Lack of Bandwidth Oversight Damages HDTV Quality 292
mattnyc99 writes "Over at Popular Mechanics, Glenn Derene has a great new column investigating the lawless lands of broadcast television, where the quality of the picture that ends up on your expensive hi-def set is determined by a bunch of fuzzy math. Quoting: 'In fact, there's no real regulation over high-definition picture quality at all — "none whatsoever," one industry consultant told me. And that's part of the reason why different HD stations often have wildly varying levels of picture quality that change from one moment to the next. Behind the scenes, content producers, broadcasters and cable and satellite providers are engaged in a constant tug-of-war over bandwidth and video quality, with no hard metrics to even define what looks acceptable. Even officials at HBO, where Generation Kill looks pretty fantastic on my TV, bemoaned the lack of a silver bullet ... for now.'"
What's that smell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Smells like a convenient excuse for the likes of Comcast and Verizon to use in an attempt to get the public on their side of the net neutrality debate.
"If you don't let us manage the network bandwidth, you'll be doomed to watching fuzzy video on your expensive HDTV!!!!"
Re:HD channels w/ no HD programming (Score:5, Insightful)
I completely agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondary channels should be banned. The local NBC affiliate runs a weather channel on their .2 and it their image quality is very poor next to the local CBS affiliate (CBS bans secondary channels). And woe to me if I try to watch the .2-.5 channels on PBS. Even in SD they are block city.
I disagree Generation Kill looks good. I watched the first episode on HBOW, which is an H.264 channel on DirecTV. And it had significant blocking. The 2nd episode looked better, but still, I am spoiled by BluRay. It's worlds better, and no cable or satellite system which only allocates a few mbits is doing to ever match it. That includes U-Verse.
I'm watching "The Professionals" on BluRay right now, and the video bandwidth along is over 27mbits, even in scenes where almost nothing moves. On pans it goes over 30mbits. And this isn't even one of the best looking movies. And this 27mbits is with H.264 video (AVC). 8-10mbit H.264 (let along MPEG-2) doesn't stand a chance.
Broadcast companies (and cable systems) will keep removing bandwidth until their "HDTV" looks even worse than it already does. They advertise quantity (100 channels!), quality is rarely even mentioned.
typical (Score:5, Insightful)
I professionally install home theater systems, and most of our customers are very happy with the end result. I get what this article is going for (not that I read it, or anything), and I wish it could be better, but unfortunately the world of business never comes up with anything that is perfect... because to develop perfect tech would cost infinite money, which would significantly cut into profits.
take any technology standard and leave it to a bunch of linux geeks (myself included) to pick it apart and point out the flaws. sometimes I think our time could be better spent designing something better, rather than badmouthing that which already exists.
OTOH it is kind of fun to bitch, so I am torn...
Re:Same thing with standard def (Score:4, Insightful)
oh and i have a 70 inch 1080p TV so i know what it looks like on a large screen. 1080p is nice, but it's not essential.
Re:typical (Score:5, Insightful)
I professionally install home theater systems, and most of our customers are very happy with the end result.
Anyone who spends several grand on the latest and greatest is going to like it regardless of any actual improvements or (more likely) disappointments.
Re:FIOS Baby (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that I can offer them to pry from my cold dead fingers is Verison DSL which is currently have 14 kbps of upload speed (just measured at speedtest.net), because there is nothing else to pry in our corrupted county.
Re:More Regulation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is the author insinuating we need MORE government regulation? Yup, because THAT will solve everything. If only the engineers were as smart as the journalists and legislators, we wouldn't have these "problems".. :-P
More regulation solved that little problem where we used to have depressions. Also the one where we couldn't get HDTV.
Re:I completely agree (Score:5, Insightful)
I completely disagree -- each company should get to decide how to allocate their bandwidth. I would prefer to have two channels of good content instead of a single channel, and I'll bet that most consumers would agree with me. There's a reason why they advertise quantity instead of quality -- it's what people actually care about.
Of course, there's a point where most people DO care about quality -- stuffing 15 sub-channels into a 19 Mbps broadcast channel is going to piss people off -- but you probably aren't going to hit that point with just 2-3 channels.
Re:ehh.. (Score:1, Insightful)
This is comment a direct result of the DDoSing going on to 4chan. Take away the hive of scum and villainy and they'll infest the very streets we walk on!
Re:typical (Score:5, Insightful)
In my area, HD channels really did look much improved, like your customers find. But over time, the cable company (Comcast) has decided to increase the compression on some channels (lowering their bitrate) so they can squeeze more channels in their bandwidth. So HD quality *has* degraded here, not through any fault of the HD technology, but through the choices that the cable company has made.
If your local pizza company sells you melted plastic because it's cheaper than cheese, do you just say "oh don't bitch about it, a good pizza would cost too much"?
Re:Some important questions... (Score:4, Insightful)
2. As the article states, the compression ratio is all over the place, but tops out at 12-15Mbps (depending on which HD standard is being sent). It will almost certainly be lower. And that's the entire point of the article.
3. No idea.
4. Uncompressed HD video takes roughly one gigabit per second (as stated in article). That's roughly 52 channels worth of bandwidth.
Re:Same thing with standard def (Score:0, Insightful)
1080p is nice, but it's not essential.
Television is 100% non essential, regardless of the quality. If we're going to roll around in consumerism, we may as well go the full mile.
Personally, I think we're due for at least a full year of international loss of all electricity. As we stand now, I think people would literally go crazy and start killing each other if computers, the internet, video games, television, etc. all became inaccessible. People are so dependant on the things we have now. Sigh.
See I have HD! (Score:3, Insightful)
They only care that their knob is calibrated up to 11.
Re:HD channels w/ no HD programming (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HD channels w/ no HD programming (Score:3, Insightful)
Even that could be rigged. They could rebroadcast content or permit 'on demand' downloading and say, hey look, you have HD content available 24 hours a day 7 days a week on 20 channels!
Except it's a half hour or hour long show on each channel that was shown once in the week and is available on demand thereafter.
Re:typical (Score:5, Insightful)
I did have a local pizza place sell me some "ham & pineapple" pizza using crushed pineapple and TVP [wikipedia.org]. I even confronted the manager about it, and the idiot claimed that they ran the ham through a meat grinder before putting it on the pizza.
So much for trying to support a small-town non-chain business operated by one of my neighbors. I ordered the next pizza from Pizza hut, and at least they delivered with some real Canadian Bacon.
As far as the HD channels are concerned and their bandwidth, I hope this doesn't turn into the digital equivalent of the shrinking toilet paper rolls.... where those manufacturers keep making gradually smaller and smaller rolls with less paper (but selling it at the same price), only to come out with a "double roll" at a higher price that had the same amount of paper as the rolls you bought about two years ago.
Mark my words.... these cable companies are going to start a promo (at of course a higher plan rate) that offers "enhanced resolution" of these channels for an improved picture that was just like you experienced when you first signed up for HD channels.
Re:I completely agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Cox Communications HDTV = Blatent Rip Off (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:FIOS Baby (Score:5, Insightful)
1. FIOS is not mandatory for HDTV. But higher bandwidth definitely helps FIOS to deliver better HD content.
2. Grass looked liquid - probably because either the TV was not setup properly OR as the article says, it was subjected to random chopping due to limited bandwidth.
3. You mentioned that your picture looked as good - well, normally I do not buy corporate shit wholesome, but to give a (hopefully) suitable analogy, the real difference between HDTV and standard definition is similar to difference between tape and audio CD (or suddenly realizing you were seeing things with 'defective' eyes and then looking through your prescribed spectacles).
Though I have comcast HD at home, and a lot of HD content is compressed hell out of it, it's still miles better than standard definition and the only reason I still have my cable connection (and before you murder me for having Comcast, I do not have a choice unless I go dish, and I can not do that).
when will the FCC start regulating HD broadcasting (Score:3, Insightful)
what qualifies as an HD broadcast? apparently they think it's just resolution.
I've seen comcast's HD channels. Blocky as hell for broadcast. I can stream it from the Internet in higher quality.
Re:Digital Cable Experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Your cable box is defective. Everyone seems to be having that issue. You get lucky and you get a box that works, and you see ALL of the issues you mentioned magically disappear.
It would be nice if these jerks would stop buying their equipment from the lowest bidder.
Re:Same thing with standard def (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't require it to survive. We require it to maintain our current populations, but people out in the country would be able to survive. Heck, I just got back from a month long road trip and self powered homes are no longer just for the rich. Some states even pay you to install wind, solar, and other small scale home based power generators.
So, I agree, there may be chaos in the cities, where many people can't even cook and don't possess wilderness survival skills or tools, like guns, ammo, fishing gear, etc but I know places that'll carry on - they have biodiesel plants that run off corn cobs in many parts of the country. Horses too.
Re:Corrupted how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Same thing with standard def (Score:3, Insightful)
An unplanned loss of worldwide electricity a couple million? Seriously?
I'd think a couple of million would be a good estimate for a single country - say, England-size - if they react promptly and they're lucky.
Billions may be a stretch, but that's still closer to the order of magnitude from a year-long loss of electrical power.
Most nations are just not self-sufficient in terms of food production.
Heck, most large cities would starve rather quickly without imported foodstuff - food production is far from local, and the panic would compound the crisis even more, since practically all our emergency measures are dependant on electrical power (transporting aid, supplies, etc. assumes the source of aid has at least normal infrastructure) - and that communication lines are available to request and send help in the first place.
Of course humanity would soldier on and survive - but you could say the same of a nuclear war.
Re:Corrupted how? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true! Exactly right! In fact, I think I'm going to set up a competing broadcast TV and cable network!.
Oh, wait. It turns out over-the-air bandwidth is incredibly expensive and there's none for sale at the moment. Still, I can set up a cable network. Oh, I can't get a permit to dig up all the roads in a municipality to lay cable?
TV distribution companies have a government-granted monopoly because some forms of last-mile bandwidth are scarce resources (broadcast transmissions) and some cause disruption to everyone if they are installed (cables). Satellite is an exception, but the cost of entry into this market is huge. It is in the public interest not to have streets dug up all the time, so the (typically local) government enforces this. It is then not in the public interest for the resulting monopoly to be unregulated.
There is one alternative, which is communal ownership of the last-mile pipes. When you build a house, you buy the cable from your house to the nearest exchange, and a share in this exchange. You pay a cooperative to operate it, and they sell bandwidth to TV companies and so on. I don't know if anyone has implemented this in the real world, although there were plans to in Utah a few years back (they seemed to have stalled when I visited though).
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:3, Insightful)
QOS IS NOT A FEATURE its a hack! A good network should be able to move all the traffic at decent latency, not just special traffic.
Re:Caveat Emptor, baby ... (Score:3, Insightful)
It was easy to be ignorant and happy with NTSC, and, let's face it, how could anybody have found VHS acceptable?
Because some people find the content to be more important than the specifications? I'd personally prefer a crappy VHS copy of a good movie to a really high def calibration image--but to each his own.
Re:ehh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not about "legislating technology" it's about truth in advertising.
A consumer should be able to know what they're getting when someone
tells them they are selling them HDTV. It's like butter versus
margerine. One is a well defined quantity and the other could be
pretty much anything.
If it's a "prime cut", then you should be able to verify this with
some scanner that looks like a tricorder. That scanner should be
able to give you a yeah or nay. There should be some objective
way you can determine if the vendor is "full of shit".
Re:Same thing with standard def (Score:3, Insightful)
Are all the people saying this basing their judgement on the "Gangs of NY" Bluray release? Because you'd have to have like 20/80 vision to not be able to tell the difference between a "properly made" DVD and a "properly made" bluray. UPCONVERSION DOES NOT ADD QUALITY, though if you're comparing a modern "upconverting" DVD player to an old, bad DVD player outputting over composite video, yes that will make some difference.
Watch Transformers on DVD and then watch it on Bluray (well, ok, I have it on HD-DVD but it justcame out on Bluray) and tell me bluray doesn't blow it away. If it doesn't, you're sitting too far away from a TV that is too small, or you need glasses. And don't think the "you need glasses" part is meant to be an insult. My brother wears glasses and he had them off when he walked into the room while i was watching Transformers on HD-DVD. And he's like "whats the big deal?" I said "Put your glasses on." And he does... and he's like "Oh, that DOES look freakin awesome. Couldn't really tell the difference without my glasses though"
TL;DR version: Upconverting DOES NOT make DVDs look like Bluray. There is no way to make 480p at 5-10mbits look like 1080p at 20-40mbits.
Re:WHA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Again, the claim that CD software is always going to decode the data flawlessly is yet to be proven.
No, it has to be disproven. And in this case, it has to be disproven for the vast majority of models, since apparently only the very best players can properly decode an audio CD, as per the post.
It should, but again some makers would cheat as much as possible on the processor, RAM, whatever to get the unit out the door for a profit.
Read the CD specs some time. RAM is not much of a concern, neither is the processor -- if you want to get ANYTHING out of the signal, AT ALL. You can use a shoddy laser, but that's not just gonna be shoddy on some "hard to decode" sequences of audio, but everywhere. It'll also result in audible skipping. Another thing I have seen is an improperly shock-isolated drive, i.e. one that would starts skipping at even slight vibrations -- like those caused by a drumbeat as rendered by the speakers. But again, that is not decoding logic.
What the hell are you gonna cheat on, on CDs ? Really, what ? Look at the specs, there is not much to cheat on to make it fail on just some "very hard" sequences ... There is nothing "really hard" or "really easy", it is the exact same difficulty.
This is MUCH less common nowadays, since the hardware is pretty cheap, and processors are vastly better than back in the late 80s. My first player was a Sony, and it was fine. The next, a Denon, was not my friend, though most of the problems were with the UI.
Denon of http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM/ [amazon.com] fame ? No wonder. Oh, and shoddy UIs say nothing about the decoding logic.
I'm going to have to look harder for the problem passages I worked with back around 1992. We were discussing it on minidisc.org, but I can't find the emails yet. Another archive I have to get and load.
As I noted, you ARE gonna find problematic passages on Minidiscs. MD is not CD. MD is lossily compressed with a bad, bad codec; though I assume you know that and mean something else.
Yes, I have emails from 1990 and before.
As do I. Also lots of FidoNet stuff.
Don't ask. I have spam samples from then to about 2004, when spam stopped being cool and started being nasty.
That late, eh ? :)
The only DIFFERENCES to observe in CD players are in laser/lense quality, drive/tray durability, and error correction. That last one is interesting on scratched and some burned discs; earlier models, in particular, would play improperly "corrected" samples in their garbled form, which would cause some nasty noise (about the effect you get when you play a CD-ROM in a very old audio CD player); now those samples are just silently skipped. Some firmwares try to interpolate missing samples, but that's not staying true to the original (kinda like MP3Pro sounding "crisper" than MP3 at low bitrates -- and, as it turns out, the original material). If skipping is the problem, however, it's because the CD has faults, not because the decoding logic has a hard time with some sequences of bits and not others.