CBS58 HD is terrible (Packers game)

[LucasD]

I know it has been discussed before, but.... YUCK.

It's actually grainy, not pixelated, grainy.  

46" plasma with signal strength at 97-100 according to Tivo, so it's not my equipment.


:mad:

[Tivoman44]

Check your picture settings on your TV, specifically your sharpness.  I have my sharpness turned way down below 30%.  A friend explained to me once that on an HDTV you want it turned way down because the higher the sharpness will make the extra pixalation/grainy show.  Whereas on an old analog TV, Sharpness should be turned up for a sharper picture.  

Flipping between CBS and Fox, i think the picture looks pretty good.  My Tivo is showing CBS at 94% signal strength.

[SRW1000]

I have to hand it to anyone who is able to enjoy a football game with such a terrible picture.

Here's a small screen capture from the game.  I shrunk the image due to size, but overlaid three full-sized cropped images from some of the worst-looking areas.  It was saved as a JPEG, so there may be some additional compression to the image, but the macro-blocking in the image is present in the original.  



There simply isn't enough bandwidth for an HD football game along with three SD channels.

Scott

[SRW1000]

Here's a clickable thumbnail to the unaltered image, in PNG format, so it hasn't been recompressed:



Scott

[Talos4]

I kept switching between fox and CBS, I thought something was wrong on my end.

Nope, just 58 starving the main feed again.  

Pathetic. :eek:

[Xizer]

That's not grain. It is macroblocking.

Grain is good.

Anyways, this makes me glad I am not a fan of rugby.

[WPXE ION]

What do you think MPEG-2 video is?

Blocks of data.

[murdoc]

There simply isn't enough bandwidth for an HD football game along with three SD channels.

Scott

LIES!!!  We all know that is from you and I having faulty equipment with terrible connections. :rolleyes:

[SRW1000]

What do you think MPEG-2 video is?

Blocks of data.

Higher bitrates allow small blocks of data, allowing them to be almost unnoticeable.  Once the blocky texture becomes part of the picture, it can distract the viewer from the content, as one's eyes tries to make sense of patterns that were not meant to be.

It becomes readily apparent in football games, especially with the grass as the camera pans across the field.  Grass isn't square.

Scott

[Jack 1000]

TWC-Milwaukee HD (1005) looked pretty good here:

I HATE that annoying crawl on the bottom of the screen.  It eats up too much of the picture, and I find it distracts from the game.  A small top screen conventional scoreboard, like it used to be should be used again.  Bring ALL of the bottom third of the screen back by removing the lower-screen crawl.

Jack

[WPXE ION]

Do you all sit in front of your TV with a magnifying glass looking for the slightest imperfection?

WOW.

[brewtownska]

I think it's just that we know how GOOD things COULD look (as they have in the past), and now that they are sub-par, we have reason to complain.

It's like a flaw in a picture.  Once you find the flaw you can never ignore it because you KNOW it's there.

[Xizer]

Yeah man that's the problem; the picture quality is so god damn ****** that the flaws are obvious and spotted a mile away. I didn't sign up for HD for that.

[SRW1000]

Do you all sit in front of your TV with a magnifying glass looking for the slightest imperfection?

WOW.

I wish it took a magnifying glass to see these problems.  Did you look at the screen capture I posted?  How could you not see the flaws in that picture?  They're not slight imperfections, they're ugly and obvious.

And unnecessary.

Scott

[Rick_EE]

I wish it took a magnifying glass to see these problems.  Did you look at the screen capture I posted?  How could you not see the flaws in that picture?  They're not slight imperfections, they're ugly and obvious.

And unnecessary.

Scott

It shows the disconnect between the providers and the consumers.

I completely agree with you, Scott.  On any faster moving shot, the blocking was bad.  The cuts when the CBS logo moves on the screen are really bad.  Advertisers are aware of this.  Notice commercials don't often have fast motion anymore.

Before the digital transition and there were not a lot of subchannels, this did not happen.  The original specification for digital TV bandwith was 1 HD channel or 4 SD channels.  Now we are squeezing 1 HD plus all the sub channels.  Yes, there is picture degradation.

Signal strength has nothing to do with what the screen capture shows, it has to do with the bitrate.  Signal errors look entirely different.

However, it appears a lot of watchers are like my wife.  She insists she can't see the difference when I switch between SD and HD versions of the same show.