1 edit | Sandy Relief Concert & HD quality I am using the Hurricane Sandy relief concert as an opportunity to compare the various HD feeds of the different channels that are all broadcasting the concert.
Well, the results are in...
Cablevision should be embarrassed to call the following channels "HD":
AMC
IFC
WE
Fuse
I can't believe how incredibly bad these channels are when there is a lot of rapid movement or lighting changes. Completely unwatchable. Even when there is not that much going on, there is still distracting macroblocking and other artifacts.
The other HD channels (those not listed above that were broadcasting the concert) that I looked at were acceptable (except when there was rapid strobe-light effects). Although it seemed that channels in the range above 100 were not as good as the ones below 100.
I've known that there was a problem with AMC for a while now, since I've had to put up with the distracting picture quality while watching Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, but watching the Rolling Stones on stage clearly drove home just how horrible the quality of this channel is.
Right now I am watching "The Who" on IFC, at least I think it is "The Who" since with the amount of macroblocking going on it is hard to tell.
Cablevision should be ashamed to call these channels "HD". They are in no way high quality.
I have read that these channels are all about 9 mbps, which is not good enough for 1080i.
My understanding is that these channels are all owned by Cablevision, so they have no good excuse for the horrendous picture quality of these networks. |
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| Whatever keeps their costs down, right? |
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dm145
join:2009-12-12
Clifton, NJ | reply to spc111
amc, we, and fuse share a single qam along with speed ch
IFC is also on a single qam shared with three others
so yeah it is very bad
three should be the limit with two being ideal |
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| reply to spc111
How in the world could you use that concert to base everything on ?
Most likely it was the feed itself and not the channels. Every channel I went to was all pixelated and messed up .
Nothing like how the channels usually are.
I am thinking the channels rebroadcasted the internet feed. |
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 Jmartz
join:2000-07-20
Tenafly, NJ | reply to spc111
The picture quality last night was horrendous. Hopefully this is a wake up call that they need to fix it.
They need to get rid of all the SD channels that are carried in HD. Everything will be letter boxed on non HDTV's but a lot of channels are already doing that... there's really no point in having both channels anymore.
It would free up huge amounts of bandwidth to eliminate all the duplicates. Hopefully they get around to that and at the same time reorganize their channel lineups... have a traffic station in the middle of all the sports channels and a sports channel in the middle of the movie channels is kinda ... werid! |
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 IllIlIlllIllEliteDataPremium
join:2003-07-06
Hampton Bays, NY
kudos:7 | reply to spc111
the premium channels in HD seemed to be the best. |
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| reply to Jmartz
said by Jmartz:The picture quality last night was horrendous. Hopefully this is a wake up call that they need to fix it.
They need to get rid of all the SD channels that are carried in HD. Everything will be letter boxed on non HDTV's but a lot of channels are already doing that... there's really no point in having both channels anymore.
It would free up huge amounts of bandwidth to eliminate all the duplicates. Hopefully they get around to that and at the same time reorganize their channel lineups... have a traffic station in the middle of all the sports channels and a sports channel in the middle of the movie channels is kinda ... werid!
What I am saying is the picture quality being horrendous had nothing to do with the channels themselves. IT was the same quality over every channel that was owned by the same company.
If you went to say channel 710 it was much better quality. I think they rebroadcasted the internet feed which would have caused the horrible quality. |
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Jmartz
join:2000-07-20
Tenafly, NJ | I watched it on HBO. It wasn't much better. They over compress the channels. |
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dm145
join:2009-12-12
Clifton, NJ | reply to IllIlIlllIll
MSG+ was the best I saw
stands to reason since it only shares a qam with MSG
plus it was in 5.1 |
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tdoranPremium
join:2003-09-27
Ridge, NY | reply to spc111
Supposedly this was a “pool feed”, and with the production manager being James L. Dolan (whose father is Charles F. Dolan, who had a little bit of involvement also in Cablevision), so that could explain it all, “quick, dirty, and cheap”. |
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| reply to Jmartz
I still know plenty of people who have CRT Tube televisions and still all work fine. I don't think we're quite at that point yet to get rid of the SD channels. |
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Jmartz
join:2000-07-20
Tenafly, NJ | A lot of SD channels are in 16x9 already. So if CV eliminated SD ESPN it would save bandwidth. They could down rez the channel in house for the SD boxes. |
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TheWiseGuyDog And ButterflyPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-04
East Stroudsburg, PA
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Optimum Online
| said by Jmartz:A lot of SD channels are in 16x9 already. So if CV eliminated SD ESPN it would save bandwidth. They could down rez the channel in house for the SD boxes.
To save Bandwidth from the headend to the box, which is the important bandwidth, you would need to res the channel at the box. Do the SD boxes have the ability to take a 16X9 picture and change the resolution?
--
Warning, If you post nonsense and use misinformation and are here to argue based on those methods, you will be put on ignore. |
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| That's never been an option either in the SARA guide or the current Onyx guide. |
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| reply to Jmartz
Didnt all the SD channels get eliminated ? On my system ESPN is in HD only. |
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| You can't tune to them on an HD box, but the channels are still dedicated frequencies for those with SD boxes, who will get the SD versions. |
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Jmartz
join:2000-07-20
Tenafly, NJ | said by frdrizzt:You can't tune to them on an HD box, but the channels are still dedicated frequencies for those with SD boxes, who will get the SD versions.
That's what they should eliminate. ESPN-HD and ESPN-SD are the same thing. People with tube TV's and an SD box are getting ESPN in 16x9 which is the HD feed just put into SD with bars on the top and bottom. -- A lot of channels have switched to 16x9 on their SD station, so it makes me wonder if there is a need for both to co-exist. SD viewers are slowly being pushed to 16x9... so why not just auto-tune everyone to HD and let the box downrez.. it already does. |
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| If cv can make the HD boxes work as well as the old sd boxes then they could get rid of sd.... hd boxes are slow as hell on channel changing... sd is terrible bit hd is even worse! |
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