Something else of interest. Although my average is 21 for The Cave, the peak bitrate was almost 30.

***** Loading: E:\hdtv\projects\cave1.m2t

07/30/06 10:56:42 Sampled peak video bit rate of 29.95277 (Mbps) exceeds sequence header rate of 25.00000 (Mbps)

07/30/06 10:56:47 TS->Auto Mux with 16 samples: Mux Mbps: 31.88506, avg video: 21.740, peak video: 29.953, audio: 0.420, PSI: 0.015

Silly me, I had The Cave on my HDD. Recorded Sun. 07/23 at 5 p.m. I'm watching/capturing it now. It sucks bad.:( Sigh. Oh well, I'll bite the bullet.:)

O.K. here are my numbers for The Cave.

Run-time including MCHD parental warning etc. and some of the end credits is 1:33:43 and 11 frames. The size of the file is 5,792,311 kb.

After editing with VideoRedo Plus, the run-time is 1:32:30 and 23 frames. The file size is 5,715,799 kb. Here is the rest of the information VRD+gave me.

Audio frame errors:1Input
Sequence Errors:2
TS Video packets: 29441308TS
Audio packets: 1734610TS
PSI packets: 108058TS
Null packets: 0TS
MUX Rate (Mbps): 19.30490
Video output frames:144447
Audio output frames:173461
Processing time (secs):361
Processed frames/sec:399.33
Actual Video Bitrate: 8.97 Mbps

O.K. here are my numbers for The Cave.

Run-time including MCHD parental warning etc. and some of the end credits is 1:33:43 and 11 frames. The size of the file is 5,792,311 kb.

After editing with VideoRedo Plus, the run-time is 1:32:30 and 23 frames. The file size is 5,715,799 kb. Here is the rest of the information VRD+gave me.

Audio frame errors:1Input
Sequence Errors:2
TS Video packets: 29441308TS
Audio packets: 1734610TS
PSI packets: 108058TS
Null packets: 0TS
MUX Rate (Mbps): 19.30490
Video output frames:144447
Audio output frames:173461
Processing time (secs):361
Processed frames/sec:399.33
Actual Video Bitrate: 8.97 Mbps

Yuck :) Notice how your mux rate is 19.3? Mine was almost 32.
TS Video packets: 85547925
TS Audio packets: 1820800
TS PSI packets: 116402
TS Null packets: 0
TS MUX Rate (Mbps): 31.88506
-TS Discontinuities: 1
Video output frames: 174622
Audio output frames: 182080
Processing time (secs): 996
Processed frames/sec: 175.28
Actual Video Bitrate: 21.59 Mbps

Merton. Sorry if you've answered this already but I couldn't find it. Where do you live? Your location is very pertinent to this entire discussion.

Recorded my worst ever bit-rate HD on Saturday
This was the Fox showing of Bring Down the House

I used MPEG2Repair, then VRd to chop out commercials

TS Video packets: 24832188
TS Audio packets: 1790965
TS PSI packets: 103490
TS Null packets: 0
TS MUX Rate (Mbps): 11.31449
Video output frames: 312291
Audio output frames: 162815
Processing time (secs): 554
Processed frames/sec: 563.07
Actual Video Bitrate: 6.97 Mbps


The movie is 86min 48sec AC3 for a total size of:

4.65 GB (4,996,226,148 bytes)

Hardly better than a good DVD!!

So someone is compressing like heck ?Fox ?Shaw

I dont record often from Fox, so this may not be unique

My setup is NOrth Shore Vancouver, 6200 firewire to G3 Mac, then edited on PC

These low bit rates is what were pissed about. Spiderman-2 looks so bad because there is so much movement, it isn't even funny. We deserve 2 channels per QAM. This quality is crap. Sorry to rant, but I find it frustrating to pay, yes Pay for HD and get crap. I will switch to MTS if it is better. Don't care about capturing that much, I'll have a nice little HD-DVD or Blue Ray box for my HD movies in time anyways.:( :mad:

I say I pay for HD because I bought the box and who watches SD when you have HD. Only CNN and Discovery over here. And discovery shouldn't be. I'm mean if they gave us a option to only have HD I would take it. But they don't. So don't tell me it's FREE. BS.

My Rant to Shaw, not that it will make a difference.

I thought you may want to know why you are going to lose me to MTS and probably many others. The quality and quantity of your HD is just bad. The Shaw Executives should really read the digitalhomecanada.com forums to see what us customers think of their TV service. But they probably won't understand it. If you can't do much about the quantity, then just give us Discovery HD and give us the quality we deserve.
http://www.digitalhomecanada.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44562

:mad: :cool: :D

Merton. Sorry if you've answered this already but I couldn't find it. Where do you live? Your location is very pertinent to this entire discussion.

Calgary area.

Calgary area.

Well that figures.:p The hometown seems to get the best service. A testing ground. Hopefully the quality will improve in all the major urban centres.(sorry rural:( ) September will be here soon and with it, the fall TV lineup. I hope both Shaw and MTS play their cards before then, so I can make a decision.

While I don't think Calgary is getting 20mbps HD, I do think it is substantially better than many other Shaw serviced areas. Other people had complained about the degrading HD signal, while I had never experienced it. I guess this somewhat proves that Calgary is slightly higher than other areas.

Smart Travels from PBS-HD...
2.21GB for 23:52

2.21*1024 *1024/1432 = 16.2mbps

(is this still the correct formula? Or should there be a *8 in there?)

sorry should be: space in GB * 1024* 1024 * 8 / time in seconds

So:
2.21 * 1024 * 1024 * 8 / 23:52

= 12946.... so 12.9mbps

You need the *8 for bytes to bits - you also forgot another 1024 - Giga is 10exp9, not 10exp6, which gives you 13 Mbps.

2.21 * 8 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024/1423 = about 13 Mbps.

I was at the Bell store last night asking some questions regarding HD-PVR. I am considering switching from Shaw to Bell. The Bell associate told me that Shaw is only broadcasting their HD at 720p and not 1080i. It the Shaw box that do the upconversion to 1080i. Is this true?

The only reason I am thinking twice of staying with Shaw is the fact that I have to purchase their receiver outright. Unlike Bell wherein they have a rental program for new subscriber.

I don’t know. I still haven’t made any decision whether to go Shaw or Bell. I am currently with Shaw using their Classic Cable (Full Cable) with no box. Maybe someone here can shed a light to me so I can come up with a decision.

...Shaw is only broadcasting their HD at 720p and not 1080i
1. Shaw doesn't broadcast.

2. Cable service providers do not change the format of the original channel - although some STBs may only allow one HD output format at a time (Motorola).

3. BEV does change the format of some 1080i channels to 720P. The 9200 also only allows for one output format, period.

4. See: HDTV Formats (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17721)

it's amazing to see just how some of the HD channels (esp. abc/cbs) are macroblocking and don't look good at all compared to, say, hdnet, which always looks amazing, and pbs which also tends to look quite good (although not nearly as good as hdnet): is this a case of shaw overcompressing the network channels (vs specialty channels like hdnet) or are the upstream links that give the programming to shaw the culprits?

I was watching sunday night football earlier and it was macroblocking a lot every time there was any fast pan going on, then I switched to the coldplay concert on hdnet and even on fast camera movements on the crowd the picture was pretty much perfect. What makes me also wonder is that the video quality of the US Open final seemed a lot better than the football's, could it be the production crew at the stadium itself that is overcompressing things?

It'd be nice if we could get the US channels OTA so we could compare: also in my area we supposedly are on an upgraded network (did it last december) so there should be plenty of b/w available.

There were severe problems with the Football games, which were discussed elsewhere in this forum (sports). There have always been some differences in the channels themselves, partly due to the programming they show - HDNet and Discovery being typically high quality. Production values of the programming is very important and may impact more than the compression done by Shaw. Earlier posts in this thread have already probably addressed some of these issues.

This macroblocking thing (now that I know what to call it) has been bugging me a great deal lately as well. My Father-in-law has BEV and his HD seems much better than my Shaw HD because of the macroblocking. I saw in another post of yours that you say that BEV uses 15Mbps which is better than the worst case Shaw situation (13), but worse than the best case Shaw situation (19). So would it be true that some of the channels (some of the time) on Shaw are better than BEV, but most of the time worse? I am seriously thinking of taking my STB back and signing up with Bell. Do you think that we will see technological/infrastructure improvements will make Shaw as good or better in the near future, or will things just get worse as more people sign up and demand delivery through the same bandwidth?

P.S. I am in Edmonton

There is currently a BEV thread on compression. They are seeing compression on some channels below 10 Mbps. This could be due to a temporary problem at BEV, but it's there nonetheless.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=72525

Switched Digital Video (SDV) along with the (gradual) elimination of analogue channels will free up significant bandwidth on Cable Service providers.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=51559