Fitting Three Shows Where There Were Two

Digital compression, in it's many flavors is exciting stuff. A provider like Comcast can get more on their system, without much expenditure expect computer cycles. The problem is most compressors are lossy, the quality degrades the higher the compression factor. The reason digital zooms are useless on cameras, just take the camera pixel capability shot and zoom it on the computer.

I have noticed this when I had DTV and now on Comcast, the DVD when played on an up scaling DVD player looked so much better than the one broadcast by the service. But lacking the equipment to measure, I just assumed it was all there was ... But I knew there was more. The pictures on the screens at the video store looked so much better than my high cost service provided. Over at Gizmodo they have some measurement data and some screen captures.

Comcast has begun compressing HDTV shows in order to deliver more HD channels to you while using the same amount of bandwidth. They didn't use to do this before, but now, when compared to Verizon FiOS, the channels are grainy and blocky and full of artifacts—a result of shoving three channels into a space where only two previously occupied. A guy at AVSForum measured how the new bitrate stacks up against Verizon.

If you look at the picture on the site, you see the bitrate is badly mismatched to the channel capacity. Hence the distorted picture, better get used to it, it's not going to go away. You do have multiple cable companies to choose from, don't you -- hah!

The temptation is too great to just compress it down -- Afterall, it's channel choice people want, not quality, right? I have cancelled all my subscriptions for TV and now use only DVDs. TV is slowly becoming a wasteland of the uninspired.