[mythtv-users] HD Compression Artifacts

[Kevin Hulse]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2007 at 12:53:10AM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 03/23/2007 04:54 PM, Scott Alfter wrote:
> > John Goerzen wrote:
> >   
> >> This is the first I've really noticed it, though.  I haven't watched
> >> much basketball in HD, but the live football I've watched doesn't seem to
> >> have had the problem.  And prerecorded shows usually look great.
> >>     
> >
> > I've never noticed compression problems with the HD stuff I watch, but them I
> > don't usually watch sports.  I've gone ahead and scheduled this
> > afternoon/evening's games to be recorded because UNLV will be playing (go
> > Rebels! :-) ), so it'll be interesting to see if the game looks significantly
> > worse than NCIS or The Unit.
> 
> You ever watch the intro's to your shows (i.e. with the actors' names 
> superimposed on fast-moving scenes/animations of images from the show 
> and all)?  The NCIS intro (and, IIRC, also The Unit intro) is an 
> excellent example of too-low-bitrate compression.

	I've been seeing this on SD Digital cable services for years.
There will be obvious differences in quality and compression levels
between different channels, different shows on the same channel and
even the opening credits versus the main show.

	Most of the time the wife can't even tell the stuff is divx
compressed (on top of what DirecTV does). But occassionally the source
is so bad on something that the transcoded version will be bad enough
for her to notice.

	OTOH, I can notice the compression artifacts in the raw DirecTV
feed.