Superbowl observation...

[GollyJer]

HD signal through Comcast cable box had a lot of artifacting.
QAM using HDHR and Sage through same cable feed had equal amount of arifacting.
OTA HD using Sage had significantly less artifacting and resulted in a much more enjoyable experience.

Conclusion: OTA is a much less compressed signal than the cable company provides.

Anyone else notice the blockiness of the Superbowl feed during onscreen animations?

[Morgan111]

My favorite animation was with the Blockbuster commercial and the mouse.

My biggest disappointment with the HD picture was the constant fogging up of the camera lenses and water drops.

I'm pretty much used to the artifacting, but I have noticed it generally worse on some networks than others.

[steingra]

Well..since this was the first big game we have watched on our new plasma 50" screen (only had it for about 1 week), everyone at our party (none of the 12 of them have ever really seen HD before) were all totally blown away by the clarity of the picture and how colorful it was. Now they all wanted one too. So I got a lot of questions about them. And I heard some of them saying "hey, best buy in on the way home" he he

But its too cold to put up an antenna around these parts...so I subscribed for free for 2 months to our Mediacom cable companies HD service. They are the only ones who currently provide the local channels in HD.

I am curious to compare a good antenna OTA vs..Mediacom cable...while I am still getting the service for free until end of march.

Well....I didnt notice too much artifacting at all. But then again, I watched ~50% of the game on the plasma and 50% on a different system in the basement which wasnt HDTV signal, just SDTV.

Too bad my team lost. uuugh! how depressing.

[UFGrayMatter]

I've been trying to "diagnose" these problems for a while....

My basic cable HD channels - CBS, FOX, ABC and NBC come in fine. ESPN - forget about it. TNT - forget about it.

I have Optimum (Cablevision) in NY w/ 4200 HD firewired.

[steingra]

Originally Posted by UFGrayMatter

I've been trying to "diagnose" these problems for a while....

My basic cable HD channels - CBS, FOX, ABC and NBC come in fine. ESPN - forget about it. TNT - forget about it.

I have Optimum (Cablevision) in NY w/ 4200 HD firewired.

Just to be certain, are you saying you get your local HD via OTA? or using Cablevision?

[mscottsimon]

Here in Naperville (Chicago) on Comcast, we had almost no artifacting at all. I can only remember one time and it was thankfully during game-time and not a commercial. ;-)

Now as to the foggy lenses and waterdrops -- yes, that was annoying indeed.

.scott

[UFGrayMatter]

Originally Posted by steingra

Just to be certain, are you saying you get your local HD via OTA? or using Cablevision?

All of them are through the 4200HD - nothing OTA

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

My biggest disappointment with the HD picture was the constant fogging up of the camera lenses and water drops.

CBS really cheaped out on the broadcast. Very poor anounce team, and a minimum of replays. Hardly ever showed a replay between snaps. I didn't need a Madden-level of replays, But heck, on the INT in the 4th? quarter that had offsetting unsportsmanlike penalties, they never even showed what was up with that.

[FidgetyRat]

Don't feel bad guys. (And yes the "mouse" commercial was the best).

I don't even own a HDTV (still too poor). What I did notice was that besides the rain, it felt ALOT like they blurred up the SDTV signal to make us buy HD.

I have only seen HD once, a world cup game, and watch SD constantly. The superbowl was the worst quality SD I have ever seen. Even during the dry parts of the game..


Conspiracy ?


I also kept yelling. "Why can't you put a wiper on the damn camera blimp!"

[CharleyZ]

It is true - I used to be a "cable guy". The cable companies do WAY more compression than they should to get more out of the available bandwidth. This results in "blocky" images most noticible in things like smoke, shadows, etc. Even Satellite services compress their signals more than OTA broadcasts. However, their compression isn't as bad as cable.

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by CharleyZ

It is true - I used to be a "cable guy". The cable companies do WAY more compression than they should to get more out of the available bandwidth. This results in "blocky" images most noticible in things like smoke, shadows, etc. Even Satellite services compress their signals more than OTA broadcasts. However, their compression isn't as bad as cable.

Interesting. I haven't looked into satellite companies at all because I was pretty sure they don't provide local channels in HD. Is it easy to get the satellite HD channels into Sage or are they encrypted? Searching now.......