Just a gentle rant about picture quality...
A long time ago, my first job out of school involved redistribution of
off-air TV signals. We spent a lot of time and effort getting clean pictures,
and I was trained to look at TV pictures critically, to the point where when
I went to visit relatives and neighbors I either had to spend time putting
their TV pictures right, or just not watch because some of the stuff they
put up with was just plain offensive to me.
I no longer do this stuff for a living, but that early training has stuck,
and I do appreciate good quality pictures.
At one point, I left England to live in France. After a couple of years of
missing UK TV I bought a Ku satellite system. With my trusty (motorized) 1.2m
dish and analog reciver I could find quite a few signals worth watching.
What struck me at the time was how good the (PAL) TV pictures were. Generally
much cleaner than you could expect to get terrestrially off-air. I assume
that this was the start of a TV revolution where everyone would be able to
get studio quality pictures.
Sky TV (and a few others) started transmitting (analog) from the Astra
Satellite, then the put a second satellite in the same spot, giving even more
channels. Things were looking good.
I was particularly pleased to be able to get feeds of stuff like the Olympics
where I could whatch what I wanted, for as long as I wanted, without inane
drivel from commentators, and concentration on national athletes and events
in which they were participating. I even watched a few NTSC feeds -- which were
not up to PAL standards (sorry ... its just true), but were still 100% better
than I had ever seen in the US on my various visits there.
Then came the "digital revolution". The analog transponders went dark, most
of the content was encrypted, and even with digital receivers it was obvious
that the name of the game was cramming too many channels onto each transponder
with consequent reduction in quality -- good enough for Joe Sixpack, who was
apparently happy with "VHS Quality".
I lost interest because of lack of content, and crappy pictures.
Fast forward a few years, and I now live in the US. I still find NTSC quality
quite poor, but considerably better than what I can get delivered by digital
means into my home (Cable, Dish etc).
HD looked like the revival of good quality TV signals ... but no, the mass
distributors re-encode at lower bit rates, and although impressive on
still and slow moving scenes the quality overall leaves a lot to be desired
compared to what the medium is capable of. Joe Sixpack and his nicotine
stained eyeballs apparently still rules.
I recently dug out my 1.2m dish, and bought a DVB receiver to see if there
were any decent TV signals to see. Some hope!!
DVB is just incapable of delivering high quality -- I should have been tipped
off by noticing that some of the networks still use analog feeds, and that
if the move to digital, its 4:2:2, not DVB.
DVB is ok - if you watch it on a 20" CRT, from 10' away, but its really still
in the "VHS Quality" ballpark.
The comments from people on this board who bought cheap analog receivers, and
saw their first NTSC analog feeds prove the point - they were amazed at the
quality of the pictures (believe me when I say that its the same jump again
if you ever see an analog PAL feed).
So what am I to do if I want something better than Dish et. al. seem capable
of delivering? 4DTV might have been the answer, but that seems to be on the
verge of extinction.
Seems that no-one is wanting to deliver genuine high quality TV signals
any more. The measure of quality seems to be "enough that the masses don't
switch off".
Sorry for my rant ... I am just beginning to feel old, and thinking of the
good old days when getting the highest quality pictures delivered to people's
TV was the order of the day.
A long time ago, my first job out of school involved redistribution of
off-air TV signals. We spent a lot of time and effort getting clean pictures,
and I was trained to look at TV pictures critically, to the point where when
I went to visit relatives and neighbors I either had to spend time putting
their TV pictures right, or just not watch because some of the stuff they
put up with was just plain offensive to me.
I no longer do this stuff for a living, but that early training has stuck,
and I do appreciate good quality pictures.
At one point, I left England to live in France. After a couple of years of
missing UK TV I bought a Ku satellite system. With my trusty (motorized) 1.2m
dish and analog reciver I could find quite a few signals worth watching.
What struck me at the time was how good the (PAL) TV pictures were. Generally
much cleaner than you could expect to get terrestrially off-air. I assume
that this was the start of a TV revolution where everyone would be able to
get studio quality pictures.
Sky TV (and a few others) started transmitting (analog) from the Astra
Satellite, then the put a second satellite in the same spot, giving even more
channels. Things were looking good.
I was particularly pleased to be able to get feeds of stuff like the Olympics
where I could whatch what I wanted, for as long as I wanted, without inane
drivel from commentators, and concentration on national athletes and events
in which they were participating. I even watched a few NTSC feeds -- which were
not up to PAL standards (sorry ... its just true), but were still 100% better
than I had ever seen in the US on my various visits there.
Then came the "digital revolution". The analog transponders went dark, most
of the content was encrypted, and even with digital receivers it was obvious
that the name of the game was cramming too many channels onto each transponder
with consequent reduction in quality -- good enough for Joe Sixpack, who was
apparently happy with "VHS Quality".
I lost interest because of lack of content, and crappy pictures.
Fast forward a few years, and I now live in the US. I still find NTSC quality
quite poor, but considerably better than what I can get delivered by digital
means into my home (Cable, Dish etc).
HD looked like the revival of good quality TV signals ... but no, the mass
distributors re-encode at lower bit rates, and although impressive on
still and slow moving scenes the quality overall leaves a lot to be desired
compared to what the medium is capable of. Joe Sixpack and his nicotine
stained eyeballs apparently still rules.
I recently dug out my 1.2m dish, and bought a DVB receiver to see if there
were any decent TV signals to see. Some hope!!
DVB is just incapable of delivering high quality -- I should have been tipped
off by noticing that some of the networks still use analog feeds, and that
if the move to digital, its 4:2:2, not DVB.
DVB is ok - if you watch it on a 20" CRT, from 10' away, but its really still
in the "VHS Quality" ballpark.
The comments from people on this board who bought cheap analog receivers, and
saw their first NTSC analog feeds prove the point - they were amazed at the
quality of the pictures (believe me when I say that its the same jump again
if you ever see an analog PAL feed).
So what am I to do if I want something better than Dish et. al. seem capable
of delivering? 4DTV might have been the answer, but that seems to be on the
verge of extinction.
Seems that no-one is wanting to deliver genuine high quality TV signals
any more. The measure of quality seems to be "enough that the masses don't
switch off".
Sorry for my rant ... I am just beginning to feel old, and thinking of the
good old days when getting the highest quality pictures delivered to people's
TV was the order of the day.
:
