Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
HF2101
Enthusiast - Level 1

I vote +1 for BBC America HD. I just switched from Cablevision, who did'nt cary BBC America at all until recently, now they carry BBC America HD, and I am stcuk with SD BBC America on FIOS.  Almost makes me want to switch back!

Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
JDinNJ
Enthusiast - Level 1

Another vote for BBC America HD, PLEASE.

Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
ABCMD
Enthusiast - Level 3

Another vote here for BBC America HD...

Some of the most interesting shows on TV are on BBCA, imo....

This saga has been going on for years on FIOS, other channels slowly being added, but not BBCA/HD....

What is the "qam" issue referenced earlier in this thread, and is it still relevant?

Can anyone from verizon tell us how close is this addition, and why it has been taking so long?

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Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
glugglug
Enthusiast - Level 3

I'm thinking the QAM issue refers to the fact that even though the FIOS signal is delivered to your house through fiber, it gets converted to the same signal format that everyone else's Cable boxes/Tivos/PC tuners can understand by the ONT.

The QAM spec has 38.4 Mbps of bandwidth on each frequency (vs. OTA ATSC which has 19.2, so a minimum of 2 HD channels per QAM frequency is possible without recompression).

Since I'm using an InfiniTV 4 CableCARD tuner in my PC as my primary DVR, I can see the channel map that lists what QAM each channel is delivered on in the web interface for the card.   FIOS is currently using 122 of the 134 QAMs between 2 (57MHz) and 135 (861Mhz).   Normal cable providers have much larger blocks of channels unused by TV for all the cable modems to use.

They could go up to 158 instead of stopping at 135, but this would most likely interfere with the MoCA network between the Actiontec and the set top boxes, and is also the upper channels might be flaky with a lot of amplifiers and filters.

What other cable companies are doing is either going to very buggy SDV, or overcompressing the channels to stuff 3-4 HD channels per QAM, introducing extra compression artifacts and lots of stuttering in the feed from their buggy recompressors.

A better solution would be to send the video as H.264 instead of MPEG-2 for many times better compression ratios without sacrificing quality on a lot of the channels, as is allowed by the ATSC 2.0 spec (although not used anywhere in North America yet other than by satellite providers), and has been the standard for Europe and Satellite TV for some time  (I'd say 2x better for stuff with barely any motion, 11x for action videos).  This would break a lot of older set top boxes, but I'm not sure FIOS has any.  Maybe 1st gen CableCARD TiVos as well, but I doubt that.  It would break my Linksys extender so I'd have to replace that with an XBOX.  Many of the channels are already sent to the cable companies as H.264, and then converted to MPEG-2 for north american set top boxes.

Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
steven113
Contributor - Level 3

BBC HD for NYC!!!!

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Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
steven113
Contributor - Level 3

30,000 views couldn't come soon enough

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Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
BritInAshburn1
Enthusiast - Level 3

Don't think anyone is listening a VZ..... nearly 30,000 views and all these post it would seem BBCA HD was a no brainer!

I for one now get my UK content via other means!

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Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
snosberry
Newbie

yet another vote for BBC America HD - come on already.

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Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
jackmcgann
Specialist - Level 1

@snosberry wrote:

yet another vote for BBC America HD - come on already.


Can anyone cite any instance where Verizon added or corrected ANYTHING, based on customer voting, or polling? or is it all "marketing fluff"?

I'm just saying.......

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Re: BBC America HD on FiOS?
glugglug
Enthusiast - Level 3

If the QAM space is really so tight, why do we need all the Pacific time zone channels here in NYC? (although by my analysis of the channel map there is room for at least 24 more HD channels without getting rid of anything or tightening the compression or other means)

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