Overcompressed bitstarved HDTV frustrates World Cup fans

It's an unfortunate but familiar circumstance for many high definition television owners, after spending a lot of money on a new HDTV, hooked up the cable/satellite/antenna and settled in to watch the big game, only to get a blurry, blocky mess. While American soccer futbot football soccer fans have commented that they "can finally see the ball" during the World Cup broadcast, Korean watchers are flooding the nations three major broadcasters with complaints that they can't see anything thats moving quickly.

The broadcasters have been testing a new multicasting system, MMS to broadcast more channels within the same frequency, lowering the bitrate from 19Mbps to 13Mbps. It looks like viewers noticed the difference, with threats to sue and other complaints posted on the internet. The Korean Broadcasting Commission is going to vote tomorrow on whether to continue the MMS test or not. Korea, we've got our fingers crossed. Whether or not someone will sue ESPN for their poor color commentary during games remains to be seen.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 13th 2006 8:01AM]

Gotta Love HD-Lite ;) , First Patented by D*

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 13th 2006 8:24AM]

So true, so true. And this is a multicast business so their excuse is on equally hollow foundation. DirecTV, bringers of HDlite in your HD diet.

I get better, more full HD free, but I get emaciated HD from the pimp that starves me (DirecTV). I'm such a cowsumers.

Moo!

[BenD Posted Jun 13th 2006 8:38AM]

Actualy DIRECTV reduces the resolution in order to prevent compresion artifacts. Either are prefered but I would rather have reduced resolution than compression artifacts.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 13th 2006 8:52AM]

The Korean Broadcasting Commission said it would decide during its board meeting tomorrow whether to stop the test-service.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 13th 2006 9:28AM]

>>Actualy DIRECTV reduces the resolution in order to prevent compresion artifacts. Either are prefered but I would rather have reduced resolution than compression artifacts.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 13th 2006 12:31PM]

Try living in Australia where thanks to our crappy simulcast system (SD and HD sharing the same 21mbps bandwidth) we are limited to a maximum of 14mbps, with most networks using 11mbps. Yep 11mbps 1080i. Compression artefact city. And they have the cheek to call it HD.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 13th 2006 8:50PM]

I love how all the "analysts" on various ESPN 1 shows comment that Americans are not into soccer. This is not directly related to the digital artifact problem the Cable companies seem to have on thier hand, I realize. The commentators blame the American soccer team for not getting Americans into soccer. They should blame (their parent company) Disney and carry the games on a channel that sports casual watching Americans have access to (ABC), if they cared about the feelings towards soccer in America. The first USA game was broadcasted on ESPN2! As almost 75% of the games will be. The ratings argument (The FIFA World Cup apparently does not generate enough viewers to have it on ESPN) is ridicoulus. If a Spelling Bee can score some 8 million viewers, then an American Team playing at the World Cup should rate as much as that. Of course, when the medium for content deliverey is present.

[rda52 Posted Jun 13th 2006 9:57PM]

i cant understand why the US game was thru ESPN2, even the mexico one was thrpogh ABC, i guess disney doesnt believe the US team will bring the raitings. MEXICO!!! FTW!!!

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 14th 2006 7:47AM]

We've got the Roland GARROS tournament here in France with 5,2Mbps (adsl2+, on the net) in 1080i and it worked near perfectly !
Live encoding was done by ATEME...