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Are You Being Cheated by Digital Cable?
Lauren Weinstein writes "Even though your cable company may claim that a channel is in a digital tier that you're paying for, they may be sending it to you in analog form, with associated negative effects. Surprise! Are You Being Cheated by Digital Cable? 'You're paying for digital, you should get digital. Outside of the lower video and audio quality that can be present on many analog feeds, third-party devices (like cableCARD TiVos) which could otherwise record a digital signal directly, will be forced to re-digitize an analog signal, with inevitable quality loss in the process. But how to know for sure if a channel is digital or analog as received?'"
and it doesn't surprise me ... I finally dumped cable because too many channels came in looking like fuzzy analog channels, even though they were supposed to be all digital.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Does this surprise anyone?
The game.
this message brought to you by direct TV and dish network, losing signal from thunder storms and tree branches for over a decade!!! Seriously this was news like a decade ago.
If you didn't notice anything was wrong, who cares?
The point about audio is very important the digital picture quality does vary mine is somewhat close for sd programming but the audio quality that goes to a receiver from the digital channels vs the analog channels is night and day in my market some networks are digital some are analog and the difference is very noticeable. I assumed using optical or coax from my cable box to my receiver all the content would be at least digital stereo not only available through the rca jacks in an analog format.
We have cable (Tivo HD with 2 cableCards, plus an MCE for our XViD movies and playing DVDs) and we're transitioning away quickly. Our cable bill is ridiculous, and more often than not, we'll download torrents of shows we want to watch rather than wait for them to be recorded by the Tivo.
Honestly, I'd rather pay a la carte for shows we like than deal with the cable mess. A la carte would mean better handling of their massive bandwidth, and a better distribution of proceeds for shows. No need for Nielsen when advertisers will know exactly who is buying what.
I think we'd honestly pay $5 for a 30 minute show -- what does it cost in our time preference to sit down for 30 minutes? I'd pay less with ads. If we liked the show,we'd pay for an annual subscription -- giving shows the chance to continue even without massive ad-funding (see: Firefly).
With our 8-12Mbps Comcast Internet (not oversold in our neighborhood, yet), we download moves quickly enough to make it worth the wait. If we like the movie, we'll buy it, but I have no problem reimbursing even without a physical medium to save it.
I can't figure the TV distro system out, really. Sure, the powers-that-be are paying millions (or more) to keep the monopoly they have, but as the next generation ages, I'm sure the old system will hit the toilet, to be replaced by what? Hopefully more a la carte.
On Comcast it's easy to tell analog from digital feeds: on digital cables the S/PDIF signal is present, on analog feeds it is not, so on the analog feeds I need to switch my audio receiver to use the line-level input instead of digital.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I don't know about other places, but the cable company here compresses their digital channels so much that they look worse than cable analog channels (although better than over the air). Furthermore, it is much harder to record digital channels using cable card than it is to record analog channels using a plain old tuner.
As far as I am concerned SDTV is just a means for the cable company to free up bandwidth for other purposes, not to provide better service. I could see pushing the cable company to ditch analog to improve your cable modem bandwidth, but not to improve TV quality.
Seriously, with Cox Cable (digital) in Phoenix, Arizona, I notice that at varying times during the day, certain channels are just not accessible,... for example, CNN or Comedy Central or some other channel, will just blank out completely for a couple of hours, then come back later. It's kind of hard to file a report on this, since you call them saying CNN doesn't work, and when they finally send somebody out, it's working again. I haven't complained too much since I don't really give a flying fark if I can't see Anderson Cooper on CNN at some random time, but the moment it blanks Sci-Fi during Doctor Who, there'll be hell to pay (fortunately, this hasn't happened yet)!
Ummm, Lauren Weinstein, you might want to look this up to verify it for yourself, but if you have a full bandwidth NTSC signal as your input and convert it to digital, the result is poorer quality (even if you convert it to a high quality digital format with no compression). This is basic physics at work. Feel free to look it up and try to prove me wrong, you won't be able to.
Now, if we're talking about a signal that originates as digital, then converting it to analog will produce degredation. While a lot of stations might be broadcast this way, not all are. Your History Channel probably is. Your local news probably isn't.
If you are getting a crappy picture on the analog stations on your cable that originated as analog, you need to phone up your cable company and complain about the installation of your cable feed as it's not done correctly. There's plenty that are like this, so you're not in the minority. They'll either fix it, or you can live in the all digital world of satellite TV (Because it looks so much better in digital, right? VC-II+ customers are obviously insane!)
If you're getting a crappy picture on analog stations originating as DIGITAL, however, you should still call. It is unlikely the output from the CableCo's DAC is going to be bad enough to be perceptible by you or your TiVo!
Your excuse that your equipment sucks for the ADC on your part is really not the CableCo's problem; although their having sold you a (possibly) better quality signal for what they advertised as a shitty over compressed signal is technically false advertising (that would be the actual problem). However, when I get a Lexus for the price of a Corolla, I just keep my mouth shut. Feel free to do otherwise.
But how to know for sure if a channel is digital or analog as received?'
Look at the noise characteristics. Analog and digital respond to noise differently. Digital pixilates and stutters but otherwise displays a perfect picture. Analog ghosts and snows.
If you're not getting enough noise to tell the difference then smile and be happy because you have a better cable TV signal than most of the rest of us.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I think the analog vs. digital argument is a bit off-target. The point isn't the type of signal, it's the quality. I've heard people complain about artifacting in their TV shows because cablecasters are using low bitrates or are cutting the S/N ratio too close. I'd much rather have a good analog signal to encode than a crappy digital signal even I could tap it directly.
Begin unscrewing the coax cable from your cable box. As you very, very slowly pull it away, if the signal starts to fade/shows static/etc., it's certainly analog. If, instead, it suddenly goes from perfect, to black, it's digital. Also, in the latter case, it will probably start to show artifacts, perfectly square 16x16 pixel macroblocks that stand out in sharp contrast to the rest of the picture.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Comcrap is moving all of the channels to digital in some area and if don't have a box you get the locals only.
first they started to move some there Local channels on basic to digital forcing to pay for a lot of other digital channels that people may not want just to get what they used to get and now this crap.
They want you pay per box or per cable card with little to no support for them.
Just wait for Ipv6 they will likely only give you 1ip and make you pay more too hook up more then 1 system on a per ip fee.
I only wanted analog cable, because I have two Series2 TiVos, but I ended up getting digital cable because it's cheaper and still includes all the analog channels. (It's a promotional price, but I'm still saving $12/mo for N months.)
When the promotion expires, the price is only $1/mo more than plain analog cable. At that point, I'll give back the cable box -- it isn't even hooked up, but Comcast insisted I take one -- and save a buck a month by going back to analog.
See, when you sign up for digital cable, you're doing them a favor. They want you to have digital cable so that (1) you'll be tempted to buy On Demand movies, (2) you'll have to pay them to lease that godawful box, (3) you'll be tempted to pay for one of their DVRs because third-party ones don't fully work with the box(*), and (4) once everyone is a digital subscriber, they can switch off the analog feeds to free up bandwidth and sell you more services.
(* Yes, there are DVRs that accept CableCards, but they're prohibitively expensive, you have to pay for the cards, and we've all heard how much trouble it is to get a CableCard installed correctly.)
You're sure not helping yourself. Anyone who's ever used a cable box knows how much they blow. Changing channels is slow; and if you use a cable box with your own DVR, you can only record one channel at a time, your recordings will have cable-box banners all over them, and you'll have the ghettoest house on the block with that little infrared "blaster" dangling around.
And what do you get in exchange for that hassle... marginally better picture quality? Maybe not even that, because you're just trading analog noise for MPEG artifacts and blocking. Even if you do get a better picture overall, how long will that stay exciting? A week? After that, you won't notice the picture quality, but you'll be dealing with the drawbacks of digital cable forever.
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I get so pissed off at compression artifacts (mosquito noise; banding; blocks in fast-moving, busy shots) that I think I'd *prefer* analog (this is probably a curse of too many years in video post-production where I was paid to notice problems in video). Back when I had analog cable, I almost never had the noise associated with over-the-air analog broadcasts, and of course I didn't have compression artifacts. Alas, that was a long time ago. It really annoys me when cable companies (and others) tout "digital quality!" as if that means anything by itself.
In fact, this is why I haven't bought into HDTV yet -- if I spend a couple grand on a TV and extra per month for HD channels only to see compression artifacts in high resolution, something's getting sent through the front window.
and the subprime lending scam artists that are getting off scott free, while the world economy goes down the toilet.
the real problem? digital cable! thank god for slashdot.
Around my area it's obvious Comcast is cutting bitrate on digital channels.
One might argue it's to squeeze more channels in the same space but I think the secondary premise is to make HD look better than it really is by giving people a lousy stream to compare against.
I really think there ought to be a declared minimum average bitrate for every audio/video format. (I also think 4:2:2 color should be the minimum. And many more things.) And there needs to be minimum guarantees for error correction.
DVD, IMHO, is still a pretty crappy format. You can fit maybe an hour per layer at the peak bitrate, and even then a professional MPEG2 encoder can barf on noisy video. Fitting a 6 hour VHS tape on a DVD just looks like blocky VHS.
By contrast, if you follow ATSC, you get over 19 mbit/sec, or only about double the peak DVD bitrate.
2x the bitrate either for 6x the resolution (1080i is a blocky mess) or up to 6 480i channels at 19/6 mbit/sec. And I'm sorry, but if I'm complaining about DVD's PEAK bitrates, no way 3 mbit/sec MPEG2 will cut it.
In this day and age of MPEG4 and especially the H.264 extensions of course it becomes a _little_ less painful to watch but you still have unique MPEG4 artefacts. (Namely, a certain blurry and pasty quality that H.264 exacerbates if you use the in-loop deblocking filter. Flesh tones never look quite right even on Blu-ray bitrates.)
So here I am complaining about the most modern codecs at 40 mbit/sec, and yet Comcast can deliver whatever crap bitrates they want. I want a minimum guaranteed quality so I know what I'm paying for.
My cable is my MOST expensive bill... and I don't even like TV! But my girl can't live without it so.... but in general I'd sum it up as ... su$$s service and features for MAXIMUM OUTLAY of cash. Hmm..... I wouldn't doubt this at all....
DirectTV has much, much higher quality feeds than my local Time Warner affiliate. Or go to a bar that has a DirecTV setup and compare it to your experience with cable -- in my area, the DirecTV signal is always better.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Here in DC Comcast doesn't keep any secrets: there's a range of analog channels, a range of digital channels, a range of HD channels, and so on. They're more than happy to let the customer which is which.
My antenna gives me what is really a wireless video stream of 19 Mb/s in MPEG-2.
It's not like in the age of BitTorrent that you really need to be beholden to the cable companies, unless you have a real need for college football or MLB.
Don't forget what uncle Milt Friedman taught us: people vote with their feet. If you don't like what the cable company is doing to you, get a dish, an antenna or just download the shit out of everything you want.
Between my antenna and BT I'm pleased as punch paying practically nothing for the few TV programs I bother to watch. As long as the NFL stays on local TV, I could care less. And MY HD is just gorgeous.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Yeah, Charter in St. Louis is simulcasting all of the analog channels in digital, but they are taking away the analog channels one by one. G4 was the first to go, not that I miss it that much.
I think that is just how cable is. Usually 99% reliable. When I had cable, every once in a while it would poop out. Sometimes just some channels. Sometimes a few minutes, and sometimes a few hours. I remember a few times they would skip parts of a movie, and then backtrack. It depends at least partially on where you live. Sometimes they might even mess up your favorite show. Fortunately, sci-fi shows, like Doctor Who, are easily accessible via bit torrent.
From my experience, 99% of the time when you switch the channel, that channel will be working fine.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Disclaimer: As mentioned before, I do work for a cable company.
Americans can get their traditional TV through a number of different providers, but it boils down to just a few methods of delivery: direct from the broadcasters over the air, from a satellite, via fiber owned by a telephone company, or via a hybrid fiber/coax network owned by a cable company. Of these options, cable providers are caught in the crossfire of regulatory demands and consumers who don't know enough about the technology itself to know what they really want. You never hear these complaints about satellite/FTTH (FiOS), only because the nature of their medium requires all digital transmission. But is 100% digital always "better" for the consumer? The answer is clearly no, not always.
As I'll explain later, much of the FCC's time is spent regulating the coax providers to help the "smaller players". Really, now...AT&T and Verizon are small players? When will the FCC step in to help the smaller players in the landline voice business, such as Vonage and VOIP? (Hint: they won't.)
Cable has been the incumbent for so long that they have become the Microsoft of TV. If there is any complaining to be done, lets complain about the cable company. But as I said, most consumers don't know what they are complaining about. Let's look at the ramifications if every cable company switched to 100% digital tomorrow...which seems to be to be what people want. Let's do a step by step breakdown:
The infrastructure in most cable systems does not need a rebuild for digital, just a little headend work and some maintenence in the field to fix issues that will visibly affect digital but not analog (CPD, microreflections, etc...). So, BAM! Cable is all digital. What happens the next day?
Firstly, ALL TV's without a digital tuner go dark. Great-aunt Maryrose and Gramma Clara turn on their perfectly good 1988 Zenith, and get static. They now have to go buy new TV's to use cable service, because consumers demanded digital transmission. In fact, this WILL happen when the OTA conversion happens in 2009, but OTA viewers may get subsidized boxes. (It will be interesting to see the FCC enforce the separable security statute with that one.) Cable companies get to eat the cost. In fact, this week the FCC guaranteed that cable companies eat the cost for an additional 3 years. They mandated that all cable providers (coax based only) provide a viewable analog OR digital signal to all subscribers until 2012. Linkage (pdf warning) It would be easier to comply by sticking with analog signals for the mandate, but customers (and the FCC) are demanding digital broadcast.
"But wait," you say, "they can get a digital cable box and keep the older TV!" Well, sure, but then we get to hear about how the cable company is bleeding it's customers dry by charging for equipment. I call horseshit on this one. Cable companies charge an average $7.50 monthly lease fee for the box that costs them $300 upfront, plus maintenance and repair. In "only" 40 months of maintenance free operation of that box, the cable company breaks even. Yeah...that's certainly not what I would call milking the customer.
"Why can't they use a third-party box, like a TiVO?" you might ask. They certainly can but to access encrypted channels, the box will need CableCards, the abomination of technology that they are. I work in the billing department and since they are authorized through our billing software, I support and troubleshoot CableCARDs on a daily basis. They have potential, and would work SO much better if manufacturers would standardize on a set of firmware...but I'm diverging from the point. Besides, the bigger question is "WHY DOESN'T ANYONE ELSE MAKE A 3RD PARTY BOX?!" Personally, I think there is not currently a market for cable boxes. How much money did TiVO lose last quarter? Ah...only $17 million.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
One of NTSC's weaknesses is poor color rendition. Given enough bandwidth, an SDTV stream's colors will be richer and more stable-- akin to those of a DVD. Of course, sufficient bandwidth is rarely supplied.
Most locals should be digital anyway---given that there's a FCC deadline.
I woulda thunk that everyone on Sloshdat would only watch torrents with their c0mp00ters...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Use a Clear QAM tuner. You'll be able to get all stations on basic cable in digital, via your own tuner - not some cable box you have to rent.
It serves well to get local channels in HD even if you don't have good OTA HD reception, and you get a number of other channels as well.
You'll miss out on some premium content, like Discovery HD and other things. You can find other ways to get at those shows if you need to, from iTunes to torrents.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you can't tell the difference by watching it, who cares? Analog vs. digital is an implementation detail. Is the end product good video or not?
-Dave
Disadvantage: cable.
the real problem is apple locking linux out of the ipod. THINK OF THE CHILDREN
Currently shopping for alternatives.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
I feel the cable to see if the signal is rough and bumpy, or smooth and wavy. Why, how do you do it?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I had this problem a few years ago and called the cable provider. The technician who came out identified a simple barrel connector in the cable demarc box was attenuating the signal by about 12 db instead of the expected 0.5 db. It took him just minutes to trace out the wires and replace the connector (he also replaced the cable ends while he was at it,) and it didn't cost me a cent.
So I agree that you should do a bit more investigation before calling shenanigans.
John
I lived in Germany the biggest part of my life. Sometimes in 1998 i decided that the quality of the TVC program has dropped so much that it is a waste of time and space in my room. I go to cinemas often and rent DVDs. Overall i would say that in the last 8 years i approximately watched 30 Movies per year in the cinema and maybe added another 20 Movies per year watching on DVD. Since a few years I enjoy to watch some video news on the internet and i can only say that this perfectly fits my needs. I was hoping for a long time now for online movie services, but they either dont work on linux or have a really crappy selection of b-movies.
I am willing to pay, however the service should work around the world (right now i am in Japan).
I do not understand why a thing like DVB exists. Multicast procotols in the internet have exactly the same advanages as cable digital television, but on the long term they will be cheaper. So i strongy hope that there will be a "IP over DVB" standard soon, because i will preferably buy services, which provide me an internet access of some kind, even if it is restricted and only uses IP this would be fine for me.
In my opinion Television as we know it anyway is as dead as it can be. Look at the media consumption among young people.
The deadline has already come and gone. I forget when, but there was a low power compliance period and then a full power dead line. If I recall correctly, June was the deadline for full power ATSC transmission. There were very few exceptions granted or rather some stations may simply have not elected to stay in compliance.
The new deadline is the analog cutoff for full power licenses and that is about 2 years away. So at this point, if you can receive the NTSC signal of station then they should have a digital foot print to match.
There are not a horrible amount of guide lines as to what should be aired and as such the transmission could just be a simulcast of the analogue feed converted to digital. This at least gives a studio feed level of quality and it can be a bit of a jump.
However, a great deal of syndicated content still comes down over analog satellite transmission. So, surprise surprise, that SD ATSC feed simply eliminates the issues that crop up with the transmitter and your receiver.
All in all, the only shows that really benefit are those that travel along an all digital path. (This is gaining more ground with syndication, but it is still not the primary means of transportation for many shows.)
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
When I had digital cable with comcast, I used hdmi for audio and video. Regular cable channels (2-100) Were 480i mono sound. The "digital" channels (which actually looked worse) were 480i stereo. The only watchable channels were the 10 or so HD channels (5 of which I get free OTA). The absolute worse offender though has to be comedy central. I don't know who exactly to blame, but when I can catch low bitrate degradation on an analog station on an analog TV (It almost gave me motion sickness on the HD) it's really bad. Combined with the fact that I just can't find enough content I actually want to watch to justify the extra $70/month, I recently went cable free and couldn't be happier.
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Yes, DVD is convenient/etc. and I buy them aplenty. But the artifacts from the MPEG compression are sometimes simply teeth-gnashingly awful. Compare an S-VHS versus a DVD of movies with lots of water/ocean in them... Waterworld, Titanic, etc. I can nearly guarantee you that you'll prefer the S-VHS in terms of picture quality.. then hug the DVD because you can skip the awful, awful scenes (content-wise) in them.
.. onto the same DVD", cutting down the amount of space available to the actual movie, doesn't help.
That said, I'm sure the content mastering teams are to blame there. There's more than enough bits available to compress even the most difficult shots into perfectly good MPEG, switch to an all I-frame build-up if need be. But that actually requires them to do that work, and they tend to be too lazy. Having executives say "stick trailers for other movies, the leaders, the menus, 3 different audio languages, commentaries, cinematic trailer, making of, [voice fades as listing continues]
HD-TV suffers from the same problem; Nobody tells the HD-TV broadcasters to actually use the bandwidth they have for a single show. They're perfectly welcome to splitit up into separate channels* and get multiple avenues for revenue; guess what they're more likely to do? So yes, you'll just get the same compression artifacts in high resolution.
(* http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=82&article_id=2061&page_number=1&print_page=y )
My cable company is Time Warner. As far as I can tell, all (or at least most) of the channels that are offered in analog format are also offered in digital format on a separate channel. Some are offered a third time in high definition.
Example:
Channel 27 = TNT analog (confirmed using analog-only TV tuner card)
Channel 401 = TNT digital (has visible artifacts when the signal is weak)
Channel 1827 = TNTHD
All three channels have the same programming at the same time.
I'm not condoning actions such as delivering a channel in Analog that you are paying to receive in Digital, but my question to you as Devil's advocate is this: You ask how you can be sure you are receiving the channel in digital; if you can't tell the difference, can it really bother you that much?
And I'm not talking digital as in ATSC (HDTV), because there's really no way to fake that; I mean the regular cable channels that get broadcast in "digital" format but really there's not much difference.
Aikon-
>Given enough bandwidth, an SDTV stream's colors will be richer and more stable-- akin to those of a DVD
:D ). At the 1/4 mark, that is about the same as, or perhaps less than what NTSC's colour system can do with a combined colour carrier. Colour separated out and in a lab environment, NTSC analog still beats all NTSC digital simulations.
:-) IIRC, some early Criterion Collection DVDs are captured from the Criterion Collection laserdisc, nothing more than a pure NTSC analog signal (or PAL, depending on what standard they are encoding for).
That is true for a raw SDTV capture, if the colours are mixed with the signal on the analog and there is noise and attenuation present (this is likely, so you do win a point on that!)
However, DVD being an MPEG 4:2:0 profile means lots less colour definition than the theoretical maximum of raw SDTV. Here's the gory details. Specifically, brightness is given a 720 x 480 resolution, whereas colour is given a 360 x 240 resolution, meaning colour gets 1/4 of the pixels dedicated to it as brightness gets. Professional MPEG broadcasts (like you might pull off an uplink) are in a 4:2:2 profile, which returns the same number of lines of colour resolution as brightness (the most important thing is usually lines in a broadcast like this, although horizontal resolution matters, it is technically infinite in an analog signal and that means it's unquantifiable... and not worth oversampling!
Compare a DVD to a laserdisc and you will see how the above actually does make a difference...
Comcast where I'm at has analog for channels 2-99 and digital for 1, and 100+. So sometimes theres a rare occurance of drops or noise on the analog channels and more common blockiness, freezes, and other fun artifacts on the digital channels.
Regardless, I see running both types of signals as a good thing. No need for a fancy box in every room, and the smaller TV sets do just fine with the basic channels. (Stupid clunky cable box would have a bigger footprint than the set, making things difficult where shelf space is limited.)
It's not the loss in quality on the DVR that's the problem. It's the fact that the analog broadcast takes up a whole lot more space on the hard drive afterwards than the digital channels.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
That article was a lot longer than it needed to be.
How many digital channels did your cable company promise you when you signed the contract? I seem to forget mine.. or maybe it didn't say at all.. weird..
I work as a field-tech in the cable industry. Other than system problems (rare), you should have zero issues... It's just cable.
We're working in the digital era now days, long gone are the splicing of coax with electrical tape (causes ingress/egress). Long gone are the days of using splitters willy-nilly (there's a science to distributing signal properly). And definitely long gone are the days of twist-on connectors.
You will have no problems if, all the wiring in your house is good (RG6 not RG59), all your splitters are of decent quality (rated for 2-way, minimal insertion loss and are designed to carry up to 1GHz - no radio shack), you're not passing through any third-party components before the digital box (VCRs and switch boxes have high insertion loss, are not very well shielded from EMI, and cause unreliable 2-way communications), and the signal levels reaching your house are in specs (not to high or too low, don't amp just because you think it's a good idea - too much signal causes distortions).
Even if there are no issues showing on the TV at the time, signal level, ingress checks and attenuation readings on your lines by a cable tech should identify any problems with in-house wiring.
Oh and if any of your systems are using the newest boxes from Scientific Atlanta - they don't have analog tuners in them - so you're not looking at analog. In fact our system doesn't broadcast any analog simulcast (except one channel for troubleshooting purposes and it's not listed on the guide).
HDTV is actually better-looking TV (doesn't help the plot, unfortunately, except for sports channels where it really _is_ better when you can see the puck.) But Standard-Definition Digital TV isn't better than analog - it degrades differently with noise, but its primary advantage is that it's easier to put more channels on the cable using digital. The channels you get don't look better than the ones you get on analog, but the channels you didn't get on analog might look better in digital.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I haven't really had a TV for years, the one i got i was given, the one before that I bought for two bottles of beer. I download all the shit i want to see, with a 100mbit connection a 30 minute show is about 40 secs of download, 20 sec unpacking. Unless the conventional content providers approach that level of ease, I won't spend any money on their crap. The quality is also very acceptable, about on par with analog SD, except i don't have to watch it on a 50Hz flickering screen based on 1950s standards. Sorry for posting anonymously, there's Riaa on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow. There's riaa on the starboard bow.... Everyone, sing along or provide better lyrics/songs. And yes, I know I could get x264 rips, I sometimes do.
...me three.
The bigger a corporation is the more likely it is to suck... big cable companies, big phone companies, big satellite companies...
Makes me glad that I live in a small town that is just big enough to support its own local cable/broadband/phone company that actually doesn't suck. All my "digital" channels are really digital, and I also get 20Mbps broadband for a TOTAL (digiTV+Broadband) of $80/mo, and yes I have tested my actual bandwidth and it performs regularly at less then 15% under the advertized speed!
Screw satellite, broadband internet is more important to me anyway...
If the transmitted program was recorded digitally, ie. recently, it does look better, and is mpeg2 standard (DVD) with bit rates up to 15 Mbs (thats the highest I've seen so far).
If the transmitted program was recorded to tape and then converted to digital for transmission, then of course it doesn't look any better. Try recording a cassette tape to cd and see if you get "digital" quality. The problem is that most programming schedules consist of ancient repeats and so are not digital in origin.
Here* is a screenshot of the tech details for a random DVB-t program I just looked at (BBC1). Notice the picture size, bitrate and encoding. They are all substantially better quality than analogue tv provides.
*The reason the background is black is due to the video using overlay.
However, the artifacts are the worst drawback of digital tv. With analogue transmission, you may get ghosting or lines on the picture, but you get a picture. If there is interference with digital transmission, you very frequently get no picture at all, or it's so blocky and halting that it's unwatchable. Mobile receivers will be up in arms when the analogue gets switched off, as they will not be able to get a picture in places they currently enjoy, albeit a crappy one. I know, I live in and drive a truck weekdays. I have resorted to satellite to ensure I get a signal.
I work for a Cable company in tech support. TV quality is great. my company is one of few that really does care about quality..... Unfortunately if there's a bad picture (doesn't matter if it's analog or digital) if a cable company is unwilling to fix it, it's the company that's bad, not the technology.
Not true.
Not True.
I think what the grandparent was saying is its not neccessarily better
. If the transmitted program was recorded digitally, ie. recently, it does look better, and is mpeg2 standard (DVD) with bit rates up to 15 Mbs (thats the highest I've seen so far).
I'm sure that would look better. What if it were transmitted at 256 kbps instead? Would the quality still surpass a virgin dub from a high quality master onto broadcasters professional tapes (1/2" Beta as I recall)? No way in hell. And broadcasters I'm pretty sure don't generally use DVD's to store their material. So the bitrates you see on you DVD player are irrelevant. Actually, in general the quality of the source material is irrelevant. Yes, good tranmission won't help bad source material, nobody is arguing that. Assume pristine best case source material.
Now think, does an CD (digital representation of an analog sound wave) or an MP3 (compressed digital represntation of an analog sound wave) sound better? At higher bandwiths the compression losses (MP3 is part of the MPEG2 standard, a "lossy" standard) become negligible, sure. But almost nobody argues it is better than the original source.
Now lets think bandwidth. An analog signal consumes some amount of bandwidth (I think 38 Mbps). By compressing it via MPEG2, the cable company can now fit 7 (very good quality) to 12 (Ok quality) channels. With all the bandwidth pressure though (more channels, faster internet, HDTV), cable companies are being tempted to add even more channels in each slice, I've heard of up to 24 less popular digital channels being squeezed into 1 "analog" channel.
So why is "digital" sold as cleaner? Interference. While a very clean signal is injected at the head end, By the time it runs through all the splitters, amplifiers, it can be very muddled. The benefit of digital assuming about 85% of the signal can be ressurected at the far end, and near ideal picture can be constructed. Problem is, at about 75% loss, no picture can be reconstructed. Analog pictures can yield usable content with much higher loss level (we used to what OU football games out of NYC (OTA) with maybe 40% of the signal surviving. A staticy mess, yes, but we knew what was happening on the field.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
how to know for sure if a channel is digital or analog as received?'"
Not to be snotty but it's easy training with MythTV in our area because 1/3 of the stations have an HD and SD broadcast side-by-side. Switch back and forth on a newscast a few times and you'll forever recognize the fuzziness of lines and text in particular in SD.
Cable system operators would prefer to switch the system to 100% digital. They can't do it immediately for a couple major reasons. One of those reasons is the up front investment costs involved. The other reason is the need to service quite many customers in analog, especially the basic customers at the lowest pricing tier, likely to include grandma and grandpa with that old TV from the 1970's that still works. Eventually, however, cable systems will move to be 100% digital. A few have achieved this, already (and presumably supply a set-top box with analog output).
The reason digital is an advantage to the cable system is that it means they can offer more channels in whatever combination of standard definition and high definition they would end up with. It's even more of an advantage for cable than for broadcasters because cable can use QAM256 which has twice the bandwidth as the 8VSB modulation broadcasters use over the air. The 6 MHz of space a single analog channel uses could carry 2 to 3 HD channels at 1080i60 or 720p60 (typically found on over the air digital TV in the USA) or one channel at 1080p60 (the ultimate format many HD TVs can now handle but cannot be sent over the air at all). Or that same space could carry even more channels at various customized formats such as 3 to 5 channels at 1080p24 specifically optimized for movies, or 6 to 9 channels at 720p24 for slightly lesser definition movies. That same space could carry 12 to 20 standard definition channels at 480i60, or even 16 to 25 channels at an even slower 480p24 which is fine for programming like infomercials and shopping channels. Dozens of still frame music channels could also be carried in that 6 MHz of space.
More channels means more revenue for the cable companies, both from the providers supplying the programming as well as from tiered customers selecting that programming. Although cable companies might have to pay for highly recognized programming like CNN, the smaller programming providers typically have to pay the cable company to get on (especially where there aren't as many channels).
A cable system that still has some national channel carried over the wire in analog just hasn't gotten around to making the change, yet. Making these changes is not easy, and may invole carrying it in both forms for a while to be sure the set-top boxes pick up the change, and that customers tuning directly on cable ready digital tuners are made aware of the change. But in the next few years, cable systems will be making these changes, and will be adding more channels and more HD channels, and maybe even using more channel space for internet access.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You likely have a problem with ingress, or noise from broadcast channels or other RF leaking into your cable through loose connections, damaged cable or poorly shielded cable. Ingress problems commonly come and go at different times in the day. It affects certain channels over other ones because it's certain frequencies that you're getting interference on that may only be taking out a few digital channel blocks, containing 6 to 8 channels each usually. Those channels aren't necessarily going to be beside each other in the lineup.
On motorola boxes you can usually check the frequency, signal to noise ratio and other data by using the remote to turn off the box (not the TV) and immediately pushing the "OK" button to bring up the diagnostic menu.
Good luck.
Unfortunately the site is flash only, as are the downloads of the episodes ("webisodes", after we kill all the lawyers, the marketing people are next against the wall). The site has little to entice you, looks $10 job from domainsRus. no photo-set of Amanda Tapping in a tight costume (with or without hot grits). Seriously, it does not have screen shots, no intro pricing for the first download, no bundle pricing for the entire set. What's with the .99 intent to deceive? Act like an adult, its $2, be honest and post it that way. I also appreciate the fact that they want to gouge us extra for HD over SD format. They really need new marketing people as the current ones are clueless. They appear to have no interest in treating us right, so I have no interest in treating them special. Think I'll wait until the box set shows up at the library.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Unless you use Comcast or another provider which adds compression to it's HD signals, degrading the quality in a very noticable manner. The fact is that standard cable does not have the capacity to deliver true HD bandwidth. This will become more true as more HD channels come online. Want proof? Find an HD channel on cable that is also on NTSC broadcast and switch between the antenna and cable signal.
As far as I know, right now Verizon FIOS is the only provider to deliver lossless HD video. This is a big deal for anyone with a TV over 46".
If water scenes macroblock, it's digital. If you get fuzziness on letters and text, it's analog. I was agast at a Direct TV broadcast of a college football game. HDTV format, correct colors, and such huge compression that the screen just blocked whenever there was fast action...what was the point of HDTV then ? Much like sound has been "dumbed down" for the iPod generation and digital satellite radio, you can expect the providers to send out the lowest level product that the masses will accept. For the time being, I get HDTV over the air...where if they don't sub'channel too much, it still looks great. Digital is in theory perfect...but then the marketers and suits get involved.
Begin unscrewing the coax cable from your cable box. As you very, very slowly pull it away, if the signal starts to fade/shows static/etc., it's certainly analog. If, instead, it suddenly goes from perfect, to black, it's digital. Also, in the latter case, it will probably start to show artifacts, perfectly square 16x16 pixel macroblocks that stand out in sharp contrast to the rest of the picture. Which is why I always preferred analog: I can follow a conversation with a bit of static, but I can't follow a conversation that stops to show me a bunch of brightly colored squares popping in and out.
You can't take the sky from me...
You leave the TV on and unplug the cable. If what spills out is all ones and zeros, it's digital. If you get a tangled mess of unspooled E&M, then it's analog.
Sheesh.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
However, they may choose to over-compress the channels to squeeze more digital channels out of the available total bandwidth.
2005: cable company offers 300 digital channels.
2005: customer demand for HDTV
2006: cable execs decide which channels stay and which channels go.
2006: junior exec gets the brilliant idea to compress the HD channels, tells senior execs "nobody will notice."
2006: cable company rolls out HD channels, removing only 2 standard channels for every HD channel.
2007: people notice
2007: junior exec gets promoted anyways
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...that reminds me of 'Unlimited Internet'
... but I thought it was unlimited?!
*ring* *ring* 'Excuse me, but you stressing our network and we have to discontinue your service'
or what about...
'Sir, you have been using too much ondemand. You cannot use it more than 18 hours per day.'
Every now and then an analog channel has digital artifacts.
My best guess is the cable company down-linked it as a digital program but something went amiss either before the cable company got it or in the cable company's D/A converter.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Apartment buildings are prohibited by law from banning you from having a satellite dish.
This doesn't do much for north-facing apartments, but market forces are coming into play and in "renters market" cities, savvy apartment managers are working with people who don't have south-facing apartments some way to get them satellite TV.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Good advise, but I lent my bitbucket out to a friend, so this method would be way too messy.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In the Denver/Boulder area, Comcast has full analog-digital simulcasting enabled. The Motorola 3416 DVRs they give out don't have analog tuners, so all channels are encoded digitally.
I was really starting to think the rest of the world was blind, especially the arrogant premature HD adopters that believe their new set can never do anything wrong, when in fact it looks like crap for the most part.
Digital TV has jacked everything up. I was on Cox as they migrated to the age of vomit and notice that on shows I could once see the whites of eyes, I was now left with black pits. Now I'm on Dish, which is at least more consistent on their quality, but it's still as step down from what I was used to in the past.
I used to be a TV repair tech, going into homes all day every day and I'd verify things like this and if the Cable Co actually turned on the HD of the receiver box (You'd be surprised more than 50% of the boxes were set to put out 480i not 720 or 1080) The way I'd tell them if they actually had a digital signal was to tune to a local or network station then slowly unscrew and slowly pull out the coax from the wall. If the picture started going fuzzy it was analog, if it got pixelated then froze or went black it was digital.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
Oh right, anything you can get on cable you can get on broadcast TV.
The legal alternative to cable/satellite is to do without. Pass on the cable-only sports events. Wait for your favorite cable-only TV shows to come out on DVD. You can even go out and do stuff instead of spending all your leisure time in front of the box.
But Americans don't like to do without. So they pay huge cables fees. They may bitch and moan, but they will pay.
Come on, seriously: Unless you've spent a Toyota Camry's worth of dough on some huge-ass digital receiver television, you probably don't give a shit. This oh-so-exciting little conspiracy of cable television signal providers ought therefore to be relevant only to an idiot. And I can't imagine anything less relevant than that.
Dammit, that deserves a "5 - Funny" rating.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
"Well, looks like you are fucked then. Monday night football is ESPN. Some Thursday and Saturday games are only on the NFL Network."
Local ESPN and NFL Network games' rights are sold to local TV stations, and therefore I get to watch them. My local ESPN game goes on the ABS affiliates, and the NFL Network games end up on my CBS affiliate. And in full HD.
For example, I live near Pittsburgh; the Hall of Fame Game in August on NFL Network was carried on KDKA-DT.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
The issue that you are having with certain channels blanking out at certain times of the day is often due to a combination of issues. You should contact your local cable office to report this as they can't fix the problem if they don't know about it. During the day the attenuation of coax changes due to heat. If a digital carrier attenuates to much you end up with a blank screen. The problem could be at your home in the form of a bad connector or failing splitter. There could be water in the tap face plate outside, squirrel chewed feeder in your area or a failing module in a line extender, trunk amplifier or node. You're comment about hell to pay when Doctor Who blanks out really gets under my skin as a service technician for a cable provider. Too many customers take this approach. Why not call in to report the issue you notice and allow the provider to give you the service and support that you are paying for???
I'm a cable customer and I can tell you the day I can no longer get an analog signal is the day I cut my cable off and put up an antenna. In fact I might just drop that before that happens if Charter tries to increase my rates again. I can't stand 90% of the filth they send down their tubes anyway. And with Paul Allen in charge you are pretty much right on about the Microsoft of TV. It's been well over 5 years since I've had a Microsoft product in the house and Charter is close to being kicked to the curb. I much prefer static to the pixelization and compression artifacts. I don't want a stinking box for every TV and I don't want to buy a new TV.
There are actually several things I wanna highlight:
1) If a channel is digital, but the movie thats being shown is an old print, scratched disc or whatever, the picture quality will be bad anyway right?
2) On a tangential note, One particular DTH operator in India (Tata Sky) shows more advertisements than movie. I am quite a movie buff and I can tell even if a single dialog from a particular movie is missing. I have watched the TV format of the movies so it can't even be that the theater format cuts are being enforced. Parts of the storyline, dialogs, fight scenes etc. are cut from movies that get aired. Typical Hindi films have at least 5 songs and these crappy songs are shown in their entirety and the interesting stuff in the movie gets cut off for the sake of advertisements.
Just to give you numbers, a typical 2.5 hour hindi movie goes on for a good 4 hours and that too with cuts and snips in between. So you can imagine the number of ads that get shown.
So my question is why should I pay my DTH provider for ads?
Judging by the fuzziness of some of the comments, I think my ISP is cheating me with an analog internet.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If you live in the right area, get AT&T U-verse.
They don't give a shit about the bandwidth I consume.
I pay $120/month for 6 MB/s Internet, at least as many standard channels as you can get through digital cable (I wouldn't be surprised if it was more), and several premium channels (Showtime, Encore, Starz, TMC, and every single variant of those channels). If you don't want premium channels, you can get U-verse significantly cheaper (they have four TV packages...mine is the second-highest). Ditto if you don't need the 6 MB/s bandwidth...they offer 3 MB/s and 1.5 MB/s Internet, if you're on a budget.
I know nothing of their Usenet support, though. But if you're really after unlimited Usenet access, just go with Forte: it's about $15/month for unlimiteda access.
The point that it is "lossy" remains valid.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
CNN and comedy central *is* the same channel.... and you should be happy getting those blackouts
While cable companies do list channels and items being in "digital tiers" I think it is important not to get confused and caught up with Analog vs. Digital. Digital isn't always better, despite what cable companies might try to make you believe.
.... these channels and programs are originally shot in analog. Whether the cable company chooses to send them to your home Analog (NTSC) or Digital (QAM) doesn't really matter. Because the original program/source is analog, you're not getting any additional information with the Digital version of the channel. In fact Cable companies often use the Digital (QAM) scheme to their advantage to compress (Degrade) the signal to squeeze more channels into a smaller space.
Believe it or not some videophiles (people who spend a lot of time and money on TVs and video equipment) prefer analog video to digital. Much like many audio enthusiasts prefer vinyl to CDs because to them vinyl has a much smoother/fluid quality.
I agree in principal with Lauren's argument that for the best possible video signal the fewer times it is converted/scaled the better. But, when looking at many of the Cable Channels offered in Digital Tiers, C-SPAN, DIY, Style, Fashion, Vs.,
The main thing you should be concerned with to get the best Picture Quality from your cable company is the Signal Strength. It sounds like Lauren might have a problem with her signal strength which will affect analog channels more than digital channels. Have the cable installer check your signal strength, and if necessary they can probably add a signal amplifier or replace the connection at the junction box.
Truth be told, a strong signal analog channel should be just as good, if not better, than its digital counterpart.
High Def is a whole different story...
Brooks Flynn Philips Consumer Electronics
Mod me troll all you fucking like. It doesn't change the fact that super-special TV still isn't worth the money or the circle-jerk hassle of dealing with a super-special-TV signal provider. Jesus, as if basic, unadorned TV isn't retarded enough, it's now somehow worth it to go through more bullshit per unit time because super-special TV is more worth it, and not less.
...or, uhhh, maybe not.
To borrow a quote: "You can't polish a turd." So stop trying. That's all I'm sayin'.