[mythtv-users] MPEG2-TS (slightly OT)

[Devin Heitmueller]

On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 2:52 PM, Steve Greene <sgreene59 at verizon.net> wrote:

> I was under the impression that US broadcasters have mostly stayed with
> MPEG2-TS for off-air ATSC broadcasts. I think they added h264 support to
> the ATSC broadcast standard in 2008. Does anyone know if any broadcasters
> have made the leap to deploy H264 for broadcast in the U.S.?
>

No, they are not permitted to.  H.264 is permitted for ATSC-MH (i.e.
mobile), but not for the original ATSC standard.  This is due to
compatibility concerns (TVs conforming to the ATSC 1.0 spec wouldn't be
able to decode the broadcasts).


> I understand many cable systems have made the leap (probably to crowd more
> compressed channels into the available distribution "pipe"). I think most
> of my provider (Verizon FIOS) is still distributed via MPEG2.
>

It varies.  Most cable companies are making the transition slowly (i.e.
blocks of channels at a time).


>
>
> I thought most ATSC tuner cards just grabbed the MPEG2 stream w/o
> decoding. Are these same cards capable of grabbing h264 streams? Is Myth
> able to handle broadcast h264 pretty seamlessly, now that HEVC/h265 is on
> the horizon?
>

The tuner card is agnostic to whether it's carrying MPEG2 or H.264.  It
just shuttles the ISO13818-1 transport streams across the bus, regardless
of what the underlying codecs are for audio and/or video.  If you could
actually find a ClearQAM channel with H.264 then the TV tuner would work
just fine.

Devin

-- 
Devin J. Heitmueller - Kernel Labs
http://www.kernellabs.com
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