Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart C
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.
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).
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Transcoding to MPEG 2 isn't a smart idea though. Obviously you are flushing a good chunk of that lovely HD quality down the toilet immediately, and also because MPEG 2 is very wasteful on space. Ultimately all channels, or at least the majority of channels will be in HD, so carrying 150-200 MPEG2 1080i streams is not going to be very pleasant.
Windows Media Center has an option for a high visibility white on black colour scheme for those that want it, but it defaults to something far prettier. It doesn't help that the Virgin EPG is in 4:3 SD, and very, very badly upscaled to 1080i. Again compared to Windows Media Center, with it's transparencies and slick scrolling, zooming, and transition effects, the Virgin EPG feels like something from a couple of decades ago.
Personally I with we had cablecards here as they do in the US. That way the consumer can decide which box they want, then just plug the cable card in to decode all the DRM cable channels. Sadly though, as with many things tech related, the UK is way behind other countries. (particularly the US and Japan)