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Lack of Bandwidth Oversight Damages HDTV Quality
mattnyc99 writes "Over at Popular Mechanics, Glenn Derene has a great new column investigating the lawless lands of broadcast television, where the quality of the picture that ends up on your expensive hi-def set is determined by a bunch of fuzzy math. Quoting: 'In fact, there's no real regulation over high-definition picture quality at all — "none whatsoever," one industry consultant told me. And that's part of the reason why different HD stations often have wildly varying levels of picture quality that change from one moment to the next. Behind the scenes, content producers, broadcasters and cable and satellite providers are engaged in a constant tug-of-war over bandwidth and video quality, with no hard metrics to even define what looks acceptable. Even officials at HBO, where Generation Kill looks pretty fantastic on my TV, bemoaned the lack of a silver bullet ... for now.'"
you make an excellent point. I don't dispute it at all. I would point out though, that Cumcast is doing this to increase profits. Sort of my original point, the guys providing this service want to make lots of money, not provide you with a perfect product.
if we are lucky they take a portion of the increased profits and reinvest it in giving us better service in some way, or maybe we trade some TV picture quality for some extra speed on the data side.
again I am not arguing. I think it sucks too, but not because it isn't improving, just because it isn't "there yet". Cumcast is providing a better, faster, more feature packed service than they were 10 years ago. hopefully this trend continues, even if it is at a snail pace. With the current economic structure this is the best we can hope for.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
The FCC mandated that the HD video be encoded in Mpeg2 only; never planning ahead
That was planning ahead. Now they can force everyone to change everything up again in a few years.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"