JeepMatt
Delaware Fios
Premium
join:2001-12-28
Wilmington, DE
 ·Verizon FIOS
1 edit | 3 to 1 HD - Channels Look Worse
Now that i've finally had time to watch some of Food HD, etc. since Comcast this week moved them 3 to a QAM here in the DE area, I'm thoroughly disappointed.
Comcast has taken two of the best, full quality HD channels (Food and HGTV) and ruined them. Tell me how you fit two 17-18 meg channels along with a 3rd HD channel when there's only 39 meg to go around??? Oh that's right, you don't.
Food HD now looks grainier, doesn't have that pop - and I constantly am seeing the picture slow down, stutter, etc. on both Tivo and the HD-DVR.
Thank you Comcast for taking the shorter road to give us more HD. |
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Old Man River
@comcast.net
| Re: 3 to 1 HD - Channels Look Like Crap
Everything in life, including HD image quality, is a relative thing. And it's a bitter thing to be moving in the wrong direction, especially when one is paying a premium for service.
Here's hoping that they can restore your Food & HGTV channels to your satisfaction on a local basis.
Those two channels are among our most outstanding HD benchmarks here in the Mid-South Comcast area. So I feel your pain. |
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markofmayhem
join:2004-04-08
Pittsburgh, PA | I have no "grainy" channels, that's interesting. The stutters and slow downs are a killer, though. Really, really annoying! 45 days of patience to "work out the kinks for new technology" is enough, isn't it? |
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JeepMatt
Delaware Fios
Premium
join:2001-12-28
Wilmington, DE
·Verizon FIOS
| Re: 3 to 1 HD - Channels Look Worse
Mark-
I know you know your stuff...so not sure if you're being sarcastic. 
I love new technology, but Food HD (ever since I saw it first when it came out on Dish Network), has been one of the most beautiful HD channels available.
DirecTV's version of it actually looks BETTER than Comcast's now. I could never say that before.
--
"ONE team - ONE city - ONE dream!!" |
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TurboDan
join:2006-06-08
Point Pleasant Beach, NJ | reply to JeepMatt
I guess now we know why Comcast never ran commercial attacking DirecTV's picture quality in the past. |
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Mr Cable
@rogers.com | 3:1 HD QAM is fake HD. I dont consider that HD |
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NoPegs
Premium
join:2006-06-14
Myerstown, PA
| Ehhh, bear in mind that your normal 17-19mbps mpeg-2 stream has about 7-8mbps of FEC data in it... you "could" remove that and not lose any pic quality, assuming you're decoding 100% of all packets correctly... It is just like eight-to-foutreen-modulation used on CDs... There's waaay more than 650MB of data on there, there's about 600MB of FEC data that helps the discs work once they're scratched or of the laser is out of alignment just a bit... they're not adding *THAT MUCH* compression to the stream, they're just removing the redundant FEC data...
See:
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-to-F···dulation |
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bicker
join:2007-05-10
Burlington, MA
| I'm much happier WITH Sci Fi HD than without it. 3:1 HD is just fine, and better that SD. I recognize that everything isn't just about what I want, and there are a lot of people who still need analog service, so this is a very nice compromise. I get my HD channels and they keep their analog service. Everyone gets some of what they want. That's what is fair. |
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Chad473
join:2007-12-18
Lancaster, PA
| the only problem with that is that cable co's will see people accepting this level of quality, so why would they go back to 2:1. I guess we can hold out hope that they will get better with the 3:1 thing in the next few months. Hopefully in a few years mpeg4 will help, but they will always be trying to maximize channels and profit with quality not getting top priority. |
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markofmayhem
join:2004-04-08
Pittsburgh, PA | reply to JeepMatt
No sarcasm. The stuttered pictures are really getting annoying. I've been putting it off, but I better start checking my wiring before I really start complaining, I suppose. |
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Chad473
join:2007-12-18
Lancaster, PA | the stuttering is my main beef too. Other than that, when they show something from a nice source, it doesn't look any worse to me than before 3:1 started. |
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markofmayhem
join:2004-04-08
Pittsburgh, PA
| I agree. The picture quality is still amazing, but the high-action blocking and frequent stuttering seems to be more often. Perhaps I'm just in-tune to it.
Out of curiosity, who besides me has actually called Comcast and complained about the stuttering/blocking on their 3:1 QAM HD channels? The 3:1 QAM HD is in direct response to both the CEO and COO publicly stating that "50% less bandwidth for HD" would be nationwide by the end of 2007, if your having trouble explaining it to a CSR. |
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reelbigfish
join:2002-06-06
Boston, MA | Honestly, the only channel I am having issues with is USA HD. All the others look great and I haven't noticed any stuttering or blocking. I am going to call to complain about USA HD however. |
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JeepMatt
Delaware Fios
Premium
join:2001-12-28
Wilmington, DE | reply to markofmayhem
Mark-
My concerns have been relayed as well.
--
"ONE team - ONE city - ONE dream!!" |
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KenAF
join:2006-01-23
Arlington, VA
1 edit | SciFi-HD and USA-HD are both 17Mbps ABR with 18.2Mbps peaks. But on Comcast, they are now squeezed into a single QAM with another 12.5Mbps HD channel.
Squeezed into 38.8Mbps, something has to go... |
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cypherstream
Looking forward to the future of things.
Premium,MVM
join:2004-12-02
Reading, PA
clubs:
1 edit | reply to JeepMatt
Well I did watch a lot of TLC HD yesterday and on my system it's a conventional HD, with only TBS HD on the same frequency.
TLC HD has very vivid colors and sharpness when watching LA Ink, Jon & Kate + 8, and shows like Rides or American Chopper. During fast motion, you do loose some resolution in small sized blocks, but you get that with everything.
Now switching to a 3:1 HD...
Food HD and HGTV HD both still look great IMO. I did see one glitch where there were a few small pixels "blipped" on Food HD. I see the same motion artifacts as TLC HD, perhaps a little bit more, but there's not usually really fast paced motion on these two channels to tell.
Discovery HD looks pretty good as well. It lacks the "pop" as TLC, but most of the times it seems I'm watching unconverted material. I did catch some Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters in HD and it did look really good. I had one or two occurrences of stuttered video during Dirty Jobs, and even one occurrence on "It Takes A Thief", during a bright flash transition screen.
USA HD looks pretty dark. I'd say this is the worst, but I don't watch SciFi enough to compare. It still looks HD, and is far better than USA SD, but it doesn't give me that pop that Mojo or TLC does in terms of color definition.
A&E HD looks pretty good. I watched some Gene Simmons HD and that Parking Authority show in HD. Looks great, minimal artifacting, good resolution and color fidelity.
My take on 3:1?
Our system is so bandwidth starved, and yet theres many of us clamoring for more HD. Theres a big push from DirecTV to move there for HD, so Comcast has to come up with something to please us early adopters while maintaining a balance with analogs for the general population. SDV will be a great solution, but it's expensive and time consuming to deploy. It will be deployed, no dobut, but to get it done in a timely manner 3:1 QAM can tidy us over. What would be the point in putting just Discovery HD and TLC HD on one 2:1 QAM when Discovery HD is already 3:1 loaded on the sattelite? The main delivery method (currently Hits Quantum AMC 18) is triple loading transponders, so there would be no benefit to 'unbind' one HD from each transponder and re-mux it into it's own QAM. Could they have picked a better channel combination for the Discovery/USA/SciFi mux? Probably, because the Food, HGTV, A&E trio looks slightly better.
But in the end of things, I'm ok with the 3:1, because it's good bandwidth management. How else do you think we are going to get the HD channels we want? Going out and doing a 1 GHz, or deploying a CablePON system would cost tons of money and most of all, TIME.
Removing analogs is an option but then you risk high customer churn as analog only customers start considering their options with other providers. "If you need a box now with Comcast, what's the difference with DirecTV? Let's give them a call." Sure we can remove analogs, but it's going to be a slow process, where one here and there goes every 60 days or so. It's not like overnight were going to loose 45-50 analog channels.
3:1 works good enough now, so we might as well accept that. When the time comes and SDV is deployed, or brute force bandwidth expantion is explored, or even perhaps MPEG4 set tops become the norm... 3:1 is what's needed as bandwidth is so costly.
Your going to find more and more HD networks launch on 3:1 muxes on their distributing satellites. Transponder bandwidth is VERY expensive. Again if the source is muxing at 3:1, the cable operator might as well pass that feed down. Garbage in is garbage out right?
»www.lyngsat.com/packages/hitsamc18.html |
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no3to1
@verizon.net | reply to KenAF
fios has less hd channels but at least they are not doing rate shaping and stripping bandwith out of hd channels. |
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JeepMatt
Delaware Fios
Premium
join:2001-12-28
Wilmington, DE
·Verizon FIOS
| reply to cypherstream
Garbage out is right.
Cypher - unfortunately, you never got to see Food HD before it was a 3 to 1 channel. You'd be shocked.
The whole stuttering / slow-motion effect is the worst. I just turned off Comcast and watched DirecTV for the rest of the day yesterday.
But, what a day it was! Yesterday was my 1st official TV veg day in quite some time.
Sixers big win, followed by a Soul win, PSU knocked off Indiana in OT, then I watched the Big 10 wrestling championships (on BTN), then some Fast & Furious on USA HD, followed by a Hell's Kitchen marathon on Fox Reality (okay, i'll expect flack on this one).
--
"ONE team - ONE city - ONE dream!!" |
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pennstatejim
join:2007-10-10
Reading, PA
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Comcast
| reply to JeepMatt
Other than a few problems on USA HD, I have had no problems with the new channels or the 3:1 HD. I'm thankful that we have what we have. But, I guess we should have expected that after all the griping and moaning about not enough HD linear channels, here we get them, and now the complaints are about the channel quality. I guess everyone just needs something new to gripe about. |
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cypherstream
Looking forward to the future of things.
Premium,MVM
join:2004-12-02
Reading, PA
clubs:
| reply to JeepMatt
Well I did get to see it on Service Electric Cable, but that was on different TV's. A true comparison would be using the same TV and connection method, along with the same picture settings.
Say I would move to an area that has both Comcast and Fios. As of right now I would pick Comcast. They have more of the HD that I want to watch right now. Plus they have a bigger VOD library, including HD-VOD, and their triple play price for $159.95 for everything is a deal to me.
Eventually FIOS will catch up, but as of right now, I have to go with the provider that suits me. Sure theirs DirecTV, and I would consider them, despite loosing VOD, HSI and Phone discounts. Perhaps Fios could bridge the gap in those situations. |
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