picture quality

  • Thread starter Thread starter new-oakviller
  • Start date Start date
Took 70 minutes to get the voicemail notification on Bell at lunch time today (Saturday). Never seen this be more than 7 seconds with Telus.

-gmd
 
Just started with Bell on Monday and after some initial hiccups, everything is running quite well. Compared to Rogers the PQ and PVR are big upgrades...

But...the PQ on TSN and TSN2HD aren't so hot...in fact they're the only channels that are worse than Rogers. Anyone else notice these don't look so hot?

Unfortunate for a sports nut.
 
It's a bit tricky testing for which is better - don't confuse "smooth and accurate" with "crisp and inaccurate". The latter is part of the reason that many people are "impressed" by the default picture mode on their TVs - lots of edge enhancements and sharpness, but an inaccurate picture.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=87543 On Upconversion

A good example is people's hair. When properly optimized you can usually see the individual hairs on a person's head, whereas a TV that's got lots of edge enhancements will show more like "clumps" of hair, instead of individual hairs and those "clumps" look crisp, but once you see the individual hairs, you see what you've been missing.
 
The game was broadcast in widescreen SD, not HD. As was the Calgary/Minnesota game. Only the Leafs/Bruins game was in HD. The second game is usually HD, but CBC must have ran out of HD trucks that weekend.
 
So just how bad is Bell's HD PQ, well for the first time last night I decided to stick in a DVD just to see what the quality of a regular DVD looked like and the picture quality of the DVD was easily comparable, if not slightly better then Bell's HD quality, which is quite poor. I remember when I first had HD where the quality was really good, then came DVD, then SD, now on my set it's BluRay/PS3, then DVD, then Bell HD, then over the air SD, then Bell SD. I didn't realize how good my tv would display SD signals until I hooked up an over the air antenna and the quality is way better then Bell's SD.
 
There's a helluva lot of misinformation in the previous few posts. Let my post some facts to straighten out some misconceptions:

1. Rogers does not convert the formats (say 720P to 1080i). The formats are passed to the STB by the head end without any format conversion. Here's the FAQ on HDTV formats with more info on the topic:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=76129

2. Rogers STBs in Ontario can passthrough the native format, be it 720P or 1080i directly to the TV.

3. BTV convert all 1080i channels to 720p, therefore I usually recommend setting the STB to 720P to eliminate one further conversion, however, I also recommend people try both 720P and 1080i to see what they prefer. Here's the FAQ on upconversion:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=87543

And Native TV formats, which can have an impact:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=73528

4. 720P uses about 10% less bandwidth than 1080i and that's why BTV does it - with 100 HD channels 10% is a lot of bandwidth.

5. BTV's average bitrate for the HD channels is about 10 Mbps, while Rogers does no compresson on most of their channels and "only" compresses some of the channels. Even the channels that Rogers does compress, typically have a higher bitrate than what you get from BTV - see the following thread on that topic:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=104501
 
Bell is definitely soft in the PQ department. I was at FS the other day and they had Shaw digital on one of the displays and did a double take when I saw how much better HDNET looked on Shaw vs Bell. I've already seen how good it looks on Star Choice. Too bad Shaw won't set up cable in our little Hamlet even though the main pipeline runs right next to it on the highway on it's way to the base. I wouldn't mind a cable/internet package. It would be cheaper than a separate wireless ISP and satellite provider. Any word on when SC's new PVR is coming out yet?
 
happy friday, mates! don't rush buying the lastest receivers from bell now. BEV controls the bitrate at their data center. The only things you can do are hdmi & svideo. :D
 
I just completed testing the 9242 by using both the HDMI cable and component using 720p. I'm not seeing any difference between 720p and 1080i when watching an HD program. The blacks still look gray and as far as quality goes, HDMI is definitely inferior to the component connection on the 9242 that I have.
 
bell gets signal staright from satellite through dish but rogers sends through underground cables which are at some end connected with dish. so my point is how come bell customers don,t get full hd picture whereas as per your post rogers do
 
Picture quality is not a quantifiable parameter. Bitrate is very loosely correlated with it.

This helps Bell get away with it.
Proving them being in violation would require something that would be above CRTC's comprehension level.
 
Thanks, 57, for the bit of advice on how to really compare.

Technically, 720p contains abt 1 million pixels of information per frame and 1080i contains abt 2 million pixels of information per frame. So in theory, native 1080i ought to be better than native 720p.

Once a service provider starts upconverting and downconverting a broadcaster's original signal, who knows where you will end up.

Most US broadcasters, and all Canadian broadcasters, and some Canadian specialty channels, send their signals to distributors (satellite and cable providers) in 1080i. Ideally, everyone will pass through signals as is. Alas, that's not quite today's world.

Given all the above, it's not surprising that viewers able to capture CBC live OTA or a very well produced Blu-ray will notice better picture quality when their TV set is displaying 1080i/p vs 720p.
 
All I can say is wow, did the picture quality on Bell suck last night or was it just me. Watching the two hockey games on TSNHD, both games were very soft, especially the Wings/Ducks, noticed a fair bit of motion artifacts and even some macroblocking, and I've seen none of this on TSNHD in a long time. Even the logos in the scorebar weren't very detailed. Was able to notice some of the ventaliation holes in the jerseys, but not as visible as it used to be. Bell needs to get their act together soon. I thought this switch to 8PSK was to happen a month and a half ago. Maybe it's time to forget about that and move to MPEG 4 instead.
 
Rocketman, you must work for Bell to get so many things incorrect. I know for a fact that CBSHD, NBCHD and ABCHD on BELL are very soft looking when compared to Shaw. TSN and Sportsnet HD look great on Bell, but those are the only channels (on Bell that I watch) that look sharp like they used to 2 years ago. All the HD channels used to look very sharp on Bell 2 years ago, but not anymore. I have a 10 foot screen with a front projector so it makes it very easy to see which provider has the best quality HD. I have recordings of Jay Leno from 2 years ago that look just as good as Shaw does now. Bell has definitey gone downhill with their HD quality. I am hoping that when Bell switches over to 8PSK and then finally MPEG4, that the HD quality will return to what it was over 2years ago.

Please explaing to me how 720P can look sharper than 1080i. 720P will look much smoother than 1080i--as long as it was recorded with 720P HD cameras, but I don't understand how it could look sharper.
 
MPEG4 will only be for the HD channels. I do not believe there are any of the existing SD receivers that are capable of working with MPEG4, so that would imply that all SD will stay as MPEG2.
 
I recently noticed that picture quality is much better from last 2 weeks. Using Bell 9242
 
Back
Top