Cable HD compression gets turned up a notch in the Electra 8000 encoder

We haven't talked about QAM cramming much recently, but we have a feeling its ugly, pixelated head will soon be raised once more, now that Harmonic is launching the DiviCom Electra 8000 encoder, capable of stuffing four MPEG-2 HD streams in one QAM channel. It might be an interesting bit of hardware if you're a head end tech, capable of delivering 1080p60, MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 video capable of three encoding passes, but all we can see at the end is too many channels slotted into too little frequency and the potential for compression artifacts. Anyone stopping by Cable Show '09 this week should be able to get a demo, with the first units shipping in June, we'll be keeping a close eye on both our channel lineup and picture quality.

[Thanks, Larry]

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 30th 2009 10:17AM]

Man, and here I thought the turn over would make HD content get uncompressed. I must be a fool of hope. What's the true word, anyone?

[Biggiesized Posted Mar 30th 2009 10:49AM]

Comcast must be chomping at the bit for this piece of equipment so they can cram more highly compressed "HD" down your pipe.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 30th 2009 11:26AM]

Bright House Networks in Michigan has been doing the 3-1 compression and it looks bad. I complained A LOT but to not avail. I had an engineer on the phone once and he was actively increasing the bandwidth allocation on the channel I was complaining about. It was amazing how much better it looked...at the expense of the other 2 channels being broadcast on the same freq band.

They all need to go to 2-1, and leave it at that.

[Roberini Posted Mar 30th 2009 12:10PM]

OTA HD for me. I don't trust any cable company to give me any HD worth watching.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 30th 2009 12:51PM]

I think SciFi is using an encoder that someone built with gum and duct tape, the Battlestar Finale looked like shit, as do many of their shows.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 30th 2009 1:59PM]

Amen brother. SciFi HD blends the world of HD with 80s era Nintendo. Huge pixel blocks everywhere. Battlestar looks awful on the HD channel. At least it does at my house (we have Comcast).

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 30th 2009 2:23PM]

Once again, the internet (pirates) provides a superior product to cable companies (legitimate business). More compression is the opposite direction we should be headed in.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 30th 2009 3:12PM]

Satelitte for the win

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 30th 2009 3:16PM]

Uh, or satellite :)

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 30th 2009 6:32PM]

It seems that Cable and Sony are doing their darnedest to keep me from getting excited about their product.

Cable - too few HD channels, or too many stuffed into too little bandwidth
Sony - BD is too freaking expensive

The only media avenue I feel totally comfortable with is DVD via Netflix. I'm thinking of dropping my Cox digital and going only Netflix for DVD's and streaming via Xbox 360.

[Fanfoot Posted Mar 31st 2009 1:15AM]

MPEG-2 HD at under 10Mbps? Sorry, don't think so.

If this is what they want to do, they need to start using STBs that can handle h.264 video, which can certainly do this and with good quality too. But MPEG-2 compression at this rate, sorry, no...

They're going to drive people back to OTA... That OTA signal at what 18-20Mbps? is starting to look pretty good... and hey, the price is right for these troubled times.