MPEG-4: Cable's Future, But How Soon?

There's an interesting piece this morning over at Multichannel News about the cable industry's slow conversion from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 and how the networks and operators are handling it. The upshot is that while MPEG-4 is almost universally hailed as more efficient than the older MPEG-2 format since it consumes less bandwidth while maintaining a high picture quality, so much money has been invested in MPEG-2 headend, transponder and set-top box equipment that a wholesale changeover to MPEG-4 won't happen anytime soon.

Check out the full MCN article for details on what HBO, Starz, Discovery and others are doing with MPEG-4.