picture quality

  • Thread starter Thread starter new-oakviller
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I spent last weekend watching HD on Starchoice and all I can say is that it appears to me to be more of a constant PQ than Bells'. I am not sure it was better but every channel looked as good as the others, I cannot say the same for the Bell HD channels.
 
Wow Coop....by looking at your signature, you are certainly not a newbie....but yet you find the PQ quite good. Are there any channels in particular? I know the prime time shows (sim-subbed) are not good.....but RushHD is not bad. I would like to see the Prime time PQ increase.
 
The PQ on the Bell HD channels has always been very good in our household until the last week or so. It has seriously degraded and eventhough have disagreed with Markb in the past must admit his comments are appropriate. It seems that just before more services are added the quality goes down but in most cases has returned to acceptable levels after the channels have been added. It was most noticeable on the National allthought the Movie Network had good PQ.......disappointing to say the least. As for SD some of the channels are almost unwatchable even when not stretched.
 
I guess the Flames games on SNW are one of the lesser rated shows since their picture quality lately has been terrible.

I think sports shows should take precedence for bandwidth use as the picture quality is really noticeable compared to wasting it on regular programming from some indoor studio.

especially since I'm paying extra for it on Centre Ice
 
HD should be better than DVD. I thought I had Showcase with Bell but I guess it was free for awhile and then they took it away. Was the HD picture not as sharp as the DVD?
 
I don't think Bell TV will do anything in regards to your inquiry unfortunately. They care more about the number of channels etc...
 
I haven't experienced any actual macroblocking for a while, it's those other compression artifacts/motion artifacts that I'm referring to, that are more visable in dark areas of the picture. A bright scene on any show will not display these, just the dark areas, which is probably what you are seeing too. Blu Ray looks flawless and I think the reason behind Sasktel Max looking better was because Sasktel is using MPEG 4, not MPEG 2. I may try to sign up for a week just to do a comparison between the two and then cancel which ever one I don't like. Of course the only thing keeping me with Bell is NHL Centre Ice. Even Sasktel offeres more HD channels then Bell.
 
I'm not sure if this is the right forum for a picture quality comparison but as a long time Rogers customer I've been intrigued by the push that Bell is making to "reclaim" customers for their bundles. They've been pretty aggressive on price and claims of superiority in TV offerings. I went to a Bell store to see their equipment. I have to admit that their HD PVR seems a lot better than my SA8300 in terms of program guide, channel locks, parental controls and the ability to customize the guide. Be that as it may, I couldn't help but notice that the HD picture quality didn't seem as good as Rogers.

The problem is that I'm watching on a 1080p Sharp Aquos at home (I realize everyone is broadcasting in 1080i and 720p) but the Bell stores are using Samsung HD TV's. I wasn't sure if the lower picture quality was due to their display TV's or compression.

Have any of you done side-by-side comparisons of Rogers HD vs Bell HD with the same program source? How is Bell's compression vs Rogers?

The Bell features and hardware seem so much better than Rogers but I'm uncertain on picture quality. Any thoughts?
 
I see lots of compression artifacts on my recent SONY TV with my 9242. (hooked up with HDMI). I initially thought that it was my TV and it was the LCD motion blur thing but if I pause live TV you can clearly see the blur in the moving objects. If it was the TV, the blur would go away when the image is paused. When I pause HD hockey sometimes you can barely make out the player because its so blurred.

I was watching 24 last night in HD and the dark scenes were just terrible. It was "snowing" like crazy. It's amazing what Bell tries to pass off as HD sometimes.
 
Since Rogers HD has better PQ than Bell (bitrates don't lie), I assume the difference they notice immediately is that Bell is worse?

Bell takes 1080i signals, down converts them to 720p and then further compresses the feed to the satellites. How can that possibly be better than 14Mbps - 17Mbps Rogers cable in native 1080i format?
 
I've noticed that when monitoring the PQ threads here with Bell signals... people have the same consistency of complaining when the signals suck> and then when the signals appear OK.

This leads me to conclude that: Bells SD/HD signals are all over the map!> They're not consistent and are actually archaic in terms of functionallity...it's pretty piss poor to provide people a service that flucuautes in quality like the weather?!!>

The past few days I've noticed my SD channels are sharp and have wonderfull clarity> But in a few days I'll be saying they arn't that good.

I think we should contact Bell regarding these inconsistent annomoly's and complain to them as to why they are happening and why no one is even bothering to fix them!!


If the picture quality has the potential to be near perfect> then why should I pay for the services when the picture quality is degraded?

That would be like investing in an exotic automobile and have it perform perfectly on occassion, then disruptivly. Why invest?
 
Its a lost cause, some people are just too brainwashed by Bell to know any better. Especially if Bell is all they ever see. I've learned that on this forum.
 
There are satellite providers that care about quality over quantity. They only problem is they are in the US. Both DN and Directv use MPEG4 which mades for better HD picture quality.

I think that once Bell switches over to MPEG4 for the HD channels, the HD quality should improve. If it doesn't I'm moving south to get better HD!:eek:
 
If it's just you, then it's me as well. Even if I watch one of the 800 HD channels, the 1000 channels look better then the 800's. There is less artifacts in the picture I notice, and I've been a big complainer about bad quality. It can still be better and still isn't what it was when I first signed on to HD, but it's been better then what it was a year ago. I still wish they would switch CBS, CBC and any other 1080i channels back to 1080i. I remember watching Bruins games from NESN HD in 1080i and those looked great, or CBS HD NFL games. Wish we still got that 1080i quality.
 
No way was it as good. When I showed my wife it only took her a split second to notice the difference. She said the HD from Bell looked smokey. I going to try again tomorrow at 4pm "HD Meet the Parents" I think I have the DVD around somewhere.
 
I believe it's quite recent that they switched everything to 720p - from what I gather around the net you used to be able to get channels like CBC, HD Net, etc., in 1080i which is what they broadcast in, but apparently not anymore.

What are you switching to if you don't mind my asking?
 
Does anybody know how long the complete HD switch over to 8PSK will actually take? A few days, a week or two, a month?
 
Macroblocking is there for sure... You will see it or not depending on a lot of factors like:

How far you are sitting from the TV
TV size
Contrast and brightness
Etc...

I was with Videotron (Qc) until last Thursday, and Bell TV HD is definitely worst ! Compression artifact, macroblocking, loss of details. For me, it was the price to pay to get almost 2x the number of HD channels compared to videotron.

I hope it gets better with either MPEG4 or the new satellite !
 
unfortunetly sometimes it in the eye of the beholder. some people might think its fairley good and yet other might think its worse then rodgers or Cable. see if you can go to an elecrronics store with Bell on display so you can check it out yourself
 
I agree 100% with Jumpy27, on what he is saying...... I also feel that Rocketman's observations, althought perhaps factually true, do not "hold water" in the real world.
His comment regarding the 720P/1080i issue does not take into account that 99% of all HD TV out there do a better job deinterlacing 1080i to the sets native resolution than 720P. OH, and yes, on my 60" calibrated Kuro I notice everything that Jumpy27 stated in his post.
In fact ,just ckeck my posts regarding this topic, I have been on BEV back regarding the PQ issue since day one. I too hope that things change soon with the advent of 8PSK and MPEG 4.

Paul
 
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