picture quality

  • Thread starter Thread starter new-oakviller
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I am an industry professional and I wanted to provide you with some insight on some things you may not be aware of.

I and a group of others have recently had the luxury of seeing Rogers, Star Choice and BellTv side by side for all of their HD content.

For the most part Rogers and Bell were very comparable with a slight edge to Bell overall

Star Choice is a distant 3rd on much of their content. Check out channels such as Sportsnet and TSN..quite poor PQ looks like they have lowered their resolution to 3/4. Challenging content on HD will expose macroblocking on many of their channels. They are typically softer than Bell and Rogers and with them needing to eliminate some of their Sd channels to make way for more HD in trouble..

U.S content is already received compressed from the broadcaster. NBC and CBS overcompress their signals and that's why you see the issues on Bell, Rogers and SC for these channels. Here's why sometimes the like better than other occasions. U.S regional broadcasters receive (depending on the show) an already compressed signal such as live sports and Leno, Letterman etc. from the Main Network. This show is then re-compressed and sent out again...you can understand what that will do. On other occasions for syndicated content such as Desperate houswives they will receive the tape and encode it only once at a very high quality...then distribute it...looks better. Same goes for the Canadian broadcasters. You can see why there is inconsistency in the quality and some mis-conceptions.


1080i vs 720p.

There is no advantage to 1080i with picture quality...in fact 720p can look sharper and is better for sports content. Don't forget 720p is displaying 60 frames every second not 30 as 1080i. 720p is not a down res.

Finally always make sure that your receiver is actually not set to 480p...it can sometimes default back
 
Leno and Letterman look really soft lately (Letterman has looked soft for almost a year now), as do most of the other HD channels. It seems the only channels that look sharp all the time are the HD sports channels. If it wasn't for Bell's superior PVR I would dump them and just use my Shaw PVR's. Shaw's HD is noticeably sharper than Bell, but does have more macroblocking. I am hoping that Bell's switch to 8PSK will allow a higher bitrate giving a sharper picture on all HD channels.
 
Tech101, I agree with haystack's response.... the only thing I can think of, is the output resolution on the 9241, make sure it is set to 1080i and not some other resolution also check your TV's set up.

PS. BEV PQ is hit & miss, they lack consistency in the PQ.

PAul
 
I tried 720p and 1080i, both the Panny plasma and Samsung do a better job deinterlacing 1080i to 1080p than upconverting 720p to1080p.
 
I'm all for not adding anything new, in fact there are some channels they can take away to free up bandwith issues, like a PBS feed for example seeing as how most of the time they are showing the same thing. I did speculate on the new channels, but I would rather not see them at all. TCM and AMC to me are the biggest waste of space. All they show is old movies that I'll never watch, so why waste space. Most of the time AMC is just widescreen anyways and I bet TCM is the same. What HD movie is there from the 1940's?
 
You may be correct since I recorded "House" from FoxHD..... but the Global simsub, (which was pretty nice) is what was being piped through.
I agree that most HD channels showing sports are problematic for BEV in terms of the PQ.
As for TSN HD, only when they are reporting from their anchor desk is the PQ actually quite nice.

Paul
 
I find with picture quality, the times you see both providers side by side is not long enough to determine which is best. Quality of HD source is way more critical. From the little I saw Cable was better but there are too many other factors to say definitively. Good and bad original HD Signal supplied to all providers.

I chose price as a larger factor in my TV subscription. That's not to say they couldn't use improvement with both.
 
markb, you must get tired of hearing this from me but I have to disagree with you about TSN/CFL broadcasts. They are consistently rock steady without artifacts on my set. My only complaint is with the scorebar for CFL football that is placed at the bottom of the screen and actually semi-blocks a small part of the bottom of the picture. Same good picture for NHL hockey and for Jays Baseball. In fact I'd say that TSN is one of the better HD channels on Bell TV. The HD looks gorgeous, detailed and with a lot of depth.

Those are my views but I'd certainly welcome others, particularly from viewers in Atlantic Canada. Why ? Well even though it makes no sense I'm noticing that a lot of complaints come from the central part of the Canada including the Prairies. Maybe the angle of the satellite has something to do with it?
 
Approximately one month ago I upgraded my receiver for HD. I read through the comments regarding the picture quality of HD on Bell before upgrading which had me concerned somewhat. However, I am very pleased with the picture quality. Very happy with my choice.
 
1080i and 720p natively have the same bandwidth requirement. You do not "down-convert" from 1080i to 720p. Rogers is equally as guilty if all their signals go out in 1080i; 720p is the native resolution for many channels including ABC and FOX.

However, the compression is real on Bell and I can notice the difference in picture quality. Even my small local cable company did a better job on HD picture quality, but they just didn't have the HD selection that Bell does.
 
Picture quality is poor on most of the hd stuff .......this started some time in summer 08.......or a bit before .......now almost everything is very compressed.

Bell has the new commercials which are making me extremely angry.......

"the only provider with 100 HD Channels WITH STUNNING PICTURE QUALITY"

I agree it is pretty stunning.
 
I think a good reasoning why the DVD looks better then Bell HD is because what Bell is currently sending as HD is actually what can be referred to as HD lite. Everything is sent in 720p and the majority of channels are so overcompressed that there is only a bit rate of 7 - 8 mbps on most shows, which is comparable to the rates of a DVD, just the main difference is the DVD is not as compressed as Bell's signal and you are getting the original format. I posted a few weeks ago that I had watched a DVD on my tv for the first time since getting it (usually watch Blu Ray) and found the quality of the DVD to be better then Bell's PQ. Here's hoping that the 8PSK switch will provide better quality and not just give them more room to add more channels that aren't needed, like CFCN HD.

Another reason why Bell would wait for the 8PSK switch before adding any new channels would be the existing channels would be that much more compressed. I haven't seen major macroblocking in a long time, but once those two NCAA HD channels went active, the PQ was really blocky and not sharp, the worst I've seen in a while.
 
I have not really done a comparison, perhaps you maybe correct.... I 'll have to see for myself on my set up as to determine if what you are seeing is true.

Paul
 
I hava a Pana 42 inch G10 and since a while my HD PQ is very poor.

I watch Hockey yesterday on RDS watching the HABS and that was a Festival de Macroblocking. Try different setting on TV to minimize without luck.

So i'm happy to see that this is not my TV set and many people are on the same boat.

Just bougth an extra Receiver for my Home Projector very disapointed too with HD specialy Hockey.

Any Videotron users can compare ?

I will call Bell just to let them that i'm not happy with it :(

just sharing my experience...
 
Guys, were have you been..... I've been screaming about this for the last year and a half, probably close to the time that BEV started to change all of their 1080i signals to 720P.
I received a TONE OF FLACK from people here saying that it wasn't so, and it had to be my TV, set up, etc.
Its nice to be vindicated, and believe me if there is something wrong with the PQ of BEV my 60" Pioneer (Full-Calibration) will show me all the imperfections.

Just as side take a look at this thread which touches upon some of the 1080i/720P issues.
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=84976

Paul


Paul
 
Give it some time for the novelty to wear off, you too will see Bells "The Most HD" .
 
With regards to the AMA's, I've also seen complaints from Rogers customers. And I noticed the macroblocking on an OTA feed from Buffalo on ABC (which broadcasts in 720p).
 
That's interesting. Thanks for your responses. I agree with the "softer" look of BTV. I generally only watch HD channels anyway but the cable signal certainly looked sharper. I'm not a techie but perhaps with a bigger pipeline the cable signal isn't as compressed. The 9241 software looked significantly more advanced than the 80's style program guide on the SA8300.
 
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