I was an original beta tester and paid them for about 12 years maximum channel of service until I got fed up. They've taken what originally was breathtakingly beautiful SD at the highest possible resolutions (Imagine CNN always looking like a 480P DVD?) And surprise, surprise, they've consistently knocked image quality down. When HD came along with the RCA DTC-100, the SD looked like cable, but the HD at 540 lines of progressive-scan looked impressive. Then I saw over the air (OTA) done by PBS on a single non-multicast channel. The difference between the feed from the highly compressed and (yes,) down-rezzed DirecTV signal paled in comparison. And it continues to get more pale with each added (Absolutely Ridiculous) Must-Carry Local Station.
I imagine that DirecTV (and the cable-co's) wouldn't have to beg-barter-and-steal bandwidth, if we could get the FCC to stop protecting the Buggy Whip Manufacturers (local stations who can't compete and end up a must carry.)
Ever notice how a major event like the Oscars or the Super Bowl looks amazing compared to the norm?
The companies adjust bandwidth on the fly depending upon viewer numbers and the import of the programming from the corporate P.O.V.
The guy is right. He's being ripped off by what was supposed to be a great picture at 19.4 Mbps of lovely HD Goodness.
But, so are the rest of us who are on cable with crazily down-rezzed channels of both SD and HD nature.
So are the rest of us who put up with a low-bandwidth feed from our local NBC station via antenna, because they are doing five channels of multicast on what should be a single GREAT picture.
What's odd is that it appears that the pre-dish company named VOOM (however poorly launched and positioned in the market) had things mostly right. Deliver a high bitrate set of HD channels, and fair bitrate on your SD and let the end user put up a nice UHF antenna to get their locals.
Local MUST=CARRY is killing the Sat biz (slowly but surely) as they'll never keep up by launching multi-billion dollar birds and bidding like crazy for new spectrum.
The rest of us have to put up with Cable making everything equally bad by pushing five hundred channels of crap through a small pipe.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rick Raymo @ Sep 20th 2006 1:47PM
I was an original beta tester and paid them for about 12 years maximum channel of service until I got fed up. They've taken what originally was breathtakingly beautiful SD at the highest possible resolutions (Imagine CNN always looking like a 480P DVD?) And surprise, surprise, they've consistently knocked image quality down.
When HD came along with the RCA DTC-100, the SD looked like cable, but the HD at 540 lines of progressive-scan looked impressive.
Then I saw over the air (OTA) done by PBS on a single non-multicast channel.
The difference between the feed from the highly compressed and (yes,) down-rezzed DirecTV signal paled in comparison.
And it continues to get more pale with each added (Absolutely Ridiculous) Must-Carry Local Station.
I imagine that DirecTV (and the cable-co's) wouldn't have to beg-barter-and-steal bandwidth, if we could get the FCC to stop protecting the Buggy Whip Manufacturers (local stations who can't compete and end up a must carry.)
Ever notice how a major event like the Oscars or the Super Bowl looks amazing compared to the norm?
The companies adjust bandwidth on the fly depending upon viewer numbers and the import of the programming from the corporate P.O.V.
The guy is right. He's being ripped off by what was supposed to be a great picture at 19.4 Mbps of lovely HD Goodness.
But, so are the rest of us who are on cable with crazily down-rezzed channels of both SD and HD nature.
So are the rest of us who put up with a low-bandwidth feed from our local NBC station via antenna, because they are doing five channels of multicast on what should be a single GREAT picture.
What's odd is that it appears that the pre-dish company named VOOM (however poorly launched and positioned in the market) had things mostly right. Deliver a high bitrate set of HD channels, and fair bitrate on your SD and let the end user put up a nice UHF antenna to get their locals.
Local MUST=CARRY is killing the Sat biz (slowly but surely) as they'll never keep up by launching multi-billion dollar birds and bidding like crazy for new spectrum.
The rest of us have to put up with Cable making everything equally bad by pushing five hundred channels of crap through a small pipe.
Go Figure.