Quote:
Originally Posted by moroboshi
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.
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I have to admit, I would prefer H264 support, but Virgin (unless they are really going to surpise a lot of people) seem to be sticking with MPEG2. It's possible that they wish to support both (although they have spent a lot of money on transcoding hardware, I suspect it's a fraction of what it would cost to replace all the current V+ boxes), but it's also possible they wish to stick with MPEG 2..
It's also worth noting that MPEG2, given a high enough bitrate, beats H264 on quality given a similar bitrate. H264 gives a better image quality at low bitrates though.
It's worth noting, however, that (and I know this, part of my day job is helping students with video encoding) transcoding from one lossy codec to another lossy codec is never a good idea, however good they are. Both MPEG2 and H264 are considered lossy codecs.
---------- Post added at 18:44 ---------- Previous post was at 18:41 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jefferson T
I'm hoping any new box will also be able to read out the menus too.
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TBH, I am suprised this is not a requirement of the Disability Discrimination Act. It would also be fairly easy to implement. After all, all you have to do is record someone reading out the screens, then get the box to play back the relevant recording.