anyone who didnt already know about this 2 YEARS AGO should have kept their SDTV. in fact, they're probably watching stretched images thinking to themselves, "man, this HD is GREAT".

Ah ha, I thought something was messed up at Comacasts end, not mine. Sometimes my signal is so weak on those channels I don't get a picture at all. Not to mention how annoying it is watching a program with signal drops every 20 seconds.

So glad I dropped comcast a few months ago. Direct TV has been well, um, the picture is great!

buy an antenna and be happy you're not paying for a free HD broadcast that's been overcompressed by cable or satellite providers.

And still the best HD picture you can get is with an old school rooftop antenna.

While this may be true about Comcast, this is not a very scientific test. What kind of cable is he running? How many ways is he splitting the signal. There are a lot of things that can cause the digital break up he is seeing. That said, cable companies are compressing the signal quite a bit, and with my HD service, Cablevision, I noticed some channels are highly compressed (Universal HD in particular) and break up a lot when there is motion on screen.

Yeah, same thing with Dish Network. It isn't that heavily compressed but it's definitely noticeable on channels like Discovery HD. Blockiness makes my TV (and me) sad.

maybe they should upgrade their network infrastructure, so they can deliver quality product and not 'be forced to' block bittorrent protocols...

i guess its hard to afford such measures when your higher ups are making millions, and you are spending millions on advertising some guy quickly building a house of cards. (how apropos)

/rant

the old Adelphia clowns did something even more nasty a couple years ago...

They got rid of HBO2 and HBO3 and replaced it with the Disney Channel and Home Shopping Network.

Ahhh, comcast. Wonder why some folks still pay for them.

That sucks, but then again it's Comcast, so no big shocker there.

I'm more interested in how the HD screencaps were taken. The firewire output in my market is encrypted on nearly every HD channel. Is there some method other than firewire to capture the stream from the receiver?

I still don't understand peoples obsession with over hdtv. The quality seems fine to me. Sure I've seen the ones that are super clear and crisp and they DO look better, but it's just a frikin t.v. I'm not going to start liking American Idol, just because it's in hd. I'm beggining to think it's just for bragging rights. The Jones' have one up'd me once again.

Definitely glad I'm not paying for cable. Living in NYC with a lot of OTA channels, it's not that difficult to sacrifice some cable-only channels.

What a bunch of idiots. Compression artifacts (READ: GIANT BLOCKS) is the reason my family switched to cable from overcompressed DirectTV a few years ago. With big screen TV's becoming extremely cheap, the quality difference is noticeable by your average joe.

I wonder what the smarmy Comcast lady from the Detroit area commercials would say about this.

@IrisMR: My parents' only choice is Comcast since the trees around their property block the satellites for DirecTV and Dish. :/

This falls under buyer's choice. Do I stick with comcast or switch to Fios? We'll see when my deal expires in September.

Time Warner in Dallas is running ads on local newscasts claiming that the "only way to see this news in HD is with TW cable!" Trouble is, I really think they believe it.

I aways have to bite my lip when I get the obligatory "look at my new HD system" tour from friends who then flick on their heavily compressed Sat/Cable feeds.

As a former cable co worker I can tell you that that's just the way it's going to be. There just isn't enough bandwidth in the current cable system to not compress things, especially with analog cable(customers who just plug the cable direct to the TV) eating up so much bandwidth.
Where I worked it used to be 4+ different cable co's that got bought out by one of the big cable companies, It was such a nightmare going to a few certain sides of towns because the plant(the lines on the pole) were in such bad shape that no matter what you did or who you escalated the problem to you could bet your bottom dollar that the problem wasn't going to be fixed without plant modification. The cable companies are over promising on what they can deliver(home phone,TV,OnDemand,Internet services) then what they are actually cable of ESPECALLY if your in a apartment. Frankly They don't care and seem to just want to ride it out until a FIOS option is available in their service area.

I've said this from day 1. You go into Best Buy, and they have comcast HD on all the TVs. I've always thought it looked over compressed (the best buy guys say it's cuz of the splitter - that's BS cuz it's DIGITAL dammit)

Problem is, everyone thinks you need the CD service to get HD (you can get it OTA). Second, no one understands about compression and artifacts.

Comcast is still broadcasting a number of channels in Analog. Which eats a lot of bandwidth. We'll see if they uncompress some of this in Feb of '09 when analog goes away.

@snoop-blog: That's been my opinion as well. My TV is used for cartoons and video games for my son and on occasion when I rent a movie. I really don't need to be able to discern the borders of someone's mole to enjoy the story.

Somehow I have managed to end up living in some tiny shadow areas that do not get OTA reception despite being in urban areas. I feel sorry for people with analog in the same areas cuz those free boxes will be worthless.

TV is not worth forking over $86 dollars a month for basic HD.

@oakie: I got my digital TV converter boxes last week. I love the snow-free picture I get over the air so much, I'm reconsidering whether my DirecTV service is really worth $53/mo.

@Gamethyme: The analog to digital transition deadline doesn't apply to cable.

@Gamethyme: Analog isn't going away on the cable side of things for a while, Per the Gov they have to offer it to customers till a certain date.

@suburbancowboy: Actually, the number of splices, and quality of the wire should not matter. Digital works, or it doesn't. (please keep that in mind when someone try's to sell you "high quality USB or HDMI cables). If some packets are lost, you will notice voice not syncing with video, or little spots where no video displays (or large chunks missing). You will not see the total pixelation that you see in the pictures. That is just a compression/decompression problem.

@philipbarrett2003: Not to mention, Sattellite, and the cable providers in my area all broadcast HD in 720i. Not even the nicer looking 720p, let alone the "real" 1080 HD. I'm blown away at how nice a Blue Ray disk looks on the big screens (at 1080HD), and then how crapy and "stretched" the cable and satelite demo's are.

@mikeluisortega: Wait? Are you telling me that cable companies can't just profit forever off of old coax lines and that they might have to someday UPDGRADE their services in order to remain competitive?

Hi, my name is Papa Midnight... and I'm a former Comcast customer.

I'm now in my 6th year free from Comcast and loving it. I might have to mooch internet from my neighbor but I feel good not having to worry about rediculous pricing, 2 week CSR calls, etc.

I'm wondering if there's a false advertising lawsuit here considering that level of pixelation indicates the resolution has been reduced. As QuantumRiff correctly pointed out the compression used, and not line signal quality, is responsible for the difference. If Comcast is advertising "HD" TV then their offering ought to match some definition of HD. Right now it looks like that barely makes 720 resolution, however I'll bet they would try to worm out of this by saying there are indeed 720 pixels of resolution but it just so happens that half of them are duplicate data. "HD" indeed. Anyone with Comcast who does care about the resolution they're being sold vs what they're getting should look into what they are officially buying on their contract as you might have a class action suit with this. Car dealers can't sell a car with 300hp as being 500hp, cable companies shouldn't be able to sell 480i-equivalent content as 720+.

@mikeluisortega: Isn't Comcast the one who claims they have "High Capacity State of the Art Fiber Optic" lines?

@Sherryness: well i do. & i'll tell you why. first off, most companies charge more for their hd lineup. even if they don't charge more, they require you to spend some ridiculous amount of money on an hd receiver. seems silly to spend more to get less, doesn't it?

second, since hollywood & tv execs have done an excellent job stripping away any meaningful story/plot, believable dialog & emotion out of their works, the ability to discern where a mole starts & ends is just about all i have left. please, don't take that away too...or...or...i'll stop watching....yeah, that's it. i'll do that. now, where's the power butto....ooooh lookey here! cliffhanger! i can't remember the last time i saw it...last tuesday or wednesday.......*drool*

@BugMeNot2: Firewire isn't all encrypted in every market. Comcast isn't very consistent about this. Also, if you have a QAM tuner you can sometimes get some of the channels directly off the wire -- usually at least the local stations are unencrypted, but sometimes other channels are, too. Again, it varies from market to market and sometimes from week to week.

@Papa Midnight: Most cable co's use a hybrid network, Fiber from the base to nodes spread out in their service area and then from those locations, copper to all the houses that that node serves. It's misleading when they say FIBEROPTIC and DIGITAL! All semi lies but like any company they use Buzz words to get people excited.

The native FiOS resolution is 1080i and ComcastHD is 720p. Right there is one difference before even accounting for macroblocs and compression.

or here's a shocking idea - less channels!

I know, I know, its crazy. But here me out - I don't want 5 home shopping channels and approximately 50 PPV channels.

Just throwing that out there.

I swear the best HD programming I've seen on my HDTV is PBS: 720p OTA.

It's funny though, all the channels I want and watch in HD are the ones being heavily compressed by Comcast.

All I needed to hear. When it comes time for me to move to HD I'm switching to dish.

@Pop Socket: Not necessarily, Depending on the station, There should be different stations broadcasting at different resolutions, If you have a Scientific Atlanta 8300 box, it will tell you what res the signal is coming in on unless you lock it to a certain resolution. This could be different in other markets but I never heard of the Comcast system be locked to 720p exclusively.

@Pop Socket: it's a difference, but which one is better? hobbits or oompa-loompas?

[www.neopoleon.com]

I knew my Comcast cable HD shows were compressed. I notice it from time to time, especially with motion but I live with it. Until this weekend.

HBO was showing Matrix Reloaded, one of many shows previously enjoyed by myself on DVD. I was excited to watch this in HD to see how much better it looked. I was appalled. It was the worst compression I've seen to date. It looked like it was streaming right from YouTube. At first I thought I must have been the issue sitting there watching the non-HD broadcast but I was not. In fact the show-info stated this to be HD and at times it did look passable as an HD broadcast... at times.

I don't know what happened to this particular broadcast but since I prefer to finish what I start watching I popped in the DVD and watched the show on an upconverting DVD. It was grainy but you know what, that kinda worked for me. It was a Matrix movie afterall.

Now I'm trying to figure out if this will be the norm for future movies on this particular HBO channel. If so I'm not especially impressed. Why am I paying for this again?

@radio1:
I was thinking the same thing. Why are they choosing the channels I want to watch as the ones to compress...Especially Discovery, who could arguably be one of the most graphically needy channels.

I always thought that something was wrong with my TV. I'll be calling Comcast and cancelling my TV service. If I didn't need them for their net, I wouldn't have them at all.

Yup, noticed this after I got my new TiVo HD which happened to coincide with the addition of the new channels. I thought it was the TiVo's fault, but apparently not.

Does that mean they are removing the HD tag? Discovery middling-depth. I wonder if the decrease in resolution is enough to warrant false advertising charges if they don't...

boandmichele: actually, they're going to stop messing with bittorrent.

snoop-blog: Sports, in particular, are much better in HD, and the Nature channels are, too. It's a distinctly nicer picture. If you saw a true HD picture and a normal one next to one another you'd realize it.

@IrisMR: B/c some folks can't get satellite in their apartments and live in places where FiOS is a myth. Someday...

I submitted this a few days ago. I wonder what happened to it.