TWC - Was there a bitrate increase?

[Mark Strube]

I don't know if I'm crazy, or if something changed. Many of the standard definition digital channels are looking a lot clearer to me today. I don't watch them too often, but I do remember more compression artifacts usually.

Anyone else?

Specifically, 149 (G4) and 150 (Discovery Kids) are looking much better. Not exactly the best channels in the world, but G4 is fun to watch... once in a while. (Although I'd love my TechTV back.)

[tencom]

I checked channels 4, 6, and 58 digital  SDTV digital streams thats available for Digital Cable boxes and found there data rate as well as their pixal rate remains the same  with pixel rate at 544 x 480 pixels which is below the full resolution standard of    720 x 480 pixels. Most  digital cable channels with, the exception of the premium channels, in my opinion, use  544 x 480  pixels,  and is the reason that most digital channels aren,t as sharp as they could be.  There should be a campaign to get full DVD resolution on digital cable channels. I heard that digital satellite TV also cut the pixel rate , to save data so they can squeeze more video streams into each channel.

[Mark Strube]

DishNetwork does the same thing to the resolution of the SD channels, not so sure about DirecTV but it wouldn't surprise me.