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Originally Posted by moroboshi
US cable companies have for a while been launching new HD channels in H.264 only, and have launched new PVRs to go with these channels. Existing customers with out-dated MPEG 2 hardware are welcome to stay where they are and watch SD content and older MPEG 2 HD channels, but they will not be able to receive any new channels unless they upgrade their boxes.
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Or, unless the cable operator re-encodes in MPEG2. Seeing as Virgin have bought a lot of hardware to do this, I suspect that's the way they'll go.
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As everyone knows, Virgin's V+ is based on out-dated MPEG 2 tech, so a movie to a new H.264 capable box would make sense. Really too bad they've spent so much already on giving customers out-dated hardware though, as it will be a headache for everyone to change over.
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Unfortunately, NTL were looking at a newer version of the current Scientific Atlanta box that did offer MPEG 4 as well, but the Telewest management are running VM and cancelled the project.
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I think they could also improve their EPG a lot on more powerful hardware. What they have frankly resembles a BBC Micro circa 1985, with crude low-res white text on a black background. Compare it to a media center PC and the difference is enormous. The difference is big in functionality too, it's just too bad the only way to get at locked networks like Virgin and Sky is through their own approved but technically incredibly basic boxes.
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Actually, I suspect the current colour scheme was chosen for easy visibility to most people (a lot of people, even though they are not registered disabled, do have trouble percieving certain colours). This is actually something a lot of designers forget.
The current hardware is more than powerful enough to run VM's EPG at a decent speed. Tivo has a far superior user interface and EPG, yet runs on a power PC based computer with 16 meg of RAM and a 50MHz CPU (the V+ also has 16 meg of ram, but uses a CPU with a speed > 100 MHz).