“No one can receive HD from DVB-T stick”
This is not universally true. Some countries [such as the UK] use DVB-T2 for HD. In other countries, you CAN receive HD from DVB-T stick [I’ve been doing it for years].
[Laser Man] “No one can receive HD from DVB-T stick”
[HiroProtagonist:] This is not universally true. […] In other countries, you CAN receive HD from DVB-T stick [I’ve been doing it for years].
You are right! What initially started as an idea for a “simple discussion” about Software-Defined-Radio (SDR) sticks should be able to also tune, receive and decode the DVB-T2 radio waves - supported by updated demultiplexers and soft-decoders - shows as a much more complex thing.
Even in some regions in Germany (and in Slovenia as I just read), there are/where test channels with H.264 HD, transmitted via DVB-T(1). While DVB-T(1) is a synonym in Germany for 4 programs in MPEG2/576p per Mux, it is also somewhere used for 2 programs in MPEG4-AVC-H.264/720p, or for one program in MPEG4-AVC-H.264/1080i50 per Mux. And for 6 programs in MPEG2/576p per Mux elsewhere.
Here in Western Europe, it seems that many people using the term “DVB-T2” and the term “terrestrial H.264/720p” synonymously, while this is not necessarily required to be the same, as I learned now.
The above said situation seems to be the mother of all questions like “why not continue using my DVB-T1-SDR-tuner for DVB-T2?” In Germany, this is even a bit mory crazy, because freenet.tv decided to use HEVC-H.265 (instead H.264) for the video codec, so the rough idea of most of us was: “why shall I care about the video codec? I don’t need to decode it it to receive, record or stream it within my house. So, why the hell shall I buy new hardware?”
Aside of the areas where HDTV is avail with DVB-T1 (you’re happy), lets have a look into the regions, where DVB-T2 is only providing HDTV:
Compared to DVB-T1, a DVB-T2 capable tuner stick/card needs to support an extended COFDM (+16K and +32K) mode, 264-QAM Modulation and extended block length for DFT. Otherwise it will not even be able to deliver anything one could record as a Mux bitstream to the disk. Most of the former said algorithms are tightly bound to the tuner itself, so emulating it via a tuner card driver seems to be not possible in practice. At least because recent tuner API’s are not aware of such. So, back to the real existing tuners:
Regarding Antti’s Blog - MN88472 Demudulator, it’s not only the question of the main IC (RTL2832), but also of the 2nd IC, the demodulator. This is important, because the RTL-2832 is what we see in a lot of syslog files, tvheadend screens and so on. But the name of the demodulator IC is not available easily. With short words: one can have a tuner “RTL2832” which is capable of decoding DVB-T2 and/or HDTV, and another can have another tuner “RTL2832”, which is not.
Somewhere in the web I found the statement: the widespread RTL-2832 tuner can only receive 2 MHz wide channels, while DVB-T2 uses the 4 MHz and that is the reason for no DVB-T2 via 2832. But I can not confirm any part of this. Just now, I tried to link that blog entry here, but it was deleted. For a good reason, I guess.
I hope I was able to shed a small light into the topic, and please excuse me, if i was not exact in all details. If so, please correct my statements! Thx.
@HiroProtagonist:
Can you kindly provide some more details like screen resolution, codec, modulation, bandwidth of your HD TV streams you are watching via DVB-T(1)?
Here in NZ, HD channels are transmitted in 1080i with H264 MPG-4 AVC (part 10) encoding, QAM64 modulation and 8MHz bandwidth.
I’m using ITE 9135 DVB-T tuners.
Hi HiroProtagonist,
This is quite funny, because this fits mostly the properties of what Western Europe (except Germany) uses to call “DVB-T2”, only the modulation is more complex for T2 here. Maybe a marketing / branding issue. Did New Zealand start with a predecessor with lower quality, say, 576 lines before the stuff you recently get?
Cheers,
Laser-Man
No, it was this way from the start. There are a number of SD channels as well as the HD stuff.