View Single Post
  #15  
Old 03-11-2018, 09:14 PM
etype2's Avatar
etype2 etype2 is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Valley of the Sun, formerly Silicon Valley, formerly Packer Land.
Posts: 1,487
Quote:
Originally Posted by dtvmcdonald View Post
Where am I "coming from"?

I'm from Champaign IL in Concast land, at $200 per month ... but not for much longer.

I'm simply reporting the horrendous quality of our service. There are NO
channels I subscribe to ("140 channels") that are acceptable
quality. None at any resolution. Every channel except the lowest res
ones has pixelization on fast action. The so-called HD ones
appear to have maybe 1200 pixels resolution on sharp edges. On flat areas
like faces its much lower ... say 200 across the screen at 5, not 8 bits.
This is called "pasty faces". One can see MPEG wiggles around every
sharp line. On some talking head shows I see not 60 or 30 Hz refresh but rather 4 Hz for the background. You can see the horrendous low-bit
MPEG background squares change at that rate and no faster!

Our local over the air stations all have one so-called HD channel
and three SD ones. The HD shows all the same problems as Comcast,
just not as bad.

Edit: I just rechecked. Out local PBS station, WILL, is currently refreshing the middle background
MPEG squares (at most 4 colors per square, vertical or horizontal gradient only) at 1Hz.
They are constant for a whole second.
I’m originally from Milwaukee, then Lake Geneva about 200 miles North of you. As a television enthusiast, I remember cable and the inferior quality you are talking about. When it rained the video quality degraded with cable. This was in the 70’s and 80’s. The only choices were OTA, cable and later the 12 foot diameter satellite dishes. No HD, no 4K.

Then DirectTV came along in 1992. I quickly switched to DirectTV. Been with them for 25 years. My DirectTV bill went up to $179 a month. Just recently, I ordered their new 4K server with 4 clients. They dropped my bill by $92 for a year! That is why I’ve stayed with them all these years, they always worked with me. Over the 25 years, Direct TV technology evolved. I saw some of the artifacts you describe and now and again some channels had problems but they always seemed to get resolved, so again stuck with them.

We have Comcast in our area and I won’t touch it. I gather you are are talking about Comcast cable service or both including some streaming services?

I mentioned this before, it you want acceptable 4K service, you need at least 25 mbps Internet speed for streaming. If you are streaming, what is your internet speed?

This thread is about 4K UHD. No, I don’t think the providers will cut 4K service to 5mbps. Adoption of 4K for your home is not for casual viewing. If all you care about is a nice acceptable image, HD is fine. For 4K you need a large screen to appreciate the higher resolution. Your not going to see an improvement on a 55 inch panel. You need to think about lighting, invest in high speed internet and currently the best quality is UHD 4K Blu-Ray disks, so you will need a Blu-Ray player. Many folks want the best sound with their 4K video, so they invest in high quality multi channel sound systems. Some folks don’t like physical media. I come from an era when I adopted Betamax, VHS, CD, Laser Disk, and DVD. Physical media doesn’t bother me. In fact, being from the old school I looked down on streaming, now I embrace it.

I appreciate where your coming from with your cable service. 4K is a whole new ball game and if I live long enough I’m sure I will embrace 8K.
__________________
Personal website dedicated to Vintage Television https://visions4netjournal.com

Last edited by etype2; 03-12-2018 at 02:59 AM. Reason: Typos
Reply With Quote
Audiokarma