On August 17, 2010 at 19:27, Nertz said...
I don't understand why sub channels are desirable? One has to rationalize what they wish for. I'd rather see the entire 19.39Mbps of the ATSC stream dedicated almost entirely to the single primary HD feed.
The presence of a sub channel does consume bandwidth that would normally be made available to the primary HD stream. An SD sub would consume 4-6Mbps of the total 19.39. The corresponding decrease in bandwidth for the primary HD channel would require higher compression rates and thus a corresponding decrease in quality. It would be no different than what the cable companies do highly compressing multiple streams in a QAM channel.
I'll settle for the single HD feed without sub-channels any day!
cheers,
N
two reasons
1) I don't think they end up using the full BW even when they don't use subs
2) in the end content is king. I like watching the cooking and construction shows on Create (33.3), I like that I get CW (44.2) some of those shows where on the local Fox affiliate before. The same would be true for Canada. For example V started off on CTV(12) but then it stopped and now it is on A (which is owned by CTV) but there is none here. I would love it if some of the more basic speciality channels where added to this. But like I said before I don’t see it happening because , for example, CBC gets $ for each cable/sat subscriber to newsnetwork (or RDI), so why would they move it to a sub of CBC which will then make it OTA and so free to cable/sat companies and the same for every speciality channel out there?
