Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Puts the Screws To HDTV
Todd Spangler writes "Comcast, like every video distributor, compresses its digital video signals. But to fit in more HDTV channels, Comcast is squeezing some signals more than others. The cable operator claims it is using improved compression techniques, so that most subscribers won't see any drop-off in picture quality. But A/V buff Ken Fowler claims the differences between some of Comcast's more highly compressed channels and Verizon's FiOS TV are indeed noticeable. He's posted his comparative test results on AVSForum.com — and the results are not pretty."
How many slashdotters in an area served by both have FiOS? Have cable?
Looking at this, and at the recent debacle surrounding Bittorrent and Comcast, I know which I'd definitely behaving. Not to mention the fact that fibre to the premises just sounds so much cooler and faster than cable!
The Mothership
He was yapping on and on about why we should switch to Comcast Digital Voice, and we can save over $100 if we bundle pack our services (we have Internet and cable from Comcast right now).
:)
:)
But my dad said we were thinking about canceling our Comcast cable and getting FiOS, then the Comcast guy, noticing our spiffy new HDTV, starting going on and on about how we would have like 50 new "HD" channels by the end of the year, all at MUCH better quality.
Yea right! What a LIE that Comcast guy was saying! I told him we will think about getting Comcast phone service when BitTorrent works on our Internet like
First post w00t
To be more precise, they're putting the screws to the consumer. Lower quality than Over The Air (OTA), all for a premium price.
No thanks. I'll stick with my Yagi antenna which pulls in 15 stations (many with subchannels) from 30 miles away. (Though I'm quite tempted to try a Gray-Hoverman Antenna as detailed here on Slashdot, just to see if it's better. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/14/2021223 )
Well, now we know why Comcast worked out a deal for bit torrent distribution of content on their network.
The world called out for a hero and all it got was me...
I have FIOS for Internet but I've kept Comcrap for my TV for one simple reason: Verizon requires you to use their crappy Actiontec router if you want to use FIOS TV.
I use Eye TV to record over-the-air HD, and it's quite obvious to me the quality is much higher than Comcast's HD. That said, I can't get as may OTA HD channels as I can on Comcast. And the quality of, say, Sci Fi Channel HD shows beats the standard def Sci Fi Channel.
Still, it would be nice as a consumer to know what I'm really getting. Maybe Comcast (and anyone else) should be required to label their channels as "compressed HDTV".
what won't they compress
In conclusion by not upgrading to an HDTV, and using my bunny ears, I am getting the same quality as Comcast's digital offering. Sweet :)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
"Just move closer"
Anyone who has worked in the cable TV industry saw this coming a mile away. It's not like Comcast and pretty much EVERY OTHER "digital cable" providers wasn't already doing this.
Here's the thing: Coax cable networks, even hybrid fiber/coax cable networks, just don't have the bandwidth to handle very many HD channels without compressing the hell out of them. They just don't. It's not going to improve. The ONLY thing they can do is either drastically reduce the number of digital and HD channels they offer their subscribers, or bite the bullet and start massively upgrading their network. Basically, they need to run fiber to every home. Which they aren't going to do.
This is why I laugh at people who buy HDTVs and expect some kind of massive improvement. In most of the country, the infrastructure just isn't there to give people very many full-res HD channels over cable. Digital satellite has many of the same issues. There just isn't enough bandwidth.
What about OTA, you say? Yeah, OTA broadcasts only have to be *digital*, not HD.
I have them for Internet at the moment: at one time, I had them for TV and phone service as well. And yes, it was reasonably-priced at the outset, and the services worked well enough. Then the monthly bill started edging ever upward 'til after a couple years I was paying more than double. The phones alone (two lines) went over ninety dollars a month. Then picture quality began to degrade (due to compression artifacts as well as line quality issues and they couldn't/wouldn't fix the latter) so I dumped the phone and cable TV. Now I just have a cable modem, and use AT&T's Callvantage for my phones (yes yes, I know it's SBC but it works well, it's inexpensive and they haven't raised the rates.) As for cable TV ... well, so far I found that I can live quite well without it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You know, considering that comcast is my 3rd biggest bill (behind, rent and insurance), you would think they could upgrade their network after all these years of collecting billions of dollars off people like me. Instead they just keep pocketing the cash, and turning out crappier products and hindering any competitions.
I don't have the wherewithall to prove it, but I am pretty sure that they are throttling netflix watch-it-now services. When netflix first released that service my downloads were speedy and ran great. Now that netflix is starting to offer some real titles comcast is throttling them, I'm sure of it. Case in point, I've been very sick this week and in bed a lot. I've turned to netflix for entertainment. I can watch my first episode with no problem, 2nd, a few minutes of buffer but no big deal. Now that I have been using it for a day or two it can take 20 minutes to start a show with several buffer sessions in the middle.
Contrast this with the fact that I can take my laptop to school on a SLOWER connection and get uninterrupted downloads. Their legalized monopoly they have is complete bullshit. If somebody offered another service in my area you can bet I would be there tomorrow. I despise writing that check every month to those fuckers. I hope they get what's coming to them in the form of a class action law suit to the tune of billions.
they should figure out how to stop spam instead of downgrading program signals for spam bandwidth.
Only thing keeping me with Comcast Internet is that it's the only thing available here. (Temple University campus within eyesight of the new Comcast Tower in Philadelphia). It's kinda sad that Comcast has the philly area by the balls. They have a duopoly with Verizon on Internet around here and I don't see Verizon laying down any fiberoptic lines in this ghetto ass neighborhood.
Perhaps we don't really need HDTV if you can reduce the image quality that much without it being noticed.
With my Comcast service there are a few really gorgeous channels: the local TV affiliates and HBO. Everything else can get downright gross. But no FIOS for my neighborhood...yet!
Heck, Comcast can't even supply standard def well. Many times I've seen "Family Guy" on a non HD Comcast channel, when the static parts of the scene will be sharp while the mouths will become shimmering black and tan blocks. Occasionally large areas or the entire screen will block up. I especially like watching Comcast TV while the signal has been cutting out, or blocking up, or fuzzing, or flashing during the show, and one of those Comcast commercials about how crappy dish service is comes on.
But what I find the most frightening is looking at the pictures in the article I quoted, and then realising that "These images were rescaled to half-resolution". Imagine how coarse they must look at twice the size if a downscaling doesn't produce anything more smooth than that.
I'm starting to rediscover my love for that ~15 year old 14" CRT thing I have in my room.
I've seen DVDs that looked better than their so called "high" definition signals. There may be 1920x1080 pixels, but there is so little data behind them, they never lock into place except when the scene stays completely static. God help you if you want to watch an action movie, since every time something moves the whole screen turns into a blocky mess. So now they are talking about making it even worse? Awesome, can't wait.
Free Hans!
I wonder why bother with 1080 sets if they're doing this. The difference in quality seems quite dramatic. I would guess that while you have a choice between 720 and 1080, it's hardly worth extra $$ for the 1080. Just curious if this would seem true to others.
We dropped Comcast's internet and cable TV the moment FiOS came into the neighborhood....it came at a good time because their internet was blacking out on us all the time. It would just flutter for anywhere between a few seconds to a few minutes to a few hours and it was a real hassle playing games online and suddenly losing connection out of nowhere...And we ALWAYS had problems with artifacting with their cable. the picture always started getting these little green boxes everywhere during a program. Comcast had a pretty extensive On Demand list, and FiOS kind of lacks that, but there's more ups than downs.
HDTV only defines the resolution AFAIK. At least I've never seen any minimum for HDTV bit rates to still be considered HDTV. Just because it's 1080p it shouldn't be considered HD if it's 2Mbps. HDTV specs should define a bit rate that has to be required to have HD. I don't see how Comcast can call what was shown in the link as HD with all that macro blocking.
Lots of people saying, "if only FIOS was in my area".
As a former Comcast customer, what can I tell you but keep checking.
When FIOS reached my block, I called Verizon the next day. The install went smoothly and all the contacts I've had with Verizon have been great.
I'm done with those thieves at Comcast.
Internet is unbelievable, I shelled out extra money for higher speed. Downloading a distro used to be an overnight undertaking. Now it's more like 20 minutes.
I got a bunch of new phone features I don't need and the TV signal quality is great.
Best part is I'm paying a little less than I used to pay Comcast for TV and internet but
I'm getting TV, Internet, phone and long distance with the price locked in for 2 years.
I'm still waiting for my free 19inch LCD TV from Verizon, but to make up for the delay they sent me a $20 gift certificate.
I got one message that was over a meg - nothing but links to porn sites. A thousand of those would eat up a fair amount of bandwidth.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We all know this from the OGG vs. MP3 issue years back, or AAC vs. MP3, or just about any other codec that produces smaller files that have a higher quality than MP3.
This is no different, but the experiment doesn't SEEM to lie. The quality of the FioS frames is certainly higher than the Comcast frames on those particular channels, at that particular time, during that particular program.
Another factor that is not known is whether Comcast and/or Verizon change their compression dynamically based on the utilization of the loop. How do we know that verizon won't do the same thing once their fiber loops are hopelessly oversubscribed, as Comcast's are now?
There are too many variables left unconsidered to treat this person's analysis as reliable. All he has demonstrated is that more highly compressed video has lower quality than that of lesser compressed video, and nothing more. It is hardly a comprehensive study.
Is FiOS or Comcast more expensive? And by how much?
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
Does anyone know how Comcast is progressing with its Switched Digital Video trials? From what I understand if SDV ever got off of the ground there would be little to no need to recompress HD video due to the bandwidth savings.
For every analog channel they drop, they gain back 2 decent or 3 crappy HD channels. Or maybe they could do 2 half-way decent HD and 1 SD channel. And, yes, there is a requirement to provide analog until 2012. But they can meet that requirement by supplying a converter box that outputs analog (at no additional cost for basic customers). The question is, is the cost of providing that converter box greater than the benefit of the extra channels?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I have two concerns with U-Verse as it is 1. You can only have 1 HD stream at a time right now. Bandwidth limitation. 2. No TiVo
...is why Comcast actually still has anyone subscribing
i can't really see much of a difference between the two from a laptop's monitor screen distance away from my eyes and the difference would not be that much if any at all at the typical distance for viewing a a hdtv.
Can anyone tell me what sort of hardware one needs to watch FiOS TV? If you need an equivalent of a cablebox, do the ones provided by Verizon at least have something of the equivalent of Firewire output? Or is it pretty much just component, s-vid, composite, and HDMI?
The article mentions that Comcast doesn't compress local stations, but I just dropped my Comcast service in Washington, DC and was surprised at how much nicer the OTA broadcasts look on my 1080 HDTV. If it's not compression, then there was something wrong with the converter box or component video connection.
For reference, my cable bill was $112 a month for one HD and one standard converter box, extended basic channels, and HBO. I'm using simple rabbit ears now, but I'm looking for a better antenna since all the clutter in the city causes reception to drop out in very annoying ways.
Please fix the headline by dropping "Puts the" and "To" from the sentence.
Thank you.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
So, people are paying for HD content, but Comcast compresses the video degrading the quality. So now the HD content that people are paying for is no longer HD quality. So now the quality is nolonger HD, but there is more room for "HD" channels.
I smell a very big lawsuit coming on.
This is like paying for 92 octane gasoline, but having it cut with diesel when you put in in your tank, so as to make the station's reserves of gasoline last longer.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
They could achieve really good compression by throwing away the colors and using 256 shades of gray instead, throwing away a portion of the image along the left and right sides for a 4:3 aspect ratio, and hmmm... maybe use 486 scanlines total in the picture. That should result in a great picture while using the least possible bandwidth.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
When the installer came for this new house, I mentioned that I was only getting digital for the purposes of HDTV, and that otherwise I liked analog better. It was rather entertaining listening to him explain that digital only needs ONE bandwidth, while analog needs FOUR bandwidths.
None of this is nearly as annoying as their execrable channel guide, which dedicates a third of the screne to some random bullshit preview and a third to advertising. And often takes ~10 seconds to flip to the next screen. And if you want to search by name... my god. To get to the middle of the alphabet, it's ~20 key presses (they make you go through the numerals if you try to go backwards). It's one of the worst interfaces I've ever seen-- and I have seen some shit.
But never mind all that; I've seen MythTV in action and I will soon be cured.
They refuse to put in the network within Boston because they're fighting with the state over getting a broad cable provider license. So unless you live in the burbs, you can't get FIOS in Boston and they (the city and Verizon) continue to let Comcast rape the rest of us with this sort of crap compression. It's enough to make a guy want to buy DirectTV...
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
It seems odd to me that they are using MPEG-2 for encoding their HD channels, I imagine it is due to the equipment deployed on customer premises, but they've had years and years to sort this out and get prepared.
If they used H.264 for the encoding they would get twice the channels at the same quality in the same bandwidth. This goes for both the HD channels and the SD digital channels.
In addition, why are they keeping the analogue signals intact? Surely it's better to give out digital SD decoders to the analogue customers (yes, including RF output for grannies with 1960s TVs) and then remove all the analogue channels to free up masses of bandwidth?
The longer they keep on installing hardware that only does MPEG-2, the longer it will take to migrate away from that in the future. It is in their best interests to move to H.264 capable hardware now, so that 5 years down the line they can actually improve their service in the face of competition. However it is the "profits now" attitude that means that in 10 years time Comcast will probably lose all their customers to satellite alternatives sending 20mbps+ 1080p signals.
...and prohibit providers from calling it "HD" unless it meets all of those standards--not just pixel count.
Let the marketplace decide, but make sure that consumers know what they are actually buying.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
- i'm in a fringe area - a godforsaken cracker-infested peninsula, and i get 20 great HDTV channels using a $30 omni (DB2 design) at eight-foot elevation indoors pointed to the east (there's nothing to the west except groupers and big pink shrimp)....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a basic 1080P 32" HDTV, and noticed the so-called HD channels had some measure of artifacting to them, to the naked eye. The refreshed every 1/4 to 1/2 second compared to the areas where there were more frequent movements. It gets pretty blotchy too, at times I'd swear that they were playing FMV on a 32 bit game CD.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
but it is important to note that most people tend to have biases towards hardware based on one or two bad experiences.
..." ..." ..." ..."
:)
So are you saying companies should be forgiven when they give you crap that dies when it shouldn't die in the first place?
I agree, one bad experience is too small to be considered statistically significant. However... googling for "actiontec routers suck" (without the quote) gives us these results:
"Fix For Mysteriously Rebooting FiOS Actiontec Routers - Verizon
"RE: Need to replace dead Actiontec router... options
"Help! Verizon FIOS and Actiontec router keeping me from MetaFilter
"Verizon sued over GPL code in FiOS routers - Engadget"
"ACTIONTEC M1424WR Router Problem - [H]ard|Forum"
"SmallNetBuilder - Small Network Help - Actiontec MI424WR Review
"Verizon: FiOS Router Constantly Rebooting? Here's The Fix"
Just FYI, Google returned around 700 hits. And for "Actiontec router problem" (without quotes), I got 13,600 hits. Significant enough for ya?
Finally, that GPL violation Issue tells me that Verizon isn't an example of honesty... I'd stay away.
I've had DirecTV for about six years (since Paul Allen's Charter purchased my local franchise and started making me crazy). When DirecTV launched HDTV I was all over it, getting a few custom channels (ESPN, ESPN2, HDNet, etc.). Since I'm 50 miles from Boston, which is my natural market, I had the opportunity to "petition" the networks to get the New York feeds. CBS and Fox said fine (Fox owns DirecTV), ABC and NBC stations out of Hartford and Springfield were a$$holes and denied me.
All of the original stations and the CBS/Fox stations are MPEG-2; all the new ones, including local Boston stations and my beloved Red Sox on NESN, are MPEG-4. You can easily tell the difference, especially with DVR recordings. The MPEG-2 channels are fluid and smooth, while the MPEG-4 channels are pixelated and choppy. It's really just a matter of bits.
The proof is when I watch a game (any sport). I typically start an hour or so after the game starts, then by the time I skip all commercials and fast-forward through dead spots, I usually finish around the time the game ends. If I fast forward at 2x on an MPEG-4 channel, it's very smooth. If I fast forward an MPEG-4 channel, it jumps like crazy. It used to be worse, actually; when NESN started you could actually see the artifacts of a batter's swing. Either NESN or the DVR fixed that after a while.
Anyway, I guess my point is that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and there's no such thing as lossless compression. Be careful what you wish for.
I'm looking over the wall, and they're looking at me!
This is why I hate HD. With old analog TV it is technically impossible to do this compressed signal crap. Haven't you noticed now that since the TV stations have gone to digital broadcasts, you get all kinds of weird problems with signals (pixaltion and chunk-outs) and you get nasty pixel-ish compression artifacts. When you had analog this was unheard. Also with the original CRT televisions the phosphors were round which made for a nice smooth picture - not the chunkly looking edges you get with square pixels and limited colour levels.
With digital there are all kinds of horrible things the broadcasters can do to the signals - compression is just one of them.
I haven't followed up on this, but it was a couple of years now that I read a very involved discussion about Direct TV doing the exact same thing. The big issue there was that not only was the HD signal down-rezzed, but in times of huge HD traffic -- such as the football package they were pushing at the time -- they would turn off less popular channels (such as TNT HD). Apparently, the root of the issue was that they didn't have enough satellites to supply the proper amount of bandwidth. They had another satellite launch scheduled for early last year. That was supposed to solve the problem, but I haven't gotten around to seeing if it was actually true.
Are we surprised that Comcast is down-rezzing HD video? Were we surprised to discover they're throttling BitTorrent? Not if you've ever had to use their service. You take what they give you, and if it fails catastrophically, then you might be able to find someone to get the service restored -- but complaining that the performance of a thing isn't what it's supposed to be? You'd be lucky if you found someone that had any idea what you were even talking about...
I'm interested in FIOS for internet, although I find their television service overpriced, even compared to cable and satellite. Unfortunately, despite constant advertising bombardment I cant get it around here. Even in Manhattan the service is only available in new buildings and no one has any idea when everyone else will have access to it.
The highest quality HD I've seen to date has come via over-the-air signals; the good old antenna. My father set it up last year but continued to subscribe to cable. Earlier this year they raised rates, yet again, he got pissed and canceled. He occasionally wishes he still had a few of those channels he had with cable, but otherwise he doesn't miss it at all. More recently, he's been considering free-to-air satellite to augment what he gets now.
As for the reception, it's all digital so it's flawless. Even standard-definition is superior to cable, but HD is on a whole other level. It's a pity this doesn't get more attention. Some people actually believe over-the-air broadcasting is ending with the switch to digital; even at least one high-profile blog has perpetuated this notion.
If people wanted to screw the cable companies they'd just dump them. But people have a hard time letting go of all the programming they get. After a week, however, most wouldn't miss it. The majority of television programming is drivel anyway and most shows nowadays wind up on DVD or online further reducing the need for cable, satellite or anything else.
Of course if everyone left then these providers really wouldn't have the money to set up a proper network. But then, this is one of the very few times where I'm inclined to think that like the highway system a high speed communications network might be their responsibility. At least until I'd learn they're spending 5 times more than they should, taking 3 times longer than projected and making a mess of it.
"Popular brands have more people and thus more failures, as long as they're not disproportionate there's really no news there"
/wallet?
popular brands have more failures? Gee, maybe you should tell that to Honda/Acura and Toyota/Lexus. They must have missed that memo.. they didn't know that they are supposed to be putting out more crappy broken products/cars instead of the ones they make. You know the ones that get best value and reliability and such ratings every year by consumer reports every year because they dont have broken hardware. Why are mac's becoming more popular? because among other things they "just work".
theory sounds like bs to me... the brand should get more popular because of a LACK of failures and problems.
my only remaining question, is why is said "popular" thing still popular if its such a piece of junk... sounds like people are getting to lazy to vote with their feet
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
I would like to state the following:
Any time an individual searches the Internet hoping to find negativity on any topic, no matter how innocent, they will not be disappointed in that effort.
To wit:
Linux sucks. Windows sucks. Dell sucks. HP sucks. Driving sucks. Mercedes-Benz sucks. Kia sucks. Harley Davidson sucks. Furries suck. Google sucks. Indoor plumbing sucks.
I'd go on, but Adolf's Third Law states that I don't have to.
Kid-proof tablet..
The reviewer may have a point, but I can't take anybody seriously who talks about image quality, then converts the sample images from PNG to JPEG.
The last thing you want to do when talking about compression artifacts is run the samples through something like JPEG compression, which introduces edge artifacts of its own and makes existing sharp edges worse.
It happens. Companies sometimes decide to compete on price, and undercut the better-quality product, in hopes enough people won't know or at least care enough about the quality difference.
What are you talking about? The full resolution (FIOS) captures are there for side-by-side comparison, and they look GREAT.
Also, downscaling doesn't have to produce blurring. Better scalers are much smarter than that. Even with a stupid one, a simple sharping filter afterwards would reduce the blur, though it then brings out other artifacts.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Get yourself a very good antenna, and a preamp, and for less than the cost of 2 months of Comcast, you'll have PERFECT quality HDTV, with no future fees, and no price increases.
http://slashdot.org/~evilviper/journal/184757
Yes, you get LESS channels, but cable TV is hardly worth watching anymore, anyhow. Why get the "non-stop repeats of Law & Order" channel, when you can get the "We make Law & Order" channel for free, and record as many episodes as you might ever want to want again, onto your DVR? On the rare occasion of a good cable TV show, you can get the DVD set (or perhaps Blu-ray in the near future) of the full season for the cost of one month of comcast.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Their "HD" channels are pixellated and fuzzy a lot of the time...you get a few channels that are nice and crisp, but you can tell they are pushing the limits of bandwidth on the stations but they still claim they are "HD".... Thank goodness V day is coming for us..and it's not victory day..it's VERIZON day.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
While it's sad to see Comcast degrading quality for profit, it will never bother me, as I have the $5 / month cable (it's an extra $5 on top of my expensive net connection).
I seriously don't watch TV, but I do play video games. I have made do with a 12 year old TV for, well, 12 years, but now I'm getting the itch to play my nice new Smash Brawl on a nicer TV. What kind of TV am I supposed to go for, on a budget of about $1000?
Great name for a band.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Well, I'd be more curious about how do they compress it.
Following the link in the summary seemed to suggest that they get some streams which are already highly compressed, and add their own compression on top. Which is kinda easy to believe, since I don't think they're getting a huge uncompressed stream from anyone.
In that case, here's the fun part: no matter with what they re-encode it, it will just add more artifacts on top of the existing ones.
Once you get a lossy compressed stream, you can't get back an 100% accurate original stream from it to start anew with. If it were possible to get the exact original image, it would be called "lossless" instead.
So let's say one pixel was originally, say, royal blue and ended up prussian blue instead, after the lossy compression. That's it. The original shade is gone for ever. If you re-encode that stream to another codec, you now start from prussian blue and mangle it some more from there. There is no way for the second encoding to know what the original colours were, only what they look like after decoding the original lossy compression.
IOW, if they received a highly-compressed MPEG-2 stream and re-encode it to H.264, the image isn't going to get any better. They'll just degrade it a little more.
So IMHO the right thing to do is to just freakin' leave it alone, if they get it in an already compressed format.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Time Warner Cable in New York, has been doing this for ages. They compress the hell out of all the Fox-owned channels. Funny that, can't imagine why they'd do that! Any films that are on Fox that have lots of red or smokey scenes degrade into large unwatchable blocks of color. Always makes me wonder how much The Discovery Channel pays for what is quite obviously a large swatch of bandwidth.
My UID is prime!
If they are so expensive, and everything about them sucks, DROP THEIR SERVICE. You won't wither away and die if you can't watch TV!
Comcast recently bought out my cable company. I'm dropping them ASAP. I deal with slower DSL that I know I can run Bittorrent over reliably, and now I'll switch from cable to OTA for TV.
I will have nothing to do with Comcast, and I'll be able to survive just fine without them.
I understand that some people only have Comcast in their area for internet or cable TV. Hey, if that's all you have, then I guess you have to deal with them. It might not hurt to look around for wireless internet providers, or see if there are any OTA digital stations in your area, though.
I know a lot of [better] H'wood directors get very upset at the reformatting of their movies created 16:9 trimmed down to 4:3.
I see this resulting from:
(1) Consumers are using the number of channels offered as a benchmark when comparing satellite with cable. Well at least the marketing at DirectTV and DishNetwork started the "We have more channels" mantra, and the cable systems have to try to keep their customers.
(2) Television studios are packaging more of their channels to the cable/satellite distributors to force them to carry some of their less popular or new channel offerings.
(3) The old FCC rule that assigns "Must Carry" on local OTA broadcast stations, so cable must allocate channel space for them. Where I'm at, it unbelievable the number of religious broadcasters...
I think Comcast would prefer not having so many channels. They have QOS issues and they have an interest in keeping the cable bill under the pain threshold of its subscriber base. With fewer channels, Comcast could make more money at the current billing level... What you didn't think the price would go down did you??
Personally I wish the FCC would force "a la carte" pricing and allow each channel to compete for consumers. Maybe then we would see a lot less of these "filler" channels that have been created with almost no viewership.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
In my neighborhood, we have two cable providers (Comcast and Millenium Digital Media) and Verizon FiOS. Until recently, I had cable, but decided to switch to Verizon FiOS. Main reason I switched was good timing on Verizons part. We were having some service disruptions with our cable provider and some headaches dealing with customer service. Seemed like we had to wait on the phone for 30 minutes just to talk with somebody. At the same time Verizon had just installed fiber in our neighborhood. It was quite an operation they had, their must of been a crew of about 50 guys with shovels, and I believe they had our ~1/4 mile street, (~0.4 km for you metric people) done in a day. Anyhow, after Verizon installed the fiber they went on a blitz to get as many people in the neighborhood signed up as possible with free installation and some package discounts. So we decided to make the switch.
Verizon FiOS has worked well for me so far. The biggest issue I have with FiOS is that you need a cable box at every television set and my Hauppauge PCI cards don't receive any cable channels anymore (unless I want to donate a box to them too). A really cool feature would be a box that would decode some set of digital signals and broadcast them in analog over the internal cable system, while allowing the user to select the set and assign the analog channel.
If they didn't have a very annoyinging advert, I wouldn't do this. They interupt your browsing with a page of adverts (that was blank here due to adblock), but as I block cookies unless necessary the advert page kept coming back. Annoying use of adverts like that can be solved, so here's the whole thing, and the comments off their site:
-----------------
Todd Spangler
What Comcast's Crunched HD Looks Like
March 29, 2008
In the black art of video compression, the trick is to fool the human visual system into seeing things that aren't there.
All digital video is compressed. The technology that does this removes a lot of data, stripping out visual information in clever ways so it can be packed down, sent over a wire or satellite, then unpacked on the viewing end to a TV set.
Without squeezing HD signals down, a distributor couldn't feasibly distribute them -- uncompressed 1080i video simply takes up too much room (around 1.5 Gbps). Even the HD DVD formats use compression.
The question is: How tightly do you twist the screws? The more you squeeze, the more video impairments you get. A rule of thumb for MPEG-2 broadcasts has been about 19 Mbps is needed to ensure good quality. That means two HDs will comfortably fit in a 6-MHz carrier on 256-QAM cable networks.
Cable needs to add more HD channels (i.e., to keep up with marketing from DirecTV and Dish). But the challenge is doing that in capacity-constrained cable systems.
There's switched digital video, which sends down a channel only when someone tunes to it. Cablevision, for instance, will be offering the 15 Voom HD channels this way.
There is also "3-in-1" compression: Comcast is distributing some of its HD channels using a variable bit-rate encoding technique that fits three HDs into one QAM. One of Comcast's technology suppliers for this project, startup Imagine Communications, has touted the ability of its system to deliver lower bit rates without harming quality.
But as Ken Fowler, an A/V buff in Virginia, claims to have found in an analysis he posted to AVSForum.com, the differences between some of Comcast's more highly compressed channels and Verizon's FiOS TV are indeed noticeable (see "Test Shows Comcast's HD Squeeze In Virginia").
Dramatic, you might even say.
Below are cropped sections of images Fowler grabbed of MTV Networks' MHD high-definition music channel, airing a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, which he extracted using two TiVos with CableCards connected to both providers.
I cut out 480 x 270 sections showing the band's bassist, Flea, because the full images won't fit on this page. I used Microsoft's Digital Image 2006 editor to crop the images and convert them to JPG from PNG format.
In addition to his screen captures, Fowler uploaded 11-second MPEG clips of MHD's Chili Peppers program (click to download his FiOS and Comcast clips).
Now, it's important to note that -- to my eye, anyway -- the differences in picture quality in the actual video aren't as striking as in the still images. Furthermore, the images I've posted here are one-sixteenth screensize cutouts to show detail.
For example, the blockiness and blurriness evident in the Comcast detail below don't jump out as much in the full-screen video. Then again, I was watching this on a PC screen rather than a 50-inch flat-panel display.
Click on the links below to see the full-screen (1920 x 1080) versions Fowler originally posted.
FiOS TV: MHD Red Hot Chili Peppers
Average bit rate = 17.73 Mbps
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/MHD/Red%20Hot%20Chili%20Peppers%20Live%20in%20Milan/1080/FiOS-MHD-RedHotChiliPeppersLiveinMi.png
FiOS
Comcast: MHD Red Hot Chili Peppers
Average bit rate = 13.21 Mbps
U-verse is transcoding from 20Mbps MPEG2 to 6Mbps MPEG4 (give or take), with predictably horrific results. To add insult to injury you can only tune 1 HDTV channel at a time for your entire house! AT&T went with a cheapskate FTTN (Fiber To The Node) network, which uses some variant of DSL to provide a 27Mbps copper pipe from the fiber node down the block to your home that's shared between TV, Internet and VoIP. The Motorola IPTV settop boxes run WinCE.
Uverse HD Quality
U-verse Internet is less bad than Comcast (10M/1.5M for $55/mo), though with higher latency due to the ~20ms hit caused by their DSL scheme. I kept that and dropped U-verse TV.
down-rez is different from re-compressing. DirecTV was doing HD Lite at a lower res. Comcast is compressing the channels too much.
However, the cable market is far from competitive and is best described as regionalized monopolies with competition from substitutes (sat/phone). Faced with the reduced competition, modest [informative] regulation may be the best response.
When digital terrestrial launched in 98, it was absolutely stunning on a decent TV, as it was in 2000 when I obtained a set-top box. Pin-sharp and nary an MPEG artifact to be seen for much of the time. In football matches, when the camera panned, you could still see the grass relatively clearly although it did get slightly fuzzier.
That was in the days when they only had 4 or 5 channels per "multiplex".
Then came the cost-saving, extra channels were crammed in and the bitrates went down. The main channels (BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1) are still broadcast at a decent bitrate but even they now show MPEG artifacts more often than they did 8 years ago, and no - I'm referring to old-fashioned Trinitron displays, so it's not a switch from CRT to LCD that's caused it. It's also using the same old box, absolutely nothing has changed in the equipment I'm using since then.
If you watch football on some of the lesser channels now the grass just turns to a green mush when the camera pans, all detail is lost in a load of MPEG blocks. Even the DOGs (channel logos) in the corner are pixellated if you look at them on some channels!
The Great British public generally hasn't noticed, though, which is why it's continued apace. It's very disappointing if it's happening to HDTV though, as it negates the whole point of HDTV in the first place!
I think you took his comment backwards. He wasn't commenting on the FIOS. He was saying that if the comcast images look that bad downsampled, imagine how bad they'd be full resolution (and yeah, he obviously didn't notice you can click them).
"Powered by Fiber Optics" is a phrase used in current Comcast ads here. A perfect example of "Let's just make irrelevant claims that make us sound good.. they won't see through it." marketing.
They did with the old $370 analog plan. Now they're doing it with the $1200 HDTV plan. Customers still flock to them. It's not like U can just leave Calif* and find a job somewhere else.
Both myself and my brother constantly had problems with our Actiontecs, both at our homes and at work. The routers would have to be restarted roughly once each week. We've switched all our DSL modems to old Ciscos we bought on EBay. In the last three years we've had to reset the ones at work a few times because they stopped accepting incoming TCP connections, but we've never had to reset our ones at home.
When my brother and I had constant problems with five different Actiontec routers, that's an issue. It's hard for me to believe that we were just 'unlucky'. Those problems ceased completely for all four DSL lines when we switched to Cisco DSL routers.
Well designed and manufactured DSL routers will rarely fail. My Cisco 974 has been running without fail for three years at home. My Actiontec (and the initial replacement) had failed roughly once per week. Microsoft software has trained us that technology will fail and you need to reboot. If you accept this level of quality in your equipment then they will keep producing the same level. Maybe rebooting your router isn't a big deal for you, all you have to do is unplug it and plug it back in after all. Would you accept a car that you had to take into the shop once a week though? You shouldn't have to.
Monopoly.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I couple years ago I tried watching a basketball playoff game on a friend's HDTV. The lines on the court all looked like jagged lines, like spastic lightning bolts zapping up and down as the camera panned the court. To say it was distracting is a huge understatement. Also the crowd in the background was motionless except for once a second when the keyframe updated and everybody in the stadium was in a new position or pose for another second.
Some of TWCs analog channels also update once a second, but it's out of sync with the interlacing so text and still lines bounce up and down, up and down, one line, once a second.
I would complain, but for two years the TWC commercials playing on TWC had the sound so high it clipped to the point of being completely unintelligible, so I figured it was pointless.