Posts by Paul Campbell
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The US system (ATSC, which I have implemented), is similar in that lets each broadcaster put up their own mux on their own frequency - it's the way they already do analog TV. In that world having a central EPG on a single qam somewhere makes little sense because not every viewer gets every channel because of geography - there will always be someone who can't receive from any particular transmitter but can from many of the rest.
(Knowing nothing about Oz I assume the same dynamic has kicked in there)
But in the US the implementation of real EPG is spotty or non existent - instead people like TIVO provide it as a service (and charge for it) - a provider can buy a nationwide feed from a single central source and parcel it out over the internet.
NZ is different because we don't have lots of transmitters, each city has one and all the digital content is from one geographical source, either you receive it all or none - so a single EPG makes more sense
BTW probably the easiest way to reverse engineer the EPG stream is to open a cheap freeview box and dump the roms - who knows maybe there are crypto certs in there .... (security by obscurity is not security even if things are very very obscure)
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DVB carries EPG information in two different places - current/next is inband (within a channel's stream, which is why you have to tune to get it on other channels) - while normal EITs (longer term EPG) is carried in one, well known, transponder/qam - again you have to tune - but for a PVR which has lots of storage you can do that once a day when no one's watching TV and save it on the hard drive
Of course DVB's a loose spec, sometimes honoured in the breach so YMMV (just look at sky's channel maps - quite non-standard but easily reverse engineered)
The freeview EPG stream is probably living in private sections somewhere - maybe we should track down a stream and reverse engineer it ourselves - they can't change it without trashing existing boxes
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Home" is a funny word, for us it's often meant where we were not -when we lived in the US "home" meant NZ (but not really any particular part of it), even after 20 years, just after we moved back "home" it swung around to mean the US (and Berkeley/Oakland in particular - "home" was never Texas) - these days it's not so sure, maybe "Dunedin"
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Sacha - they're 'technical emmys', they hand them out at a different ceremony a few days before corralling the geeks with a couple of 2nd rate stars (or so I'm told, it's not like I got to go) - they're still all bright and shiny though - mind you, as someone pointed out recently, oscars make better sex toys, not as as many pointy bits, I guess that's why they are more valued
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add to that the stupid 'TV Guide' patent (if you want to display your programs on a grid you have to pay them) which I personally think fails the blooming obvious test
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Hard News: Chasing the Trans-Pacific Express, in reply to Andrew C,
Paul, we are thinking about getting a PVR in the not too distant future. Seeing as you would probably know more than the average bear about whats good, whats bad, whats needed, whats not etc, is there one you would recommend? Dont have sky, so i guess this means freeview compatible.
I haven't used any of the Freeview ones in anger (I built settops largely for the US market) so I really can't comment - you could just take that old PC you were going to recycle, add a couple of tuner cards and load up MythTV.
Russell: the problem with mpeg4 is that either you take it as whole cloth (as we have) or (as much of the world is faced with) you change your existing mpeg2 system to use it - that makes ALL your existing set top boxes (and digital TVs) obsolete - it's a big ask, especially since you probably just made everyone give up their analog TVs and/or buy an mpeg2 box just a couple of years ago - it's why existing digital TV users wont be changing fast - if half the settops only do mpeg2 then free channels are not going to switch (and lose half their advertising revenue)On the other hand there's nothing much intrinsically more expensive in an mpeg4 settop chip vs. an mpeg2 one - other than volumes and industry momentum - the settop company I worked for until recently looked at mepg4 but couldn't make a business case - no reason to spin a working already selling design for a tiny market - any unneeded change is too much risk
Middleware's an interesting issue - it's a battlefield - (for those who don't know it's potentially UI code that can be downloaded from the network and runs on all boxes) it's where people decide who owns your settop box - who writes the UI - do you get a UI foisted on you by your cable/satellite company? a local TV station? do ads crawl round the outside or appear inside the UI? is it bland and pixely to fit the lowest common denominator analog TV, or smooth and cool on your HD screen? is it written by the person who you bought your settop from (and can settops compete in the market over who has the best UI?) or by the TV channels. Can I write my own? Is the EPG (program guide) all wrapped up in it so I can't present it my own way?
I'm firmly in the "the settop should be allowed to innovate" camp - but then I spent a decade building settops that innovated in their UI design (I share two Emmys for that ....)
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Hard News: Chasing the Trans-Pacific Express, in reply to 3410,
And considering a DVB-T tuner now costs well under $100, Freeview need not cost a king's ransom.
(a good PVR should have 3+ tuners - but they really cost a lot less than $100 when embedded - more like $10, and are a tiny part of the whole system)
Well part of it is a combination of our small market (one that's fragmented into satellite and terrestrial segments, one mpeg2, the other mpeg4) and an unusual standard (mpeg4) - it means that off the shelf solutions aren't available - someone has to design one specially for us - and, even then, for a quality product most of the work is software. As more places pick up mpeg4 that issue will go away.
There's also a butt load of stupid patents in this area and everyone wants their cut
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Nope - mpeg 2 is standard, mpeg 4 is still something you buy special (rather than cheapest) silicon for - the NZ market is still too small and too much stuff in freeview is just different from everywhere else.
Picking MP4 was cutting edge but you have to live with those decisions and we've seen the results.
I spent years designing DVRs (protocol engineering, not UI) and everything I've seen in NZ so far just grates - the UIs suck - especially MySky - where's the skip forward 30 seconds? the "what did he say?" button (back 5 secs), - why to I have to to go up to get larger channel numbers some times and down others? I have a big screen TV, why does the UI have the graphics finesse of Windows 1?
more importantly why can't I make my own PVR for Sky? I know it's not hard, the streams are bog standard - sell us a stream decoder , let us deal with the UI
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I was at my daughter's first soccer game of the year a few years back - the parents were hanging around, we introduced ourselves, one guy said "Hi my name's Dave", someone else said "You look familiar, have we met?", he responded "I would be your Minister of Energy" ... that David Parker .... NZ is a wonderfully small place
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I have to point out that I've had great luck in the past avoiding major sporting events - my careful avoiding of World Series traffic ment I wasn't where I normally would be late on a Thursday - stuck in traffic on the bottom bit of the freeway that collapsed the day the Loma Prieta quake hit.
If I do make it off the island keep an eye on that Alpine Fault