Whats the point of Freeview?
 

Boltar wrote:
On Oct 8, 10:41 pm, "mr deo"
wrote:
"Boltar" wrote in message

...

On 8 Oct, 17:01, "mr deo"
wrote:
FreeviewHD will roll out next year and the "quality" will be obviously
better..
Yeah , probably as long as nothing moves in the picture. As soon as it
does watch those squares appear.
Most people who complain about "blocks" just have really crappy boxes!...

Humax PVR9200. I think you'd agree its one of the better ones. I dread
to think what the crap ones are like. Suffice to say we watch on
analogue unless theres specifically something on one of the non
analogue stations we want to watch. Perhaps we're lucky that we're in
london and have a good line of sight to crystal palace so the analogue
signal is spot on , but then the freeview signal should be too , but
its full of nasty artifacts, the resolution drops as soon as theres
any fast movement and because of the way mpeg works theres a kind of
fixed pattern on any slow moving surfaces which looks very unnatural
on things such as faces.

I think it's down to what you get used to. I used to hate the mpeg
artifacts on fast moving scenes but I'm now used to it. I couldn't now
go back to analogue as PAL artifacts are far worse in my opinion and
there's also no widescreen.

A lot of it may be choice of TV. There's no doubt that a good CRT is
much more forgiving of mpeg artifacts than, at the other end of the
scale, a budget LCD.

Whats the point of Freeview?
 

Boltar wrote:
On Oct 8, 10:41 pm, "mr deo"
wrote:
"Boltar" wrote in message

...

On 8 Oct, 17:01, "mr deo"
wrote:
FreeviewHD will roll out next year and the "quality" will be
obviously better..

Yeah , probably as long as nothing moves in the picture. As soon as
it does watch those squares appear.

Most people who complain about "blocks" just have really crappy
boxes!...

Humax PVR9200. I think you'd agree its one of the better ones. I dread
to think what the crap ones are like. Suffice to say we watch on
analogue unless theres specifically something on one of the non
analogue stations we want to watch. Perhaps we're lucky that we're in
london and have a good line of sight to crystal palace so the analogue
signal is spot on , but then the freeview signal should be too , but
its full of nasty artifacts, the resolution drops as soon as theres
any fast movement and because of the way mpeg works theres a kind of
fixed pattern on any slow moving surfaces which looks very unnatural
on things such as faces.

B2003

Same PVR, same problem. I've noticed a lot more breakup and blocking
problems (and loss of sound) over the past month or three, even affecting
Five on occasion. Not sure why - it doesn't seem to be weather-related.

Like you, we watch in analogue when we can (we can't get Five in analogue,
unfortunately).

--
Jeff
(cut "thetape" to reply)

Whats the point of Freeview?
 

For my type of use (apartment dweller with only one satellite outlet but
multiple terrestrial aerial outlets), digital terrestrial TV (aka Freeview)
is a very effective way of obtaining the wider range of channels at all of
those locations in my apartment.
I don't have the poor visual quality that others describe (central
Birmingham location).

The satellite works fine at its one location in the apartment. At the other
locations, it is very restrictive - limited to the selected channel and
delivers reduced quality, most obviously mono sound only.

David Foster

"Boltar" wrote in message
...
Worse picture quality than analogue TV ( lots of nasty mpeg artifacts
and motion blur)

Worse reception than analogue TV

Receivers use more power than analogue TV (climate change , who cares
eh?)

Most of the extra channels other than perhaps BBC4 and 1 or 2 others
are either utter rubbish or endless repeats.

So what exactly is its point?

B2003

Whats the point of Freeview?
 

On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:48:53 +0200, J G Miller said...
On Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:23:32 +0100, Adrian wrote:
You don't know what you're talking about.

Hmmmmmmm. Do you think Boltar may be related to Ian Beale?

halfpint?

--
Mark Myers
usenet at mcm2007 dot plus dot com
I call that a radical interpretation of the text.

Whats the point of Freeview?
 

On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 08:09:53 +0100, Barry Oakley
wrote:

That is not my experience. I have been watching freeview exclusively for
around 18 months from the Mendip transmitter. I have an aerial in the
loft, and only very very rarely do I see any compression artifacts.
Most of the time, especially when there is high pressure, freeview
delivers a far superior picture than analogue on my system.

No doubt you will say that this is 'absolute rubbish' but I can only
speak as I find. For me, it works well and I am very satisfied.

On the other hand, my Son in Edinburgh has Sky, and every time the wind
blows, he loses the picture because (apparently) trees interrupt the
signal, and the dish vibrates.

For me analogue reception is infinitely better than freeview since I
can't get freeview!

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.
See http://improve-usenet.org

Whats the point of Freeview?
 

"Boltar" wrote in message
...
Worse picture quality than analogue TV ( lots of nasty mpeg artifacts
and motion blur)

Worse reception than analogue TV

Receivers use more power than analogue TV (climate change , who cares
eh?)

Most of the extra channels other than perhaps BBC4 and 1 or 2 others
are either utter rubbish or endless repeats.

So what exactly is its point?

B2003


Agreed. Digital is pointless unless you want it.

Whats the point of Freeview?
 

On Oct 9, 10:14 am, Silk wrote:
I think it's down to what you get used to. I used to hate the mpeg
artifacts on fast moving scenes but I'm now used to it. I couldn't now
go back to analogue as PAL artifacts are far worse in my opinion and
there's also no widescreen.

If your analogue signal suffers from ghosting and the like which you
can't do anything about no matter where you point the antenna then it
can get very irritating. The colour signal dropping out is also a big
problem especially with indoor antennas , but the thing with analogue
is that unless the signal gets really bad you can still see and hear
whats going on through the mush. With digital , once the signal drops
below a certain threshold thats it , you might as well go read a book
because it'll just stop. Unfortunately that threshold seems to be
pretty easy to go over in a lot of places.

A lot of it may be choice of TV. There's no doubt that a good CRT is
much more forgiving of mpeg artifacts than, at the other end of the
scale, a budget LCD.

A good CRT TV will still beat a good LCD IMO for picture quality Which
is odd because I find the opposite is true with computer monitors.
Must be the internal processing that LCD TVs have to do.

B2003

Whats the point of Freeview?
 

On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:14:38 +0100, Silk wrote:

I think it's down to what you get used to. I used to hate the mpeg
artifacts on fast moving scenes but I'm now used to it.

But if, as I do, you watch a great many wildlife and natural history
programs, nothing on earth is going to acclimatise you to any of the
following breaking up into visible squares:
Anything involving water that isn't as flat as a millpond
So that's rivers, rapids, waterfalls, seascapes
Wild fires
Flocks of birds
Shoals of fish
Fast chase scenes, etc

The simple fact is that over-compression needn't and shouldn't be
there.

A lot of it may be choice of TV. There's no doubt that a good CRT is
much more forgiving of mpeg artifacts than, at the other end of the
scale, a budget LCD.

I don't want to turn this into another CRT vs LCD argument, because
really the argument is and should remain about the crap quality of our
Freeview service, particularly arising from the over-compression it is
abused by, but in making the above comparison it is you that is in
danger of dragging the thread off-topic.

For one thing it's a biased comparison, 'good' one against 'budget'
the other. In direct contradiction, I have *proved*, not merely
asserted, that a 'good' LCD is better than a poor CRT.
http://tinyurl.com/5ccryd
.... standing in for ...
http://www.cemh.eclipse.co.uk/JavaJi.../CRTvsLCD.html

But neither is statement is actually wrong, just, particularly in the
absence of any supporting evidence such as I have at least provided,
not very useful - it rather follows from our definitions of language
that a 'good' anything SHOULD be better than a 'budget' or 'poor'
anything.

I would imagine that I am not alone in thinking that it is the purpose
of a TV to display the picture fed to it as faithfully as possible -
that is, it shouldn't add artifacts of its own, but it shouldn't leave
out detail from the picture either, even if that detail happens to be
artifacts in the source signal that shouldn't be there.

If as, you seem to imply, you have a CRT that is leaving these
artifacts out, while you have observed them on a budget LCD, that
suggests to me that the budget LCD is displaying the picture more
faithfully, and is thus the better TV.

Whats the point of Freeview?
 

Hi, My 2 pence worth

Freeview picture quality is not crap, I strongly suspect those that claim
this are in one of the following scenarios:

1. Watching on a HD TV, their SD performance is generally speaking quite
appalling with a few exceptions.

2. Watching on a cheap & nasty LCD TV that has crap picture quality ( i.e.
poor grey scale performance and contrast) regadless of signal input type or
source.

3. Using the RF or the composite video signal output of their STB or PVR
(RGB is best, then S-video and Composite & RF are the worst possible
quality)

4. Using the STB/PVR output set to RGB but have not configured the input on
their TV to accept that so it is still only seeing the Composite signal
which is still output from the STB/ or PVR on the SCART socket even when RGB
mode is selected as it uses different pins.

4. Using a rotten quality poorly screened £1 shop SCART lead between the STB
or PVR and the TV

5. Subtle combinations of items 1 to 4 above.

I watch Freeview on a Hyundai-Imagequest HQP421SR 42" SD plasma (calibrated
for greyscale, contrast, brightness, sharpness and colour using a test DVD
called Digital Video Essentials) from a Humax 9200TBX PVR using the RGB
output via a good quality SCART lead (e.g. about a tenner ) and it looks
fine.

There is wide selection of good quality watchable programs on Freeview and
also a lot of crap, just like their is on SKY, Virgin, NTL et al. also.

For what it costs me annually I think it is a pretty good service and any
time I have evaluated the costs of changing to SKY it has not seemed worth
the price by a long shot.

Right, let the bitching commence !!!

Marcus

Whats the point of Freeview?
 

"Mark" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 08:09:53 +0100, Barry Oakley
wrote:

That is not my experience. I have been watching freeview exclusively for
around 18 months from the Mendip transmitter. I have an aerial in the
loft, and only very very rarely do I see any compression artifacts.
Most of the time, especially when there is high pressure, freeview
delivers a far superior picture than analogue on my system.

No doubt you will say that this is 'absolute rubbish' but I can only
speak as I find. For me, it works well and I am very satisfied.

On the other hand, my Son in Edinburgh has Sky, and every time the wind
blows, he loses the picture because (apparently) trees interrupt the
signal, and the dish vibrates.

For me analogue reception is infinitely better than freeview since I
can't get freeview!

--

Lol....
That sucks... :P...
I personally think every home should have got FREE BBC STB's that allowed
UpScaling (bbc gets first dibs on all spectrum and the cost is passed on to
the OTHER spectrum purchase holders)...
If you cant get FreeView then you shouldnt have to pay the TellyLisence ;P