HD cable is pure crap

[gus6464]

I am currently watching Transformers on HBO HD with time warner cable and I must say the amount of compression on this feed is just insane. On every action scene so far the amount of artifacting is just huge. The scene with the Scorpinox attack on the desert town has been the worst so far. Have any of you guys with either Dish HD or Direct HD encountered this much compression?

 

[Adam]

Hopefully it'll get better in the near future as bandwidth gets increased (which I expect it will). I got Directv back in 1997, and the compression effects in movies were horrid. My initial subscription came with something like a free month of the pay movie channels, and I was completely unimpressed with the video. Even normal TV was bad at times. That stuff got much better as they added satellites, but their initial HD offerings seemed to suffer from the same effects as their early SD material. I haven't seen any satellite HD material in the past couple of years, though. From what I've read, it's gotten a lot better.

 

[WmAx]

I am currently watching Transformers on HBO HD with time warner cable and I must say the amount of compression on this feed is just insane. On every action scene so far the amount of artifacting is just huge. The scene with the Scorpinox attack on the desert town has been the worst so far. Have any of you guys with either Dish HD or Direct HD encountered this much compression?

I have DirecTV in HD and compression is minimal. Not as good as a BR disc of course, but no major artifacts in most movies. However, my ex-favorite pay channel Starz(due to the large number of channels they have in HD) is now crap, not because of compression, but because of the new record breaking annoyance level channel logo they use: a bright orange-yellow opaque burst of considerable size in the lower right corner. It usually pops up every 5 minutes or so for 5 minutes, goes way, repeats.... argh! Way to go, Starz....

-Chris

 

[bandphan]

just watched also and it wasnt noticable, in fact its not my pay channels that are compressed, its the TNTs and TBSs that comcast is jacking up, especailly A&E in my area.

note, my poor little abyss bottomed twice on me hmmm, somethings up there. love the low bass in this movie >:->

 

[Hi Ho]

I couldn't be happier with Dish. With the introduction of "Turbo HD" I saw a noticable increase in quality; quality that was already far better than Comcast offers in this area. Some of the "HD" channels on Comcast are so bad that certain SD channels on Dish look match them.

 

[Geno]

I've got Dish HD also, and have been pretty happy with the PQ. Maybe some day they'll have something better than DD audio, although it's still a nice step up from the conventional stereo. Blu-Ray, it ain't.

 

[croseiv]

I must have gotten lucky, because my comcast PQ is great.

 

[MDS]

My cable has been flaky lately and usually beginning after about 9 PM. There are no artifacts due to excessive compression but they can't seem to deliver the data at the correct rate and the picture freezes or turns into a jigsaw puzzle.

So I have a $3K TV and pay $140 per month for cable and yet TV is sometimes unwatchable. When the picture is fine we of course still have the annoyance of the giant station logos and animated ads at the bottom of the screen and stations with commercials are still unbearable with their 7 minutes of program followed by 5 minutes of commercials (and the SAME 4 commercials at every break!).

So much for 'progress' in the new HD age...

 

[JerryLove]

Agreed. My HD channels are compressed down to the point that some SD channels look better (hey, at least they don't lock up as often), the little transparent logos I can deal with, but the big flashy ones are annoying, and not only do they sometimes put more commercial than show, and then add commercials *during* the show, and put those over the screen (rather than compressing the image down and playing in what would be the "black bar"), but they waste my time with ads for other shows.

I mean I could understand if they were at least getting paid to block off half my screen.

 

[majorloser]

I have Dish Network with the ViP622 DVR receiver. I've been noticing for the past couple days that sometimes the picture on the HD channels locks up (freezes). Not the usual type of problems that I would normally see when one of the HD channels loses signal.

It might be because of the "Turbo HD" change.

 

[gus6464]

I think I might have to switch to Dish Network if this continues with TWC. The only thing is that I am going to have to pay more for my phone, tv, and internet since I bundle with TWC and I want to keep roadrunner and digital phone. I used to have DSL and the download speeds were pretty crappy compared to cable. With roadrunner I am hitting 1mbit download speeds all the time whereas with DSL I was lucky to get 600k and that was with the upgraded speed package.

 

[bandphan]

. With roadrunner I am hitting 1mbit download speeds all the time whereas with DSL I was lucky to get 600k and that was with the upgraded speed package.

id put a bullet through my head if that was even close to my download speeds,(i get almost 2mbs on upload) heck i can even tether my blackberry and get 600k

 

[gus6464]

id put a bullet through my head if that was even close to my download speeds,(i get almost 2mbs on upload) heck i can even tether my blackberry and get 600k

What do you have? FIOS?

 

[jwenthold99]

I have to wholeheartedly agree with the op! I have ATT u-verse, and I am not at all impressed with the HD quality.... way too much compression, and the picture shifts every 1.5 seconds or so, just enough to be noticeable in still scenes... I can't get dish in the building we are in, and time warner is no better, with less selection.