[MEncoder-users] Encodes for slow laptop

[R.L. Horn]

On Mon, 9 Jun 2008, Loren Merritt wrote:

> I don't know who designed HDTV, be he must not have been much of an 
> expert.

Expert in analog television perhaps.  The ATSC specs in particular just 
don't make much sense to me in a digital context.  I think the FCC just 
had existing proposals for analog HDTV, saw an opportunity to "free up" 
(that is, sell off) bandwidth by going digital and rushed to a hybrid 
standard which is pretty much universally despised.

> 1080 content is often broadcast as 1080, i.e. encoded as 1088 and 
> cropped to 1080 at playback time. Yes, it suffers from all the 
> inefficiency normally associated with non-mod16 encoding.

I couldn't find any references to 1080i broadcast streams with vertical 
resolutions other than 1080 in the wild.  Unfortunately, I have to rely on 
scrounged information since I don't have access to DTV broadcasts and, 
unless or until I move, never will.