sundar_milo
Regular
Well i have undergone inplant training at Doordharshan,chennai.We had the oppurtunity to see the real time video encoders that is sent to Terrestrial broadcasting section and to the satellite for DD DTH.The only channel that is being transmitted from chennai is DD Podhigai that is available in DD DTH and others from start.The stream was encoded at variable rates from 2.xxMbps to a max of 4.xx MbpsIt was a big machine and it had its own Windows xp based computer in which a software was running showing the details about the encoding level and stuff.Man we have xH.264 and other new codecs in market which are especially made for better than DVD quality(Bluray official video format,ipod video,Apple TV,iPhone, ps3,360 and a lot more now supports h.264) and at lower bit rates.Definetely Dish TV and Tata Sky doesnt support H.264But IPTV do support h.264 though.So the available bandwidth is not the only factor for transmitting N number of channels.Codecs really do involve in the transmission of channels.Its like the MHz-GHz war that went on some 5 years before in processor market.People thought that the processing power is proportional to the GHz value.But its not the real thing.With advanced instruction set,more cores per chip the Hertz war got ended. 