Is it me or is it getting worse?

[2cvbloke]

Simple question really, I've used about 4 different receivers (Humax box, two Samsung TVs and a Goodmans FreeviewHD+ box), and the picture quality is really getting pretty naff to my eyes on a lot of the mainstream channels, never mind the low-budget ones...

So is it just me or are they messing with the bitrates to the point where it's getting unwatchable? I mean, I have TV shows I've downloaded that are far better quality than the broadcasted versions, and they're not particularly high quality or resolution themselves, heck, the music videos they put on the old Windows95 CDs are higher quality, and they're videos from the 1990s, that's how bad it seems the be getting...

 

[Lazarus]

I thought the same until I had my Biennial Eye Test and my new Bins arrived in the post a few days ago.

Very small change in prescription, but it made a massive difference to perceived viewing quality on the TV.

I'm not joking.

 

[2cvbloke]

My jam jar prescription's up to date, so the blockyness is quite clear, even with my TV's Digital and MPEG noise filters set to maximum (and that can make the picture too blurry!!) it is just a mess, it makes Minecraft look like GTA5...

 

[Lazarus]

Ah, clear Blockiness. Classic!

 

[2cvbloke]

Ah, clear Blockiness. Classic!

Clear as in plainly obvious as it's hard to not see...

 

[Captain Jack]

I don't really know if it's getting worse but some mainstream-ish SD channels on Sky can be quite dull looking. We recorded Sleepy Hollow on Universal Channel SD (to save disk space) and it's really like watching something from 80s. Quality is really bad. Not so much with blocky-ness but generally just dull.

Like you say, 2cv, downloaded videos in SD res/bitrate can look much better on the same TV. This is not limited to UK based channels but abroad as well. Have you seen the crap quality they pump out on Albanian channels on 16e and Eastern European ones on 1W? I find it hard to believe that some of them are paid-for channels.

Some countries are better than others. Russian channels on 11W in C-band are fairly good looking with only occasional blocking but the picture is sharper and more vivid. Scandinavian and especially French SD channels are streets ahead of UK counterparts.

While on the subject - does anyone remember TMF Belgium feed on 16e years ago? Now THAT was quality! It was easily as good as most DVDs and if I play the recorded clips now on the Uno, I am still astonished at how good the SD can look on a modern TV.

 

[smoggy07]

I know it's not the same thing but it is sort of related

The Kids where watching the Little Mermaid or some other old Disney classic on my big TV in the front room using a Now TV box and the Sky Movies sub.
I nearly fell over when I seen the quality of the movie, it was as bad as one of those Italian shopping channels with the mobile phone stream bitrates.
I honestly thought they had found an old VHS or Betamax copy (remember those lol)

While on the subject - does anyone remember TMF Belgium feed on 16e years ago? Now THAT was quality! It was easily as good as most DVDs and if I play the recorded clips now on the Uno, I am still astonished at how good the SD can look on a modern TV.

I can remember TMF from when I was working out near Leiden years ago, it was plumbed into the TV in the lounge at the diggs and always played the latest tunes with really high quality videos

 

[2cvbloke]

I honestly thought they had found an old VHS or Betamax copy (remember those lol)

Which was it? VHS (superior in the poorest of poor quality) or Betamax (top notch video quality)?

I have a load of Beta tapes and a lot of them are very high quality, almost broadcastable even (well, that is via analogue, digital compression would make it look as crap as the current master copies!!), infact it wouldn't surprise me if I have some lost episodes of something in there, kind of like what they've been showing on Challenge with old editions of Bullseye that look like they've been home-recorded...

I was thinking back to when I was messing about with Hispasat and my indoor dishes, and I recall some of the really low-budget channels that looked like they used a JVC camcorder form the 1980s as their cameras, and back then they were clearer and more defined than what a lot of the freeview channels are now, of course they too have probably reduced in quality, I haven't scanned the skies for a while so am pretty much out of touch with what's available...

 

[DishDick]

I remember my best satellite SD tv picture and sound - BSB. Wonderful!

I am sure Sky Digital was much better at its launch than it is now (SD), I am sure it is done to highlight the benefit of HD - together with the extra 10 pounds per month extra!

 

[Captain Jack]

Never saw BSB but some D/D2MAC channels had some very good quality, like NRK or FilmNet+. Much better than PAL/SECAM stuff.

 

[mich181189]

I have a load of Beta tapes and a lot of them are very high quality, almost broadcastable even

In which case you may not be suprised to hear that a souped up variant of Betamax called Betacam has been the workhorse of the broadcast industry for years. Most SD TV nowadays is produced onto a digital variant called DigiBeta.

 

[DishDick]

I remember the Filmnet picture being very blue! ;)

 

[2cvbloke]

In which case you may not be suprised to hear that a souped up variant of Betamax called Betacam has been the workhorse of the broadcast industry for years. Most SD TV nowadays is produced onto a digital variant called DigiBeta.

Nope, not surprised at all, cos I knew about that back in the 90s...

You can use small BetaCam tapes in Betamax machines too so long as they're not the SP version (a few high-end Betamax machines with hardened heads will support BetacamSP tapes, but regular machines cannot as the tape will grind the heads down to nothing), the only difference is that Betacam runs at a much higher speed so a 2-hour(ish) L750 Max tape would be about 5 minutes in a Cam machine, so they can put as much information onto the tape as possible, hence why they're such high-quality compared to a domestic VCR...

There's also HDCam which is a further derivative, but I don't know much about that one aside from it being used for high-def content...

 

[daro2096]

Don't blame Sky blame SES squeezing more channels in one transponder. More channels spaces they can sell = more money for SES. I have seen Eutelsat squeeze 18 channels into a transponder which is barely 2mB each.

 

[archive10]

<hard-hat on>
Hate to say this guys, but cable tv sometimes can do something SAT tv can't (commercially).
It just feels more "right" when a proper HD channel (albeit mostly 720p) is allowed to fill 8 Mb/s, and sometimes when statmuxed between 6-10 Mb/s.
Esp footy looks bloody fantastic in 1080p, and films are great too!
I know this is the wrong forum, and I'll take the beating if necessary, but sometimes cable can actually offer something better than sat-tv (for commercial reasons)!
Looking forward to HEVC, not for 4K , but for better picture quality on normal TV (yeah, right)...
<maintain hard-hat on!>

 

[Captain Jack]

I always assumed that cable was worse because it took the feed off satellite. But that's an assumption. Did anyone compare Sky's and Virmin's outputs for picture quality?

 

[Fisty McB]

Don't blame Sky blame SES squeezing more channels in one transponder. More channels spaces they can sell = more money for SES. I have seen Eutelsat squeeze 18 channels into a transponder which is barely 2mB each.

I always thought that unless either SES or Eutelsat were uplinking channels themselves, the multiplexing was done by whoever was renting the transponder capacity, so in the case of Sky's channels it would be their responsibility, the BBC for their own as well, while for the smaller independent channels they depend on the space that Arqiva rent out from Eutelsat/SES?

 

[archive10]

I always assumed that cable was worse because it took the feed off satellite. But that's an assumption. Did anyone compare Sky's and Virmin's outputs for picture quality?

Don't know about Virgin, but here in DK, we take the national broadcaster's signal straight form the horses mouth - we actually have a rack of encoders in the broadcast centre of Denmark's Radio (DR - national broadcaster). DR have an agreement with us how their mux should be configured (bitrates etc), to allow high-quality pictures to be broadcast.
I assume that the BBC still run their own muxes, so they also control their own quality and bitrates. It is probably similar to the DK scenario.
Moving to the other end of the (content provider) spectrum, there are a lot of limited-audience channels taken straight off dish, and just remuxed into the cable signal. But, hey, don't expect too much customer hoo-haw from babestation1-4, now, do we?

 

[archive10]

I always thought that unless either SES or Eutelsat were uplinking channels themselves, the multiplexing was done by whoever was renting the transponder capacity, so in the case of Sky's channels it would be their responsibility, the BBC for their own as well, while for the smaller independent channels they depend on the space that Arqiva rent out from Eutelsat/SES?

Exactly. If you rent a transponder, you get to do the muxing, if you're just in for a channel, you're bargaining for mb/s! (but pay a lot less £s)

 

[daro2096]

I was assuming that it was SES/Eutelsat/Intelsat etc. that set the transponder specs. If that is wrong then I will stand corrected.