Netflix Loses Patent Dispute to Broadcom in Germany, Ordered to Stop Using HEVC

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by FranceBB

I still dream of the day in which we'll be able to get rid of SD and MPEG-2 from the face of the Earth once and for all...

that day may be coming sooner rather than later as the World Radio Conference 2023 is happening and they might be deciding to give the tv frequencies used to the 5G broadcast standard for tv and radio. If that happens then new tvs and set top boxes will be required for Over-The-Air tv therefore newer codecs will be used.

[Sunspark]

But TV frequencies aren't 5 GHz..

I don't know that people will be too happy being told that they need to get new tuners already.. it wasn't that long ago that they took VHF/UHF off the air.

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by Sunspark

But TV frequencies aren't 5 GHz..

I don't know that people will be too happy being told that they need to get new tuners already.. it wasn't that long ago that they took VHF/UHF off the air.

people have to get new tuners every 10-20yrs already.

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by Sunspark

But TV frequencies aren't 5 GHz..

I don't know that people will be too happy being told that they need to get new tuners already.. it wasn't that long ago that they took VHF/UHF off the air.

There can't be no such thing as broadcasting on the 5GHz band, the penetration at such frequencies is nonexistent. Even WiFi devices have to use the 2.4GHz band where the 5GHz signal doesn't reach.

When hajj_3 talked about "5G broadcast standard" I think he meant 5G cellphones.

Personally, I want broadcast to stay. Not everyone has a high-speed unmetered internet connection, plus broadcast doesn't have the issue of having to use a specific client on a specific platform (well, unless you are an American and have to deal with ATSC 3.0 DRM which does require specific clients, but here in Europe broadcast doesn't have such issues, free-to-air is free-to-air).

As for what will actually happen, governments will probably implement a "death by a thousand cuts" policy where every 5 years they'll take bandwidth from broadcast in 100Mhz chunks.

For example, most countries have already sold the 700Mhz band, which in some countries led to channels going off the air or losing their HD version:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/freeview-v...150014326.html
(and that's on top of the reduction in bitrates that happened in most countries when the 800Mhz was sold off)

You would expect that, given these spectrum losses for broadcast TV, goverments would mandate VVC decoding on all TVs in order to future-proof broadcast TV, but nope. Most governments only care about selling spectrum to carriers and nothing else. Some countries are even wasting bandwidth simulcasting in MPEG-2 so they can pretend nothing has changed (when in reality they have reduced TV bandwidth to about half). There is no reason broadcasting shouldn't already move to MPEG4 SD (as the back compact stream) and HEVC 1080p HDR (as the main stream).

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

There can't be no such thing as broadcasting on the 5GHz band, the penetration at such frequencies is nonexistent. Even WiFi devices have to use the 2.4GHz band where the 5GHz signal doesn't reach.

When hajj_3 talked about "5G broadcast standard" I think he meant 5G cellphones.

Personally, I want broadcast to stay. Not everyone has a high-speed unmetered internet connection, plus broadcast doesn't have the issue of having to use a specific client on a specific platform (well, unless you are an American and have to deal with ATSC 3.0 DRM which does require specific clients, but here in Europe broadcast doesn't have such issues, free-to-air is free-to-air).

As for what will actually happen, governments will probably implement a "death by a thousand cuts" policy where every 5 years they'll take bandwidth from broadcast in 100Mhz chunks.

For example, most countries have already sold the 700Mhz band, which in some countries led to channels going off the air or losing their HD version:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/freeview-v...150014326.html
(and that's on top of the reduction in bitrates that happened in most countries when the 800Mhz was sold off)

You would expect that, given these spectrum losses for broadcast TV, goverments would mandate VVC decoding on all TVs in order to future-proof broadcast TV, but nope. Most governments only care about selling spectrum to carriers and nothing else. Some countries are even wasting bandwidth simulcasting in MPEG-2 so they can pretend nothing has changed (when in reality they have reduced TV bandwidth to about half). There is no reason broadcasting shouldn't already move to MPEG4 SD (as the back compact stream) and HEVC 1080p HDR (as the main stream).

5G broadcast is a new standard that uses the 5G standard but would use the frequencies currently used by terrestrial tv - 470MHz – 698MHz

This standard would not require a subscription, sim card or internet connection, it is broadcast like a tv signal. The standard supports radio too.

ETSI TS 103 720: https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts...20v010201p.pdf

This spec currently supports h264 and h265 for video and he-aac, AMR-WB+ and xhe-aac for regular audio. It also support EVS, AMR-WB and AMR for voice-only. I suspect that VVC will likely be added at some point and the upcoming IVAS audio codec (successor to EVS).

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

5G broadcast is a new standard that uses the 5G standard but would use the frequencies currently used by terrestrial tv - 470MHz – 698MHz

This standard would not require a subscription, sim card or internet connection, it is broadcast like a tv signal. The standard supports radio too.

ETSI TS 103 720: https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts...20v010201p.pdf

This spec currently supports h264 and h265 for video, he-aac, AMR-WB+ and xhe-aac for regular audio. It also support EVS, AMR-WB and AMR older codecs for voice-only. I suspect that VVC will likely be added at some point and the upcoming IVAS audio codec (successor to EVS).

Whaaat?? How does it differ from DVB-T2? Asking because DVB-T2 is already state-of-the-art. We are talking about modulation here, not compression which can take advantage of Moore's law. DVB-T2 was supposed the best that can be done for broadcast technologies.

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

Whaaat?? How does it differ from DVB-T2? Asking because DVB-T2 is already state-of-the-art. We are talking about modulation here, not compression which can take advantage of Moore's law. DVB-T2 was supposed the best that can be done for broadcast technologies.

one of the main benefits is that it is IP based therefore if you are watching via iptv and your internet goes down you can continue to watch via 5g broadcast and visa versa. You can watch tv via your phone/tablet too. Here is some more info:
https://rxtvinfo.com/2022/how-5g-bro...errestrial-tv/
https://issuu.com/daromedia/docs/tmb...567/s/18954205
https://www.5g-mag.com/5gbroadcast

Maybe they will allow some of these low frequencies for 5g phone calls and texts too, this would increase phone reception quality.

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

one of the main benefits is that it is IP based therefore if you are watching via iptv and your internet goes down you can continue to watch via 5g broadcast and visa versa. You can watch tv via your phone/tablet too. Here is some more info:
https://rxtvinfo.com/2022/how-5g-bro...errestrial-tv/
https://issuu.com/daromedia/docs/tmb...567/s/18954205
https://www.5g-mag.com/5gbroadcast

Maybe they will allow some of these low frequencies for 5g phone calls and texts too, this would increase phone reception quality.

So, it's basically broadcast packets that aren't filtered at the operator/WAN level (when sent from an authorized source). Which sounds like a nice idea (broadcast packets cost the same as a non-broadcast packet when it comes to spectrum use of a given cell but can reach every device on the cell), but there is the question of whether 5G cells (which are low-power by definition to achieve spatial reuse of spectrum) can deliver reliable TV service. Even in metropolitan cities there are massive blind sports of cellphone service and on the countryside it's even worse. And why should carriers go along with it when they typically lease their network per packet (aka bytes of information) much more profitably, and not stick to some legal minimum (if that exists)?

Anyway, now we know what the governments have planned for broadcast TV: Not completely phased out but replaced by a lame simulation of it utilizing broadcast packets, at the whim of cell carriers who have more profitable use cases for their towers.

[rwill]

kurkosdr... you still don't get it do you?

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by rwill

kurkosdr... you still don't get it do you?

No, care to explain?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Getting a bit off-topic here, aren't we?

[TEB]

Originally Posted by FranceBB

Not just sports, anything that airs on a linear channel is HLG, encoded in H.265 and transmitted as a .ts stream.
This means that if a movie or a documentary goes on air on linear TV it is also gonna be in HLG (90% of the times it's converted from PQ by basically taking the input in, finding the MaxCLL value in the metadata or a sidecar xml, mapping whatever that was to 1000 nits HLG - unless it's lower than 1000 nits - and then encoding).
Sometimes it becomes a tedious process as it also involves getting the conversion process (and specially created LUTs) signed off by the majors owning the content that gets delivered.

Running linear channels nowadays isn't easy as you quite literally need to produce the UHD HDR HLG BT2020 50p version for the UHD channel that gets encoded in H.265, the FULL HD BT709 SDR 25i version for the FULL HD channel that gets encoded in H.264 and the SD BT601 SDR 25i version for the SD channel that gets encoded in MPEG-2.

I still dream of the day in which we'll be able to get rid of SD and MPEG-2 from the face of the Earth once and for all...

Anyway the point being that those linear channel companies most often than not also have a (limited) streaming service and you can bet anything you want that anything UHD in there is also gonna be HLG 'cause the last thing they want is asking the staff to create yet another version, only in PQ perhaps, just for the streaming service, 'cause that would require time, effort and would also cost money as it would need to go down the whole processing chain again, I mean encoding, loudness correction, QC, distribution etc.

NRK, Norways state channel has started providing quite alot of HDR HLG content in HEVC Main10/bt2100 1080p25. Looks great IMO.

https://www.tek.no/nyheter/nyhet/i/J...er-hdr-innhold

HLG - tester:
https://tv.nrk.no/program/TTVL10000023

HLG program:
https://tv.nrk.no/serie/snoefall-2

Verified on our HLG compliant STB's

[FranceBB]

Originally Posted by TEB

NRK, Norways state channel has started providing quite alot of HDR HLG content in HEVC Main10/bt2100 1080p25. Looks great IMO.

Of course it does.
I know steipal (i.e Steinar Apalnes) as one of the guys working there who's also the creator and main developer of FFAStrans (FFMpeg Avisynth Transcoder).
If there's something I'm sure is that he never stops until he gets things 100% right.
He's a great encoder, a dedicated developer and most importantly a really good friend (I met him in real life too).

[oibaf]

Win for Netflix and Quinn Emanuel as patent court invalidates Broadcom patent

"In a preliminary opinion, the German Federal Patent Court found the patent-in-suit to be valid. However, the 2nd Senate under presiding judge Monika Hartlieb has now found the patent invalid due to lack of inventive step and lack of novelty (case ID: 2 Ni 4/22). Netflix has thus averted the injunction and compulsory investigation proceedings. It is not yet clear whether Broadcom will appeal."