tv have both far more bandwidth available. We are about to enter the HD era, but don’t have to many technical solutions available.

It was with great joy I read Ashley Highfield’s blog entry ”I Love Digital Radio“. It lists up in a great way the problems we have with DAB and competing Internet Radio Stations:

The quality of the IP stream is often woeful. It frequently buffers, meaning I hear nothing for seconds or even minutes on end. It frequently loses the wireless connection, and sometimes gets confused and wants the WEP key again. I switch it off and on again. About once a day. By contrast the DAB radio just works. Press the button, and on it comes: excellent quality; reasonable range of choice; no bother.

He continues with showing how we have failed to make DAB different from FM, with examples on how DAB should have been:

I want DAB to show me weather, traffic and travel information graphically, on the same nice big screen, but unlike IP, reliably, simply, without installation and configuration. It’s all possible: I’ve seen it working from our development teams and research engineers. I want DAB to use its metadata – the information about the programmes – to differentiate itself from FM, which is surely its biggest competitor, rather than from IP. I want DAB to look like a product of the future, not the past.

For me it basically sounds like small embedded Linux system with a decent screen and a nice touch interface. Now that would have been different. Most of these features could have been easily made available on a computer, but the few DAB cards that were available for Windows-based computers seem all to be gone, and left is small retro boxes with an inbuilt half-decent DAB tuner.

The biggest problem with DAB is that consumers listening habits are changing We still listen to the big national radio channels, but instead of listening to the many small local stations, we find ourselves some nice Internet Radio Stations/services that stream our favourite music. He mentions Last.fm, which is a great example, but I will also add the many radio stations broadcasting over the Internet with AAC Plus. Superb sound quality, and often stable connections. DAB could survive in Norway if we say that the bigger channels should only be available on DAB and not FM. But the politicians are not willing to make the decission. In the meantime the alternatives are getting better ans better.

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