Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

In article , Peter
Hayes scribeth thus
tony sayer wrote:

In article , Peter
Hayes scribeth thus
tony sayer wrote:

One part of the digital chain that needs improvement is the quality of
most receivers. Freeview quality can be excellent, especially
downconverted HD, but Judging by what I see in the likes of Curry's the
receivers the public are buying are complete rubbish.


I should give what you wrote there some more thought;!...

Freeview quality can be excellent, see the Reporting Scotland thread,
but if some content, "flashing lights, fast movement, detail and smooth
gradients on screen at the same time etc.", to quote the OP, fails, then
there's room for improvement.

That doesn't excuse manufacturers selling receivers that are, frankly,
junk.


Now where and why are the receivers junk?

Have you actually SEEN what's on offer in your local TV superstore?

The vast majority of receivers (not STBs) are horrendous, massive jpeg
artifacts shimmering away nicely around fine detail, bad smearing on
movement, you name it, etc. Some are ok, the larger Samsungs seem to be
reasonable. None can compete with my MacMini and a decent LCD monitor.

when the real problem with freeview as implemented is bit rates that are
too low most all of the time.. these are the cause of when you have
outlined above....

There's two separate problems, as I see it. One is the inability of the
current freeview transmission format to cope with the kind of content
the OP complains of, the other is the junk receivers on offer, unless
you buy a large LCD or a plasma.


Now then ... something funny happened last nite!.. I had my accountant
on the phone yesterday afternoon asking me to advise him on a problem,
well couple of problems he was having with his TV reception. Being the
ever helpful and wondering why the aerial system he had was so bad I
chucked the ladder on the car and ventured forth...

He's got a fairly recent Sony Bavaria is it?, seems to be a very good
set, rave reviews and most important of all it came at the right
price... Jokes about accountants running broadcasting were left off the
menu;!..

For some reason he deemed it necessary to have the Sky family pack and
Freeview. Now the picture when I got there was simply bloody awful the
contrast was set at max. the brightness too, the colour was up to 70 on
the scale the resulting "quality" was simply awful:!..

Anyway channel 4 on Sat was cutting out very badly, full indicated
signal strength, quality indicator about half way across the screen ..
the ladder I bought wasn't quite high enough to reach the dish properly,
I being told it was lower than it was. A phone link set up and prodding
the dish a few times had the quality indicator well over to where it
ought be which stopped the disruption, I'll return when I can find my
sat meter to line that up better..

The Freeview on Sandy heath was missing the Top CH 67 MUX, a Triax Hi
Gain wideband was actually in the loft coupled to the cable in the wall
via a lump of string the picture on analogue was almost non existent.
Lengthening that a bit and taking it off the floor of the loft provided
an almost noise free analogue PIX and restored the top MUX that carries
channel four!..

Now some time was spent getting the presented picture right by reducing
the contrast, brightness, and the colour saturation. After a while we
were getting something which better resembled a viewable picture but it
was still full of shimmering artefacts on movement, the grass on the
footie was one shade of dirty Green, and the faces of most anyone were
the wrong grade of pink all with the exception of the analogue PIX which
were the only ones that resembled what was being transmitted!. And of
course the wrong aspect ratio!.

Mike agreed that the results were now much improved though he still
liked the picture more "colourful" and at that time wife and son
returned and exclaimed why was the picture now so pale looking?, and why
didn't people have that nice sun tanned glow that they liked:?..

So there you have it, the state of home viewing for one viewer and what
they had come to expect and think was right! Set bought from John Lewis
delivered and un-boxed and plugged in and told "theres the manual
shouldn't need touching"!...


Now would you consider that set to be substandard in anyway at all?, or
is it just showing up in all its shame the results of digital TV in the
UK today?.

I wouldn't give the displayed results house room its nowhere near what I
get on our 10 year old B&O CRT set and that being at the rather
unfashionable 4:3 ! .

One other thing from last nite was the shortage of well produced images
to do anything like a quality assessment, all being American junk, some
programme short with a spycam!, and other questionable materiel!......
--
Tony Sayer

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

In article , Peter
Hayes scribeth thus
Graham Murray wrote:

tony sayer writes:

Encoders can only do so much with so many bits..

..Or rather lack of so many bits!...

But if they reduced the number of channels on each MUX then the bitrate
for each channel could be higher, and therefore also the quality. Do we
really need so many +1 channels?

We don't, the channel bean counters do. Each +1 is an additional revenue
stream at minimal cost.

If the number of repeats (especially of programmes which were only shown
days or weeks previously) were reduced then not so many channels would be
needed to show the same material.

The +1 channels should help fund better programmes, in theory... :-)

Come analogue switch-off, if they were to keep the current
digital MUXes and convert the current analogue channels to digital then
not only could they increase the number of channels on DTT but could
increase the bitrate of all the channels.

And add a few HD channels.

But will the cash strapped broadcast TV industry be able to compete for
this additional spectrum?


Well its another stealth tax whichever way you look at that!!. In
engineering terms it would be simpler to make satellite broadcasting HD
where there is much more bandwidth and capacity, and leave terrestrial
digital for less demanding applications such as portable and mobile
reception.....
--
Tony Sayer

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Peter Hayes wrote:

Have you actually SEEN what's on offer in your local TV superstore?

The vast majority of receivers (not STBs) are horrendous, massive jpeg
artifacts shimmering away nicely around fine detail, bad smearing on
movement, you name it, etc. Some are ok, the larger Samsungs seem to be
reasonable. None can compete with my MacMini and a decent LCD monitor.


Yesterday I happened to be in a local superstore of that ilk, with a
large display of supposedly-HD LCD and plasma receivers. Without
exception, the pictures were blotchy, lacking in contrast and
definition, with a smeary quality like someone had turned the
sharpness control to minimum. On-screen text, even quite large text,
was practically unreadable.

Looking round the back, I was astonished to see that programme
distribution was UHF analogue! I wouldn't be surprised if the
programme source (an in-house advert, not off air - though that wasn't
much better) was VHS.


There's two separate problems, as I see it. One is the inability of the
current freeview transmission format to cope with the kind of content
the OP complains of, the other is the junk receivers on offer, unless
you buy a large LCD or a plasma.

Or a tube. Same shop had a few tubed sets (though not in large sizes),
and the improved quality was noticeable. Of course, it showed the
problems in the distribution system much more clearly too!

--

rgds
LAurence

....Act now and get a free gift with that tagline!
---*TagZilla 0.059* http://tagzilla.mozdev.org

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:23:56 +0100, Mortimer wrote:

As a matter of interest, what would a £500 LCD make of a studio-bit-rate
signal (always assuming that it knew how to decode it) - would the
picture still look crap because of the differences between the tonal
rendering of LCD/plasma compared with CRT?

The picture still looks crap compared to a CRT because of the lack of
information in the darkest parts of the picture and often (but depending
on the panel) limited viewing angles.

In the great outdoors, LCD displays are not always bright enough for
satisfactory use.

Has anyone looked at the 17" or 23" Humax freeview LCD's available on the
Tottenham Court Road at around 350 quid? These seem to have quite a fair
consistency over wide viewing angles

G.

--
gareth at lightfox dot plus dot com

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:55:42 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Now then ... something funny happened last nite!.. I had my accountant
on the phone yesterday afternoon asking me to advise him on a problem,
well couple of problems he was having with his TV reception. Being the
ever helpful and wondering why the aerial system he had was so bad I
chucked the ladder on the car and ventured forth...

I really hope you sent him a bill....

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

I'm sure that's where we're heading. The main problem with that is
that lots of content won't be on the HD channel, leaving the
increasingly bitstarved SD channel as the only source.



The BBC smears DOG **** on their HD channel. It will never have superior
picture quality to the analogue signal.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Gareth Rowlands wrote:

The picture still looks crap compared to a CRT because of the lack of
information in the darkest parts of the picture and often (but depending
on the panel) limited viewing angles.

Yes, one manufacturer quotes a viewing angle of 178 degs, but omits the
mention the colour balance and brightness certainly don't remain constant over
that range !

In the great outdoors, LCD displays are not always bright enough for
satisfactory use.

I'm often dazzled by our bedroom 20 inch LCD TV, when some peak white caption
or graphic comes on, yet you're quite right. There's the 7 inch LCD viewfinder
for a certain HD broadcast camera that's 'less than optimum' when used in
daylight ;-)


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

"Light of Aria" wrote in message
...


I'm sure that's where we're heading. The main problem with that is
that lots of content won't be on the HD channel, leaving the
increasingly bitstarved SD channel as the only source.



The BBC smears DOG **** on their HD channel. It will never have
superior picture quality to the analogue signal.


As do / would all other channels.

You really are allowing your anti BBC bile to get in the way of the
facts - again...

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:22:49 -0000, Mark Carver wrote:

On Aug 29, 1:55 pm, "Graham Harvest" wrote:

Do broadcasters still put a line of colour bars in the vertical interval?
I'm sure they all used to do this last time I checked (early 90's) and often
had a 2T pulse too.

No colour bars, you're thinking of the first few active picture lines
on Test Card F ?
However there is ISTR a linearity staircase, and 2T pulse and bar. UK
standard signal, carried on lines 19/332 and 20/333 I think ?

On analogue OB links there was often an ITS inserter to put colour bars in on
a couple of lines. All gone away now of course. Maybe that's what he was
thinking of.