CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Spanky Ham · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

Actually the rabbit is inside the cat. The cat ate it already.

There are at least two things that look like they MIGHT be well camouflaged rabbits hiding in the grass in that picture, but no confirmed actual rabbits. I'm just funning you.

CIR Engineering · Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 2:48 pm Post subject:

Now I am sure there is a rabbit Wink

craigr

CIR Engineering · Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 2:49 pm Post subject:

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

I suspect that if we do, it'll be so compressed that it would drive any videophile insane.

Spanky Ham · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central

CIR Engineering · Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2016 6:15 pm Post subject:

Spanky Ham · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central

Well to be fair they were making the switch between analog to digital. The stations were having to outlay a lot of money when the shift over the previous twenty years had been to cable/sat. Now, it seems that people are seeing that they can dump cable/sat and go with OTA/internet. The latter option is usually cheaper and at least in the case of OTA superior pic quality.

Don't quote me, but I thought I read somewhere that for the stations they would need a lot less new equipment therefore the outlay would be minimal. Lets be blunt. The cable/sat companies can roll this out quicker, but the more people find out that they can get OTA UHD for free the more people will consider it.

Everytime I consider going back to cable/sat, I hear the horror stories. The latest was my mother at xmas. I was looking at her bill and nearly went into orbit when I found she was paying $140 a month for Comcast's midtier package. I yelled at my sister and told her she needed to take care of this ASAP.

One other thing that hasn't been mentioned is the sub-channels. This has given the stations an alternate source of income, as well as expanding the amount of programming on TV. I just saw that there is a new scifi channel called Comet. Unfortunately for me they are only in WPB as of now.

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

My "hyperbole" in my previous comment was based on my own (cynical) observations concerning what my local cable provider has done to its customers.

While I am not privy to the ultimate bandwidth capacity that their system has, it is apparent by looking at any given sports broadcast that they have chosen to carry more content at a high compression rate than carry less content (channels) at higher quality. Watch a sports program (football showing the problems most clearly) you see artifacting every single time the camera is panned. Since I don't drink I'm never drunk enough not to notice.

Granted, the way the current system works is not even remotely like legacy analog cable, with many channels actually carried down the coax, but instead it is a pure digital client-server system. I understand that. But they're offering so many interactive services and have such a high system bandwidth loading that they compromise image quality in favor of all these bells and whistles.

Their attitude seems to be to turn down the picture quality until they get too many complaints about the sucking picture quality, then they turn it up just enough to make the phone stop ringing.

it's my fear that OTA and cable providers will always choose against providing purest image quality when they can compromise image quality and derive another revenue generating source from it.

Spanky Ham · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central

So, you are conflating OTA and cable/sat. The latter has a fixed pipe in which to shove as many channels as they can down their customer's throat. OTA is a single channel. They have other constraints, but hopefully the quality will be maximized.

Ironically I think it will be the distribution which will be the hold up for UHD, as the content providers should be able to produce everything in UHD for not to much more expenditure.

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

I think OTA for UHD will be problematic in any event. The broader the signal bandwidth, the harder it is to maintain signal integrity over a long distance. Even allowing for improvements in compression algorithms and modulation schemes, I'd expect a UHD carrier to be broader than an HD carrier (two for one channel slots?) and even harder to get good range out of it.

There's a reason why broadband internet isn't already everywhere. Broadband signals don't carry unless you put a lot of power behind them. Speed and distance costs money, how far and how fast can you afford to go?