Bell HD Sports Macroblocking

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DarkLord

New member
I used to have a Sony 1080i HD RPTV and I didn't remember noticing any significant amount of pixelation with the HD sport programs. Recently, I upgraded my TV to a 1080p plasma and I notice a significant amount of pixelation, watching golf and NFL.

Most notably, on the few NFL games I've watched so far, the grass is like a blotch of green patches from afar. Switching between 720p out and 1080i out didn't make any differences.

I'm just wondering if anyone noticing that lately as well.
 
BEV (I suppose I should call it BTV now?) has plenty of issues with over-compressed video resulting in pixelation and other artifacts. In order to cram as many channels as possible onto the available transponder space, they have to. You're probably just noticing this now because you have a better monitor.

Think of it this way: a professional quality DVD has 8-9Mbps of data at a resolution of 720x480, and should show few (if any) picture artifacts. BEV is typically delivering a 13Mbps stream for a 1280x720 video... that works out to only 50% more bandwidth for video that has almost 200% more pixels.

The end result is that visible macroblocking occurs, especially during scenes with a lot of movement (in sports or movies).
 
Your previous TV may not have had the resolution that the new TV has, so you're noticing it more on the new TV. Also, has the new TV been set up properly? If you've still got it in Vivid mode all the edge enhancements and contrast will exacerbate the macroblocking (not pixellation).

See the following post on TV setup.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=76161
 
I find the sports channels actually to look great, little or no pixelation for me, like recomended above check your tv settings, that might just be the problem.
 
actually since they are cramming 3 hd stations per transponder, its more like 8-9mbps per channel. and all of bells channels are 720p now, even cbc and src which wer estill 1080i up until a little while ago.
 
Turn out it's my TV's problem. I initial experienced marcoblocking/pixelation problem with my Samsyng PN50A650 and I had returned that TV since and picked up the Pioneer 5080. The problem is now gone. During the few NFL games I watched today, the grass looked like grass and not blocthes of green.

Now I'm convinced that the Pioneer does have superior video processing ability on top of their deeper blacks.
 
this is yet another reason bell should go MPEG 4. heck dish just did it with there new birds for both HD and SD programming and they have more than 900 channels on one sat
 
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