RE: Digital Picture Quality

["Keith Doxey" <ukha@xxxxxxx>]

Indeed.

Here is a snip of one of my recent "rants" on the quality of
digital TV.

****
....by far the most limiting factor regarding bandwidth for SKY channels
is
the reluctance of SKY to pay for more transponders. SKY are insistant
on
cramming more and more channels into the same amount of bandwidth by
reducing the bitrate below acceptable limits.

In a vain attempt to keep up with SKY, OnDigital also tried squeezing a
gallon out of a pint pot rendering most of their channels unwatchable.
The
BBC have made efforts to improve the picture quality by reducing the
number
of channels thereby allowing a higher bitrate for the channels.

My TiVo is currently set to Medium for all recordings as the programs that
I
want to record are usually of one of the Discovery channels where a
better
quality recording option would only serve to use more disk space with
no
increase in quality. I have just been watching a program about
lightning
DIRECT from the digibox because Tivo was in use and the scenes of some
truly
spectacular lightning storms looked as if they had been created from
mosaic
tiles.

We all know that digital CAN give perfect reproduction but as I have
said
before, one of the promised benefits of Digital TV is NOT being
delivered.
We were promised that Digital TV would do for television what CD did
for
scratchy vinyl records. In reality the pictures I receive from most of
the
digital TV channels are of lower quality than the signals I received
from
Analogue satellite.

Analogue satellite signals from some of the German channels are superb
quality and the D2MAC signals I used to get when I first played around
with
satellite using a modified BSB box were excellent.

I was expecting to receive superior pictures from digital TV and that
has
not happened.
*****

My other gripe with digital is that it was supposed to give a greater
choice
of programs. By having hundreds of channels you could have channels
that
were targeted towards a more specific audience. What has happened in
reality
is that almost all the channels are trying to appeal to the masses and
dumbing down the content to the lowest common denominator. The extra
"choice" that digital HAS given is the choice of which channel to
watch a
program on and at which time. Sadly these tend to be mostly quiz shows,
soaps, and "reality" TV shows. None of which are the type of
program that I
want to watch. And there is also a myriad of shopping channels selling
everything you never need. Thank god for the Internet.

Keith

www.diyha.co.uk
www.kat5.tv


-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Lowe [mailto:ian@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 30 November 2002 22:21
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Digital Picture Quality


Ahhh the old complaint... "not enough bandwidth"

Keith has posted about this in some detail before, but basically,
whilst
digital has the *ability* to deliver a significantly better image for
most
people, the only thing it really improves is errors of a radio nature
(ghosting, reflections etc etc)

Unfortunately, there is simply not enough bandwidth to cram in the number
of
channels they are trying to at the moment, and the way to do this is to
use
higher compression ratios.

It's a shame that packages are always positioned on price rather than
quality.. I don't care a whole lot if the base package is ?15 a month
or
?17, but I'd happily pay a premium for a higher bandwidth, advert free
version of (for instance) E4 or Sky One.

Ian.


-----Original Message-----
From: Martin [mailto:ukha@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 30 November 2002 21:36
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Digital Picture Quality


Why is the picture quality so crap on digital, all pixels and stuff.
Switch to terrestrial and its fine, so much for a digital revolution.

PS SWMBO has insisted on watching the popstars crap not me, but it is
the girls !

MJ

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk
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