<div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im">
> content in a single channel is due to their practice of degrading the<br>
> quality of said content. I have seen the difference between OTA and<br>
> Cable, and it is very noticeable.<br>
><br>
<br>
</div>This is only partly true. Since cable has a higher signal to noise ratio than OTA, they can use QAM256 and get more data through<br>
the link than 8VSB, so potentially they could send 2 HD signals in the same bandwidth that would allow only one for 8VSB at<br>
about the same quality.<br>
<br>
But then comcast goes and tries to cram 3 HD signals in that bandwidth.<br><br></blockquote><div>QAM256 has ~38Mbps total bandwidth compared to just over 19Mbps for 8VSB this is correct. However in the 19Mbps OTA networks usually run 1 HD and usually multiple SD streams so the actual bandwidth that they use is more like 12-15Mbps and then it's not that hard to put 3 HD OTA channels in the same Cable channel with virtually no loss in quality and I imagine you'd only have issues if all three of these show simultaneously high action scenes where the total bandwidth of the three would exceed 38Mbps.<br>
<br>Here are the actual values for SF Bay Area broadcasters that one person provided on the SFBayHDTV Yahoo group about a year ago (the numbers are all in Mbps). As you can see only few of these ever go beyond 12Mbps (I don't have numbers for Cable/Satellite only HD channels so there the bandwidths may be different) and this is during prime time:<br>
<br>2-1 = variable 14 - 14.5<br>
2-2 = 2.05<br>
<br>
4-1 = 3.62<br>
4-2 = 14.32<br>
<br>
5-1 = variable 11 - 17.5<br>
<br>
7-1 = variable 11 - 12<br>
7-2 = variable 4 -5<br>
7-3 = variable 1.5 - 1.7<br>
<br>
9-1 = variable 9 - 11.5<br>
9-2 = 3.03<br>
9-3 = 2.84<br>
<br>
11-1 = variable slightly 12.7 - 12.8<br>
11-2 = variable slightly 3.2 - 3.4<br>
11-3 = variable slightly 2.3 - 2.4<br>
<br>
20-1 = 14 -15<br>
20-4 = 2.46<br>
<br>
36-1 = variable 9.5 to 13.5<br>
36-2 = 3.22<br>
<br>
44-1 = 16 - 17<br>
<br>
48-1 = 3<br>
48-2 = 15<br>
<br>
65-1 = variable 9.5 - 11<br>
65-2 = slightly variable 2.4 - 2.5<br>
65-3 = variable 2.5 - 3<br>
65-4 = 1.9<br>
<br><br></div></div>