Bell TV HD Needs Improvement Fast

M

MarkB

New member
Monday nights are the busy night for tv for me, and tonight I really noticed just how bad the so called HD is on Bell, or should we just call it HD Lite as that is all we are getting. Watching Heroes tonight and the HD feed only looked marginally better then the SD feed. The same observations were made for How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory on CBS. The NFL game also just looked marginally better. Bell needs to get everything on the new satellite and switch over to MPEG 4 fast so us viewers can get some quality back. It is a disgrace to be calling what Bell customers see HD. The quality is horrible and not at all sharp. It's time Bell gets their act together fast.
 
I realize we've shifted quite a bit from the original topic, maybe a new topic would be appropriate.

"If there is one problem most players in $1K+ class have, it's deinterlacing."

Deinterlacing used to be a problem, when recorded material comes from an interlaced camera (can happen for most TV shows on DVD, but should not happen on movies transferred properly to DVD). Since the camera captures both half frames at a different moment, movements will create issues during deinterlacing. But nowadays, with most cameras being progressive, when you create an interlaced picture from this kind of source, it should not be a problem anymore. There may be the odd case where some hardware or software will place half-frames in different order (even-odd, instead of odd-even), in which case, the deinterlacing creates a garbled picture.
 
Do you think Bell would listen if you/we were to complain to them? Maybe lots of complaints directly to them would finally get some action. Something has to be done about this.
 
I believe going to 720p was the best step BeV made in the HD space: when properly done the picture looks at least as good and no deinterlacing required on the consumer end. The problem is, they don't always do the best job in transcoding...
When it counts (i.e. brings $$$), BeV can do a really good job: Olympics, Dancing with the Stars, some concerts, etc.
Like what? I don't think was the case.
At least BeV was already then chastized for bad HD on this forum.
I do. Magnifica Italia on Equator a couple times a week for at least a year. Like it very much. Good quality most of the time.
 
One last note about (de)interlacing:

Taken from here.

I strongly believe (and have quite a bit of personal experience to support this) that in real life situations - low bitrate, imperfect transmission, receiving, decoding, deinterlacimg, TV sets, setups, etc. - 720p is better than 1080i. Only when reaching the HD/BD level does this change.
 
"1) Subjective viewer testing of the effects of reduced bandwidth on compressed video performed by the European Broadcast Union has indicated that 720p degrades much more gracefully than 1080i. Considering BTV assigns only 8-9Mbps per channel maybe 720p is a better compromise."

Of course. You don't need subjective testing for this kind of conclusion. Math will do the job for you: a 1080i picture uses more pixels (1,036,800) than a 720p picture (921,600pix): 12.5% more ! If you allocate the same bandwidth for both signals, it is normal that the 1080i will have inferior quality.
 
I have both Bell and Shaw HD, and both look the same on my 119" screen--good but not great. As soon as Bell gets MPEG4 they will use the extra bandwidth to add more HD channels, so it will questionable if the HD will improve. The only way to overcome this is to live in a big city and make use of HD OTA channels.
 
That may be true, but I strongly believe that BDUs such as Bell should not be making those decisions for me. If NBC, CTV, CBS, CBC, HDNet etc. have chosen 1080i, then BDUs should be abiding by CRTC rules and delivering those stations to me in 1080i format with no degradation or reduction of bitrate.

If a BDU has bandwidth contraints then they should offer fewer channels (cut some superfluous SD channels) or they should not be allowed to market the product as HDTV.
 
Agreed, but it wouldn't be so bad in Canada if the CRTC would actually enforce its own rules for digital television. Their policy is that signal distributors (Bell, Rogers, etc) are supposed to deliver digital stations to customers in the "same format and quality" as received by the BDU. This means no transcoding, re-compression, etc.

Bell got around this for a little while when they were only converting a handful of channels to 720p by claiming that the conversion was being done at the source, e.x. claiming that Global was feeding Bell a 720p signal despite being 1080i over the air.

That is clearly not the case now since they're transcoding pretty much everything, yet the CRTC will not hold them accountable.

I've grown weary of complaining to the CRTC about this issue; I tried complaining to various stations like HDNet, CBC, and others to let them know that their picture quality is being degraded by Bell, but aside from keeping CBC-HD alive in 1080i longer than the rest it had little effect. I suspect that they either do nothing, or their complaints to Bell fall on deaf ears. For something like HDNet that isn't a mandated "must carry" channel, Bell can simply threaten to stop carrying them if HDNet complains too much about the signal manipulation.
 
i aree there must be some channels SD or HD people rarly watch. if it were me i be firing the guys who decided to put the hunting and fishing network on SD tv. who the heck need those sports 24/7 LOL. oh and i am curious if anyone watches BITE on 82W
 
"I believe going to 720p was the best step BeV made in the HD space: when properly done the picture looks at least as good and no deinterlacing required on the consumer end."

Yep, it's much better to have a 1080i picture converted to 720p then reconverted from 720p to 1080p on full HD TVs, than having a 1080i picture deinterlaced to 1080p...
 
It's a different issue and I won't argue here...
It looks like that famous wording means nothing in terms of accounting.
And BeV was screwing up 1080i signal so badly, it wasn't hidef most of the time.

Yes, sticking to "better fewer channels but higher bitrate" would have fixed this. But the market doesn't leave this approach a chance for existence...
 
Well the question is was the horrible picture quality on Heroes from Bell or Global? My suspicion is the problem was the source.
 
I don't expect cable or satelite to ever be the best quality.

Never has been, never will be, don't expect unreasonable quality and you won't be disappointed. Broadcast quality, is just enough to make it watchable, never was meant to be any more.

I bought a blu-ray because i wanted quality. I watch movies with great picture and sound. If you really need to see Hereos in 1080p, buy it on BD.

OTA should be the answer, but NBC Buffalo can't do 5.1, nor can they insert an HD commercial. Pops and glitches all over the place.
 
I forgot to mention that the EBU also found that 1080p degrades more gracefully than 1080i. This isn't at all intuitive since 1080p contain 2x pixels/sec and it would suggest that interlaced video is inherently more susceptible to compression artifacts.

Based on this, perhaps BTV should switch to 1080p!
 
Does Bell intend to use both 'birds' at 82? If so, then perhaps this opens up enough bandwidth to give us the 1080 feeds at mpeg2. Can mpeg4 compression give the customers good enough PQ to satisfy our 'give us real HD' demands, or would it actually have the opposite/nil effect for customers--but just allow Bell to jam more junk through the pipes?

Forgive me for my ignorance, it wasn't very smart, if it had come out the other end...
 
Ok here's a thought...... how about BEV just deliver all their channels at 1080i ( which is what the broadcasters send them anyway - ABC, TSN, FOX being the exceptions) and send this at 14-16 Mbps per channel..... and Ohhhhhh and how about only 2 channels per transponder.:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Just a thought guys, just a thought!

Paul
 
Not sure I got the point. Will try again: it depends.
If the stream is a movie (1080/24p), it is perfectly telecined, perfectly transmitted,
your receiver doesn't screw it up and TV set does perfect IVTC - then no, 1080i transmission is better.
Since satisfy all those ifs is harder than for a snowflake to survive in hell - yes, having the deinterlacing chores
taken away before transmission makes perfect sense. Especially when we are talking about single digits Mbps streams...
 
Only 32 transponders with 30-40Mbps useful bandwidth (depending on modulation/FEC) can be handled by the receiving equipment. No point in keeping 2 birds when one will do.
1080/60p can't be handled real time by the receivers. Won't happen any time soon (with the possible exception of what Dish is doing).
Mpeg-4 is a much more efficient compression algorithm but it will take time to develop good real-time encoders and sort out how many channels per transponder BeV will actually use. Until that happens expect the picture to be of the same quality as now. At best.
 
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