[Tig] compressing cable feeds

[Greg D.]

I was told by comcast a couple yrs ago that they too were passing the HD
feeds "as is."  They did admit to compressing all the other channels to
"fit" as many as 6-12 digital std def feeds into the bandwidth of what an
analogue channel does/used to require.  I thought then that they were
probably going to try to send HD as good looking as they could in the
beginning, but then would certainly eventually compress to add more
capacity.  I believe that is happening at Comcast now and other providers as
they add more SD and HD channels.  To provide more, they are most certainly
compressing more.  My 15 or so HD feeds show a lot of compression!
Especially obvious in sports and fast moving or fast cuts material.  I have
to say HD still looks way better than SD on a large (50") set, but boy the
compression artifacts are really annoying.  I also think the analogue cable
feeds look better than the digital ones.  I'm thinking I prefer SOFTER
instead of crisp blockiness!  NR smear doesn't't help either.  I rather see
soft than blocky crappy edges I think.  I've been trying to ignore the
crappy picture as I have recently been watching more EPL (football/soccer)
via Fox's Soccer Channel.  Incidentally Comcast charges an extra $7 a month
for it and it has to be one of the most compressed feeds they send out!  Not
too mention the PAL to NTSC artifacts and I'm sure several up, down, cross
converts, A to D, D to A, compression this, compression that.  It looks
worse than VHS!!!!
A lot of hard work still never making it home!  BTW, there are finally many
more spots beeing fed in HD programming.  Way up from virtually none even
during last yrs Superbowl.  The post folks must finally like that!
-Greg Dildine