[mythtv-users] Better Satellite Service in the US

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 01:32:15PM -0600, Brian Wood wrote:
> On Thursday 24 July 2008 13:26:12 Brad DerManouelian wrote:
> > I have this exact same solution (except I have DirecTV and not DISH)
> > in place and honestly, I'm quite happy with the quality of S-Video
> > from the HD Satellite boxes and enjoy not having to have massive
> > frontends to display the big pretty SD quality content. It's in a nice
> > wide-screen format that I would say is somewhere between DVD quality
> > and the crappy quality I was getting out of the SD Satellite boxes.
> > Oh, and this SD quality is much better than the quality my friend gets
> > from his HD Comcast DVR connected directly to his huge Plasma display.
> 
> Yeah, the HD I have seen from cable is not too great. My local cable
> company advertises that you do not want satellite because the signals
> are "aggressively processed".
>
> The implication is that the cable signals are not so processed, but
> from what I've seen CATV HD is even more mangled. I guess they are
> safe, because it would be hard to get a precise legal definition of
> "aggressively".

Yeah, both cable and satellite headends probably recompress the MPEG2
feeds they get from the program provider master controls.  In the case
of anything except OTA signals, you're not really directly in a
position to measure this, really.   Cable networks you could pick off
the bird and measure, if they aren't/weren't encrypted.  

On the other hand, it's probably safe to assume that any program
producer who's originating HD is doing it at pretty close to full
bitrate, so if what you get is less than that...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
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