World Cup Viewers Say: Compression Sucks

[Jeremy Charette]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200606/kt2006061317300010160.htm' target='_blank'>http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200606/kt2006061317300010160.htm</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Anticipation of watching the world’s top players in action during the World Cup may have jacked up sales of high-definition televisions but there are more than a few who complain they didn’t get their money’s worth; and it’s not because of the quality of the hardware. Kim Hyung-shik, a 30-year-old football fan living in Seoul, spent 2.5 million won for a 30-inch high-definition LCD TV and the HD cable TV service last month. But when the World Cup finally kicked off last Friday, he couldn’t believe his eyes. ``I couldn’t see the ball clearly every time when the players kick the ball hard. The screen gets blurred around the ball when it is moving fast,’’ Kim said. ``Now I regret buying the HDTV set. It’s only good when the players are standing still, and drink water at the sideline.’’ The Web sites of three main broadcasters _ KBS, MBC and SBS _ and the Korean Broadcasting Commission have been flooded with hundreds of angry complaints and insults from football fans, angry after witnessing their brand-new digital TV sets as only capable of playing blurred and scrambled images with inconsistent audio. Some viewers even reported their new TV sets went blank when changing channels and never recovered until they pull the plug out."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/ronaldinho.jpg" /> <br /><br />This is my biggest complaint about HDTV, and digital TV in general: compression sucks. Some HDTV channels from Time Warner look great, such as Discovery HD, but others are a macroblocked mess, like TNT. It looks like Korean broadcasters have been playing games with compression and bandwidth in an attempt to get more World Cup games on more channels, and it's backfired in a huge way. I tried to watch the British Grand Prix on Sunday, and it was painful. Between all of the format conversions and scaling, the picture I saw on my HDTV was worse than an analog signal. Someone has got to stop this madness, or consumers are never going to want to adopt HDTV. When Microsoft's HDTV guru still doesn't have an HDTV in his own house (because he thinks compressed HD is so painful to watch), that tells you something.

[Janak Parekh]

That may be true, although I find most HD-over-cable here in the US (Cablevision, precisely) looks _very_ good. INHD looks probably the best, but all of them are far superior over the regular signal, even analog. There are occasional breakups, but it's very rare. This Korean situation sounds a lot worse than the World Cup programming I've seen at home.

(All that said, Cablevision doesn't carry TNTHD or ESPN2HD yet. :cry:)

--janak

[Jeremy Charette]

It's the "occasional breakups" that annoy me. I'll be watching a great show, then all of a sudden frames start dropping, the picture freezes, then it starts back up again a few seconds later. Happens all the time, and Time Warner can't seem to fix the problem. Annoying as hell. I'm seriously tempted to drop cable altogether, and spend the money on an MCE PC with an HD tuner card (or two) instead. I'm guessing that OTA HD in New York City will be a ton better than HD over cable.

I do agree that it's better than the analog or digital SD channels, but in some cases, only marginally so. After all the compression and macroblocking, the SD channels actually start to look appealing.

[Janak Parekh]

It's the "occasional breakups" that annoy me. I'll be watching a great show, then all of a sudden frames start dropping, the picture freezes, then it starts back up again a few seconds later. Happens all the time, and Time Warner can't seem to fix the problem. Annoying as hell.
Could be a poor signal. Digital cable tuners are essentially cable modems that are streamed some MPEG format, I believe. We have a recent cable install -- we had trouble with signal but it was since fixed -- and breakups might happen once a day at most. Most of the time I don't notice it more than once per week. My guess -- something's wrong with your setup. Talk to Suhit about his experiences; from the stories I heard, TWC is clueless and annoying. He had a hell of a time with them when his PVR died IIRC.

I'm guessing that OTA HD in New York City will be a ton better than HD over cable.
You're kidding me, right? First off, unless you can get access to your building's roof and it's high up enough, it's utterly impractical. You also only get the regular channels, not ESPN HD, Universal HD, INHD, INHD2, ... (Cablevision also has MSGHD, YESHD, SNYHD (during Mets games, INHD2 is "converted"), HBOHD, StarzHD...)

After all the compression and macroblocking, the SD channels actually start to look appealing.
Not at all for me. No comparison here.

--janak

[klinux]

After all the compression and macroblocking, the SD channels actually start to look appealing.

I would disagree too.

However, I too hate compression. OTA HD look tons better than cable HD here in Souther California.

[Felix Torres]

My Adelphia HD feed is absolutely pristine.
No macroblocking ever...
(Living in one of the few communities with multiple licensed cable providers has its benefits.)

The macroblocking and dropouts that some folks get are not the same thing and they're not due to the same thing.

Macroblocking is due to over-compression. Properly compressed streams should not display macroblocking, like that horrible picture at the top of the column.

Dropouts, on the other hand, are due to transmission errors and are basically missing chunks of data. (On cable, they are a sign of bad wiring or capacitors or filters along the way. If you get a lot of dropouts call the cable company.) The STB client simply fills in a colored block, usually green, for the missing data. If there is too much missing data, it'll just freeze the frame buffer until it has something vaguely ressembling a full frame to display.

Both kinds of flaws are strictly the fault of the provider; not the technology.

The issue is not compression; without compression there would be no HDTV. Period. The issue is the incompetent penny-pinchers running the transmission medium that over-dial the compression setting so they can fit an extra shopping channel or community bulletin board or just to plain avoid spending on infrastructure.

My mother's cable system used to get dropouts and macroblocking up the wazoo after switching to digital. Price went up, STBs were required where none were needed before, and the quality went down. Solution? Switch to DirecTV. No dropouts, no macroblocking. On SD of course. (DTV has its own list of sins to answer for on the HD front.)

Bottom line: compression is not inherently evil.
Properly used, it can deliver stunning, pristine HD over the wire.
Improperly used... Well, you've seen what it leads to.
But the fault isn't the tech or the medium; its the operator.

If you're not getting what you're paying for:
1- Scream at the cable company; have them send a cable guy to replace the cabling, or...
2- Switch to a different provider, or...
3- Move to a different city. ;-)

Whatever you do, don't blame the tech.
The tech is neutral, even friendly.

It is the operators that are evil. ;-)

[Janak Parekh]

Well-put, Felix. :) I have a strong cable signal at home, which leads to few artifacts or dropouts... and considering the hassle to set up OTA, I'm happy with the existing setup.

--janak

[Jeremy Charette]

Time Warner NYC blows. I've called multiple times, and had service techs come out and try to fix the problems. I've been through several STBs, and still, we have dropped signals, macro-blocking, mis-matched video and sound...you name it. Luckily we live on the top floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn, with no taller buildings within a mile or so, so my antenna and satellite reception should be very good.

I think it's time I switched to satellite and/or OTA. Sayonara Time Warner!

[Jeremy Charette]

blah blah blah...It is the operators that are evil. ;-)

Another great post from Felix. I can't really move at the moment, and Time Warner is my only cable choice, so it looks like I'm going the satellite route. As for tech vs. operators, unfortunately the tech specifications are not rigid enough to prevent problems like this from happening.

I propose a universal HDTV broadcast specification, whether over cable, satellite, or air; with minimum acceptable data rates and source resolutions. Until that happens, who the hell knows what you'll get when you hook that set top box up to your brand new HDTV. Could be beautiful, or it could be garbage.