Freesat vs Freeview quality/bitrate

My PVR has Freeview and Freesat tuners so it would be useful to know
which is better quality when choosing one or the other to make a
recording. AIUI Freesat often has lower bitrates than Freeview for a
given programme, but if and when Freesat's bitrate is about the same
it's the better choice for me because it's less prone to interference.

So can anyone point me to a summary of how they compare? I'm guessing
channels 1-5/101-105 and the four HD channels available on both are
about the same, but anything else is likely to be inferior on Freesat.
Is that roughly correct?

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 12:56:03 +0000 (UTC), Tony Houghton
wrote:

My PVR has Freeview and Freesat tuners so it would be useful to know
which is better quality when choosing one or the other to make a
recording. AIUI Freesat often has lower bitrates than Freeview for a
given programme, but if and when Freesat's bitrate is about the same
it's the better choice for me because it's less prone to interference.

I though interference was a thing of the past now that the
transmission power has been boosted? Do you have the correct aerial
for your transmitter on the roof with a good quality aerial lead?

So can anyone point me to a summary of how they compare? I'm guessing
channels 1-5/101-105 and the four HD channels available on both are
about the same, but anything else is likely to be inferior on Freesat.
Is that roughly correct?

In article , Tony Houghton
wrote:
My PVR has Freeview and Freesat tuners so it would be useful to know
which is better quality when choosing one or the other to make a
recording. AIUI Freesat often has lower bitrates than Freeview for a
given programme, but if and when Freesat's bitrate is about the same
it's the better choice for me because it's less prone to interference.

So can anyone point me to a summary of how they compare? I'm guessing
channels 1-5/101-105 and the four HD channels available on both are
about the same, but anything else is likely to be inferior on Freesat.
Is that roughly correct?

I don't know, and would be interested to know more of the details myself.
So I'll read other replies with interest. However "What Satellite and
Digital TV" magazine do list symbol rates. The lists I've seen don't give
specific internal rates for audio and video, though. But I've only seen a
couple of copies thus far.

I don't have any direct experience with sat tv, but I'd have expected it to
have rates at least as high as DTTV.

Since you have the PVR, can you access the disc and examine the recordings?
They may answer the questions. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
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"Tony Houghton" wrote in message
...
My PVR has Freeview and Freesat tuners so it would be useful to know
which is better quality when choosing one or the other to make a
recording. AIUI Freesat often has lower bitrates than Freeview for a
given programme, but if and when Freesat's bitrate is about the same
it's the better choice for me because it's less prone to interference.

So can anyone point me to a summary of how they compare? I'm guessing
channels 1-5/101-105 and the four HD channels available on both are
about the same, but anything else is likely to be inferior on Freesat.
Is that roughly correct?

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

You would need to look at bit rates for particular channels.

Unless there are trees etc. directly in the way, Freesat is much less prone
to interference.

I only have Freesat HD, but for SD subjectively the Freesat picture looks
better.

In ,
Scott wrote:

On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 12:56:03 +0000 (UTC), Tony Houghton
wrote:

My PVR has Freeview and Freesat tuners so it would be useful to know
which is better quality when choosing one or the other to make a
recording. AIUI Freesat often has lower bitrates than Freeview for a
given programme, but if and when Freesat's bitrate is about the same
it's the better choice for me because it's less prone to interference.

I though interference was a thing of the past now that the
transmission power has been boosted? Do you have the correct aerial
for your transmitter on the roof with a good quality aerial lead?

I've got a decent double-screened lead but the aerial is only a loft
aerial and very old. The powered splitter and other general clutter
behind the TV probably doesn't help. Passing scooters have always tended
to interfere, and for a while vans and buses etc seemed to interfere
with the HD channels, but that seems OK now.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

Tony Houghton wrote:
My PVR has Freeview and Freesat tuners so it would be useful to know
which is better quality when choosing one or the other to make a
recording. AIUI Freesat often has lower bitrates than Freeview for a
given programme, but if and when Freesat's bitrate is about the same
it's the better choice for me because it's less prone to interference.

So can anyone point me to a summary of how they compare? I'm guessing
channels 1-5/101-105 and the four HD channels available on both are
about the same, but anything else is likely to be inferior on Freesat.
Is that roughly correct?

I don't think so. Based on the few times when I've recorded material
simultaneously on Freesat and Freeview, I have found no significant
difference in the bitrates - at least for the main channels - and when
there has been a difference, Freesat has had the higher rate.

This afternoon on BBC1, Freesat and Freeview both had an average bit
rate of around 3.9 Mb/s. For the Tour de France on ITV4 this summer,
however, the rate on Freeview was appalling at around 1.7 Mb/s, but on
Freesat it was acceptable with about twice that rate.

BBC HD used to be very good on Freesat but has been degraded to bring it
into line with Freeview.

"R. Mark Clayton" wrote in message
...

"Tony Houghton" wrote in message
...
My PVR has Freeview and Freesat tuners so it would be useful to know
which is better quality when choosing one or the other to make a
recording. AIUI Freesat often has lower bitrates than Freeview for a
given programme, but if and when Freesat's bitrate is about the same
it's the better choice for me because it's less prone to interference.

So can anyone point me to a summary of how they compare? I'm guessing
channels 1-5/101-105 and the four HD channels available on both are
about the same, but anything else is likely to be inferior on Freesat.
Is that roughly correct?

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

You would need to look at bit rates for particular channels.

Unless there are trees etc. directly in the way, Freesat is much less
prone to interference.

I only have Freesat HD, but for SD subjectively the Freesat picture looks
better.


Interesting that you say this, because on my TV subjectively Freeview
recordings (recorded as MPG using Windows Media Centre and played back on a
BluRay player that can play MPG from a USB hard disk) look better than
Freesat recordings (recorded on a Skybox). This is for SD recordings. Do
Media Centre and Skybox recordings make a faithful copy of the incoming
bitstream or is any further compression occurring?

Subjectively Freesat/Skybox recordings seem to have more compression
artefacts compared with the same programme recorded on Freeview/Media
Centre. Freesat HD recordings generally seem to bad - the Olympics Opening
and Closing ceremonies had horrendous banding of darker tones where there
should have been continuously-variable tones and there was lots of
blockiness and ghosting on moving objects. Don't have an HD Freeview decoder
to compare like with like.

On 07/10/2012 15:32, Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Tony Houghton
wrote:
My PVR has Freeview and Freesat tuners so it would be useful to know
which is better quality when choosing one or the other to make a
recording. AIUI Freesat often has lower bitrates than Freeview for a
given programme, but if and when Freesat's bitrate is about the same
it's the better choice for me because it's less prone to interference.

So can anyone point me to a summary of how they compare? I'm guessing
channels 1-5/101-105 and the four HD channels available on both are
about the same, but anything else is likely to be inferior on Freesat.
Is that roughly correct?

I don't know, and would be interested to know more of the details myself.
So I'll read other replies with interest. However "What Satellite and
Digital TV" magazine do list symbol rates. The lists I've seen don't give
specific internal rates for audio and video, though. But I've only seen a
couple of copies thus far.

I don't have any direct experience with sat tv, but I'd have expected it to
have rates at least as high as DTTV.

Since you have the PVR, can you access the disc and examine the recordings?
They may answer the questions. :-)

Slainte,

Jim


Based on having both Sat and Terrestrial feeding a PC with software that
displays bit rate in real time, for the main channels there is little
difference. Sometimes there are small improvements in the sat signal
but not significant, sometimes it is the other way round.

For the lesser channels Freesat is often much better. For example, Film
4 can often be 1.5-2x the bit rate on sat, for example at the moment it
is 544x576 and 1.3Mbit on freeview & 704x576 and 1.9Mbit on Freesat. E4
is about the same bit rate but at the lower resolution on Freeview.

ITV seem to have larger differences, eg ITV4 is about 5MBit on Freesat
at the moment & 1.8MBit on Freeview.

So I guess the answer is, based on limited random observation, Freesat
is mostly better (but sometimes not, eg on BBC1 at the moment it is the
other way round), & on minor channels can be noticeably so.

HTH

Chris K

In article ,
Tony Houghton wrote:

So can anyone point me to a summary of how they compare? I'm guessing
channels 1-5/101-105 and the four HD channels available on both are
about the same, but anything else is likely to be inferior on Freesat.

As I understand it, satellite bandwidth is a much less scarce
resource. So one might Freesat to be better.

But in my experience, the picture quality for Freesat and Freeview are
much the same on the BBC channels, presumably as a consequence of
their "platform neutrality" policy. An exception was during the
Olympics, when the Freeview quality of BBC3 and BBC4 was often very
poor; the BBC were packing in a lot of extra channels on Freeview but
had rented extra space on satellite.

On the other hand the ITV channels do often look much better on
Freesat.

-- Richard

In ,
Chris K wrote:

ITV seem to have larger differences, eg ITV4 is about 5MBit on Freesat
at the moment & 1.8MBit on Freeview.

Damn, I got that the wrong way round then. I recorded a film on ITV4
this evening from Freeview instead of Freesat :-(.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk