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Mike Thompson
Member
Username: Srfdude
Post Number: 17
Registered: 02-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 04:03 pm: | 
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Could one generalize, or even be specific, about the relative HD compression ratios between OTA, satellite, and cable stations available here in the SD area? My wife is telling me I need to sign onto cable or dish, and forget the OTA antenna. But my experience is the OTA signal is much better than cable, at least U-Verse. Is that just an impression, or is it true?
Mike |
Mike Mantle
Advanced Member
Username: Mm1
Post Number: 390
Registered: 09-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 09:26 pm: |
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Cable passes through broadcast HD without compression. I haven't spent a great deal of time comparing off-air to cable but what little I have, I couldn't tell any difference with my set up. I can't speak to satellite or U-verse. |
Michael Scott
Advanced Member
Username: Mikeyts
Post Number: 2931
Registered: 08-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 09:44 pm: |
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I've recorded the same program simultaneously with my TiVo OTA and from cable (on both TWC and Cox) and cannot see any difference in either the picture quality or the size of the recordings (the sizes might be a bit different but within 1% of each other).
"Think of the cable company as a group of terrorist (sic)." -- hookbill
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Don-RB
Advanced Member
Username: Donrb
Post Number: 3226
Registered: 08-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 10:49 pm: |
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For the local OTA HD stations the cable providers seem to keep roughly the same bitrate as the OTA source so the quality stays about the same.
However with non-local channels that are only available from cable, satellite, or other premium providers the bitrates and quality can vary greatly. For example some channels like SyFy-HD show pixelation or macroblocking artifacts with fast motion scenes more so than some other HD channels. On the Encore-HD channel on TWC I notice artifacts fairly often, like the source bitrate is way too low.
So its hard to generalize since it varies so much between different channels and it might be a source issue rather than the cable/satellite provider. |
Ed LaClair
Intermediate Member
Username: Elaclair
Post Number: 97
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, September 24, 2009 - 07:49 am: |
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For the HD locals available on DirecTV for San Diego, I can see no noticeable difference in the PQ between OTA and the Sat feed. And on the plus side, all of the non-local HD channels seems really good as well, especially the channels broadcasting in 1080i. On the negative side, the SD channels can range from okay to pretty bad, though admittedly on the ones that are pretty bad, the source may be as much to blame as DirecTV. |
Mike Thompson
Member
Username: Srfdude
Post Number: 18
Registered: 02-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, September 24, 2009 - 09:14 am: |
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Well thanks, guys. I've obviously been laboring under an illusion here ;-) Guess I'll listen to my wife and go either cable or satellite. Got to check that out.
Mike |
General over-the-air (OTA)