ABC migrating to HEVC (4:2:2) today

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Re: ABC migrating to HEVC today

Post by tvroadmin » Tue Aug 20, 2019 10:52 am

MikeI wrote:
Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:34 am
Backup 4:2:0 mux is at 99w 4140 V 30000
It may disapoear any day

Those are gone for me. :sad:

Regarding a 4:2:2 / HEVC decoder solution, I've been told a $50 chip can get the job done, but a long list of hungry parasites stands ready to sue anyone and everyone who doesn't cough up the extortion payment required for a legal license. Once you pay for the license, you will be so broke you gotta sell your decoder for USD $5000 to make your money back. :toofunny

Look what happened to the Chinese who tried to pull a fast one on MPEG LA over h.264:

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... fringement

So that is the reason there are no consumer decoder solutions and likely won't be any, unless they are peddled on the black market. It is NOT due to any technical reason. The HEVC standard is open source and anyone can implement it on any device they like. However, your legal nightmare begins as soon as you try to sell it without a license.
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Re: ABC migrating to HEVC today

Post by belter-one » Tue Aug 20, 2019 12:06 pm

tvroadmin wrote:
Tue Aug 20, 2019 10:52 am
MikeI wrote:
Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:34 am
Backup 4:2:0 mux is at 99w 4140 V 30000
It may disapoear any day

Those are gone for me. :sad:

Regarding a 4:2:2 / HEVC decoder solution, I've been told a $50 chip can get the job done, but a long list of hungry parasites stands ready to sue anyone and everyone who doesn't cough up the extortion payment required for a legal license. Once you pay for the license, you will be so broke you gotta sell your decoder for USD $5000 to make your money back. :toofunny

Look what happened to the Chinese who tried to pull a fast one on MPEG LA over h.264:

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... fringement

So that is the reason there are no consumer decoder solutions and likely won't be any, unless they are peddled on the black market. It is NOT due to any technical reason. The HEVC standard is open source and anyone can implement it on any device they like. However, your legal nightmare begins as soon as you try to sell it without a license.
Thank you,

For this information. I have an extra ZGemma H7 receiver that I must fix anyhow. So if I buy this $50 chip and figure out how to integrate it into the ZGemma, then I will be able to watch MPEG 4.2.2 HEVC data legally? Has anyone done this before?

Warming up the soldering iron, :-)

belter-one

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Re: ABC migrating to HEVC today

Post by tvroadmin » Tue Aug 20, 2019 2:08 pm

belter-one and all,

You can get the open source HEVC decoder code from here:

https://github.com/OpenHEVC/openHEVC

You can install and compile it on a linux machine and it should work. It will decode 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 too. The ABC HD 4:2:2 feeds have a maximum bit rate of 10 Mbps, so you will need quite a bit of horse power to successfully decode. A modern, multicore CPU on a linux machine will handle it. Unfortunately, if you try to port this to an ARM processor like the ones used by most Enigma2 boxes, it won't work because they are too slow. And if ABC cranks up the bit rate to 17 Mbps for HEVC 4K (the current standard), well, your PC won't handle it either.

All these Enigma2 machines use custom Broadcom (or other) chips (hardware accelerators) to perform the decoding at the gate level. Rather than executing a single instruction during every clock cycle (like the ARM chip or CPU chip in your PC), they implement hundreds or even thousands of logic functions every clock cycle. Therein lies the difference. I think nowadays they just paste the decoder silicon die into the ARM processor and you get everything on a single chip. Companies like ARM/Broadcom produce millions of these chips and can pay the royalties, because after all, these same companies are part of MPEG LA. So the license fees comes from the left pocket and goes into the right pocket, which in reality, means, they pay nothing. :roll: Everyone else must pay a fortune to get licensed, which is why there is no real competition. Ever wonder why all chips that implement the dvb-s/dvb-s2 standard are limited to a few companies like Broadcom? Well, they make the standard that the rest of the world is expected to adopt and only a few members of the "club" are allowed to make the chips to keep prices artificially high. Isn't that nice? The whole world pays through the nose for this parasitism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA


Anyhow, I think the parasite is full and burping for now, seeing that the ABC affiliates have finished shelling out an arm and a leg for their new hevc decoder toys. I'm sure the CBS and NBC affiliates are next in line for a shearing. After that it will be the rest of the program suppliers. Then and only then, will they throw a bone our way and possibly allow these chips to be used in consumer stbs. But after a few years, you will hear about the latest and greatest h.266 standard and the cycle will begin all over again. :boo!

If the satellite community wants to break this cycle of dependency, I suggest people work on some kind of open source project at the chip/gate level and bring to market a new generation of stbs that isn't dependent on custom chips from Broadcom and a few others to implement basic math functions that are being monopolized for the financial benefit of a few. That is all for today.
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Re: ABC migrating to HEVC today

Post by Victoria » Tue Aug 20, 2019 5:03 pm

HEVC hasn't really been a problem to decode since Pascal when Nvidia implemented hardware decoding for 4K HEVC.

My current Nvidia Turing-based GPU can play back 60 FPS, 8K HEVC video @ 80 Mbps just fine. They implemented hardware decoding for 8K HEVC with the RTX 2000 series.

The 4:2:2 hasn't been an issue at all, unlike H.264 they are making support for the higher chroma subsampling a standard in various HEVC hardware decoding implementations. With 4:2:2 H.264 there was no consumer grade chips produced to hardware decode it

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Re: ABC migrating to HEVC today

Post by rusty » Wed Aug 21, 2019 9:33 am

Charlie didn't pay for the h264 license either. :grin:

https://www.tvrosat.com/forum/phpBB3/vi ... 179&t=4858
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Re: ABC migrating to HEVC today

Post by tvroadmin » Wed Aug 21, 2019 1:53 pm

Victoria wrote:
Tue Aug 20, 2019 5:03 pm
HEVC hasn't really been a problem to decode since Pascal when Nvidia implemented hardware decoding for 4K HEVC.

My current Nvidia Turing-based GPU can play back 60 FPS, 8K HEVC video @ 80 Mbps just fine. They implemented hardware decoding for 8K HEVC with the RTX 2000 series.

The 4:2:2 hasn't been an issue at all, unlike H.264 they are making support for the higher chroma subsampling a standard in various HEVC hardware decoding implementations. With 4:2:2 H.264 there was no consumer grade chips produced to hardware decode it

According to Nvidia's website, 4:2:2 HW decoding/encoding is NOT supported for either h.264 or h.265. Any decoding you did of the 4:2:2 chroma profile on your PC was done by software (really slow) and likely won't work well or at all for high bit rate 4K (or 8K) transmissions. I have a 2 year old PC with all the bells and whistles. It handles the ABC HEVC 4:2:2 (@10 Mbps) decoding in software just fine, however, above 20 Mbps, decoding begins to fail in software. Yes, you can use a graphics card (hardware acceleration) to do HEVC 4:2:0 above 20 Mbps, but I don't see any (hardware) solution for 4:2:2. The latter is considered commercial grade and I don't think Nvidia or anyone else selling consumer products is licensed to use it. Please feel free to enlighten me.

I know the community is looking for a solution, but, realistically, will any hobbyist pay USD $5,000 for a legal commercial decoder? I see Rick Caylor was hinting about selling one but I don't think any hobbyist is going to mortgage the house to buy one. Most will not pay more than $250 for a consumer decoder.


nvidia422.png


https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-vid ... ECFeatures
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Re: ABC migrating to HEVC today

Post by Victoria » Wed Aug 21, 2019 6:40 pm

tvroadmin wrote:
Wed Aug 21, 2019 1:53 pm
Victoria wrote:
Tue Aug 20, 2019 5:03 pm
HEVC hasn't really been a problem to decode since Pascal when Nvidia implemented hardware decoding for 4K HEVC.

My current Nvidia Turing-based GPU can play back 60 FPS, 8K HEVC video @ 80 Mbps just fine. They implemented hardware decoding for 8K HEVC with the RTX 2000 series.

The 4:2:2 hasn't been an issue at all, unlike H.264 they are making support for the higher chroma subsampling a standard in various HEVC hardware decoding implementations. With 4:2:2 H.264 there was no consumer grade chips produced to hardware decode it

According to Nvidia's website, 4:2:2 HW decoding/encoding is NOT supported for either h.264 or h.265. Any decoding you did of the 4:2:2 chroma profile on your PC was done by software (really slow) and likely won't work well or at all for high bit rate 4K (or 8K) transmissions. I have a 2 year old PC with all the bells and whistles. It handles the ABC HEVC 4:2:2 (@10 Mbps) decoding in software just fine, however, above 20 Mbps, decoding begins to fail in software. Yes, you can use a graphics card (hardware acceleration) to do HEVC 4:2:0 above 20 Mbps, but I don't see any (hardware) solution for 4:2:2. The latter is considered commercial grade and I don't think Nvidia or anyone else selling consumer products is licensed to use it. Please feel free to enlighten me.

I know the community is looking for a solution, but, realistically, will any hobbyist pay USD $5,000 for a legal commercial decoder? I see Rick Caylor was hinting about selling one but I don't think any hobbyist is going to mortgage the house to buy one. Most will not pay more than $250 for a consumer decoder.

Perhaps it is using the CPU. However, I also see a spike in GPU usage when playing back a 4:2:2 video. Both seem to be working together.

I can play the 2018 MTV Europe Music Awards just fine. The specifications of that feed are 50 FPS framerate 2160p HLG HDR HEVC video @ 80 Mbps bitrate with 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. It never requires more than 50% of my GPU of 30% of my CPU to play this file.

I don't have an 8K 4:2:2 video to test though. Only an 8K 4:2:0 video. It plays the 4:2:0 8K video fine.
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Re: ABC migrating to HEVC (4:2:2) today

Post by tvroadmin » Thu Aug 22, 2019 12:05 pm

I see you have 13 intel cores clocked at 4 GHz and a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Your GeForce RTX also has over 4,000 CUDA cores which are being used to perform HEVC (4:2:2) in software. Can you do me a favor and decode ABC HEVC (4:2:2) on 99W or 95W and show me your CPU% and GPU%?

How much did all that cost you? Close to USD $7000? With that kind of money to throw around, of course you'll decode ABC HEVC (4:2:2) and more, but, the average hobbyist is looking for an stb decoder solution under USD $250.
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Re: ABC migrating to HEVC (4:2:2) today

Post by Arion » Thu Aug 22, 2019 2:56 pm

I think I have computer envy. I'm sure I have computer envy. I'm still running a late 2012 27" iMac and although I can stream video to it just fine and play on VLC that 27" screen seems pretty tiny compared to the big screen on the wall. Now if my Mac had an hdmi output......
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