Do the majority of Telewest customers care about that? No. And you know why? Because they
HAVE PVR and HDTV functionality,
right now.
And yes, I am capable of typing 'MPEG 4'. And I am well aware of the extra recording space and better compression with MPEG 4.
You're assuming that the majority of the public are wised-up on the advantages of MPEG 4 and Part 10 and AVC. Newsflash - most of the public
don't know these terms, or even care. They want a PVR with HDTV - they dont care
how it works or
what compression format it uses - they want the functionality that such a device would offer, ASAP!! Its that simple.
When Telewest released their PVR, did you see loads of their customers crying about the fact that it records in MPEG 2 rather than MPEG 4 (Part Whatever)??? Nope.
Did you see the majority of Telewest customers saying "Wahh!! They didn't use MPEG 4 Part 10!!!!
Now I can't record over 30 hours on my TVDrive's 80Gig Drive!!!" Nope.
What you DID see is loads of posts about how they can watch World Cup footy in HDTV and how they can finally watch one channel while recording two other at the same time.
I agree that NTL should use MPEG 4 - but right now, if using MPEG 2 instead of MPEG 4 means that our PVR gets released this year rather than 'coming soon', I doubt if the majority of NTL customers would care (especially the ones who know nothing about compression formats).