Posted by NunYa Bidness on 10/24/05 02:41

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 09:02:56 -0400, Kimba W. Lion <kimbawlion@aol.com>
Gave us:

>NunYa Bidness <nunyabidness@nunyabidness.org> wrote:
>
>> Broadcast HDTV is absolutely crisp,
>>regardless of your location. If the signal tunes, the receiver sees
>>everything crystal clear.
>
>I wonder if that's true.
>
>In my location, I can get Jeopardy at 7pm from a station here in town, or at
>7:30 from a station 40 miles away. So sometimes I watch it at 7, sometimes
>at 7:30. I repeatedly notice artifacts on the distant station's picture that
>I never see on the local station. I'm not talking pixelation that represents
>losing the signal, I'm talking JPEG-like artifacts around sharp edges. I
>can't tell if it's a signal-related phenomenon, or if the distant station is
>transmitting at a lower bit rate. (The local station also provides
>programming on two subchannels, the distant provides just one subchannel,
>which would tend to argue against a lower bit rate on the distant HD
>channel.)

It has likely been downconverted to lower the bit rate requisite.

There is FEC in the signal of a digital broadcast stream. If the
receiver decodes it and presents it to the tube, it should all be
there as it was sent. If there are artifacts other than total blocks
missing from the main picture area or full dropouts, it is likely what
was actually being sent. Sad that they are not required to send what
they get. Hell, these days, it wouldn't surprise me if they were
getting a lower res feed. That would be completely lame.

Spike TV does the same damned thing and so does the TV channel.
I think it is lame, and since nobody is complaining about cable
quality as they should, we are getting less and less avery day, and
paying more and more for it. I think it is 100% lame.

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