Verizon Defends 'Uncompressed HDTV' Ads
But Telco Acknowledges Programmers Provide Compressed HD Channels
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 4/4/2008 12:47:00 PM
Verizon Communications is standing by its claim that FiOS TV delivers “uncompressed” high-definition channels, while acknowledging that the video it distributes to customers is already compressed by programmers.
Verizon is running a TV ad campaign claiming that FiOS TV delivers “pure uncompressed high definition,” touting the supposedly superior picture quality available through the service over cable.
In one of the spots, a fictional cable customer excitedly plugs a coaxial cable into the back of a flat-panel HDTV set, saying, “This is going to look amazing!”—only to watch the TV spit the cable out. The hapless customer repeatedly tries to reconnect the cable, without success.
But the statement that FiOS TV delivers “uncompressed” video is, on its face, not true. All digital video that is delivered by commercial cable, telco or satellite TV services must be compressed.
A single uncompressed 1080i HDTV stream would consume around 1.5 Gigabits per second. That would occupy almost two-thirds the capacity of one Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) wavelength, the newer-generation fiber-optic networking technology Verizon is deploying for FiOS.
In fact, Verizon delivers video in MPEG-2 format—the same compression technology used by virtually every cable operator.
Verizon media relations director Bobbi Henson, asked to substantiate the claim in the TV spots, said the point of the campaign is to show that “our FiOS TV customers are receiving HD that’s not compressed by Verizon.”
“It’s true that content owners compress their video before sending it to video service providers,” she said in an e-mailed statement. “But we forward the signal to our customers the way that we receive it.”
Verizon is attempting to highlight the fact that many cable operators perform additional processing on digital video signals—a process called transcoding or rate shaping—before distributing them to subscribers’ homes, in order to save space. The more highly compressed digital video is, the more likely it is to exhibit blocky and blurry images.
In her e-mail, Henson called attention to a comparative test, conducted by an audio/video enthusiast in northern Virginia, of HD programming delivered by Comcast and FiOS TV. He posted the images he captured on a message board at AVSForum.com, showing clear differences between the two services.
Verizon has claimed that its fiber-to-the-home network allows it to deliver HDTV without any additional transcoding.
But the two main reasons Verizon has more shelf space than cable is because FiOS TV offers a smaller analog tier than most cable operators and delivers video-on-demand and other interactive services over a separate Internet Protocol network.
In addition, Verizon is in the process of eliminating even those few analog channels. That’s because it promised the Federal Communications Commission to do so by the February 2009 digital TV transition date in order to receive a temporary waiver to the FCC’s ban on set-tops with integrated security functions.
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ken you're not understanding. verizon allocates 2 channels per QAM. so that gives programmers UP TO 19mbps each. if a programmer chooses not to, that is entirely up to them. ESPN, HDNET, Universal HD use CBR (constant bit rate) while others such as HBO, MAX, STARZ use VBR (variable bit rate) so that it goes anywhere from 10-19 depending on content.
it has been well documented that verizon does not compress whther u want to believe it or not.
daniel - 4/4/2008 10:31:00 PM EDT -
It's probably the peak bit rate that counts for MPEG encoding. When each frame is substantially different from the surrounding frames, the bit rate needs to increase. If your are sending a still picture such as a test pattern, almost no bits other than those commanding frame repeats are required.
--- CHAS
Charles Seitz - 4/4/2008 9:40:00 PM EDT -
Interesting again. Could you do a follow-up story and see if we can get some REAL test results by a REAL 3rd party test outfit, not just some guy with unknown credentials or credibility in Virginia? Comcast claims to have not just subjective "expert" and "consumer" eyeballs, but objective criteria to prove that it's stat-muxed variable bitrate 3:1 HD is just as good as constant bitrate 2:1 HD. How about the same tests done with AVC encoding? Give us the REAL poop on this, not just some guy.
Ken - 4/4/2008 2:25:00 PM EDT -
Because (a) your customers (MSOs) are asking for it that way and/or (b) to fit more feeds into a satellite carrier, in order to lower the total cost of transmission.
Todd Spangler - 4/4/2008 2:06:00 PM EDT -
Interesting point. But if I'm a programmer, why would I deliver my HD signal at anything less than the accepted optimal standard, unless I already know that my content is going to look just as good at the lower bitrate?
Ken - 4/4/2008 1:56:00 PM EDT
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