Compression issues getting worse

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Has anyone else been finding recently that the compression from BEV is getting worst and worst. The digital breakup during scenes with high contrast is ever increasing. And there appear to be more and more signs of breakup, at least with the 9200 model anyway.

What is going on? If this is what the future of BEV holds, perhaps its time to move on.

Do they honestly think subscribers will put up with this junk!
 
Yes, the last day or so, I noticed the image is very poor on many channels.

As you said high contrast and it looks very soft here. CNN for example.

I'd rather pay for 30 top quality channels than 300 sub par ones?
 
You'll all have to wait until they implement MPEG4 and 8PSK before things get better. They are being really cheap with bandwidth at the moment.

It is scary to think that with even more compression, the problem might get worse rather than better.

How does the ExpressVu picture quality compare with Star Choice or Rogers? Anyone?
 
Well there nickname is Bell compressvu for a reason.

I am sure the quality will stay as bad or worst even when they go mpeg-4, Star choice has some pretty good looking channels, they need to since Cancom feeds many small cable company's, Rogers should have great looking video I do no downtown Toronto it's pretty good.
 
I totally agree. Global Toronto (ch. 211) used to be razor-sharp, but was down-rezzed and bit-starved a few months ago.

CBC Ottawa (ch. 208) is very fuzzy and pixelated compared to CBC Toronto (ch. 210). Compression is so high, when watching a hockey game, if a player makes a wrist shot, the MPEG encoders can't keep up and the puck disappears for a second or two.

TLC on ExpressVu looks worse than my DirecTv setup. My DirecTv uses a receiver I bought back in 1999, fed with s-video to a TiVo series 2, which is then fed to my TV with s-video. Believe it or not, even with the decompression, re-compression, and second de-compression, the picture is still sharper with a lot more detail than what ExpressVu gives us. Same with Speed channel. ExpressVu's picture quality is very obviously worse than DirecTv's.
 
It would be interesting to know if BEV just doesn't care about about the qaulity they provide or if they just think their consumers are stupid.
 
I've had BEV for about a month now. Just checked out my co-workers *C setup on his 50" plasma. Compared to my 42" plasma with BEV, I'm sticking with Bell. Starchoice looked washed out and pixelated too often for my tastes during the Ottawa-Buffalo game. Not to mention the audio dropped every few minutes for 3-5 seconds.

SD channels do look soft, but no worse than regular cable did before I upgraded.
 
I've tried both on the same setup, using a DSR 500 and a 6100 (the 500 has been recently replaced with a 505). Channels on Bell looked looked washed out when compared to from SC, even in HD. There were a few exceptions, like ABC HD.

As for audio breaking up, from worst to best
- DSR 505
- 6100
- DSR 500
The problems with the 505 are likely software-related.

Different setup might yield different results (720p vs 1080i, etc...)

I watch hockey using my OTA HD setup. Picture quality of hockey on SC is similar to OTA (both at 1080i). On ExpressVu, it appeared softer.

Using a 720p rear projection TV (at a friend's place), CBC-HD OTA looked sharper than ExpressVu.

-gmd
 
I haven't noticed any change at all. Since they haven't added any new channels in a while now, why would the quality be decreasing?

-Mike
 
My EV signals are nice and clear with few issues. The biggest change I noticed was going to a 9200. Compared to the 9200, the pictures on the 6000 and 5900 look washed out and fuzzy. But then I don't try to watch SDTV on a 50" screen either. That's just asking for a bad viewing experience. SD from any source is just not designed for a 50" screen. Some sources are better than others. TMN, for example process their SD signals digitally and encode with a higher bit rate. OTOH, a lot of Canadian broadcasters still use analog plants and just encode (or let EV encode) the analog signal. That makes for a terrible picture. Maybe you should put the blame on the broadcaster in some cases for using outdated equipment.
 
are SD digital signals (SD-SDI) not fed to the suppliers at 270 Mbps.
and then it is the suppliers, BEV / SC, that encode and compress them?
 
Edit: The following comment is regarding HD. Sorry I got confused by the 270 Mbps remark, which makes little sense to me since that's 14X HD maximum broadcast bitrate.

Service providers get their (HD) signals from the "broadcasters" at a maximum of 19.4 Mbps (although the broadcaster may be using 12-18 Mbps depending on format, multicasting, etc).

For example, TMN-HD does all the encoding and sends out a 1080i signal to BEV, Rogers, etc. This has been discussed previously in another thread and was confirmed by my high level contact at Astral.

The only broadcaster that alters the signal specifically for BEV is Global, which sends them a 720P signal (Global HD is not available OTA, therefore they can do this.). All other broadcasters send their "usual" signal. See the following for additional information on HDTV Formats:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17721

Note that in the above post there are links to previous discussions where formats and bitrates were discussed by people who did ACTUAL measurements of same.

I don't believe that the Service providers do any encoding of the original material, that is done by the broadcaster. As indicated in the link above, BEV and *C change the format on some channels and some service providers do additional compression when they're bandwidth limited (on HD). All SD digital is compressed and is typically sent at bitrates of about 3-5 Mbps.

A single analogue channel on cable utilizes roughly 39 Mbps (QAM 256)
 
That may be, but that has little to do with how the signals are encoded at the source. For example, TMN signals are pretty close to DVD quality from the source. Some of the other services, especially those with low quality analog plants may be lucky to get much better than VHS resolution by the time the signal is encoded. It doesn't matter what you do with their signals, they are going to look bad on any service. By encoding, I mean the original signal encoding at the broadcaster (for transmission to BDUs) or encoding of OTA analog services by BDUs for digital. Digital encoding of analog signals is one of the biggest causes of poor picture and sound on digital services and the reason why many people prefer analog cable. Very few Canadian broadcasters have invested significant money into digital production facilities. A fully digital service like TMN which takes high quality digital masters from the studios and process them digitally. It is difficult and expensive to do compared to just slapping a digital encoder on the end of an out-of-date analog plant, which is what most Canadian broadcasters currently do.
 
Global sends all it's SD-SDI signal to BEV at 270 Mbps uncompressed, the HD-SDI willl be sent sent at 1080i 1.3Gbps uncompressed. What BEV does to them is what you see from the stb.
 
I don't see it as crap, and as I seldom ever watch sd channels, hd is important to me. I would be happier if Bev deleted 100 sd channels and added 10 hd.

I have noticed that the ball games on WGN hd are more pixelated than last year. The pq is very good until there is alot of movement.
 
I am noticing more dropouts on the HD channels. HDNet, for example, was once almost perfect. Now I get several dropouts an hour, which is very annoying with concerts. Similar things have happened with a few other HD channels. It's difficult to determine the cause though. Is it the 9200 and firmware or is it EV's conversion to 720p (if they still do that) or compression. I noticed that EV went from one HD channel + several SD channels per transponder to 2 HD channels per transponder some time back. Then there are the CTV and Global SNAFUs the simsub FUBARs. It's enough to make me want to switch to cable. I would if it were not for bad SD signals and higher cost with cable. (IMHO, EV's SD signals are better than most of Roger's SD channels.)
 
lars, with the exception of a few channels, what you are watching is not HDTV. there is a certain point with compression that you have to draw the line and admit, this is not any better than SD-NTSC. In a lot of cases a good off air NTSC signal is more enjoyable to watch than most of what BEV is flogging as HDTV
 
628 - Spike TV is the only channel I have had comprssion issue with. This has been bad for a number of years (on the following receivers 2700, 3100, 5900, 9200). Bad to the point that I find it unwatchable. Watching people walk around is like watching an old 8mm movie.

802 CTV - seems messed up too, but I don't think that is compression (could be). Pixelation about every 2-3 minutes, audio/video sync issues, etc
 
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