Is digital cable pretty crap in general?

[Tommy Tallarico]

I have digital cable, and it's totally fine. The HD looks great, the digital stuff has no noticable flaws in it, and the VoD is great for the most part. Every so often I'll see flaws in the VoD, but it's pretty rare. I'm sure a lot of it depends on the quality of your service, the quality of your connections, and the quality of your cable box.

[Razor Ramon]

Comcast is shit.

On a hilarious note, when I went to pick up my component cables from them they didn't even ask me if I was a Comcast member. They just handed the cables to me. I'm gonna go see if I can get another one for my DVD player.

[Videodrone]

I have TW and my biggest complaint is all the non-Digital Channels. Any of the common channels (those offered to non-digital/HD subscribers) look like complete ass on my TV (48" HD Mitsu). The digital stuff is passible, but the non-digital stuff looks like <300 lines of resolution (basically VHS quality). HD looks fab, but there are alot of channels I watch that are "regular cable" channels (FSN for one) that drive be batty with how shitty they look.

[mollipen]

I was at a local shop today that has a set-up for selling service for our local cable provider (Cox), and decided to check it out. I was looking through the HD channels, and they look like crap as well. Not as bad as the digital channels, but nowhere near what HDTV should look like.

So, I tracked down one of the sales guys, and asked him about it. He agreed that it looks like ass, and that the problem is that Cox - at least locally - is compressing the hell out of the channels because they don't have enough bandwidth. He said that they keep saying "they're working on it," which I find kind of funny, because that's what Cox claims the satellite companies always say in the ads Cox runs. So, the problem seems to be totally with Cox, at least for our local branch of Cox.

He also said that he has Dish, and that the HDTV channels look far better and what they should look like. I've never checked out Dish, but the store doesn't sell any sort of Dish products, so he wouldn't be saying it just to get a sale.

Do the satellite companies like Dish have the On Demand kind of stuff, or is that only with cable providers?

[Rumpy]

http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/p...es/index.shtml
Yes they do. Apparently they have the most HD channels too, prices seem good at like 30 something dollars a month for the base plan. There could be some hidden fees around it though. Sounds pretty sweet to be honest, I know Cablevision gives us about 13 HD channels (local channels often don't broadcast HD programming though, only certain sporting events and movies for example) as part of the basic cable plan. Expensive though. CV doesn't carry National Geographic or Discovery HD which fuckig sucks though. HD channels look bad ass but I notice glitching here and there from time to time.

[Wildkat]

Well PQ issues can came from a variety of sources.

1) Overcompression at the source. This used to be very uncommon as most cable channels were brodcast of crystal clear uncompressed Analog C-Band satelite (those big 7 plus foot dishes you still see now and then usualy rusting away in someones backyard) but now, to cut costs and maximize transponder space, they are being compressed at the source so viacom and squeeze MTV/MTV2/Nick1,2,3,4,5 whatever into one transponder, leaving little bandwidth for each channel.

2) Overcompression at the middle guy. Unless your using an old-school C-Band satelite system, you get you signal from some sort of provider, that would be a cable company, satelite or a wireless cable service. These guys all recieve the source from c-band, and then to fit into whatever bandwidth they have available. This can be done almost transparently from the source, so you would see little difference, but usually since bandwidth is always limited, the signal is then re-compressed even further.

The results of either of these is the famous blockiness on high-motions scenes, (football games are great examples) or a general blurry looking picture.

Sometimes the color data can be overcompressed as well, and the picture will have a "washed out" look to it.

There is little that can be done to correct these two issues, but sometimes playing with the sharpness controls on your TV can help make the picture look less harsh and compressed.

3) Poor signal. Digital signals are pretty much an on or off type of system, A poor signal will not cause typical pixelation effects. Poor signal quality can usually be detected by total picture blackouts, massive tiliing, glitching, and audio dropouts, in addition to the infamous "channel unavailable" messages and super slow channel changing, or in the case of Satelite, signal loss during heavy rain events.

Low signal issues are rampant with cable, as the coax network in most areas is quite old and been hacked on for decades. General rule of thumb is if you analog cable is shitty, you digital is going to have issues as well.

DBS Satellite will get "rain fade" occasionally no matter what. BUT, if the dish is installed properly, with a good strong signal across all transponders, if should be a rare event and happen only during the most severe parts of a heavy rainstorm, if you loose signal when its drizzling out, or even when its cloudy, something is wrong with you install.

[TobalRox]

I have Cox in CT and I've found that analog stations look fuzzy (I have an HDTV) and that digita stations look awesome with a few exceptions. Channels like IFC have all kinds of compression artifacts, but it's definitely the channel as anything else looks great for SDTV. What I can complain about is that I STILL don't have ABC in HD after over a year and a half of having digital cable/HD service (at the beginning of which they told me it was "coming soon, we're just working out the contract."). We've got 4 more HDTV channels since then, including the shitty WB channel, and yet no ABC (which I wouldn't care about except for Lost).

[mollipen]

I did some checking on Dish Network's site, and I actually like the channel line-up you get for the money through them. As well, they have a Japanese channel you can get for extra, which would be nice for both my girl and I.

I'm still not sure exactly where I'm going to be moving to yet - either SoCal or Seattle - so once I get there I'll have to check out how the cable service is there, then make a decision. For now, I'll just stick with my regular old DVR-less analog cable.

[Tones]

My dad just got Comcast digital cable a week or two ago, and I noticed that the HD stations weren't looking very good. Also, they were in the incorrect aspect ratio. I looked all through the manual provided, and there was no explanation of how to change the output resolution, nor change the aspect ratio.

I searched around online, and finally found that you have to press menu... when the cable box is off. It worked, and it looks much better, since it's now set on 16:9 and 1080i (it was on 4:3 and 480i). Why they didn't integrate it into the regular menu is a bit confusing... the only explanation I can think of is so that they could charge for the extra trip for the cable guy to come out to make the changes.

[Mman]

My digital cable looks great 90% of the time. Every once in a while it gets fucked up and glitched, but it is never for extended periods of time. I imagine that your results will vary from provider to provider and also depending on your area.