Its not an hd thing... The compression is very noticable, even on a 27 inch regular tv screen... Of course I work in video production so I notice those kinds of things... I have noticed that the compression has gotten somewhat better than it was a year or so ago... but the more channels we keep wanting added, the more compression they have to put on... You get used to the compression artifacts though... Hopefully with the new satellites they are launching and if the rainbow deal goes through he will have more bandwidth to clean up the channels...