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

[Christopher Hunter]

On Tue, 2009-11-17 at 11:12 +0000, t.clarke wrote:
> 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. 

Part of the reason is that they're NOT transmitting anything remotely
related to true HD - its only 768 (as opposed to 625) lines.  It also
uses the appalling Mpeg compression (which looks horrible, no matter
what) and then the average domestic "gotta-have-a-HD-telly" idiot buys
something with the LCD response time of a snail on Mogadon, the results
are abysmal.  

If you want to make a TV salesman cry, get him to show you the picture
quality of his cheapest CRT TV against his most expensive LCD one... 

>   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!

The artefacts are particularly noticeable on horizontal motion.  The
combination of poor video encoding and poor LCD TVs mean than most
modern TV is appalling quality.  Incidentally, I haven't seen any LCD
monitors in TV studios yet!

> 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!!

At 1080 lines, the number of pixels is roughly 5 times that on 625
lines.  However, because the broadcasters are not broadcasting real HD,
and because the TVs currently available aren't anywhere near the quality
attainable with even a cheap CRT set, the results are of much less
quality than is being touted!

C.


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