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.'"

Comments

What's that smell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Smells like a convenient excuse for the likes of Comcast and Verizon to use in an attempt to get the public on their side of the net neutrality debate.

"If you don't let us manage the network bandwidth, you'll be doomed to watching fuzzy video on your expensive HDTV!!!!"

Re:HD channels w/ no HD programming

[rob1980]

Marketing's a bitch, isn't it. Cable and satellite providers are poking at each other in advertisements over who has more HD channels when they could be a little bit more forthcoming and compete over a completely different metric, like how many hours of HD programming are provided per week or something.

I completely agree

[YesIAmAScript]

Secondary channels should be banned. The local NBC affiliate runs a weather channel on their .2 and it their image quality is very poor next to the local CBS affiliate (CBS bans secondary channels). And woe to me if I try to watch the .2-.5 channels on PBS. Even in SD they are block city.

I disagree Generation Kill looks good. I watched the first episode on HBOW, which is an H.264 channel on DirecTV. And it had significant blocking. The 2nd episode looked better, but still, I am spoiled by BluRay. It's worlds better, and no cable or satellite system which only allocates a few mbits is doing to ever match it. That includes U-Verse.

I'm watching "The Professionals" on BluRay right now, and the video bandwidth along is over 27mbits, even in scenes where almost nothing moves. On pans it goes over 30mbits. And this isn't even one of the best looking movies. And this 27mbits is with H.264 video (AVC). 8-10mbit H.264 (let along MPEG-2) doesn't stand a chance.

Broadcast companies (and cable systems) will keep removing bandwidth until their "HDTV" looks even worse than it already does. They advertise quantity (100 channels!), quality is rarely even mentioned.

Re:I completely agree

[Percy_Blakeney]

Secondary channels should be banned.

I completely disagree -- each company should get to decide how to allocate their bandwidth. I would prefer to have two channels of good content instead of a single channel, and I'll bet that most consumers would agree with me. There's a reason why they advertise quantity instead of quality -- it's what people actually care about.

Of course, there's a point where most people DO care about quality -- stuffing 15 sub-channels into a 19 Mbps broadcast channel is going to piss people off -- but you probably aren't going to hit that point with just 2-3 channels.

Re:I completely agree

[drinkypoo]

The simple truth is that you aren't the customer, you're the product; the advertisers are the customers, and as long as studies show that the marketing still works at the bitrate at which the ads are going out, they'll keep ratcheting it down. They're not catering to the people who want to capture their streams at top quality.

typical

[ocularDeathRay]

The funny thing is that people still seem to like HDTV.... you know why? because it _IS_ better than the picture quality we had before.

I professionally install home theater systems, and most of our customers are very happy with the end result. I get what this article is going for (not that I read it, or anything), and I wish it could be better, but unfortunately the world of business never comes up with anything that is perfect... because to develop perfect tech would cost infinite money, which would significantly cut into profits.

take any technology standard and leave it to a bunch of linux geeks (myself included) to pick it apart and point out the flaws. sometimes I think our time could be better spent designing something better, rather than badmouthing that which already exists.

OTOH it is kind of fun to bitch, so I am torn...

Re:typical

[negRo_slim]

I professionally install home theater systems, and most of our customers are very happy with the end result.

Anyone who spends several grand on the latest and greatest is going to like it regardless of any actual improvements or (more likely) disappointments.

Re:typical

[schwaang]

I get what this article is going for (not that I read it, or anything), and I wish it could be better, but unfortunately the world of business never comes up with anything that is perfect...

In my area, HD channels really did look much improved, like your customers find. But over time, the cable company (Comcast) has decided to increase the compression on some channels (lowering their bitrate) so they can squeeze more channels in their bandwidth. So HD quality *has* degraded here, not through any fault of the HD technology, but through the choices that the cable company has made.

If your local pizza company sells you melted plastic because it's cheaper than cheese, do you just say "oh don't bitch about it, a good pizza would cost too much"?

Re:typical

[Teancum]

I did have a local pizza place sell me some "ham & pineapple" pizza using crushed pineapple and TVP. I even confronted the manager about it, and the idiot claimed that they ran the ham through a meat grinder before putting it on the pizza.

So much for trying to support a small-town non-chain business operated by one of my neighbors. I ordered the next pizza from Pizza hut, and at least they delivered with some real Canadian Bacon.

As far as the HD channels are concerned and their bandwidth, I hope this doesn't turn into the digital equivalent of the shrinking toilet paper rolls.... where those manufacturers keep making gradually smaller and smaller rolls with less paper (but selling it at the same price), only to come out with a "double roll" at a higher price that had the same amount of paper as the rolls you bought about two years ago.

Mark my words.... these cable companies are going to start a promo (at of course a higher plan rate) that offers "enhanced resolution" of these channels for an improved picture that was just like you experienced when you first signed up for HD channels.

Re:Same thing with standard def

[timmarhy]

this is very true. there is no point blowing your load over 1080p if you can't broadcast it well enough that you don't get a decent signal. frankly i don't see the obession with 1080p when it's much easier to put out a 720p/1080i signal which will look just as good.

oh and i have a 70 inch 1080p TV so i know what it looks like on a large screen. 1080p is nice, but it's not essential.

Re:FIOS Baby

[mapkinase]

The only thing that I can offer them to pry from my cold dead fingers is Verison DSL which is currently have 14 kbps of upload speed (just measured at speedtest.net), because there is nothing else to pry in our corrupted county.

Re:HD channels w/ no HD programming

[lessthanpi]

It always seems the highest quality video you get from these "HD" channels is the commercials. Viva America

Re:FIOS Baby

[E IS mC(Square)]

I think you are confusing two things - FIOS and HDTV. Your question about FIOS is followed by something about HDTV.

1. FIOS is not mandatory for HDTV. But higher bandwidth definitely helps FIOS to deliver better HD content.

2. Grass looked liquid - probably because either the TV was not setup properly OR as the article says, it was subjected to random chopping due to limited bandwidth.

3. You mentioned that your picture looked as good - well, normally I do not buy corporate shit wholesome, but to give a (hopefully) suitable analogy, the real difference between HDTV and standard definition is similar to difference between tape and audio CD (or suddenly realizing you were seeing things with 'defective' eyes and then looking through your prescribed spectacles).

Though I have comcast HD at home, and a lot of HD content is compressed hell out of it, it's still miles better than standard definition and the only reason I still have my cable connection (and before you murder me for having Comcast, I do not have a choice unless I go dish, and I can not do that).

Re:Corrupted how?

[GigaplexNZ]

That's assuming there is competition in the area...

Re:Corrupted how?

[TheRaven64]

That's true! Exactly right! In fact, I think I'm going to set up a competing broadcast TV and cable network!.

Oh, wait. It turns out over-the-air bandwidth is incredibly expensive and there's none for sale at the moment. Still, I can set up a cable network. Oh, I can't get a permit to dig up all the roads in a municipality to lay cable?

TV distribution companies have a government-granted monopoly because some forms of last-mile bandwidth are scarce resources (broadcast transmissions) and some cause disruption to everyone if they are installed (cables). Satellite is an exception, but the cost of entry into this market is huge. It is in the public interest not to have streets dug up all the time, so the (typically local) government enforces this. It is then not in the public interest for the resulting monopoly to be unregulated.

There is one alternative, which is communal ownership of the last-mile pipes. When you build a house, you buy the cable from your house to the nearest exchange, and a share in this exchange. You pay a cooperative to operate it, and they sell bandwidth to TV companies and so on. I don't know if anyone has implemented this in the real world, although there were plans to in Utah a few years back (they seemed to have stalled when I visited though).