Let me start by saying this is a constructive post, I am not being negative or ragging on Voom, just my observations. 
Yesterday I spent a few hours analyzing every HD channel I can pull in from Voom (Basic Package) and here's what I found:
First off, it is my belief that they have a combination of factors coming into play here: 1) Too much compression & 2) Possible mastering issues.
Reason for 1) The skeeter noise only appears when there is a high degree of fine detail that must be displayed, such as leaves in a forest or gravel on a dirt road, etc.
Reason for 2) I do not see any skeeter noise in the Voom produced promotional material, so that leads me to believe they are getting some crappy masters from the source.
It used to be that ALL programs on EquatorHD were terrible beyond viewing. Lately they've had some shows that look very good, but, every show still has skeeter noise to a degree and it is attributable to one or both of the above issues. I watched a show about Vietnam and it was very clean until detail had to be displayed, then the skeeters started. Mischeivous Meerkats looked fantastic on closeups then turned to skeeterville on widefield shots. Same with Smart Travels, it looks fantastic on PBS & HDNET but suffers from mega skeeters on Voom.
Every single channel I looked at had the same issue with fine detail except MonstersHD and a couple other Cinema10 channels. One of the movies I checked out yesterday had compression set so high on it that the entire movie was warbling about like someone was shaking my screen and sending ripples through it.
Gallery had a show on China artifacts, awesome PQ on closeups and static images. As soon as they showed an old urn or pot with lots of details, the skeeters kicked in. When they showed a plain pot or background without a lot of detail, the picture was awesome.
This holds true to my previous posts where I said it varies from channel to channel and from show to show, I think it just depends on the amount of bandwidth the program requires.
That's my take on skeeters. If you don't see them, good for you, I wish I didn't. Yesterday I said I was leaving Voom, but just for kicks I am going to ride it out and see what happens. I hope they can kick in the new encoders soon.
BTW, channel 700 that supposedly has the new encoders online does have some skeeter noise, but not much. Last I heard they had not tweaked it yet. I would love to be a Beta tester for them, I don't think they will find a sharper, more critical eye than mine.
Yesterday I spent a few hours analyzing every HD channel I can pull in from Voom (Basic Package) and here's what I found:
First off, it is my belief that they have a combination of factors coming into play here: 1) Too much compression & 2) Possible mastering issues.
Reason for 1) The skeeter noise only appears when there is a high degree of fine detail that must be displayed, such as leaves in a forest or gravel on a dirt road, etc.
Reason for 2) I do not see any skeeter noise in the Voom produced promotional material, so that leads me to believe they are getting some crappy masters from the source.
It used to be that ALL programs on EquatorHD were terrible beyond viewing. Lately they've had some shows that look very good, but, every show still has skeeter noise to a degree and it is attributable to one or both of the above issues. I watched a show about Vietnam and it was very clean until detail had to be displayed, then the skeeters started. Mischeivous Meerkats looked fantastic on closeups then turned to skeeterville on widefield shots. Same with Smart Travels, it looks fantastic on PBS & HDNET but suffers from mega skeeters on Voom.
Every single channel I looked at had the same issue with fine detail except MonstersHD and a couple other Cinema10 channels. One of the movies I checked out yesterday had compression set so high on it that the entire movie was warbling about like someone was shaking my screen and sending ripples through it.
Gallery had a show on China artifacts, awesome PQ on closeups and static images. As soon as they showed an old urn or pot with lots of details, the skeeters kicked in. When they showed a plain pot or background without a lot of detail, the picture was awesome.
This holds true to my previous posts where I said it varies from channel to channel and from show to show, I think it just depends on the amount of bandwidth the program requires.
That's my take on skeeters. If you don't see them, good for you, I wish I didn't. Yesterday I said I was leaving Voom, but just for kicks I am going to ride it out and see what happens. I hope they can kick in the new encoders soon.
BTW, channel 700 that supposedly has the new encoders online does have some skeeter noise, but not much. Last I heard they had not tweaked it yet. I would love to be a Beta tester for them, I don't think they will find a sharper, more critical eye than mine.
