[Gllug] TV ExpressCard/USB - any recommendations/avoids?

t.clarke tim at seacon.co.uk
Tue Nov 17 11:12:41 UTC 2009


Before spending money on a card or box thats upports freeview HD you might want
to
a) look at freesat as an alternative (uses an existing sky dish)
b) check that freeview are not overly compressing the picture on HD **


** I have been reading somewhere that some people are complaining that the BBC
are heavily compressing their HD transmissions on freesat, which result in less
quality than is actually achievable with 1080i resolution.   My understanding,
vague though it is, is that the picture quality is dependent not only on the
resolution  (1080, 768, 576 or whatever) but the type of compression used.
HD is transmitted as mpeg2 or something similarly which is essentially 'lossy'
and the degree of compression affects the picture quality.  Supposedly the
losses are invisible to the naked eye (at least in moving pictures) - but some
with presumably better eyesight than me say otherwise!

I have to say honestly that whilst an HD picture is very good it is not
'5 times more detail' than an SD picture as touted by the vendors!!

Tim
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