picture quality

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Started to watch the Indy/Denver yesterday on CTVHC. It was unwatchable. So much macroblocking it looked like an old analogue snowy signal. Interestingly I was watching the Min/Cin game on CTV OTA in Toronto and they played a highlight from the Ind/Den game. The picture was perfect. Having an OTA set up as well as Bell I can say you can definitely notice the difference. Sometimes not by much but yesterday was the worst I have ever seen.
 
American Idol, CTV News at 6, The Mentalist. etc etc etc all had excellent PQ on my set. As did Late Night , Night Line , Jimmy Kimmel. For many of us tv viewing does not revolve around hockey which in itself contributes to lower PQ. As for the continual threatening to cancel.....go ahead. If one is so disatified with the service or any product use your constitutional right and choose another. Hundreds of thousands of subscribers seem to be quite happy with their television reception......SD or HD.
 
Much as I hate to admit it because I feel that Bell is often unfairly targetted here by a number of the contributors, it has been pretty much established from a number of unbiased and knowledgeable sources that Bell does change all signals to 720P and then compresses the resulting signals. That is beyond question.
 
I haven't really complained about picture quality lately, but last night I found the quality on a few channels to be quite poor. As others have said, I guess it really is hit and miss with Bell. CBC HD which usually looks quite good for HNIC, look rather poor for Dragon's Den last night. The guide lists it as HD, but I'm not sure if it is or just widescreen. I've seen this show look better than what it did last night. ABCHE (1201) was really soft looking. Not sure if it was the shows, but there was no "pop" to the picture there at all. It wasn't much better than SD. Even Global HD during Glee wasn't all that sharp. It might have been one of the better looking channels, but it was still soft. I had to stick in a BluRay to make sure it wasn't me or my set, but that looked stunning.
 
Did anyone else notice some edge enhancement on the Ducks/Sharks game last night on CBCHD? Also, did anyone else see motion artifacts in the picture, more noticeable in darker parts of the picture? Besides that, when the play was still, like before a face off, the picture looked good. And before I get, it might be your tv, TSNHD does not show any of these motion artifacts and looks quite good.
 
Watched 'The Green Mile' this week on AMC and the macroblocking was terrible! Saw 'Stargate' as well and it, too, was terrible pq.
 
I just replaced a 6000 with a 6141 (before the announcement naturally), anyway, on my old fashioned RPTV, I don't notice much difference on the HD channels but the SD quality is much improved.
 
Agree with Bman72s the Indy/Denver game was unwatchable on CTVHC, loaded with artifacts the picture resembled a swarm of bees. Why even offer a hd channel with such a low bit rate that you can't watch. Bell TV is bandwidth challenged, so adding new hd channels is stupid.
 
I noticed that too on the game on CTVHC, yet the SD/MIN game on CTVHT and CBSHD had none of these aritfacts, although not the sharp 1080i presentation that CBS would be offering due to down conversion. The one other thing I don't agree with that Bell is doing now is with the HD PPV. Last night I ordered the WWE event, and although it looked decent, it would be nice if Bell shut down some other PPV channels during these live events to give the event (that cost $50) the full bandwith of the transponder. Also would be nice to see it in the 1080i that it is produced in.
 
I don't have any of the macroblocking issues that you are experiencing either. These channels look good on all TV's ... some standard LCD's and even a 240Hz LCD. I would be checking all your connectors, switches, etc. to make sure you don't have a bad connection causing this.

I am not debating whether or not you are experiencing this, but there has to be a reason for it.
 
Me too - the bluray is flawless. I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing the extra high brightness of the HDMI. Even after spending a lot of time adjusting the controls on the TV, it still doesn't look as nice as the component. Not only that, my TV will not recognize when a 4:3 show is on when using the 9242 HDMI. With component and with the 9241 HDMI it would automatically adjust. It's definitely not right. I think I may have a broken unit if none of you are having this trouble.

I can now see why some say the Starchoice DSR530 is better than the 9242. It others experience what I've experienced with the HDMI on the 9242 and the component DSR530. However, if you compare the 9241, I don't find that it's any better or worse.
 
Bell response is they have no responsibility or control of what is advertised and sold as HD. :confused: I wish CBC and their lack of HD equipment would get out of Hockey.
 
You convert a transponder to 8PSK, not the individual channels. Presumably all the transponders that carry HD content will be converted eventually.

-Mike
 
Just wondering. How do you guys find the quality of the College basketball playing on CBS HD? I find it to look ok actually.
 
As far as I'm aware Bell re-encodes everything to 720p, which is why you wouldn't see any difference between 720p and 1080i on a decent television as there is no extra resolution in the source signal. Better just to leave it on 720p, don't know why the BEV technician would have suggested otherwise.

My father-in-law uses an antenna to pick up CBC HD (5-1) free OTA and you get the native 1080i broadcast - it definitely appears to have more detail and less pixelation than the BEV broadcast lending credence to the notion that BEV is re-encoding CBCHD to 720p and compressing the heck out it.

I am very disatisfied with Bell's picture quality right now and what's even more annoying is no-one is able to discuss anything about when MPEG-4 might be coming. Always canned responses! How long has the MPEG-4 HD PVR been out now? Long time!

I can't go to OTA because I love watching F1 so I need a subscription service and I know already that Cogeco's HD picture is even worse so that's not an option. I hesitate to consider trying Star Choice...you get used to what you've got you know?
 
What's that supposed to mean? and being specific, they're mostly comparing to Rogers HD, and they notice the difference immediately.

Also; I always set the recievers picture setting to 1080, and show the customers that i've done it if the TV is ready for it. If they've got a SD TV, I show them how to change it when they decide to upgrade, so they know. I also show them the picture stretching/zooming options.

I'll give you this... I've had customers complain about the HD picture quality after I've shown them what 'stretching' does.

If the consumer knew they needed to change the setting to 1080, they would. Most don't play around in the menu's.
 
I'm a CI subscriber and I find the SNET west games are the worst of any games.

Sports channels in general tend to be not so great on Bell. Sad but true, since I've subbed to Shaw, Rogers and Bell in the last year I feel qualified to make some observations.

Shaw had the most marcroblocking by far. Rogers was so-so, I found there was almost as much marcoblocking but more colour bleeding. Bell's picture is softer than either on account of them going 720p but I find the PQ a lot more tolerable. It's a subjective thing, macroblocking drives me nuts and I see a lot less on Bell.

That said, the PQ is wildly inconsistent, and, as mentioned, I find the sports channels to be the worst. It's not just the motion, I even notice a lot of noise looking at faces on Sportscentre, while greens on baseball dance around a lot on some SNET channels.

No provider is perfect, so far I've enjoyed Bell the most though. I do wish they'd rearrange some sports channels and give them some more bandwidth as it's demanding programming.
 
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