http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/ Engadget Comments for Comcast looking to compress HD even more http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/
And when my friends and family start to notice the over-compression, well then you know you have a problem.

Also, Comast - I will gladly take LESS channels, if you provide quality HD channels that I actually want to watch. I don't need 500 stations, there is only so much TV a Media Center can record.]]>Mar 20th 2010 2:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/
You cannot watch HD on a big screen TV with TWC, HD it's soooo crappy looking with TWC @ 65".

The more channels they add the worse they keep looking.]]>Mar 20th 2010 3:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/
Are you sure its TWC crapifying the quality? I have TW as well, and while I agree that when there is any motion the artifacting sucks, I can see from the recordings on my media center PC that the bitrates are in the 15-16Mbps range, which is near the maximum that broadcasters can use (especially when some is used for the subchannels). I think the HD quality may be just as bad OTA. It really sucks that the U.S. only uses MPEG-2 for digital TV.

Now if you are talking about the SD digital channels from TWC, I'd have to agree they are bitrate starving them. Thank god they finally got Comedy Central HD here, the SD version was below YouTube quality.]]>Mar 22nd 2010 2:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Mar 20th 2010 4:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/
TWC HD should be called low bit, high compression HD, or something reflective of the image definition we pay for.

The HD standard is too broad to make any sense of what we are paying for with from our providers.]]>Mar 20th 2010 7:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/
My cable co sucks too. There's no buzzkill quite like movies with a lot of special effects turning to crap with every explosion.

Switching to Fios soon. Can't wait.]]>Mar 20th 2010 8:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Mar 20th 2010 7:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Mar 20th 2010 8:55PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Mar 20th 2010 10:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Mar 21st 2010 1:15AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/
The problem with H.264 is only the newest cable boxes support it. All the older boxes need to be replaced as well. It is much easier for the provider to swap out the equipment at the head-end than to replace everyone's cable box. ]]>Mar 21st 2010 7:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Mar 21st 2010 9:31AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/
As far as cablecard compatibility though, I don't think that's true at all. Whether they use h.264 or MPEG-2 video, cable transmissions ALWAYS use MPEG-2 transport streams to carry the multiplex of audio and video and all of the encryption schemes work at the transport stream level, not the elementary stream that MPEG-2/h.264 lives at. I'm pretty sure that STBs which ship with cable cards and have h.264 decoders in them would work with both.]]>Mar 22nd 2010 1:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Mar 22nd 2010 5:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Mar 22nd 2010 5:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Mar 21st 2010 3:36AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/
Besides do you really think MPEG-2 encoders don't get better every year? If you can get a "good" 4:1 mux, that will be an even better 3:1 mux which just means more HD capacity, faster Internet, 3D, etc.

]]>Mar 21st 2010 7:45AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/
I think we've hit the upper limit for MPEG-2, so no I don't think it's going to get much better with another year than what we have now. DVDs have been around for about a decade and a half now, which is more than enough time for the industry to optimize MPEG-2 encoders and gain familiarity with what the codec can and can't do. MPEG-2 is tapped out; MPEG-4 is the new frontier that the industry will have to embrace, become familiar with, and start optimizing.]]>Mar 21st 2010 12:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/20/comcast-looking-to-compress-hd-even-more/Gene Dolgoff doesn't even believe 1080 resolution exists on cable. The compression is completely unregulated.

http://twit.tv/htg12
]]>Mar 23rd 2010 11:31AM