Bravo-HD+: Program Review

[Sean Mota]

Bravo-HD+: Orchestra Aragon

Hey! if you are into latin music. This is a good presentation in HD/DD5.1

 

[subdude212]

Hey! if you are into latin music. This is a good presentation in HD/DD5.1

The family is enjoying this one, good tip!

 

[Lucky]

I am enjoying this Bravo HD+ a lot more than I thought I would. It has some soothing performing type shows, which are interesting and relaxing.

 

[Sean Mota]

Bravo-HD+: India Arie: Live from Bahia Brazil

Here's another one that it's an excellent program with good classic guitar music.

I really though that Bravo was going to be one of those channels with two boring programs per day. But I am really enjoying this channel. Very nice the programs that they had so far.

 

[Sean Mota]

Bravo-HD+: Cirque du Soleil

Watching it right now. It has been playing all day excellent show but dissapointed about the PQ. In fast action movement, there is compression artifact. As much as I hate to say it, there's no other way to describe it. I don't like it and it is not what I expect from HD. I want clean picture not compressed to the point that I can see these artifacts. They are very obvious on Bravo-HD. I have been seen Bravo-HD and it's apparent that it has been there from the beginning when Bravo-HD went live.

 

[o2bnla]

For those into experiencing an enjoyable show, I would encourage seeing any Cirque du Soleil live. I just took my family out to see Varakei in December and I am having just as much fun with my family watching it in HD and 5.1 (except for the commercial of course). Even with the prime tickets I purchased cannot match the perspective provided for our viewing pleasure on tv. Granted there are some artifacts and the disruptive commercials, but it still matches the $400 I spend to watch it live. Enjoyable show and worth the 1.5 hours.

If you would excuse me, my four year old daughter wants me to toss her around like what they are doing on tv :shocked

 

[dfergie]

Saw nouvelle experience and mystre in vegas a few years back... good stuff

 

[GeneWildershair]

Watching it right now. It has been playing all day excellent show but dissapointed about the PQ. In fast action movement, there is compression artifact. As much as I hate to say it, there's no other way to describe it. I don't like it and it is not what I expect from HD. I want clean picture not compressed to the point that I can see these artifacts. They are very obvious on Bravo-HD. I have been seen Bravo-HD and it's apparent that it has been there from the beginning when Bravo-HD went live.

noticed all the artifacts too...very ugly! Couldn't stand watching it any longer because of the pq.

 

[Vaggeto]

Very bad compression artifacts from what I saw... but I haven't seen this on anything else on BravoHD. So I'm not sure if it is a temporary problem, or just this show. I saw pixelation when there wasn't even a lot of movement, so could it have been a problem with something else besides V* not giving it enough bandwidth?

 

[mike123abc]

I wonder if it is a problem with BravoHD or is it at VOOM's end?

With all the new channels coming online at VOOM right now, their capacity has to be getting pretty tight.

 

[subdude212]

I wonder if it is a problem with BravoHD or is it at VOOM's end?

With all the new channels coming online at VOOM right now, their capacity has to be getting pretty tight.

According to Wilt Hildenbrand of VOOM all of the slots for channels have been blocked out since day 1 so that there won't be any crowding or squeezing via increased compression as new channels are added.

 

[Sean Mota]

If anyone is confused by what "compression artifacts" are, there are various technical definition you can get such as,

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_artifact

Compression artifacts are typically the result of quantization in lossy data compression. Where transform coding is used, they are typically in the form of one of the basis functions of the transform coder's transform space.

Compression artifacts in picture coding
Where the DCT image transform is used, for example, they are often 8x8 pixel squares, containing a stripe or "checkerboard" pattern.

Where predictive coding of motion pictures is used, as in MPEG-1, compression artifacts tend to remain on several generation of decompressed frames, leading to a "painting" effect being seen, as if the picture was being painted by an unseen artist's paint-brush.

Where motion prediction is used, as in MPEG-2 or MPEG-4, compression artifacts tend to move with the optic flow of the image, leading to a peculiar effect, part way between a painting effect and "grime" that moves with objects in the scene.

Errors in the bit-stream can lead to errors similar to large quantization errors, or can disrupt the parsing of the data stream entirely for a short time, leading to "break-up" of the picture. Where gross errors have occurred in the bit-stream, it is not unknown for decoders to continue to apply 'painting' updates to the damaged picture, creating "ghost image" effects.

To stop the build-up of compression artifacts, most compression systems occasionally send an entire compressed frame without prediction or differencing. In MPEG picture coding, these are known as "I-frames".

There is also the simple explanation: The break up of the video into large digital pixels and jerkiness in the video stream are examples of compression artifacts.

Anybody in the west coast that saw or did not see these "compression artifacts" on Bravo-HD yesterday?