Digital TV transition- Anybody notice the decrease in picture quality as TV stations convert their equipment?
March 26, 2010 by: nickadminThe video of some channels seems a little too compressed… I see distortion and/or little grid patterns [like those low quality .jpeg photos when they are enlarged]. Sure, snow and fuzziness is going away; but this is ANNOYING. Is it due to the stations converting their equipment to all-digital now? Or is this programming being edited on computers and the video “engineers” compressing their files too small??
I know what you mean, I personally found my analogue signal to result in a far higher image quality than my current digitally streamed image quality and never suffered from noise or ghosting and the channel didn’t just disappear at the first signs of bad weather (analogue terrestrial or satellite).
It must be hellish for anyone with a really big tv, it’s bad enough on a medium-sized one at the recommended viewing range.
Maybe we just have relatively good eyesight
It’s to do with the lossy compression they use – the less bandwidth they use – the more channels they can host on the same transmitter station/satellite and thus the more cash they rake in.
Let me guess — you have either satellite TV or cable. Satellite is the worst. They really compress the signal too much.
Over the air (antenna TV) will always have the best quality. The cable and satellite providers are competing with each other to offer more HD channels. To do that, the have to increase the compression.
I believe you are looking at analog signals being broadcast signals being Digital facilities. That being the case, the picture will have less detail, as the original picture (480) is being converted to a minimum of 720 lines. Thus the picture on your set is being upconverted to fill in the missing information.