Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Lack of High Definition content in Mauritius

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[This December 2009 article is reposted from one of my other blogs which I’ve put in dormant mode for the time being.]

It seems to me that a lot of people in Mauritius will invest in an LCD TV this Christmas (see my recommendations.) But it also seems to me that a lot of people have not really thought about High Definition content or, rather, the lack of it in our country.

Standard television (we use PAL and/or SECAM here) displays 576 lines with an aspect ratio of 4:3. The horizontal resolution being around 720 implies that there are approximately 400,000 dots displayed on a normal TV (I’m simplifying.) This is exactly the number of dots what our local TV broadcaster, MBC, sends us through our antennas (this is true for both analog and digital TV (TNT).) Interestingly, satellite decoders and DVD players also give us 400,000 as both have been designed with standard televisions in mind.

Now, let us put an LCD TV into the equation.

LCD TVs come in two families: Not Full HD (720p) and Full HD (1080p). The difference is the number of dots being displayed onscreen (the resolution.) A Not Full HD TV (which we tend to call HD Ready here in Mauritius even though, technically, a Full HD TV is also HD Ready) has a resolution of 1280 x 720. This is about 900,000 dots and is more than twice the number of dots found on our existing standard televisions. If we climb the ladder to Full HD, we get a resolution of 1920 x 1080, which is more than 2,000,000 dots on screen, which is five times more dots than an standard television.

So this is what we have up to now:

  • Standard TV: 400,000 dots
  • 720p TV: 900,000 dots (2 x)
  • 1080p TV: 2,000,000 dots (5 x)

The point I’m making is that MBC, TNT, Satellite and DVDs only have 400,000 dots and displaying them on LCD TVs full screen requires the television to upscale the image. In simple words, upscaling means creating the missing dots. For example, playing a DVD on a 1080p LCD TV will require the TV to create the missing 2,000,000 – 400,000 = 1,600,000 dots for each image displayed.

Another thing is the refresh rate. Televisions normally display 25 images per second (I’m simplifying.) This means that the above calculation of missing dots will need to be done at the same frequency.

 

Now, think about it. Can you see how much processing power is needed to calculate the missing 1,600,000 dots 25 times a second from what is coming from the DVD player? Can you see how complex this calculation is? And do you understand why the price in LCD TV sets vary so much? Yes, it’s because of the quality and precision of the upscaler. For instance, Sony and Samsung LCD TVs both have a complete PC inside with a powerful processor and which runs the Linux operating system!

In essence, the more you pay for a LCD TV, the better the image will be especially when viewing standard television content (MBC, TNT, Satellite and DVD.)

Note that I’m talking of original DVDs here. The pirated Rs 25 ones have pathetic image quality most of the time. The reason is that originals are generally double layers DVDs and pirated ones single layer i.e. half of the original content is thrown away on pirated copies. Upscalers only work adequately with original DVDs.

A better way to do it

LCD TV are high definition devices and therefore are designed to display high definition content. For instance, let us suppose that we have a device that can send 1920 x 1080 images to the TV directly i.e. the whole 2,000,000 dots. This would make the upscaler useless because the image is already scaled properly. This implies that most LCD TVs, if properly setup, will have similar picture quality (of course, I’m not talking of ultra-cheap gimmicks here.)

But for this to be true we need to have this elusive device that can send Full HD content to the LCD TV. Why elusive? Because, simply speaking, there is not such a thing here. Or, more precisely, the hardware is available but the content is not.

Here are our options here in Mauritius for obtaining High Definition content for our brand new LCD TVs:

  • Blu-Ray – The DVD was designed ten years ago for standard televisions and now has been superseded by Blu-Ray. A Blu-Ray disk has movies encoded at Full HD resolutions i.e. the full 2,000,000 dots 25 times a second. Connecting a Blu-Ray player to the LCD TV using a quality connection (HDMI) means that we can get superb quality images. The major problem in Mauritius is that Blu-Ray disks are not easily available! Shops do not generally sell them and the few I’ve seen are priced out of reach for most of us (like more than Rs 2,000 for one movie.) Blu-Ray disks cannot be copied yet and maybe, ceci explique cela.
  • High Definition Satellite – Canal Satellite offers two channels (Canal+ and TF1) in HD quality in Mauritius (an update: Parabole Maurice has TF1 in HD and DSTV has announced HD channels too.) Or so they say. First of all, the signal is 720p/1080i and not 1080p. So it’s at most 900,000 dots and not the 2,000,000 dots needed on Full HD screens. Secondly, it seems to me that the image quality is poor compared to Blu-Ray. Maybe the reason is that we are only getting low bitrate signals (I not done any scientific tests myself.) Bitrate is a measure of the amount of information being sent per second, Blu-Ray is about 2.5 megabyte per second (5 mbps max!) In France, Canal+ has an average bitrate of 1 megabyte per second (see this) and I would not be surprised if we are getting half of that bitrate in Mauritius for keeping costs down. In other words, Canal+ HD and TF1 HD are not really HD. At least, not here in Mauritius.
  • Downloadable content – Everyone I know (except for the very young or the very old) download films in DivX format which play fine on standard televisions. Downloading High Definition movies is something else. A  one and a half hour movie is 5400 seconds and therefore holds on 5400 megabytes (at the acceptable but not Blu-Ray quality of 1 megabyte per second.) This is more than 5 gigabytes for one film! If one has a steady 512kbit/s Internet connection, 24 hours are needed to download this movie. If one wants to have Blu-Ray quality, then two and a half days are needed! So, even though it is technically possible to download HD content, it will take ages. (an update: I’ve tested a few movies at lower bitrates and they are watchable but you need to count, at least, 3.5-4 Gb for a good picture.)
  • High definition game consoles – Both the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360 are HD. Games run in HD but are priced out of reach for most of us (more than Rs 2000 for a game.) The PlayStation 3 is a Blu-Ray player too. But once more, Blu-Ray disks are not readily available in Mauritius.

Concluding note

A lot of people I know are considering to get an LCD TV. But buying a TV to use it suboptimally is not a great idea. The problem is that we do not have access to High Definition content in Mauritius.

Who has a solution?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. @Mahen

    In the post, I mentioned that we already have TF1 and Canal+ in HD here. But what about the bitrate? Has someone done some tests? On Parabole, for instance, some channels look very blocky which is a sign that the MPEG2 stream has a low bitrate. How can one recognise low bitrate artifacts in a H264 stream?

    As for the Google Smart TV, we still have a long way to go… as far as payment is concerned. The problem is not a technical problem (we do have a 2Mbit/s network here in Mauritius) but more of a commercial problem: how are people going to pay? And how much?

  5. Hi
    First time i been to your blog, very interesting, please keep it up.
    About HD or HD ready, what is use of more dots if content is poor, first of all the quality of content should be improved.

  7. The only problem is with the pricing & the cost of disctributing HD content, whether it is with the MBC (which I do not see in the foreseeable future), Parabole maurice or Canal Satellite.

  9. Off the top of my head, a DVB-S transponder is 24Mbps and DVBS2 is 2x24Mbps. The problem is not satellite capacity as such (it is there if the provider wants it, just pay for more transponders from Eutelsat), more that DVB-S2 is not used and CanalSat and Parabole transmit many channels on each transponder, hence the low bitrate.

    As Avinash rightly pointed out with Google TV it’s about the economics and given the economics of satellite TV in the Indian Ocean region, it’s either choice or quality. The solution is to increase the cost, but the average customer would be displeased by that. HD LCD TVs are not mainstream yet.

    @BlueBerry MBC has a presence on satellite, it is used to relay images to Rodrigues I believe. From what I read there were plans to move to 16e which is used for Canal and Parabole.

    If you want to collect statistics on the bitrates for the channels, you’ll need a DVB-S/S2 satellite card and software such as TSreader or dvbsnoop.

  10. Thanks for this insightful comment, @Stephen.

    As far as I know, Eutelsat W2A is used to send us Parabole Maurice and CanalSat signals. As quoted from the website:

    Up to 15 Ku-band transponders are connected to a second beam serving southern Africa and Indian Ocean islands, and enabling connectivity between Africa and Europe.

    It seems that one Ku-band has 27 MHz in bandwidth. How many Mbit/s is that?

  11. Looking at Lyngsat, Parabole use two transponders on Eutelsat W2M (http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/parabole.html). Each transponder uses FEC 3/4, 29950 SR and I would be very surprised if not QSPK. Using the calculator here: http://www.satellite-calculations.com/Satellite/bitrates.htm, we have:

    i) Allocated Bandwidth 26MHz, DVB-S QPSK 3/4: 28.07904328 Mbps (Netto) / 30.46874909 Mbps (Reed)

    ii) SR 29.950, DVB-S QPSK 3/4: 41.40146936 Mbps (Netto)/44.92499866 Mbps (Reed)

    Assuming (ii) is a good enough approximation, that’s comparable to transponder bandwidth used by European providers, but the number of services on a transponder is higher, 22 TV channels on 11492 H. Ignoring radio and data services, we have an average of 2Mbps for a TV channel (over-estimate).

  12. Thanks @Stephen.

    Are you speaking of 2Mbit/s or 2Mbytes/s? In France, Canal+ HD is broadcasted at around 2Mbytes/s.

  13. Hi, interesting article,

    according to HDTV via Satellite… DStv provides several HD channels for southern africa. And honestly, I am looking forward to the World Cup in high definition.

    Sincerely, JoKi

  15. For Canal+ HD on Astra 19.2E – initial transponder DVB-S2 12522000 V 22000000 2/3 AUTO AUTO. Five samples.

    packets read: 4/(357916) d_time: 0.001 s = 6016.000 kbit/s (Avrg: 9264.839 kbit/s) [bad: 0]

    packets read: 2/(304095) d_time: 0.001 s = 3008.000 kbit/s (Avrg: 7990.337 kbit/s) [bad: 0]

    packets read: 7/(261996) d_time: 0.001 s = 10528.000 kbit/s (Avrg: 6855.408 kbit/s) [bad: 0]

    packets read: 16/(362056) d_time: 0.002 s = 12032.000 kbit/s (Avrg: 9417.714 kbit/s) [bad: 0]

    packets read: 5/(247941) d_time: 0.001 s = 7520.000 kbit/s (Avrg: 6654.709 kbit/s) [bad: 0]

    Calculations in post above would be Megabits per second. I’ll pull some Canal+ SD stats later, but I would hazard a guess at half of the HD rate.

  16. @Stephen

    On average, that would be around 7-8 megabits/s which is 1 megabyte/s which is (more or less) the same as in France. That’s not bad at all.

    I wonder what the bitrate is on Parabole’s TF1 HD.

  17. That’s the European version, I can get any stats on the Madagascar beam used to broadcast to Mauritius unfortunately.

    Just something that I though you and your readers would like to know, the FIFA World Cup feed to Europe is 55 Mbits/s ;)

  19. I would like to comment on the HD downloadable content. Breakthroughs have been made by movie encoders on warez forums… Blu Ray films are available in only 900mb, but it is encoded in a new format called matrovska or .MKV , with the quality unchanged! Very very few dvd players support this format, so you have to connect your PC to your LCD to be able to play these movies (here, it’s very practical to have a laptop with a good GPU and preferably an HDMI output)… A 900mb movie can be downloaded in only 5 hours with a 512 kbps connection…

    The container format MKV is superior to AVI in many ways:

    * supports H.264/AVC
    * B-Frame support
    * supports variable audio bitrate
    * supports chapters, muxed subtitles, metadata/tags and dvd-like menus
    * MKV movie is roughly half in size when compared to AVI

    I personally prefer the 720p MKV encodes @ only 500mb, and nearly same quality as 1080p encodes! So I get a movie in only 2.5 hours!

    Cheers!

  20. Thanks for the comment.

    Strictly speaking, MKV is not a codec. It’s a container. In fact, I routinely use the M2TS container with H264 video and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio when watching HD movies with my PS3.

  21. I just wanted to point out that there are plenty of MKV HD movies on warez forums, at a very small size, and with most features of Blu ray iso…

  22. Hi,
    I was looking for places where blu ray movies are being sold in Mauritius and came across your blog after some ‘Googling’. It’s nice to see that there are some people who are very knowledgeable on technical matters relative to HD materials and the like. I also found your blog to be professionally designed and commendable.

    As for me, I am mostly a movie lover and my present interest is 1080p movies. Unfortunately the blu ray originals are really out of reach. It appears that blu ray movies, as opposed to PS3 games, can be copied on blank 25GB disks. Do you know other places where such blu-ray copies are sold?

  23. Hi @Manu

    Yeah, I’ve found the Blu-Rays to be prohibitively expensive here as compared to the prices in Europe, say (someone told me that Avatar was being sold in Rose-Hill at Rs 2700!) I don’t know where copies of Blu-Ray disks are sold though. I tend to download movies though (either SD or HD) and play them using my PS3. The image quality is good enough for me…

  25. The HD ready is not suitable for some satellite channels. I’ve seen a Philips in Rose Hill at Rs @18000 Full HD. I think i take it tomorrow.

  26. Satellite channels are not Full HD 1080p. They are 720p / 1080i… so an HD Ready TV is good enough. In fact, studies show that we, humans, cannot distinguish between 720p and 1080p content on a 40″ TV at normal viewing distance…

  27. Hi Guys,

    Seems like the older posts on this blog have been deleted.
    Can someone please give me the name of the computer store in Port Louis which sells BLurays -the copied ones.
    Thanks a ton.
    Have a great weekend..

  29. Hey Avinash,

    I guess I got the wrong blog…but it was on ur blog page …I remember somewhere around Feb 2010 we were having a discussion on places to buy BDs in Mauritius. It was in a blog about HD content in Mauritius . Someone had written about a shop in P.Louis which sold BDs copied for 150-250 Mur.
    Unfortunately, I dont have the name written as I thought these blogs usually store infos..but sadly, that entire topics gone missing… I remember we were posting around Christmas time last year which followed until Feb, thats when I left for Australia..
    And I m back in the island, and need to buy some more BDs here…
    So pls, If u do seem to recall bout the store somewhere near China town..do write the name.

    Thanks..
    Cheers

  31. No Worries Avinash,
    Thanks for trying… Would you know if Media players are sold anywhere in Mauritius? The ones that can play MKV files?

    Thanks..

  32. In Mauritius?

    I use a PS3 which works really well with AVI, MP4 and M2TS containers. You can always extract the audio and video streams from the MKV and put them in a M2TS file, say, without reencoding anything. I did that once or twice and the PS3 shows everything nicely…

  34. Yes. I second that. The Western Digital WD TV Live Plus is one of the best devices to play HD video but it’s not available in Mauritius! Maybe I’ll have my own store in the future :-)

  35. dear ,sir
    indeed ,great article.thus i’m willing to buy the new LG led tv 32LE5300. what are the advise……

  36. Hi @Indoo.

    The LG 32LE5300 is a great TV but don’t get too excited with LED at 32″ (the effect is much more noticeable on much larger sets.)

    Have a look at the Sony KLV-32EX400 and Philips 32PFL3605. They are cheaper than the LG.

    To be honest, all LCD TV of that price range have the same potential image quality. You need to feed them HD content and make sure that they are properly calibrated.

  37. By the way, I nearly forgot:

    ThreeBags, my recommendation website on technology products (including, of course, LCD TV) is being revamped right now. Expect reviews of some of those new models during the week-end.

    Don’t hesitate to share ThreeBags with your friends and acquaintances.

  38. Hi Avinash,

    just came across your great blog article after doing a search for BLU Ray products in Mauritius. I currently have a SONY DVD player that doesn’t play mp4 nor H.264. After copying a DVD with mp4 files it didn’t work in my SONY DVD player because they don’t have those codecs/linceces installed – its already to old… Then i tried my Encore media box, its 2 years old – just to old to enjoy this type of media. Xbox won’t play usb sticks with copied movies nor copied DVDs. I went to Jacey and saw that they have an ASUS media box for above Rs.5000 with HDMI connection that plays such files. I think in the end, constantly buying and upgrading equipments costs more than just buying a good graphic card with HDMI connection and connecting it to the computer. Here you can stay upto date with downloading codecs and the movie players that you can use are numerous. So I agree with YNK FC solution suggested to for example downlod matroska files and just run them from the computer and connecting it to the TV… IF, now I am saying IForiginal BLU RAYS and DVDs would have a special pricing for countries like Mauritius I would have bought them always ORIZINAL! :) but they are out of reach… Do you think a graphic card for a PC will have the power required to play smoothly a blu ray .mkv packaged movie on a +40 inch HD Sony Bravia ?

  40. i think the technology that canal+ uses to trasmit these images are in true definition that is 1080P. i havent install canal sat at my place and it is too costly but i am satisfies with all images that canalsat uses to transmit imags.. i think this technology of Full HD that is 1080p should be launched in MBC for better image..

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