G+_Joseph Cappellino Posted March 15, 2013 Share Posted March 15, 2013 Can anyone back me up on this analogy for H.264 video going in a MPEG-2 Cable Box? Imagine a court room translator only knows Spanish to English and the person can't learn any other language, a Cable Box is the same. If you feed French to this Spanish translator, the person can't translate it. This is what happens to H.264 in a MPEG-2 cable box. So, unfortunately, they have to fire this translator and get a new one that knows more languages, similar to you buying a new box. Posting this cause our local digital cable provider did H.264 on a single channel while all other channels remained MPEG-2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Keith Achorn Posted March 15, 2013 Share Posted March 15, 2013 No need to analogize - MPEG2 and H.264 are not compatible codecs. They use some similar compression tricks, but H.264 is more advanced (and not backwards compatible). Many boxes can play both just fine. It sounds like yours does not. If you lease your cable box, your cable company should be able to upgrade you to a newer one. If you own your box, consider giving them a call anyways - many providers will lease one box for free. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jack Zhang Posted March 15, 2013 Share Posted March 15, 2013 Keith Achorn Yeah, it's one of those Silver Motorola MPEG-2 only boxes. It decodes the AC3 audio fine on that channel, but no picture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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