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Comcast compresses three HD television channels into two - FiOS and Comcast comparisons

31 March, 2008 18:36

It appears Comcast is working black magic on HD television media.  If you thought you were receiving true HD, think again, as Comcast is compressing three HD channels into two HD streams.  Bandwidth and television quality examples are shown after this post in relation to Comcast's delivered services:

"A public FCC hearing was held to discuss the accusations that Comcast was limiting bandwidth to file sharing peer to peer networks such as Bittorrent.

Documentation has arisen that Comcast has been sending reset packets to peers using these types of services.

It is claimed null personalities were paid to fill the seats of the FCC hearing, shutting out other interested parties and to applaud Comcast's positive remarks.

As recorded, one person admitted to this claim, and the response was: needed room for company executives.

Even National Public Radio (NPR) was having difficulty attending the hearing, amongst many other concerned citizens outside the walls of the room.

At the bottom of this post is audio with interviews of random attendees of the Comcast FCC hearing.  The source for this audio minutes:  http://www.freepress.net/node/35906" 

-- [My Blog post March 20th, 2008]

"The greatest differences are seen with movement. With slow movement on Comcast, the first thing you notice is added noise and a softer image, as fine detail is filtered from the picture signal. The greater the rate of movement, the more detail you lose and the more noise you see. With intense movement, you see more blocking and skipped frames. In VideoRedo, I noticed that a number of frames in the FiOS signal simply did not exist in the Comcast signal during motion intensive scenes. This may be responsible for the stutter and excessive motion blur seen with some video sequences on Comcast.

To Comcast's credit, I saw little to no difference on movie channels such as HBO, Cinemax, and Starz. I did see some blurring and reduced detail during fast movement on Starz, but the recordings from Cinemax and HBO were virtually identical, even on action movies such as 300 and Gladiator. When there was blocking on the Comcast feed of Cinemax, that blocking was also on the FiOS feed." -- [user on AVSforum]

[full sized version]
three shows -> two shows
[full sized version]
 comparison with and without comcast compression for home media
via [Gizmodo] 

A year ago I was writing:

windows explorer slowly, and with mockery, loops until the dreaded reboot

ultrasonic aromatherapy diffuser, and others I have used

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Main Entry: spew
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English spIwan; akin to Old High German spIwan to spit, Latin spuere, Greek ptyein intransitive verb
1 : VOMIT
2 : to come forth in a flood or gush
3 : to ooze out as if under pressure : EXUDE transitive verb
1 : VOMIT
2 : to send or cast forth with vigor or violence or in great quantity -- often used with out - spew-er noun
-- Merriam-Webster

Land where drunk cows swim and home to my daily hand