# Busted! Comcast Down-Converts native 1080i Channels to 720P!!!



## HarperVision

I think this deserves its own thread because it's such a severe violation to Comcast customers and the underhanded tactics of the always hated cable companies, in my humble opinion!

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10949905#post10949905 


patrickthickey said:


> A COMCAST gentleman who regularly works with Tivo Engineering mostly dealing with cable card pairing for TIVO engineers working with all manner of testing and prototypes, and the encryption process at COMCAST.
> 
> Anecdotally, he says as of today, you can use the web interface to your Xfinity account to perform cable card pairing. If true this is pretty cool.
> 
> He happens to reside in California, and has multiple TIVO Roamio units.
> 
> Bottom line: there is a TIVO test build which purports to fix this issue. The issue is _NOT_ MPEG4 specifically, as COMCAST has MPEG4 channels, _not down-rezzed_, and they work fine on Roamio.
> _
> *The issue is the down-rezzing, and it is 100% a software-based issue for TIVO to sort out. *_
> 
> He read me the engineering report and it clearly identifies the bits which must be changed. _What else this might break is what is being tested_, but the core issue has been identified.
> 
> I am not claiming this is new intel, just sharing my 45 minute conversation with him.
> 
> No time frame was shared for the TIVO release but this person validated it is being actively worked by Tivo and COMCAST.
> 
> Hanging up I feel pretty good about this, and am optimistic without having anything tangible to share.
> 
> Out of respect I cannot share his name or title, but he is a hands-on player at COMCAST in Northern California.
> 
> patrick





HarperVision said:


> No, the real issue is.....why the hell are they down "rezzing" (converting) native 1080i channels into lower resolution 720p?!?!?! I think this is a *MUCH *bigger issue than breaking a few channels on one model line of a niche product like TiVo Roamio! I'm thankful that it didn't work on Roamio, so it exposes Comcast's disgusting disregard for their customers!
> 
> If I had Comcast here I would drop them in a heartbeat, even going to directv and paying more if I had to. They didn't even tell any of their customers what they were going to do!!! To me that's low and despicable behavior!
> 
> I certainly hope these channel owners knew and approved of what Comcast's plans were to ruin their channels on their system, or there's going to be some seriously explaining to do. Maybe some calls and emails to their corporate headquarters about what slimy Comcrap did is in order?


It comes from this post when I suspected something fishy going on after reading this thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10943669#post10943669 


HarperVision said:


> ....... I just did some math and guess what, as soon as you get to 8 720p channels compared to 1080i, you can fit an additional 1280x720p60 channel in there! They think they're sneaky but they're just money grubbing weasels!!!
> 
> 1280x720x60 = 55,296,000 pixels/second
> 1920x1080x30 = 62,208,000 pixels/second
> 
> 62,208,000 - 55,296,000 = 6,912,000
> 
> 6,912,000 x 8 = ....... You guessed it....
> 
> .......*55,296,000*, the same as 1280x720p60!
> 
> Conclusion:
> They are down converting 1080i channels to 720p so that for every 8 1080i channels they can put on their system, they can put in 9 720p channels.
> 
> Guilty as charged!!!


...and this:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10944190#post10944190 


HarperVision said:


> ...... As stated by I believe Dan203, when they use h.264 compression they can get about 8-9 HD channels into one QAM (6MHz space with about 38Mbps payload capacity). If these 8 or so HD channels are 1080i, then converting them to 720p first will allow one extra 720p HD channel per QAM (6MHz). Therefore an 850MHz cable plant could (theoretically for this calculation, not including whatever they decide to use for Internet, etc.) could use about 140 QAM channels, each having 9 720p HD channels/QAM for a total of 1260 HD channels, as opposed to only 8 1080i HD channels/QAM for a total of 1120 HD channels. That's a difference of 140 HD channels, not only one per 90 as you're trying to say.
> 
> Of course in real life there's a mix of 480, 720, 1080, plus internet, OOB, etc. on that 850MHz pipe, but you can see how they could theoretically put dozens more channels (or even using that extra space for more internet bandwidth) on the system by converting 1080i channels to 720p and then compressing using h.264





> tivoyahoo said:
> 
> 
> 
> ......But there is this post where nfl red zone would be delivered as 720p instead of native, since isn't that the only format that vue offers?.........
> ........So maybe the NFL did negotiate that away and allow comcast and vue to have that control if the price was right?? But those rights certainly don't sign things away as in "go ahead and break those channels on tivo - so be it if that happens".....
> 
> 
> 
> I am sure that Sony let them and all other networks know that their service was going to be 720p due to constraints of their streaming system, at least initially, when they were negotiating the rights to provide their channel on Vue.
> 
> 
> 
> tivoyahoo said:
> 
> 
> 
> ......"I posted to BBC America's facebook page and let them know tivo users across the country are having problems viewing their channel on comcast. And BBC got back to me right away that it was unacceptable and that BBC going to pursue the issue and get some answers and work to correct that as soon as possible."........
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Like I said, it's NOT that a few TiVo's can't tune and/or record a few channels that's the issue. It's the fact that Comcast made a conscious decision to down convert 1080i channels to 720p, *WITHOUT LETTING ITS CUSTOMERS KNOW THIS FACT!!!* To me that's like going to the store and buying a clearly marked 12oz soda, but there's really only 11oz in the can! That's what they're doing with their OWN STBs from what I recall reading....that those boxes still report the problem channels as "1080i"!
> 
> 
> 
> HarperVision said:
> 
> 
> 
> .........How do we know that Comcast isn't changing the metadata within the broadcast stream to report that it's still 1080i, even though they've changed it to 720p in reality, and the TiVo just doesn't play that game, which could actually be the issue messing up the Roamio? They can cheat their own boxes to read whatever they tell them to via FW/SW, but not a TiVo. (Not saying this is what is happening, just a hypothetical)
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...

I think this needs to be reported and widely spread to call out Comcast on this ridiculously egregious, slimy, underhanded move on their part, just to cram in a few more crap channels that show nothing but crap reality TV! Dave Zatz maybe?


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## tomhorsley

The real question is: How good is their de-interlacing? If it is good enough, 720p could easily look better than 1080i.


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## lew

I'm a FiOS customer. I'm happy with my picture quality, internet speed and reasonably happy with what I pay.

I agree with almost all of your post, but let my play devils advocate for a minute:
Have you read any posts anywhere from Comcast customers complaining about picture quality on the 720p Comcast encoded stations?
Posters seem to love Vue and Sling TV as alternatives to traditional cable. What resolutions and bitrate are those services transmitting?
Does the Comcast STB show the resolution of the station or the resolution being sent to your TV? In other words is the Comcast box changing the resolution to 1080i.
You mention greed. Not sure I completely agree. Customers seem to prefer quantity (number of channels) over quality.

That said my preference would be for fewer stations at a better quality. That's one of the things I like about HDNet movies.


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## HarperVision

tomhorsley said:


> The real question is: How good is their de-interlacing? If it is good enough, 720p could easily look better than 1080i.


Not true at all. 1080i has the exact same spatial resolution as 1080p, and as you infer, with a good and properly operating de-interlacer 1080i would be and look equivilent to 1080p.

720p does not and will not have the same resolution (pixel density) as 1080i/p.

My answers within the quoted text, in *RED*


lew said:


> I'm a FiOS customer. I'm happy with my picture quality, internet speed and reasonably happy with what I pay.
> 
> I agree with almost all of your post, but let my play devils advocate for a minute:
> Have you read any posts anywhere from Comcast customers complaining about picture quality on the 720p Comcast encoded stations? *No, but then again most sheeple don't care or can see the difference between SD and HD! *
> Posters seem to love Vue and Sling TV as alternatives to traditional cable. What resolutions and bitrate are those services transmitting? *Most know coming into those services that they are streaming services and subject to the conditions of the internet, and probably also that Vue didn't sell a bill of goods as 1080i/p, but delivered it as 720p. I would have to read their terms of service to see what they revealed as far as resolution and streaming quality. they have to play by different rules streaming over the open internet as opposed to a closed QAM cable TV system.*
> Does the Comcast STB show the resolution of the station or the resolution being sent to your TV? In other words is the Comcast box changing the resolution to 1080i. *I am pretty sure it was reported that someone went into one of their comcast STB box's service/hidden menus and saw what the box was receiving, modulation, bitrate and resolution wise. I could be wrong though. *
> You mention greed. Not sure I completely agree. Customers seem to prefer quantity (number of channels) over quality. *I surely see that too, but I am sure Comcast is happily obliging by taking advantage of their customer's lack of awareness and knowledge to be able to cram in more and more crappy quality channels that they can in turn make more profit from! I made the "frog in the slowly boiling pot" analogy in the other thread, which is sadly appropriate here.*
> 
> That said my preference would be for fewer stations at a better quality. That's one of the things I like about HDNet movies. *I am glad to hear that and wish others thought the same*


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## lew

Sony promises all high definition content will be available in HD.

Says nothing. Read some of the threads on TCF. Posters talk about price and number of channels. subscribe to Vue, cut the cord and save money. Relatively few posters talk about picture quality. I can rent a Blu-ray at Redbox for a couple of bucks. I can rent the same movie streamed for $5-$10. Is there any question which has the better picture. Gas isn't that expensive.


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## Bigg

If this is, in fact, true, this is a new low for Comcast. They refuse to invest in their TV product by using SDV and plant rebuilds in combination with MPEG-4 to deliver a good TV service AND a good internet service.

Instead they use their broadband monopoly to shove crappy TV down your throat instead of actually making it good.


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## HarperVision

lew said:


> Sony promises all high definition content will be available in HD.
> 
> Says nothing. Read some of the threads on TCF. Posters talk about price and number of channels. subscribe to Vue, cut the cord and save money. Relatively few posters talk about picture quality. I can rent a Blu-ray at Redbox for a couple of bucks. I can rent the same movie streamed for $5-$10. Is there any question which has the better picture. Gas isn't that expensive.


Well, technically 720p is still HD. I'm sure they had to explain to each network owner that due to the limitations of their streaming service, they would have to top out at 720p, at least initially until further infrastructure and technology upgrades could be made. I doubt that is the same story with Comcast and what they seem to be doing. I am sure they're trying to open up more room to increase internet speeds/bandwidth to compete with the likes of FiOS and New Charter/TWC/Bright House.



Bigg said:


> If this is, in fact, true, this is a new low for Comcast. They refuse to invest in their TV product by using SDV and plant rebuilds in combination with MPEG-4 to deliver a good TV service AND a good internet service.
> 
> Instead they use their broadband monopoly to shove crappy TV down your throat instead of actually making it good.


I think someone should tip off DirecTV about this so they can market some new commercials pointing out how some "Big Cable" companies are compressing and down converting the crap out of their channels, compared to DirecTV's great h.264 HD image quality channels! :up:


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## lew

HarperVision said:


> Well, technically 720p is still HD. I'm sure they had to explain to each network owner that due to the limitations of their streaming service, they would have to top out at 720p, at least initially until further infrastructure and technology upgrades could be made. I doubt that is the same story with Comcast and what they seem to be doing. I am sure they're trying to open up more room to increase internet speeds/bandwidth to compete with the likes of FiOS and New Charter/TWC/Bright House.


My point is providers don't commit to a specific resolution, only HD. Can you find anything from Comcast (or FiOS) which promises a specific resolution?

Kind of funny if you think about it. People want faster internet so they can stream Netflix, Vue, Sling etc. Comcast seems to be offering faster internet by reducing video quality to streaming standards thereby giving informed consumers no reason to pay a premium price for cable transmission.

Look at it this way, tivo customers who use programs like kmttg to archive shows will be able to skip the encoding step. You might not even have to encode the video for viewing on a mobile device.

A compromise. Do we care what they do to shopping networks? Leave the primary feeds (HBO,SHO...) alone. Do the "magic" on the alternate coast feed, HBO2, HBO3....We can DVR shows off the main feed.

I hate to say this but I think the majority of customers prefer the faster internet and increased number of channels vs video quality.

Now optimized for iPad viewing may actually be a "good" sales piece.


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## dlfl

This is very interesting but I don't see it as the scandal implied by the OP. Picture Quality (PQ) doesn't depend only on either bit-rate (i.e. number of channels packed into a 6 MHz QAM), or on number of pixels (i.e., whether resolution is 1080 or 720). It also strongly depends on the amount of computing horsepower you're willing to devote to the H.264 encoding process. A ratio of 8:9 in bitrate could be compensated by better encoding to provide equivalent PQ. Now whether Comcast has actually compensated this way is another question. As already mentioned, there are other factors, such as overall customer satisfaction, that enter into such design decisions. Unfortunately the small percentage who are TiVo users with large screens don't have much weight in overall customer satisfaction.


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## mschnebly

I just switched back to Comcast from Dish and the picture quality is noticeably better. Actually night and day better. I don't care what they do or how they do it because my picture is great. :up:


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## lew

dlfl said:


> This is very interesting but I don't see it as the scandal implied by the OP. Picture Quality (PQ) doesn't depend only on either bit-rate (i.e. number of channels packed into a 6 MHz QAM), or on number of pixels (i.e., whether resolution is 1080 or 720). It also strongly depends on the amount of computing horsepower you're willing to devote to the H.264 encoding process. A ratio of 8:9 in bitrate could be compensated by better encoding to provide equivalent PQ. Now whether Comcast has actually compensated this way is another question. As already mentioned, there are other factors, such as overall customer satisfaction, that enter into such design decisions. Unfortunately the small percentage who are TiVo users with large screens don't have much weight in overall customer satisfaction.


ITA I suspect most customers prefer the increased number of channels, increased internet speed and the increased DVR capacity the change permits. I'm not a Comcast customer but I'd prefer fewer channels at a higher quality.

Are we getting to a point where 4K will be required to get picture quality equivalent to what HD is suppose to offer?



mschnebly said:


> I just switched back to Comcast from Dish and the picture quality is noticeably better. Actually night and day better. I don't care what they do or how they do it because my picture is great. :up:


Have you checked any of the channels Comcast is down rezing to 720p.


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## atmuscarella

The quality versus quantity thing doesn't really come into play for many households. They either don't have their TVs actually setup correctly or have a too small of a set for the distance they view it at. With the net effect being many people can not actually see the difference between a 1080i or a 720 down graded version of the same station. I am OTA only and have a 50 inch set, sit 12-14 feet from it, and can not see the difference between my CBS & NBC 1080i stations and my Fox 720p station (they all share their frequency with 1 or 2 SD stations). However I can see the difference between those stations and my ABC & CW stations which are 720p but share the same frequency (along with another SD station). But the ABC & CW stations don't look bad just a bit more washed out. So Pay TV providers can get away with lots of compression before the bulk of their customers are going to notice.


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## TonyD79

atmuscarella said:


> The quality versus quantity thing doesn't really come into play for many households. They either don't have their TVs actually setup correctly or have a too small of a set for the distance they view it at. With the net effect being many people can not actually see the difference between a 1080i or a 720 down graded version of the same station. I am OTA only and have a 50 inch set, sit 12-14 feet from it, and can not see the difference between my CBS & NBC 1080i stations and my Fox 720p station (they all share their frequency with 1 or 2 SD stations). However I can see the difference between those stations and my ABC & CW stations which are 720p but share the same frequency (along with another SD station). But the ABC & CW stations don't look bad just a bit more washed out. So Pay TV providers can get away with lots of compression before the bulk of their customers are going to notice.


There may be more at play for abc than sharing. I get two abc stations and both are usually pretty bad on network programming. Local is fine. I think abc has a distribution problem. Same programming looks better on Hulu, etc.


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## dishrich

lew said:


> [*]Does the Comcast STB show the resolution of the station or the resolution being sent to your TV? In other words is the Comcast box changing the resolution to 1080i.


(just found this thread over at DSLR)

Depends on which type of STB you're using. I still have a legacy DCX-3501 DVR, which has a native P-T setting & which I always keep it on. I just checked a bunch of channels that are *supposed to be* 1080i & my TV is now reporting they are now 720p. BBCA, UP, MTVLive, UHD, VICE, COOKING, DIY & OWN are the ones I checked. 
Others like TV1, Weather & NFL are still reporting 1080i.

On the X1 boxes though, none of them have a native setting...so basically EVERYTHING is converted (either up or down) to a chosen setting by the sub, so they'll probably never see a diff anyway.

I believe all of their HD-DTA's are the same way, as I could never find a way to put them into native, either.


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## lessd

You people can correct me if my following assumptions are incorrect: All flat screen TVs show the picture in the native resolution of the TV, which today is 720 lines, or 1080 lines, or 2160 lines. It does not matter if the input is 1080P or 1080i, your picture on a 1080 HDTV will be 1080P lines. A few people may be able to tell when a movie is coming into the TV at 24/frames/sec vs 30 frames/sec in action parts of the movie, so any difference will be in the detail of a given picture and color accuracy and depth. I have all HDTVs in my home and I can only tell, when I walk into a room with the TV on, if I am looking at a SD picture or a HD picture, but I can't tell anymore without looking at the TV info as to tell frame rate or resolution. (all my TiVos and Minis are set for pass through on the resolution.)


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## atmuscarella

TonyD79 said:


> There may be more at play for abc than sharing. I get two abc stations and both are usually pretty bad on network programming. Local is fine. I think abc has a distribution problem. Same programming looks better on Hulu, etc.


That could be, no way for me to really tell. But I do know that a 1 hour prime time show on my ABC or CW station is less than half the size of a 1 hour prime time show on my Fox station, given they are all 720p the ABC & CW stations are clearly more compressed than the Fox station


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## JoeKustra

atmuscarella said:


> That could be, no way for me to really tell. But I do know that a 1 hour prime time show on my ABC or CW station is less than half the size of a 1 hour prime time show on my Fox station, given they are all 720p the ABC & CW stations are clearly more compressed than the Fox station


That brings up a interesting thought. When the bit rate is low (ABC) and not so low (Fox) is that because of compression? Also, I get two CW feeds, one local and one from NY. My local is 720p and DD2.0, the NY feed is 1080i and DD5.1 so how does that affect me, beyond knowing the storage difference and sound quality. No h.264 involved on my feed.


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## atmuscarella

lessd said:


> You people can correct me if my following assumptions are incorrect: All flat screen TVs show the picture in the native resolution of the TV, which today is 720 lines, or 1080 lines, or 2160 lines. It does not matter if the input is 1080P or 1080i, your picture on a 1080 HDTV will be 1080P lines. A few people may be able to tell when a movie is coming into the TV at 24/frames/sec vs 30 frames/sec in action parts of the movie, so any difference will be in the detail of a given picture and color accuracy and depth. I have all HDTVs in my home and I can only tell, when I walk into a room with the TV on, if I am looking at a SD picture or a HD picture, but I can't tell anymore without looking at the TV info as to tell frame rate or resolution. (all my TiVos and Minis are set for pass through on the resolution.)


Pretty hard to know if the same source material broadcast at 1080i would look better if you had a 1080p version, would have to buy some blu-ray disks of a TV show to find out.

But compressing a 1080i TV feed to 720p stream is causing some data loss. Plus if they are cramming more channels into the same space that requires even more compression and more data loss. I really don't under stand the conversion to 720p, if the source feed is 1080i. When they first started broadcasting OTA HD a 1080i station and a 720p station's stream was about the same size. When they started to add sub channels they started compressing the streams more seems like they were able to compress 1080i streams just like they compressed the 720p. Not sure what Comcast gets out of converting to 720p and then compressing instead of just compressing the original 1080i stream.

Are we sure these converted channels are not really 720i? That might explain allot.

In the end what ever device (our TVs, a STB, DVR, Receiver, etc.) converts that compressed stream to the 1080p picture on our TVs is just guessing at what the lost data is.


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## atmuscarella

JoeKustra said:


> That brings up a interesting thought. When the bit rate is low (ABC) and not so low (Fox) is that because of compression? Also, I get two CW feeds, one local and one from NY. My local is 720p and DD2.0, the NY feed is 1080i and DD5.1 so how does that affect me, beyond knowing the storage difference and sound quality. No h.264 involved on my feed.


That's the way I understand it more compression equals lower bit rate or smaller file size.

I just check some CW and Fox shows that I have transferred to this computer. While the size varies it would be basically correct to say my Fox 1 hour shows size was around 6,500,000 KBs and my CW 1 hour shows where around 3,200,000 KBs. Which indicates that the bit rate for the CW show has to be less than half that of the Fox show.

With broadcast stations/cable companies they have to compress on the fly where streaming services can spend time conditioning the files and end up with a better looking picture for the same size stream.


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## jth tv

I am using an Antenna with a Roamio basic. With my plasma TV I think 720p looks better than 1080i. HOWEVER, Netflix "1080" per the TiVo info button does look better than "720". 

With Blu-Ray, the movies are typically the extra wide format with black bars above and below, which means that the main action part of the movie is actually smaller and less enjoyable to me than a movie/show that is in regular wide format.

But what really matters most to me is how a show is filmed and lighted. It makes much more difference than its HD resolution, as long as its HD.


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## HarperVision

atmuscarella said:


> ........ I really don't under stand the conversion to 720p, if the source feed is 1080i. When they first started broadcasting OTA HD a 1080i station and a 720p station's stream was about the same size. When they started to add sub channels they started compressing the streams more seems like they were able to compress 1080i streams just like they compressed the 720p. Not sure what Comcast gets out of converting to 720p and then compressing instead of just compressing the original 1080i stream. ..........


Read the math formulas in the original post. That explains what they get out of it. OTA ATSC and cable QAM are different. ATSC has about a 19.2Mbps data payload in its 6MHz channel bandwidth. In the same 6MHz bandwidth for cable QAM you can have about 38.8Mbps data payload. So as you can see it benefits cable much more, as you can see by the formula that you can add another 720p channel into each QAM if they're all at 720p, instead of 1080i.

It does benefit ATSC too however. They did the same thing with my local OTA channels that come in here from repeaters on Maui. They cram ABC and NBC together on one 19.2Mbps channel. They convert NBC from 1080i to 720p and it looks like total crap! In fact that's how I first noticed what they did. I was like "wow NBC looks crappy compared to my cable feed!" So I went in and checked and sure enough it was showing as being transmitted in 720p, which I knew was wrong. I'm sure the engineers split the data bandwidth evenly (9.6Mbps each), but I can say first hand the 720p native from ABC was clearly and easily seen as better quality than the down converted 1080i to 720p NBC station was. I remember trying to watch Sunday Night Football on it and I just couldn't. It was so horrible I can't even explain it. Pixelation, banding, combing from improper deinterlacing, flat, no dynamic range and I could go on and on. I had to switch over to cable to watch the game.

This is also a reason why I still have limited basic cable (and because I got a good deal on a double play with Internet). I would like to cut the proverbial cord and use OTA and Vue, but this horrible down converting experience keeps me from that.



atmuscarella said:


> ......In the end what ever device (our TVs, a STB, DVR, Receiver, etc.) converts that compressed stream to the 1080p picture on our TVs is just guessing at what the lost data is.


Very true! That answers many of the questions "why" in the posts above this one. :up:

Thanks for all the insightful replies here. This is what I wanted to stir up here with this post. I can certainly see both sides and agree that compression, if done correctly, can make the difference hard to see and quantify. The problem is the "if done correctly" part. It's usually NOT!

I guess my point to this is that they didn't bother telling their customers they were going to do this. I think many, but not all or even the majority of course, like to think that they should get their channels in their native resolutions that the network decided to use knowing full well that some MPEG2/h.264 compression may be applied to help them fit all the channels that customers are asking for. I DO NOT think these same customers expect them to alter the original resolutions though. A decoder can more easily interpret a compressed signal if its compressed and decompressed in the same resolution and frame rate. Once you start altering interlaced to progressive, resolutions, etc. It can cause more image quality and playback issues, as many people see now on some Comcast systems.


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## Time_Lord

correct me if I'm wrong, don't the cable companies compress the video streams? So even though they are receiving a full 720p or 1080i what they are actually transmitting across the cable is essentially lower than that. 

The satellite providers compress it even more than the cable companies which is why cable looks night and day better than satellite and FiOS is night and day above cable as FiOS does not compress the image they receive (Verizon FiOS anyway) at all.


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## thyname

Time_Lord said:


> The satellite providers compress it even more than the cable companies which is why cable looks night and day better than satellite and FiOS is night and day above cable as FiOS does not compress the image they receive (Verizon FiOS anyway) at all.


Not true. Satellite picture quality is better than cable's. For sure with Directv. Don't know about Dish, since I have not had them since ten years ago. FIOS is better than cable, but Directv is better than FIOS. I have them both right now


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## TonyD79

atmuscarella said:


> That could be, no way for me to really tell. But I do know that a 1 hour prime time show on my ABC or CW station is less than half the size of a 1 hour prime time show on my Fox station, given they are all 720p the ABC & CW stations are clearly more compressed than the Fox station


I will have to check out some file sizes. I don't have anything to do so right now.


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## JoeKustra

Time_Lord said:


> correct me if I'm wrong, don't the cable companies compress the video streams? So even though they are receiving a full 720p or 1080i what they are actually transmitting across the cable is essentially lower than that.
> 
> The satellite providers compress it even more than the cable companies which is why cable looks night and day better than satellite and FiOS is night and day above cable as FiOS does not compress the image they receive (Verizon FiOS anyway) at all.


I can't comment on satellite. But for cable, everything is local. That's true even for the big guys. You can find the data rate of your channel for a given program and we could compare notes. Even the file size would be ok if there is equal padding. For me, all channels are sent as received by my headend. True, my feed combines channels. But I have no proof that this results in loss of quality. All content starts in the studio or movie master. After that, it's anybody's guess what happens.

Except for the reason for this thread. That's different. And not nice.


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## atmuscarella

HarperVision said:


> Read the math formulas in the original post.
> ...


Just to keep this short I am not going to quote your whole post but will comment on several parts of it.

I am not certain you can translate pixels per second into the need for bandwidth. What determines the amount of bandwidth needed is the bit rate of each channel. I am going to stick with OTA/MPEG 2 as an example. In my case my Fox channel is broadcasting a 720p video stream at just shy of 15 Mbps and my CW channel is broadcasting a 720p video stream at just north of 7 Mbps. Both of these streams are providing a video with the same number of pixels per second. What makes the Fox channel look better than the CW channel is the bit rate not the video resolution. More data just makes for a better picture.

When comparing if 1080i or 720p video looks better I am fairly certain the actual bit rate is more important than if it is 1080i or 720p. My guess is a 15 Mbps 720p broadcast would look better than 10 Mbps 1080i one and conversely a 15 Mbps 1080i would look better than a 10 Mbps 720p one.

Of more importance is would a 1080i MPEG 2 broadcast with a bit rate of 15 Mbps look any better or worse than the same broadcast using 720p with a the same bit rate. My guess is for high action fast pass video the 720p would still look better on medium grade LCDs than the 1080i video which is why ABC and Fox picked 720p over 1080i to broadcast in, but the 1080i one would look better on higher end TVs and for shows without much fast action in them.

So this brings me back to what did Comcast really get by converting a 1080i channel to 720p? They can compress 1080i to any bit rate they want, just the same as 720p - what I am guessing is that they found that 720p looked better at the bit rate they wanted to use than 1080i did. They have allot going on using h.264 compression and converting from 1080i to 720p I guess what really matters is how the end product looks.


----------



## TonyD79

Time_Lord said:


> correct me if I'm wrong, don't the cable companies compress the video streams? So even though they are receiving a full 720p or 1080i what they are actually transmitting across the cable is essentially lower than that. The satellite providers compress it even more than the cable companies which is why cable looks night and day better than satellite and FiOS is night and day above cable as FiOS does not compress the image they receive (Verizon FiOS anyway) at all.


That's old data. Fios compresses now. They have been squeezing more channels per QAM in the last couple of years.

I had fios and directv side by side for about 4 years and literally watched as directv's PQ improved and fios' degraded. Not a lot but it happened.


----------



## TonyD79

JoeKustra said:


> I can't comment on satellite. But for cable, everything is local. That's true even for the big guys. You can find the data rate of your channel for a given program and we could compare notes. Even the file size would be ok if there is equal padding. For me, all channels are sent as received by my headend. True, my feed combines channels. But I have no proof that this results in loss of quality. All content starts in the studio or movie master. After that, it's anybody's guess what happens. Except for the reason for this thread. That's different. And not nice.


Fios is not local for national channels. They allocate the same everywhere and feed centrally. The exception is the local block of OTA and sports channels. Other than that block, everything is the same on every fios system with some slight variation as they migrate central distribution areas one by one.


----------



## thyname

TonyD79 said:


> I had fios and directv side by side for about 4 years and literally watched as directv's PQ improved and fios' degraded. Not a lot but it happened.


Since you HAD them both, which one you have now?


----------



## Bigg

Comcast is completely out of control here. MPEG-2 HD is supposed to be 19mbps per channel, two channels per QAM. They haven't been doing that for years. First it was 2HD and an SD or two per QAM, then 3HD, then 4HD, now they went to MPEG-4, where it was supposed to be 4HD, and they have 8-10HD. Ridiculous!



HarperVision said:


> I think someone should tip off DirecTV about this so they can market some new commercials pointing out how some "Big Cable" companies are compressing and down converting the crap out of their channels, compared to DirecTV's great h.264 HD image quality channels! :up:


Well even 1080i on Comcast looks like crap, because they compress the snot out of it. DirecTV heavily compresses too, but their PQ is still way better than Comcast, as they aren't pushing the absolute limit on compression like Comcast is.



lew said:


> My point is providers don't commit to a specific resolution, only HD. Can you find anything from Comcast (or FiOS) which promises a specific resolution?


HD would be whatever resolution the content provider is providing the signal in, 1080i or 720p.



> I hate to say this but I think the majority of customers prefer the faster internet and increased number of channels vs video quality.


No. Just no. It's not either or. It's a matter of investing in their network and services so that people have have their cake and eat it too. They need to upgrade their systems uniformly to 860mhz. They should have adopted SDV years ago. That way they could offer 200 really good looking HDs and gigabit internet, not gigabit internet and 120 crappy looking HDs.


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## dlfl

Bigg said:


> Comcast is completely out of control here. MPEG-2 HD is supposed to be 19mbps per channel, two channels per QAM. They haven't been doing that for years. First it was 2HD and an SD or two per QAM, then 3HD, then 4HD, now they went to MPEG-4, where it was supposed to be 4HD, and they have 8-10HD. Ridiculous!


If Comcast is out of control then so is TWC/Spectrum.


Bigg said:


> ........ HD would be whatever resolution the content provider is providing the signal in, 1080i or 720p.


No HD is defined at both 720 and 1080, not by what you think it should be.


Bigg said:


> No. Just no. It's not either or. It's a matter of investing in their network and services so that people have have their cake and eat it too. They need to upgrade their systems uniformly to 860mhz. They should have adopted SDV years ago. That way they could offer 200 really good looking HDs and gigabit internet, not gigabit internet and 120 crappy looking HDs.


LOL. Sure unlimited investment in cable plant would give a better tradeoff between quality and number of channels. But again this is just something you want, not what anyone has to do. As someone who has suffered with TA issues for 7 years now, the last thing I want is more SDV, BTW.


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## moyekj

Cox made upgrades to 1GHz spectrum a while ago, and has eliminated analog channels, and uses SDV heavily, and has transitioned several less popular channels to H.264, yet still is just as bad as Comcast for packing way too many HD+SD channels into 1 QAM. Some "HD" channels are just horrible as a result. So it's pretty obvious at least in case of Cox they have not used added bandwidth to improve picture quality - rather they use the reclaimed bandwidth for other uses such as increasing internet bandwidth.


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## HarperVision

atmuscarella said:


> ........ I am not certain you can translate pixels per second into the need for bandwidth. What determines the amount of bandwidth needed is the bit rate of each channel. ..........


No, it starts with the original file and its size. 1080i is bigger an 720p which is bigger than 480p which is bigger than 480i. If you take a 1080i signal and compress it with MPEG2 or h.264, it's still going to be bigger than 720p, 480i/p, etc., all parameters being equal. In fact I believe 1080i is an even bigger compression ratio due to it having to be deinterlaced, and it's more intensive to the processor. I need confirmation of that though. I just recall learning something to that effect at one time. With converting to 720p first, the resultant file size to be transmitted is smaller, therefore requires less bandwidth to transmit. All you have to do is see how they're able to get many more SD channels per QAM than they can fit HD into the same space, and there's your proof. Smaller resolution sizes result in smaller transmit bandwidth sizes. I can make an SD channel look very good at 2Mbps, but if I tried that bandwidth with HD with the same compression scheme it would look pretty bad.

So if they down convert 1080i to 720p first, then compress, you can see how the formula I provided works.

I think I see what you're saying though. Why not just compress the 1080i even further to get to that file size, instead of converting to 720p first? Maybe we should ask Dan203, as I think he's the expert in this stuff, but I think once a file compresses to a certain point there's just too many errors to keep the image looking good. They probably tested more compression and saw that converting to 720p first, then compress made the best looking image at the same file size.


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## atmuscarella

HarperVision said:


> No, it starts with the original file and its size. 1080i is bigger an 720p which is bigger than 480p which is bigger than 480i. If you take a 1080i signal and compress it with MPEG2 or h.264, it's still going to be bigger than 720p, 480i/p, etc., all parameters being equal. In fact I believe 1080i is an even bigger compression ratio due to it having to be deinterlaced, and it's more intensive to the processor. I need confirmation of that though. I just recall learning something to that effect at one time. With converting to 720p first, the resultant file size to be transmitted is smaller, therefore requires less bandwidth to transmit. All you have to do is see how they're able to get many more SD channels per QAM than they can fit HD into the same space, and there's your proof. Smaller resolution sizes result in smaller transmit bandwidth sizes. I can make an SD channel look very good at 2Mbps, but if I tried that bandwidth with HD with the same compression scheme it would look pretty bad.
> 
> So if they down convert 1080i to 720p first, then compress, you can see how the formula I provided works.
> 
> I think I see what you're saying though. Why not just compress the 1080i even further to get to that file size, instead of converting to 720p first? Maybe we should ask Dan203, as I think he's the expert in this stuff, but I think once a file compresses to a certain point there's just too many errors to keep the image looking good. They probably tested more compression and saw that converting to 720p first, then compress made the best looking image at the same file size.


Interesting. I really don't understand the whole process from filming to delver to either the OTA broadcaster or Pay TV provider. My understanding is that most of this is now filmed/recorded in 4K, I assume the networks process that file somehow and transmit something to the OTA broadcaster/Pay TV provider, who then also does something to it to get to what is actually sent out to us. But I don't have any idea how the file is processed by the Network or what the network is transmitting to the OTA broadcaster/Pay TV provider, I just know what I end up getting from my OTA broadcasters.

This ends up being somewhat confusing as the largest files I end up with for 1 hour prime time HD shows are the ones from my Fox channel which broadcasts in 720p and also has 2 sub SD channels on the same frequency. The NBC & CBS 1080i files are close in size but the Fox ones are usually the largest (there is one SD sub channel on the CBS frequency and 2 SD sub channels on the NBC frequency). Which is not what I would expect based on what you have said, I guess my CBS & NBC channels are compressing their streams more than my Fox channel, I just don't under stand why.


----------



## JoeKustra

atmuscarella said:


> The NBC & CBS 1080i files are close in size but the Fox ones are usually the largest (there is one SD sub channel on the CBS frequency and 2 SD sub channels on the NBC frequency). Which is not what I would expect based on what you have said, I guess my CBS & NBC channels are compressing their streams more than my Fox channel, I just don't under stand why.


As for NBC, having 3 subchannels can't help. But NBC has two as does Fox. If your cable company doesn't screw with their inputs, NBC I can understand. The others are a mystery. I live in a strange world since my NBC and CBS channels have no subchannels. Yet my Fox channel is pretty good. ABC really sucks.


----------



## keenanSR

Unless things have changed, the FOX network primetime feed bitrate is set by the network, they use a splicer system that I believe is controlled by the network, there's little to no meddling done to the signal at the local level. This is different from how the other network stations handle their network feeds. I don't have any FOX shows recorded right now but the bitrate is usually right around 14Mbps. 

Of course, what the local cable company does with it is a whole different story.


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## dishrich

JoeKustra said:


> But for cable, everything is local. That's true even for the big guys.


I do not believe this is necessarily true for Comcast; they have a master uplink center in Colorado, that (re)packs the national cable channels into groomed bouquets. They also resell these (some) bouquets to other (smaller) cable systems; it's called HITS:

https://www.comcastwholesale.com/products-services/hits-mpeg-2-content-delivery


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## keenanSR

dishrich said:


> I do not believe this is necessarily true for Comcast; they have a master uplink center in Colorado, that (re)packs the national cable channels into groomed bouquets. They also resell these (some) bouquets to other (smaller) cable systems; it's called HITS:
> 
> https://www.comcastwholesale.com/products-services/hits-mpeg-2-content-delivery


Yes, in fact, I believe even Time Warner and Cox get many of their cablenets from CMC.


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## TonyD79

thyname said:


> Since you HAD them both, which one you have now?


Fios.

A tree I don't own grew to block my line of sight. If it were gone, I'd have directv back and do minimal fios for Internet.


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## tampa8

TonyD79 said:


> Fios.
> 
> A tree I don't own grew to block my line of sight. If it were gone, I'd have directv back and do minimal fios for Internet.


Two words. Midnight - Chainsaw.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs

But first, take down a few other random trees in the neighborhood (and a couple more after). That way, it won't be you trying to get a better line-of-sight for your satellite, it'll just be the Midnight Tree Bandit striking again.


----------



## HarperVision

atmuscarella said:


> Interesting. I really don't understand the whole process from filming to delver to either the OTA broadcaster or Pay TV provider. My understanding is that most of this is now filmed/recorded in 4K, I assume the networks process that file somehow and transmit something to the OTA broadcaster/Pay TV provider, who then also does something to it to get to what is actually sent out to us. But I don't have any idea how the file is processed by the Network or what the network is transmitting to the OTA broadcaster/Pay TV provider, I just know what I end up getting from my OTA broadcasters.
> 
> This ends up being somewhat confusing as the largest files I end up with for 1 hour prime time HD shows are the ones from my Fox channel which broadcasts in 720p and also has 2 sub SD channels on the same frequency. The NBC & CBS 1080i files are close in size but the Fox ones are usually the largest (there is one SD sub channel on the CBS frequency and 2 SD sub channels on the NBC frequency). Which is not what I would expect based on what you have said, *I guess my CBS & NBC channels are compressing their streams more than my Fox channel,* I just don't under stand why.


I think you just answered your own question. 

I certainly don't claim to know all the particulars of this either, that's why I asked about maybe Dan203 popping in since he works with video files and programs apparently as his profession. I got out of the TV (and radio) broadcasting business in 2007, just as digital TV was really getting going. We had a Harris ATSC digital transmitter (and a Larcan NTSC with a very old RCA as a backup) where I worked as transmitter engineer for the local NBC affiliate.

We didn't have ATSC at all yet and were in the process of upgrading our aircraft's missions systems when I left Commando Solo around the same time, so I'm not as proficient on some of the digital stuff as I am the older analog baseband, broadcast and RF transmission equipment.


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## Bigg

dlfl said:


> If Comcast is out of control then so is TWC/Spectrum.


Yes, unfortunately it is common practice to compress more than the standard 19mbps MPEG-2 channels. However, Comcast has taken it to a whole new level with quad-packing MPEG-2 channels and now packing 10 MPEG-4 channels to a QAM, relying extremely heavily on statistical multiplexing.f



> No HD is defined at both 720 and 1080, not by what you think it should be.


That's true, but that irrelevant. What Comcast is doing here is messing with the resolution of the original signal, and in the process of converting, they effectively have provided a 720i channel, which is half HD.



> LOL. Sure unlimited investment in cable plant would give a better tradeoff between quality and number of channels. But again this is just something you want, not what anyone has to do. As someone who has suffered with TA issues for 7 years now, the last thing I want is more SDV, BTW.


It's what anyone who knows what's going on would want. Comcast's video service is horrible. It could not survive on it's own competing against DirecTV, except for people who are in apartments and condos and can't put a dish up. The problem is, Comcast has taken their broadband monopoly, invested heavily in broadband, and left video for dead, meanwhile force bundling video and forcing it down people's throats. If Comcast had any widespread and competent competition, they would either change, or they would go out of business. They are a monopoly, and they act like one, and basically write off markets that have heavy competition from FIOS other other broadband providers, all the while milking their monopoly markets for as much as they are worth, instead of making a service that people actually WANT.

Just because YOUR provider can't figure out how to make a TA work properly doesn't mean that they can't work anywhere. If the provider WANTS to invest in making them work properly, they can. And in Comcast's case, they could work with TiVo to do a software update to handle SDV over IP, much like they handle VOD now. That way, they could do a crappy job with their TAs, and virtually no one would care, as right now TiVo is basically the only CableCard device out there.


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## HarperVision

Bigg said:


> ......That's true, but that irrelevant. What Comcast is doing here is messing with the resolution of the original signal, and in the process of converting, they effectively have provided a 720i channel, which is half HD...........


I don't believe that's the case. The first thing a video processor does is deinterlace the signal if it's interlaced, as 1080i is. So first it takes the signal to 1080p (hopefully using a quality deinterlacing process!), then it down converts it to 720p, throwing away pixels that can be interpolated by adjoining pixels, as needed. This is where the TRUE loss of resolution happens, more so than compression as I understand it.


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## series5orpremier

I just know two years ago with Charter I could fit four and a half or five hours of "HD" programming on 1% of my Roamio's 3TB drive. Today I can fit seven and a half or eight hours of "HD" on 1% of the drive. I just started a 30 day free trial with Netflix and their 1080 picture quality is noticeably better than Charter's.


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## JoeKustra

series5orpremier said:


> I just know two years ago with Charter I could fit four and a half or five hours of "HD" programming on 1% of my Roamio's 3TB drive. Today I can fit seven and a half or eight hours of "HD" on 1% of the drive. I just started a 30 day free trial with Netflix and their 1080 picture quality is noticeably better than Charter's.


If you select a program, hit Info, then scroll to the end you can see the file's size. For my feed, a 1 hour HD NBC or CBS program needs between 7GB and 8GB.

edit: Let me clarify: I don't have Comcast or h.264 just old MPEG2 1080i DD5.1.


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## series5orpremier

OTA I'm getting about 5GB/hour on CBS and NBC, and about 3.75GB/hour on Charter basic and premium channels.


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## TonyD79

Rob Helmerichs said:


> But first, take down a few other random trees in the neighborhood (and a couple more after). That way, it won't be you trying to get a better line-of-sight for your satellite, it'll just be the Midnight Tree Bandit striking again.


Thanks to both of you for suggestions. Not anything I didn't think of.

It is a common tree in a condo development. I was able to trim it for almost 20 years but the top got out of hand and it is out of my reach.

Last spring, they did a culling of trees and I hoped mine would go. I even marked it with the same paint they marked the trees to be cut with but they didn't fall for it.

My biggest issues, besides PQ, are that directv had better sports coverage in HD. Every baseball game. Every football game. Every alternate college sports channel (neither has pac 12). But streaming of EI and Sunday Ticket almost makes up for it.

The plus for fios is commercial skip in TiVo. Makes me feel overall okay.


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## thyname

TonyD79 said:


> Thanks to both of you for suggestions. Not anything I didn't think of.
> 
> It is a common tree in a condo development. I was able to trim it for almost 20 years but the top got out of hand and it is out of my reach.
> 
> Last spring, they did a culling of trees and I hoped mine would go. I even marked it with the same paint they marked the trees to be cut with but they didn't fall for it.
> 
> My biggest issues, besides PQ, are that directv had better sports coverage in HD. Every baseball game. Every football game. Every alternate college sports channel (neither has pac 12). But streaming of EI and Sunday Ticket almost makes up for it.
> 
> The plus for fios is commercial skip in TiVo. Makes me feel overall okay.


Copper nails are you answer:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5507466_kill-trees-copper-nails.html

Hopefully there are no hard core environmentalists in these forums.

In my opinion, TiVo is the best DVR out there, interface, and features. It is also better than current crop of Directv Genie, even though there are rumors that Directv is working on new DVR that will include new UI in addition to 4K capability out of the DVR box. I should know, as I have both Directv and TiVo (with FIOS).

For sure picture quality is better with DTV, as well as access to all sporting events you already mentioned.

I am actually paying less now with Directv and FIOS Triple Play vs what I was paying before (Directv and Cox Internet and Cox phone). However, when my contract with Directv will expire on May 2017, I will probably reevaluate to see if I can dump Directv altogether. It is going to be a tough decision! Who know what will happen until then. I have not implemented current 4K solution with Directv although I have a 4K tv, but maybe if they come up with a new implementation.... I am due for a free equipment upgrade on December 2016.


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## HarperVision

TonyD79 said:


> ......Last spring, they did a culling of trees and I hoped mine would go. I even marked it with the same paint they marked the trees to be cut with but they didn't fall for it. ........





thyname said:


> Copper nails are you answer: http://www.ehow.com/how_5507466_kill-trees-copper-nails.html Hopefully there are no hard core environmentalists in these forums. ...........


OK, now I have THREE rabble rousers in this thread to report to their respective authorities!!! Comcast, TonyD and thyname!


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## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> Comcast ... They need to upgrade their systems uniformly to 860mhz. They should have adopted SDV years ago. That way they could offer 200 really good looking HDs and gigabit internet, not gigabit internet and 120 crappy looking HDs.


I remember reading an article at an industry website some time ago saying that, after trying SDV on a limited basis in a few test markets, Comcast decided against moving forward with it. The impression I got was that Comcast felt like SDV was a band-aid technology whose time was passing, probably because they anticipated soon transitioning over from QAM to IP or to a hybrid QAM/IP system. If moving to IP alleviates the bandwidth constraint problems that SDV aims to solve and also appears to be where Comcast is ultimately moving anyway for other reasons too, I guess Comcast didn't think it was worth investing in SDV to only use it for two or three years. I would bet that Comcast is already using IP for cloud DVR and on-demand viewing for X1 users.


----------



## Dan203

HarperVision said:


> Not true at all. 1080i has the exact same spatial resolution as 1080p, and as you infer, with a good and properly operating de-interlacer 1080i would be and look equivilent to 1080p.
> 
> 720p does not and will not have the same resolution (pixel density) as 1080i/p.[/B]


Just to be clear 1080i has the same resolution as 1080p/30. The reason they use interlacing, at 60 fields per second, rather then progressive, at 30 frames per second, is because motion looks smoother to the user if you only have enough bandwidth to transmit 30fps. A real 1080p/60 stream would require almost double the bitrate.

The reason they're likely down sampling to 720p is because progressive encoding is more efficient and as such allows them to reduce the bitrate more. 720p/60 has about 89% of the pixels of a 1080i stream so, by itself, converting to 720 doesn't save a lot of bandwidth. However because progressive is more efficient to encode they can lower the bitrate more then just 11% and it still looks OK.


----------



## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> I don't believe that's the case. The first thing a video processor does is deinterlace the signal if it's interlaced, as 1080i is. So first it takes the signal to 1080p (hopefully using a quality deinterlacing process!), then it down converts it to 720p, throwing away pixels that can be interpolated by adjoining pixels, as needed. This is where the TRUE loss of resolution happens, more so than compression as I understand it.


You end up with a bottleneck in the middle, and you effectively end up with 720i resolution. Now the de-interlacer they are using might be WAY better than what individuals have, so the quality loss might be as bad, but it's still, in theory, bad. That's why if you have a fixed 1080i or 720p output on a box it messes things up, as you effectively end up with 720i if you have a channel on the other resolution from what the box is putting out. Native or 1080p solves this, except with 4k tvs, where you need native so that 720p can effectively be tripled in each direction.



NashGuy said:


> I remember reading an article at an industry website some time ago saying that, after trying SDV on a limited basis in a few test markets, Comcast decided against moving forward with it. The impression I got was that Comcast felt like SDV was a band-aid technology whose time was passing, probably because they anticipated soon transitioning over from QAM to IP or to a hybrid QAM/IP system. If moving to IP alleviates the bandwidth constraint problems that SDV aims to solve and also appears to be where Comcast is ultimately moving anyway for other reasons too, I guess Comcast didn't think it was worth investing in SDV to only use it for two or three years. I would bet that Comcast is already using IP for cloud DVR and on-demand viewing for X1 users.


They kind of missed the boat on it, and now they are in a bad position in terms of bandwidth. They should have done it years ago, and they would be in a better position today. They want to go to IP, but that's going to take years to see it on a widespread basis. In the meantime, they could do better with MPEG-4 on 860mhz plants, but instead they use MPEG-4 to compress the living snot out of signals, and they have plants that aren't rebuilt.

I believe they are using IP on X1 already, at least in rebuild markets where they have 16+ DOCSIS QAMs as the streams look different, and they look like they are H.264 encoded versus MPEG-2 for TiVos and legacy boxes that are using QAM.


----------



## HarperVision

NashGuy said:


> I remember reading an article at an industry website some time ago saying that, after trying SDV on a limited basis in a few test markets, Comcast decided against moving forward with it. The impression I got was that Comcast felt like SDV was a band-aid technology whose time was passing, probably because they anticipated soon transitioning over from QAM to IP or to a hybrid QAM/IP system. If moving to IP alleviates the bandwidth constraint problems that SDV aims to solve and also appears to be where Comcast is ultimately moving anyway for other reasons too, I guess Comcast didn't think it was worth investing in SDV to only use it for two or three years. I would bet that Comcast is already using IP for cloud DVR and on-demand viewing for X1 users.


Yes, I recall mentioning in a thread a while ago that I thought I heard Comcast used SDV/TAs somewhere. I thought it was maybe a small MSO that they bought up that was using them, but then someone corrected me and said that it was a test in NJ somewhere, and as you said they decided against it.



Dan203 said:


> Just to be clear 1080i has the same resolution as 1080p/30. The reason they use interlacing, at 60 fields per second, rather then progressive, at 30 frames per second, is because motion looks smoother to the user if you only have enough bandwidth to transmit 30fps. A real 1080p/60 stream would require almost double the bitrate......


Just to be clearer, 1920x1080 is the resolution. 30/60/120/240/et al are frame rates and/or refresh rates. Not the same thing. 1920x1080 is how many pixels are in that frame which constitutes "resolution". Frame rate and refresh rate tells you how many times that 1920x1080 frame is flashed on the screen. The same holds true for 1280x720, 720x480, 640x480, etc.



Dan203 said:


> The reason they're likely down sampling to 720p is because progressive encoding is more efficient and as such allows them to reduce the bitrate more. 720p/60 has about 89% of the pixels of a 1080i stream so, by itself, converting to 720 doesn't save a lot of bandwidth. However because progressive is more efficient to encode they can lower the bitrate more then just 11% and it still looks OK.


Yes, that makes sense, thanks Dan! I think that's how the formula can work, because if you take that 11% and times it by the 9 720p channels you get in place of the 8 1080i channels, that works out to 99% of the QAM, so that confirms my numbers! 



Bigg said:


> You end up with a bottleneck in the middle, and you effectively end up with 720i resolution. Now the de-interlacer they are using might be WAY better than what individuals have, so the quality loss might be as bad, but it's still, in theory, bad. That's why if you have a fixed 1080i or 720p output on a box it messes things up, as you effectively end up with 720i if you have a channel on the other resolution from what the box is putting out..........


I don't understand what you're saying at all? 

If the deinterlacer takes the original 1080i signal and deinterlaces it to 1080p, then down converts it to 720p which is then compressed and sent on its merry way through the cable system to your box, which then sees 720p as well so it outputs 720p if you're on native, or converts it to 1080p or 2160p if your box (MSO STB, TiVo, etc.) is set to scale all incoming to one of those resolutions. I am not sure where you're getting "720i" from?


----------



## Dan203

HarperVision said:


> Just to be clearer, 1920x1080 is the resolution. 30/60/120/240/et al are frame rates and/or refresh rates. Not the same thing. 1920x1080 is how many pixels are in that frame which constitutes "resolution". Frame rate and refresh rate tells you how many times that 1920x1080 frame is flashed on the screen. The same holds true for 1280x720, 720x480, 640x480, etc.


Not quite. A "frame" in an interlaced video only contains every other vertical line, so technically a 1080i frame is only 1920x540. Interlacing works by playing alternating versions of these half frames and double the rate as they would if they were progressive frames. Each "frame" is captured at a different moment in time (or extracted from a proressive frame) so that you get essentially the same motion perception as a 60fps video but at half the resolution, and as such half the bitrate.

I know you know how it works so I'm not trying to talk down to you. Just trying to make it clear to those who are not in the industry and might not understand how this all works.


----------



## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> Not quite. A "frame" in an interlaced video only contains every other *vertical line*, so technically a 1080i frame is only 1920x540. Interlacing works by playing alternating versions of these half frames and double the rate as they would if they were progressive frames. Each "frame" is captured at a different moment in time (or extracted from a proressive frame) so that you get essentially the same motion perception as a 60fps video but at half the resolution, and as such half the bitrate.
> 
> I know you know how it works so I'm not trying to talk down to you. Just trying to make it clear to those who are not in the industry and might not understand how this all works.


I get that, and I accounted for that when I made my calculations. I used 1920x1080x30 to get to my pixel/second number. I could have just as easily used 1920x540x60 to get the same number, but I didn't want to confuse anyone either!  But if you ask a true video engineer he will stand by the fact that the "resolution" of 1080i is 1920x1080, as the engineers that came up with interlacing were counting on the end device deinterlacing that signal properly, just as they do now with compression techniques hoping the end device interpolates the compressed pixels properly to remake the original picture image as close as possible to the original source video.

You're awesome Dan, I'm so glad you came into this discussion because you're such an expert on digital video files, conversions, compression, etc. That's not really my background though. I'm an old baseband TV, radio and RF guy, with some ISR thrown in.  :up:

P.S. - This is a GREAT article (though slightly dated) that explains it very well for anyone interested. It really teaches how 1080i and 1080p are actually the same resolution and explains deinterlacing, motion and frame rate well.

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/1080i-and-1080p-are-the-same-resolution/ 


> *1080i and 1080p are the same resolution*
> _The 1080i your cable box sends out is the same number of pixels that your 1080p TV has._
> 
> There still seems to be some confusion about the difference between 1080i and 1080p. Both are 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution. Both have 2,073,600 pixels......
> 
> True, *1080i and 1080p aren't the same thing, but they are the same resolution.* Let the argument commence.......
> 
> With modern video processing, the frame rate doesn't matter much.....
> 
> When your TV is sent a 1080i signal, however, a different process occurs: deinterlacing. This is when the TV combines the two fields into frames. If it's done right, the TV repeats each full frame to create 60 "fps" from the original 30.
> 
> *If it's done wrong,* the TV instead takes each field, and just doubles the information. So *you're actually getting 1,920x540p*. Many early 1080p HDTVs did this, but pretty much no modern one does........
> 
> Now this is where an argument about 1080p -- _real 1080p_ -- becomes worthwhile. A full 60-frame-per-second 1080p video would be awesome. *Not because it's a higher resolution than 1080i, but because it's a higher frame rate (and not interlaced),* so motion will be more detailed.......
> 
> Bottom line
> While 1080i and 1080p have the same number of pixels, they do have different frame rates (and one is interlaced)......
> 
> In other words, you're not really missing out on anything with 1080i.


And I think you meant.....*"horizontal line"*, right?


----------



## Dan203

Actually interlacing was originally invented becuase the first CRTs couldn't refresh the screen fast enough to do a full update 60 time per second. So they ran tests on progressive content at 30fps and interlaced at 60 and decided that the perceived motion of interlaced was better then the increased resolution of proressive. It persisted long after CRT technology caught up because the rest of the broadcasting industry was ingrained with interlaced equipment.*

Then when digital HD came around they decided to use 1080i because with the MPEG-2 codec 1080p/60 required too much bandwidth to be practical and the H.264 codec was brand new and required too much processing power encode/decode. 

On the plus side H.265 doesn't include an interlaced compression spec, so 4k should be the end of interlaced video forever. 

* Bonus fact. Before color broadcast TV was actually 30fps (60 fields) but because of the way they wedged the color information into the signal they had to reduce that to 29.97fps, which is why we have such an odd frame rate standards that persists even today with HD. Again H.265 and 4K do away with this oddity and revert back to full 60fps. (or 24fps for film, rather then 23.976)


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## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> Actually interlacing was originally invented becuase the first CRTs couldn't refresh the screen fast enough to do a full update 60 time per second. So they ran tests on progressive content at 30fps and interlaced at 60 and decided that the perceived motion of interlaced was better then the increased resolution of proressive. It persisted long after CRT technology caught up because the rest of the broadcasting industry was ingrained with interlaced equipment.*
> 
> Then when digital HD came around they decided to use 1080i because with the MPEG-2 codec 1080p/60 required too much bandwidth to be practical and the H.264 codec was brand new and required too much processing power encode/decode.
> 
> On the plus side H.265 doesn't include an interlaced compression spec, so 4k should be the end of interlaced video forever.
> 
> * Bonus fact. Before color broadcast TV was actually 30fps (60 fields) but because of the way they wedged the color information into the signal they had to reduce that to 29.97fps, which is why we have such an odd frame rate standards that persists even today with HD. Again H.265 and 4K do away with this oddity and revert back to full 60fps. (or 24fps for film, rather then 23.976)


Yep.....see my additions to my post, above!


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## Dan203

There is a reason ESPN uses 720p instead of 1080i. For videos that have a lot of wide angle panning interlacing looks terrible. For football it's really obvious so ESPN decided that taking a hit on resolution is better then the degradation you get from interlacing. 

All that being said that's not really on topic here. What Comcast is doing is taking a 1080i source, deinterlacing it, down sampling it, frame doubling it, and then encoding it as H.264 in an effort to save bandwidth. Although as a user you'd probably appreciate that they go through all this effort rather then just dumping the bitrate of the 1080i stream. That would likely look even worse then the slight loss of resolution you're getting from their added steps.


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## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> There is a reason ESPN uses 720p instead of 1080i. For videos that have a lot of wide angle panning interlacing looks terrible. For football it's really obvious so ESPN decided that taking a hit on resolution is better then the degradation you get from interlacing. All that being said that's not really on topic here. What Comcast is doing is taking a 1080i source, deinterlacing it, down sampling it, frame doubling it, and then encoding it as H.264 in an effort to save bandwidth. Although as a user you'd probably appreciate that they go through all this effort rather then just dumping the bitrate of the 1080i stream. That would likely look even worse then the slight loss of resolution you're getting from their added steps.


Exactly! :up:


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## aaronwt

Dan203 said:


> There is a reason ESPN uses 720p instead of 1080i. For videos that have a lot of wide angle panning interlacing looks terrible. For football it's really obvious so ESPN decided that taking a hit on resolution is better then the degradation you get from interlacing.
> .........


I'll take football on CBS or NBC any day over ESPN because there is more detail on those broadcasts than what ESPN shows.


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## HarperVision

aaronwt said:


> I'll take football on CBS or NBC any day over ESPN because there is more detail on those broadcasts than what ESPN shows.


Yeah, that's because they've pretty much perfected the deinterlacing process now, so 1080i is essentially equivalent to 1080p now, as opposed to ESPN still being only 720p. (resolution wise and for broadcast TV)


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## TonyD79

HarperVision said:


> OK, now I have THREE rabble rousers in this thread to report to their respective authorities!!! Comcast, TonyD and thyname!


Hey now. I only marked the tree with orange paint.


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## Dan203

HarperVision said:


> Yeah, that's because they've pretty much perfected the deinterlacing process now, so 1080i is essentially equivalent to 1080p now, as opposed to ESPN still being only 720p. (resolution wise and for broadcast TV)


I went to a tech group a couple years ago and the speaker was some higher up at ESPN. He said they actually record all the NFL games at 1080p and down sample. So they could switch to 1080p if they wanted. With cable cos switching to H.264 they could probably do it if they wanted.


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## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> I went to a tech group a couple years ago and the speaker was some higher up at ESPN. He said they actually record all the NFL games at 1080p and down sample. So they could switch to 1080p if they wanted. With cable cos switching to H.264 they could probably do it if they wanted.


Yeah I've heard that they did the 1080p upgrade with that huge studio renovation and upgrades they did a couple years ago. That would be so cool if they did 1080p h.264, but I think they'll actually just leap to 4K/UHD at this point.


----------



## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> If the deinterlacer takes the original 1080i signal and deinterlaces it to 1080p, then down converts it to 720p which is then compressed and sent on its merry way through the cable system to your box, which then sees 720p as well so it outputs 720p if you're on native, or converts it to 1080p or 2160p if your box (MSO STB, TiVo, etc.) is set to scale all incoming to one of those resolutions. I am not sure where you're getting "720i" from?


You end up with a bottleneck in the signal processing, so you end up with a lower effective quality.



Dan203 said:


> There is a reason ESPN uses 720p instead of 1080i. For videos that have a lot of wide angle panning interlacing looks terrible. For football it's really obvious so ESPN decided that taking a hit on resolution is better then the degradation you get from interlacing.


Unfortunately, they are doing this for people with crappy de-interlacers. I've watched 720p and 1080i basketball on my setup with my DVDO EDGE, and the 1080i just looks so much better. The 720p looks soft and lacks the detail that the 1080i has. Unfortunately, many people have cheap TVs with poor quality de-interlacers, so they broadcast at 720p for them, even though for people with good equipment 1080i is just plain better. Period.



> All that being said that's not really on topic here. What Comcast is doing is taking a 1080i source, deinterlacing it, down sampling it, frame doubling it, and then encoding it as H.264 in an effort to save bandwidth. Although as a user you'd probably appreciate that they go through all this effort rather then just dumping the bitrate of the 1080i stream. That would likely look even worse then the slight loss of resolution you're getting from their added steps.


It's not a *slight* loss of resolution. It's half the resolution, and 720p looks a lot worse than 1080i. The bottom line is that Comcast doesn't care about their TV product. They know that they have a broadband monopoly in many areas, and they will either force you into a bundle and give you cheap, crappy TV, or charge you through the nose for internet only, so either way, they win. If you want good picture quality, get DirecTV, and pay through the nose for it after Comcast's exorbitant prices for internet-only.



HarperVision said:


> Yeah I've heard that they did the 1080p upgrade with that huge studio renovation and upgrades they did a couple years ago. That would be so cool if they did 1080p h.264, but I think they'll actually just leap to 4K/UHD at this point.


I'm thinking we'll see an ESPN 4k channel soon.


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## Dan203

Bigg said:


> It's not a *slight* loss of resolution. It's half the resolution


Technically it's 2/3, but I get your point. I'm not a sports guy so I don't really pay attention to that. For me when watching regular TV programs I don't really notice a difference between 720p and 1080i.


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## lew

JMO, in a perfect world the cable company should be transmitting the program as encoded by the supplier. No change in bitrate and no change in resolution. Aren't the major cable channels available to the cable companies as both mpeg2 and mp4?

I understand we don't live in a perfect world. Dan seems to make a case that converting to 720p may offer the best picture, given the size Comcast is looking for. 

Most of the posters in this thread seem to agree, the average customer won't notice the difference.

I bet some customers like the immediate increase in recording capacity of their DVRs. Is it doubled?


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## Dan203

The national feeds sent to the local affiliates have mostly converted to H.264, but I believe that the cable companies are required to pick up the local feeds from the local affiliates, which have likely be converted to MPEG-2 at that point. (they also have the local ads inserted)


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## moyekj

Dan203 said:


> Technically it's 2/3, but I get your point. I'm not a sports guy so I don't really pay attention to that. For me when watching regular TV programs I don't really notice a difference between 720p and 1080i.


 Dan, can you explain the math for that?

So the resolution ratio is not 1280x720 / 1920x1080 = 0.4444.... ? (I guess interlacing needs to be factored in?)


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## Dan203

moyekj said:


> Dan, can you explain the math for that?
> 
> So the resolution ratio is not 1280x720 / 1920x1080 = 0.4444.... ? (I guess interlacing needs to be factored in?)


1280 / 1920 = .6666
720 / 1080 = .6666

That's how I was figuring it. I guess if you do total pixels it is .4444


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## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> Technically it's 2/3, but I get your point. I'm not a sports guy so I don't really pay attention to that. For me when watching regular TV programs I don't really notice a difference between 720p and 1080i.


Actually, 720p has 44% of the resolution of 1080p. I can tell in sports and nature programming and the like. A sitcom or news program could be a good quality 480i feed and I'd notice but not care. It really depends on the content. OITNB streams at 2160p, but IMO has little to no benefit over 1080p, while Narcos looks spectacular because of 2160p.


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## jonw747

If they're going to further compress the video, reducing the resolution can help get a better result with the lower bit rate.

Bigger/sharper pixels are preferable to macro-blocking.

The issue is really the additional compression they're applying to squeeze channels in.


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## JTYoung1

Bigg said:


> Actually, 720p has 44% of the resolution of 1080p. I can tell in sports and nature programming and the like. A sitcom or news program could be a good quality 480i feed and I'd notice but not care. It really depends on the content. OITNB streams at 2160p, but IMO has little to no benefit over 1080p, while Narcos looks spectacular because of 2160p.


I know ESPN and ABC broadcast in 720p and I believe that one of the other major networks broadcasts in 720p (Fox IIRC). Broadcast TV is either 1080i or 720p, they do not broadcast in 1080p. You only get half the lines (540)every 60th of a second in 1080i while you get a complete image every 60th of a second in 720p. You get a smoother image for quick moving sporting events with 720p

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk


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## Dan203

If you're comparing pixels per second then 720p has .888 the pixels of 1080i. The only reason 720p channels typically have a much lower bitrate then 11% difference is because progressive video is much easier to compress.


----------



## jonw747

Dan203 said:


> If you're comparing pixels per second then 720p has .888 the pixels of 1080i. The only reason 720p channels typically have a much lower bitrate then 11% difference is because progressive video is much easier to compress.


Ahh, except the source material is not 60fps, so when they double the frames to convert it to 720p60, that doubling should come at almost no cost (unless for some reason they decided to motion interpolate).


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## Dan203

Yeah when they deinterlace the 1080i content they get 1080p/30, so they simply frame double to get 720p/60. There is an encoding flag you can use to set a repeat count on a frame, so you don't actually need to encode the duplicated frames at all. So they're essentially encoding 720p/30 which would allow them to lower the bitrate significantly. I'd say that 4Mbps might be reasonable for such a stream in H.264.

Edit: At 4.2Mbps they could get 9 HD channels per QAM. That's pretty significant considering that previously they could only get 3, or maybe 4 if they pushed it, MPEG-2 HD channels per QAM.


----------



## jonw747

Dan203 said:


> Yeah when they deinterlace the 1080i content they get 1080p/30, so they simply frame double to get 720p/60. There is an encoding flag you can use to set a repeat count on a frame, so you don't actually need to encode the duplicated frames at all. So they're essentially encoding 720p/30 which would allow them to lower the bitrate significantly. I'd say that 4Mbps might be reasonable for such a stream in H.264.
> 
> Edit: At 4.2Mbps they could get 9 HD channels per QAM. That's pretty significant considering that previously they could only get 3, or maybe 4 if they pushed it, MPEG-2 HD channels per QAM.


Something else that sucks is those of us with proper equipment can deinterlace a film broadcast in 1080i back in to 1080p24. Might as well just watch a movie on Netflix or Amazon if Comcast is going to down-convert like this.


----------



## Dan203

jonw747 said:


> Something else that sucks is those of us with proper equipment can deinterlace a film broadcast in 1080i back in to 1080p24. Might as well just watch a movie on Netflix or Amazon if Comcast is going to down-convert like this.


Have you had success with that? We have a customer that captures the national broadcast feeds using a big dish and even he has trouble with the cadence when trying to do a reverse telecine. After they've been processed by your local affiliate, and then again by your cable company, I can't imagine the cadence is correct enough to do a proper reverse telecine back to 1080p/24.


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## tomhorsley

Of course, the other thing cable companies do is insert local ads in the stream. I used to have a lot of trouble with ffmpeg detecting stream errors around the commercials and getting audio and video out of sync when I tried to edit streams to save them without commercials. So even if they just retransmit the raw feed, they would still screw around with it to do the commercial insertion.


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## Bigg

JTYoung1 said:


> I know ESPN and ABC broadcast in 720p and I believe that one of the other major networks broadcasts in 720p (Fox IIRC). Broadcast TV is either 1080i or 720p, they do not broadcast in 1080p.


Correct. I should have compared to 1080i. 1080i provides a much better looking picture than 720p.



tomhorsley said:


> Of course, the other thing cable companies do is insert local ads in the stream. I used to have a lot of trouble with ffmpeg detecting stream errors around the commercials and getting audio and video out of sync when I tried to edit streams to save them without commercials. So even if they just retransmit the raw feed, they would still screw around with it to do the commercial insertion.


I don't think Google Fiber does ad injection? The audio is always messed up on the Comcast ad injection around here.


----------



## keenanSR

Bigg said:


> Correct. I should have compared to 1080i. 1080i provides a much better looking picture than 720p.
> 
> I don't think Google Fiber does ad injection? The audio is always messed up on the Comcast ad injection around here.


Same here, it's annoying as hell when they do that, the return back to show will be missing a word or two as the audio stream resyncs and there's no way to recover it.


----------



## Bigg

keenanSR said:


> Same here, it's annoying as hell when they do that, the return back to show will be missing a word or two as the audio stream resyncs and there's no way to recover it.


Yeah, they need to get their ad injection technology to not suck. I feel like it's just cutting in after everything is encoded though. They could match the sound format, but I'm not sure that alone would fix the problem. I just find it annoying because my AVR often skips for for a bit, and with a video processor, AVR, TV, and TiVo, re-syncing the whole chain takes forever and a half.


----------



## JTYoung1

Bigg said:


> Correct. I should have compared to 1080i. 1080i provides a much better looking picture than 720p.
> 
> I don't think Google Fiber does ad injection? The audio is always messed up on the Comcast ad injection around here.


For standard TV shows I agree but sports like football the 720p many times appears to have a much smoother picture.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk


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## HarperVision

JTYoung1 said:


> For standard TV shows I agree but sports like football the 720p many times appears to have a much smoother picture. Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk


That really all depends on how well your deinterlacer performs. Many people, for good reasons, just set their STB/DVR to output one resolution (1080p?) so their picture doesn't take time to resync. The problem with this approach many times is that the STB usually has a cheap processing chip built in that doesn't deinterlace well, leaving things like combing, muted colors and poor motion.

Many nicer, higher end TVs, AVRs and your best option, an outboard scalar/processor, are MUCH better for this task and results in a 1080i to 1080p image that looks and acts like a native 1080p video.

In the old days what you're saying was pretty much the standard unless you dropped a few Benjamins on a scalar/processor like a Lumagen, Extron, DVDO, TAW Rock+, Faroudja, Key Digital, etc. A great place to read a lot of wonderful tests and reviews on home theater gear is www.hometheaterhifi.com from experts like Stacey Spears, Kris Deering, et al.


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## keenanSR

^ Indeed, I run the native outputs from both my DirecTV DVR and my TiVo through my Oppo 103D before it gets fed to my display. The Oppo does all the de-interlacing and upconverting and then feeds a 1080p signal to the display. I can also apply some Darbee video processing which can enhance the image as well. The Oppo has better video processing than any of the other devices in the display chain.


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## HarperVision

http://www.fiercecable.com/cable/co...jJnWGs9In0=&utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal



> *Comcast wants to be the Tesla of Cable*
> 
> While the conventional wisdom for the last several years has been that pay-TV companies are seeking to catch up with Netflix on delivering an overall customer experience, Comcast Cable CTO Sree Kotay says his company sees itself as offering a more luxury product compared to the SVOD platform.
> 
> "We kind of don't want to be Netflix. We don't want an $8 or $9 product," Kotay told Comcast's local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer.
> 
> "Not to knock them or anything, but we want to be a Tesla or a Mercedes and be a premium product," Kotay said. "The point of empowering our product and development teams is fundamentally not just about direction and ambition, it's also about tapping into their creativity, and that's how you make great products.".......


"Luxury Product"??? I can get 4K on Netflix and YOU can't even deliver the native resolution of your channels anymore!!!

Yep, "creativity" to jam more slop into the sow's trough! Going from native 1920x1080 to lower quality 1280x720 isn't my idea of "how you make great products"!



> ......."We can do more in software in 24 hours than our satellite competitors can do in two years," Werner said, speaking to the regular updates Comcast is able to push out to its X1 customers via its two-way, cloud-based platform".......


Yeah, like send a signal out to magically make your 1080i channels into lower resolution 720p so we can secretly screw our customers!


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## Dan203

Translation.... we've been gouging people for years and we don't want to have to lower our prices to compete with OTT services. 

If it comes down to it they'll lower the price of the TV part to compete and just raise the internet part to get their profits back. Unfortunately they have a monopoly over high speed internet in most regions.


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## jonw747

Dan203 said:


> Have you had success with that? We have a customer that captures the national broadcast feeds using a big dish and even he has trouble with the cadence when trying to do a reverse telecine. After they've been processed by your local affiliate, and then again by your cable company, I can't imagine the cadence is correct enough to do a proper reverse telecine back to 1080p/24.


I haven't noticed any problems on my TV when I let it deinterlace, but if there's something I can look for .. I'll look for it.

When re-encoding KMMTG captures from the TiVo with Handbrake, I have noticed that sometimes the reverse telecine works and sometimes it gets out of sync - but it's painfully obvious when this happens because single stepped video ends up skipping backwards. I've gone to previewing all my recordings because the issue can pop-up on an episode to episode basis. I've also switched to ad-cutting after encoding because this seems to make a difference as well. I've never seen anything like that on my TV.


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## Dan203

I was referring to reverse telecine. The deinterlace on your TV works differently and doesn't really rely on the cadence of the interlacing. Reverse telecine is a way of converting movies and other film content, that started as 24fps progressive and were converted to 29.97fps interlaced for TV, back to their original 24fps progressive format. To do that the interlaced frames have to be in a specific order and have a specific pattern. (i.e. 3:2 pull down) When they splice in commercials that usually messes that up that order/pattern and makes doing a reverse telecine impossible.


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## HarperVision

I'm bringing this over from another thread....just in case, but HERE is Comcast's BS answer and in my belief should cause total outrage among its so called "customers"!



tivoyahoo said:


> found the xfinity thread harper started:
> http://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Xfinit...-being-changed-to-720p60-channels/m-p/2778182
> 
> is there another thread link too? Harper, are you going to give your response some build up with a spoiler tag? the stage is yours. And speaking of building up, I'm sensing some volcanic activity in the islands that might erupt





tivoyahoo said:


> ok, you beat me to the submit message. but how long before a new thread start or follow up on the [email protected] vs. [email protected] in the place of the 720p vs. 1080i question?


Here is what I replied over there. I'm mainly putting it here in case they delete it over there, which I'm sure they will!



> *ComcastTeds Said:*
> "Apologies for the delay in responding. I was out of the office for a few days and just returned today.
> 
> Some of your HD Channels have transitioned from 1080i to 720p60. As part of our ongoing work to improve and modernize the way we deliver HD channels, we are transitioning all of our HD streams to progressive format. We are making this change in conjunction with the transition to MPEG-4. This means that some channels that were delivered in 1080i will now be delivered in 720p60.
> 
> The progressive format offers a number of advantages, and is an important component of the transition to IP video delivery.
> 
> In addition, the transition to progressive format allows us to offer a uniform HD experience across all devices, apps and screens, ensuring a consistently excellent experience.
> 
> The interlaced format reduces the effective resolution of 1080i significantly. Most video delivery is moving toward progressive formats. Many leading HD channels already deliver video in 720p60, and the progressive format renders motion more effectively. Progressive formats are necessary for advanced IP video delivery.
> 
> Based on extensive testing and research, were confident the combination of MPEG-4 encoding and the progressive format will allow us to deliver superior video performance to our customers."





> *HarperVision Said:*
> Seriously??? You and I both know that's total marketing speak and not true! I certainly hope the channel owners that you're destroying the channel resolutions of know about this! I have two immediate family members that have Comcast and I am telling you NOW that I am going to be helping them change over to FiOS in one instance and DirecTV in the other (FiOS not available there). This is the last time I or anyone I can influence will be a Comcast customer if this so called "upgrade" isn't reversed! I hope and pray others follow my lead and someone in the press gets hold of this and releases it so your unwitting "customers" know what is REALLY happening and what Comcast REALLY cares about....money! So much for integrity.
> 
> (I'm sure you'll delete this thread or at least my posts to cover up everything, right? If so, I hope you sleep well at night.)


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## Dan203

The "IP delivery" part is probably why they're doing this. Most stick devices (i.e. Roku, FireTV, etc...) as well as most portable devices (i.e. phones and tablets) do not support interlaced video. So if the plan is to ultimately transition to an IP based service, like SlingTV or Vue, then they have to go progressive. Now why they're going for 720p rather then 1080p I'm not sure. Probably to increase compression and reduce the stream sizes.


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## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> The "IP delivery" part is probably why they're doing this. Most stick devices (i.e. Roku, FireTV, etc...) as well as most portable devices (i.e. phones and tablets) do not support interlaced video. So if the plan is to ultimately transition to an IP based service, like SlingTV or Vue, then they have to go progressive. *Now why they're going for 720p rather then 1080p I'm not sure.* Probably to increase compression and reduce the stream sizes.


I've said why....."to cram more crap up the proverbial straw" so they can make more $$$$$ with total disregard for quality and their paying customers!

That's why I laughed so hard when I read that Fierce Cable article about them wanting to "be like Tesla and Mercedes-Benz"! 

From what I hear, Google Fiber and Layer3TV *ARE* quality for real, unlike Comcrap who's all marketing and dollar driven as they smile to your face while reaching around and stealing your wallet while shoving a knife up your rear!


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## HarperVision

Oooooooo Look, I've earned badges over there on their "customer" forum.....Yippee and goody goody for me!!! Maybe now they think I'll shut up and be a good little boy and fall in line and eat their spoon fed garbage and like it......cuz I got BADGES......WoooHoooo!!! 



> Hi HarperVision,
> 
> You just earned a new badge!
> 
> 1st Accepted Solution
> 
> Great Job! Your reply has been accepted. Thank you for helping and Congrats on your 1st Solution.





> On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 11:33 AM, Community Mailer <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi HarperVision,
> 
> You just earned a new badge!
> 
> Conversation Starter
> 
> You have posted 5 replies to the community. Thank you for keeping the conversations going!
> 
> View it on your profile
> 
> Thanks for being a Comcast Help and Support Forums member.
> 
> Your Comcast Help and Support Forums Team
> 
> Comcast Help and Support Forums sent this message to .........


Badges?......We don't need no stinking badges!!!


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## HarperVision

Awesome reply Keenan, thanks! :up:



> *Re: 1080i channels are being changed to 720p channels
> Options
> ComcastTeds wrote:*
> Apologies for the delay in responding. I was out of the office last week on vaction and just returned today.
> 
> In regards to 720p delivery, some of your HD channels have transitioned from 1080i to 720p60. As part of our ongoing work to improve and modernize the way we deliver HD channels, we are transitioning all of our HD streams to progressive format. We are making this change in conjunction with the transition to MPEG-4. This means that some channels that were delivered in 1080i will now be delivered in 720p60.
> 
> The progressive format offers a number of advantages, and is an important component of the transition to IP video delivery.
> 
> In addition, the transition to progressive format allows us to offer a uniform HD experience across all devices, apps and screens, ensuring a consistently excellent experience.
> 
> The interlaced format reduces the effective resolution of 1080i significantly. Most video delivery is moving toward progressive formats. Many leading HD channels already deliver video in 720p60, and the progressive format renders motion more effectively.
> 
> Based on extensive testing and research, were confident the combination of MPEG-4 encoding and the progressive format will allow us to deliver superior video performance to our customers.





> *KeenanSR Said:*
> So in other words, it's more about Comcast saving money than it is about quality. I don't care how you spin it, down-rezzing a 1080i signal to 720p will end up with a reduction in the image quality.
> 
> And if this is the reason,
> 
> "The interlaced format reduces the effective resolution of 1080i significantly. Most video delivery is moving toward progressive formats. Many leading HD channels already deliver video in 720p60, and the progressive format renders motion more effectively. "
> 
> then send the 1080i signals out as 1080p, there, your motion problem is fixed. But wait, 1080i/1080p requires more bandwidth so now we're back to the real reason and it has nothing to do with quality, it's about Comcast saving money.
> 
> With all due respect, I don't think you know what you are talking about. Are you saying that that is the company line on this issue? That all 1080i channels will be quality-reduced to 720p? If so, that's shocking, especially when other providers are moving to 4K and here's Comcast turning the clock back to 2004, unbelievable.
> 
> Again, with all due respect, I would like to see an official statement from Comcast because what you're saying is not even technically correct.
> 
> (And yes, most providers are moving to a progressive video format, but it isn't 720p.)


How did you put him in quotes? I haven't figured out how over there yet. I know, I'm an idiot!


----------



## HarperVision

HarperVision said:


> Oooooooo Look, I've earned badges over there on their "customer" forum.....Yippee and goody goody for me!!! Maybe now they think I'll shut up and be a good little boy and fall in line and eat their spoon fed garbage and like it......cuz I got BADGES......WoooHoooo!!!
> 
> Badges?......We don't need no stinking badges!!!


OK, this is a badge I'll accept. Thanks again KeenanSR!



> Hello HarperVision,
> 
> KeenanSR thinks your post is awesome and just gave you kudos!
> 
> Subject	1080i channels are being changed to 720p60 channels
> Date:	07-26-2016 03:07 PM


----------



## keenanSR

HarperVision said:


> Awesome reply Keenan, thanks! :up:
> 
> How did you put him in quotes? I haven't figured out how over there yet. I know, I'm an idiot!


When you click on Reply in the post you want to respond to the reply box has a Quote button in the upper right, click that and your response/post will include the comments you are responding to.


----------



## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> That really all depends on how well your deinterlacer performs.





> Many nicer, higher end TVs, AVRs and your best option, an outboard scalar/processor, are MUCH better for this task and results in a 1080i to 1080p image that looks and acts like a native 1080p video.


BINGO! I like 1080i because I'm running it through a DVDO EDGE, which does a nice job de-interlacing, although my Samsung SUHDTV probably does just as good of a job.



HarperVision said:


> Yep, "creativity" to jam more slop into the sow's trough! Going from native 1920x1080 to lower quality 1280x720 isn't my idea of "how you make great products"!


LOL. It's pathetic.



HarperVision said:


> I'm bringing this over from another thread....just in case, but HERE is Comcast's BS answer and in my belief should cause total outrage among its so called "customers"!


WOW. That's incredible. That's the highest level of BS that I've seen in a long, long time.



> Here is what I replied over there. I'm mainly putting it here in case they delete it over there, which I'm sure they will!


You bring up a good point. Shouldn't the content providers start dictating picture quality? I know that HBO, ESPN, and a few others dictate their bitrate, even though most channels don't.



Dan203 said:


> The "IP delivery" part is probably why they're doing this. Most stick devices (i.e. Roku, FireTV, etc...) as well as most portable devices (i.e. phones and tablets) do not support interlaced video. So if the plan is to ultimately transition to an IP based service, like SlingTV or Vue, then they have to go progressive. Now why they're going for 720p rather then 1080p I'm not sure. Probably to increase compression and reduce the stream sizes.


That's a separate stream from what is delievered to the STBs. Yes, that's all delivered as 720p, but the STBs should still be getting 1080i, and they aren't. IP delivery will happen, but for STBs, they should be delivering 1080i over IP.


----------



## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> If it comes down to it they'll lower the price of the TV part to compete and just raise the internet part to get their profits back. Unfortunately they have a monopoly over high speed internet in most regions.


Yeah, that's the issue. They couldn't compete on their own merits, so they abuse their monopoly on broadband instead.


----------



## jonw747

Dan203 said:


> I was referring to reverse telecine. The deinterlace on your TV works differently and doesn't really rely on the cadence of the interlacing. Reverse telecine is a way of converting movies and other film content, that started as 24fps progressive and were converted to 29.97fps interlaced for TV, back to their original 24fps progressive format. To do that the interlaced frames have to be in a specific order and have a specific pattern. (i.e. 3:2 pull down) When they splice in commercials that usually messes that up that order/pattern and makes doing a reverse telecine impossible.


Yes, I'm aware. I'm using the --detelecine flag in Handbrake with my encodes, and my TV is configured to automatically detect it and undo it. Pioneer calls it their "PureCinema" option.

Like I said, Handbrake's --detelecine hasn't worked 100% of the time, but for even the worst shows/networks, it's working about 75% of the time (this is with Verizon FIOS). For the shows that have glitches, I go back and encode them with the "bob" deinterlacer at 30 fps. There's an extra repeated frame when I do that, but at least it doesn't get jumpy.

I've also been using Intel QuickSync which makes it less painful to re-encode. Handbrake has some fancier options for detecting interlacing, but it significantly slows down the encodes as QuickSync isn't doing it.

Now if you guys could figure out how to handle this all automatically with VideoRedo, I'd gladly do my encodes with that; but for now I need the flexibility Handbrake's command line provides.

Actually, I'd be content to encode the video and retain the interlacing, but QuickSync (at least on my CPU) doesn't support that.


----------



## jonw747

HarperVision said:


> I've said why....."to cram more crap up the proverbial straw" so they can make more $$$$$ with total disregard for quality and their paying customers!


I wonder if you could capture a picture that would demonstrate the difference? Same show in 720p via Comcast .vs. another provider's 1080i?

Showing that the video quality is affected could be far more effective than saying the video quality is affected.


----------



## Dan203

jonw747 said:


> Actually, I'd be content to encode the video and retain the interlacing, but QuickSync (at least on my CPU) doesn't support that.


Have you tried the QS encoder in VideoReDo? We support interlaced video with QS encoder.


----------



## HarperVision

jonw747 said:


> I wonder if you could capture a picture that would demonstrate the difference? Same show in 720p via Comcast .vs. another provider's 1080i? Showing that the video quality is affected could be far more effective than saying the video quality is affected.


That's a good thought, but the other MSO's 1080i could be compressed as hell and easily look worse than a good 720p encode. If you understand resolutions and with all things being equal, then you just know a good 1080i signal will look better than a good 720p signal due to more pixels being able to resolve more details in the image.

I remember watching Oceanic's NFL Network that's at 1080i, but they compressed it so bad and bit starved the video so much that when they'd show live games or highlights and the camera would pan across following players or the ball in the air, then the image would just fall apart into a million MPEG blocks and look absolutely horrible! I am pretty sure my PlayStation Vue 720p version of the channel that they're going to release soon will not do this and will look much better, but if they use 1080i with the proper encoding and compression ratio then it should naturally be even better.


----------



## HarperVision

OK, so apparently there's a fix for the buffer/record issue, but in another thread I posed this question and figured it'd be better served here to keep those threads on topic:



cherry ghost said:


> Restarting now ETA - fixed, 20.6.1a.RC7





whoareyou_1999 said:


> Chicago. Never signed up for any field trial or early release. I'm probably just lucky, getting it as part of the first series in the update's rollout. But so far so good.


OK, now what about the fact that so many of your native 1080i channels are now squashed and pixels thrown away in the conversion to 720p? Do they think everyone is just going to be a naive frog, swimming around in that Comcast pot while they slowly turn up the heat, while no one notices or cares?

Has anyone seen anything regarding this on other forums besides here and Comcast? AVS? I don't frequent there as much as I used to, maybe I'll go check. That has a much wider audience.


----------



## lew

HarperVision said:


> That's a good thought, but the other MSO's 1080i could be compressed as hell and easily look worse than a good 720p encode. If you understand resolutions and with all things being equal, then you just know a good 1080i signal will look better than a good 720p signal due to more pixels being able to resolve more details in the image.


Devil's advocate. Dan has told us a good 720p encode may offer better PQ then a very compressed 1080i encode. You're making the same point. Given the target file size Comcast is looking for encoding at 720p might be giving customers the best picture.

I suspect most customers won't notice a difference in PQ but will notice an increase in DVR recording capacity.

Will we be getting to the point where a 4K channel, with a possible upcharge, will be giving us quality not much better then what some of us are getting with 1080i. Will the 4k channel be for customers who care about PQ on their TV and the other channels be designed for customers who watch on a portable device or use something like a fire tiv? Avoiding cable box rental fees may come at the price of reduced PQ.

Some posters are speculating about possible increases in internet pricing if a customer drops video. Cable companies have a lot of fixed costs and costs which really can't be allocated among cable, video and telephone. Capital costs, line maintenance, "customer service" etc. How much does the cable company costs decrease if you drop video? Basically the wholesale cost of your channels. A lot less then what you're probably paying. The price we pay for video includes the cost to provide the channels (fees paid to the provider) and the cost to distribute the programming through the system. Customers who drop video in favor of internet based videos will (probably) use more data. Expecting those customers to assume at least some of those costs via loss of bundle discounts seems reasonable to me.

That said I think the cable industry should be regulated. The companies are allowed to put their wires on utility poles on public and private property.


----------



## HarperVision

lew said:


> Devil's advocate. Dan has told us a good 720p encode may offer better PQ then a very compressed 1080i encode. *You're making the same point.*
> 
> *Given the target file size Comcast is looking for *encoding at 720p might be giving customers the best picture. * I suspect most customers won't notice a difference in PQ but will notice an increase in DVR recording capacity.*
> 
> Will we be getting to the point where a 4K channel, with a possible upcharge, will be giving us quality not much better then what some of us are getting with 1080i. Will the 4k channel be for customers who care about PQ on their TV and the other channels be designed for customers who watch on a portable device or use something like a fire tiv? Avoiding cable box rental fees may come at the price of reduced PQ. Some posters are speculating about possible increases in internet pricing if a customer drops video. Cable companies have a lot of fixed costs and costs which really can't be allocated among cable, video and telephone. Capital costs, line maintenance, "customer service" etc. How much does the cable company costs decrease if you drop video? Basically the wholesale cost of your channels. A lot less then what you're probably paying. The price we pay for video includes the cost to provide the channels (fees paid to the provider) and the cost to distribute the programming through the system. Customers who drop video in favor of internet based videos will (probably) use more data. Expecting those customers to assume at least some of those costs via loss of bundle discounts seems reasonable to me. That said I think the cable industry should be regulated. The companies are allowed to put their wires on utility poles on public and private property.


Yes, I never disagreed with Dan as I recall, but that's not the point. The point is the next thing you said about "target file size". That's where they get greedy! They want that target file size as small as possible with just enough quality that naive Joe Sixpack thinks "wow, that's HD!" Because it's cleaner than old analog SD and looks slightly better, even though it's now barely DVD quality and nowhere near true 1080i quality like we used to see when HD first came out on test channels like Discovery HD, PBS and HDNet. Plus, now they can jam another one of these crappy channels (in image quality and substance in most cable show instances!) onto each of those QAMs dedicated to tv channels, meaning they can go to more channel owners, buy more crap channels, and SELL more of their product, (i.e. - cable tv channels) to their unsuspecting, accepting and naive customers.

On your last point, if the target file size is the same, then how will your DVR recordings be any smaller???


----------



## Dan203

Bigg said:


> That's a separate stream from what is delievered to the STBs. Yes, that's all delivered as 720p, but the STBs should still be getting 1080i, and they aren't. IP delivery will happen, but for STBs, they should be delivering 1080i over IP.


Maybe the point here is that they don't want to maintain separate streams. Perhaps they want the same stream to be used for both STBs and IP delivery and they're trying to find a middle ground between quality, bandwidth and compatibility.

Do other IP services like SlingTV and PSVue offer 720p streams or 1080p streams?



HarperVision said:


> even though it's now barely DVD quality


To be fair DVDs are only 720x480 interlaced. Even if you reverse telecine they're still only 480p. So this is still nearly triple the resolution of a DVD.


----------



## keenanSR

Dan203 said:


> Maybe the point here is that they don't want to maintain separate streams. Perhaps they want the same stream to be used for both STBs and IP delivery and they're trying to find a middle ground between quality, bandwidth and compatibility.
> 
> Do other IP services like SlingTV and PSVue offer 720p streams or 1080p streams?
> 
> To be fair DVDs are only 720x480 interlaced. Even if you reverse telecine they're still only 480p. So this is still nearly triple the resolution of a DVD.


I'm pretty sure their ultimate goal is IP delivery of all video products so the reduction in bandwidth needs makes sense. Plus, they need to free up bandwidth to compete with increased speeds from competitor's Internet fiber products in some of their markets. Comcast was done building out local infrastructure years ago, squeezing down whatever they can to save bandwidth is crucial to their long-term goals.

I guess this means their VOD products will all be down-rezzed to 720p as well? Wonder what they're going to do with 4K video, down-rez it to 720p also?


----------



## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> Has anyone seen anything regarding this on other forums besides here and Comcast? AVS? I don't frequent there as much as I used to, maybe I'll go check. That has a much wider audience.


The DSLR forum has picked it up, but no the front page.



lew said:


> Devil's advocate. Dan has told us a good 720p encode may offer better PQ then a very compressed 1080i encode. You're making the same point. Given the target file size Comcast is looking for encoding at 720p might be giving customers the best picture.


That's the problem. When you want to get 9 or 10 HD's per QAM, you have to go to 720p, 1080i would be a mess. DirecTV is getting 6 ot 7 per TP, which are about equivalent in bandwidth to a QAM.



> Will we be getting to the point where a 4K channel, with a possible upcharge, will be giving us quality not much better then what some of us are getting with 1080i. Will the 4k channel be for customers who care about PQ on their TV and the other channels be designed for customers who watch on a portable device or use something like a fire tiv? Avoiding cable box rental fees may come at the price of reduced PQ.


The channels delivered to boxes are different than the TV everywhere channels. Hopefully 4k will be all-IP delivered so they can give it some bandwidth. Or everywho who cares about PQ will get DirecTV, and Comcast will just charge them an arm and a leg for internet, and make just as much money. That's probably the real plan.



> Some posters are speculating about possible increases in internet pricing if a customer drops video. Cable companies have a lot of fixed costs and costs which really can't be allocated among cable, video and telephone.


Their internet prices are already totally outrageous. It's basically $80/mo to get internet only from them, unless you want only 25mbps, and then it's still outrageous. Their margins are WAY higher on internet, as they have no programming costs, and they have their own backbones. The plant is mostly used for video still, and video programming costs are high. With the way that they coercively bundle TV with internet, they make about the same or slightly less if you get both, and they hope they make profits on extra box rentals, VOD, premium subscriptions, etc. It's also largely a ploy to drive up subscriber numbers for shareholders, which is sort of pathetic considering that they don't fundamentally make much money off of them.



HarperVision said:


> Plus, now they can jam another one of these crappy channels (in image quality and substance in most cable show instances!) onto each of those QAMs dedicated to tv channels, meaning they can go to more channel owners, buy more crap channels, and SELL more of their product, (i.e. - cable tv channels) to their unsuspecting, accepting and naive customers.


The real goal is to free up more bandwidth for internet, since it's way more profitable, and eventually move TV to IPTV, but in the mean time we suffer with awful picture quality.



Dan203 said:


> Maybe the point here is that they don't want to maintain separate streams. Perhaps they want the same stream to be used for both STBs and IP delivery and they're trying to find a middle ground between quality, bandwidth and compatibility.


They have to be encoded differently anyway. QAM channels are stat multiplexed for a cable QAM, whereas IP streaming is set for a target average bitrate and can use VBR and a little bit of buffer.



keenanSR said:


> I'm pretty sure their ultimate goal is IP delivery of all video products so the reduction in bandwidth needs makes sense. Plus, they need to free up bandwidth to compete with increased speeds from competitor's Internet fiber products in some of their markets. Comcast was done building out local infrastructure years ago, squeezing down whatever they can to save bandwidth is crucial to their long-term goals.


The issue is the transition period to IPTV. Once they are all-IP, in theory they should have more bandwidth than they know what to do with, and could crank the bitrates up.

The problem that they have is that some plants are 860mhz, some are less. I have no clue how they plan to transition 625mhz and 650mhz systems to IPTV given that they are absolutely packed to the gills right now. They need to finish their 860mhz rebuild program that they started and didn't finish. They are worse than AT&T with starting stuff and then just giving up when they're part of the way through.

They keep increasing internet speeds, although it's weird, since in most of their footprint they have little or no competition. They are pushing up speeds faster than FIOS, which has had the ability to do gigabit for several years. It seems they are obsessed with more and more bandwidth.



> I guess this means their VOD products will all be down-rezzed to 720p as well? Wonder what they're going to do with 4K video, down-rez it to 720p also?


4k will most likely be IP-based.


----------



## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> ......Do other IP services like SlingTV and PSVue offer 720p streams or 1080p streams?....


I am not sure about SlingTV, but Vue was said to have to be 720p, at least initially. I think they may have increased that lately with an upgrade because I have noticed much better resolution, motion and detail in the last month or so.



Dan203 said:


> .....To be fair DVDs are only 720x480 interlaced. Even if you reverse telecine they're still only 480p. So this is still nearly triple the resolution of a DVD.


That's why I said "barely even DVD *quality*" and not DVD *resolution*. I said it for the same reasons we are talking about a good 720p signal being able to look as good or better than a poor 1080i signal. I have seen on numerous occasions where a well authored DVD (Remember SuperBit?) looked better than some so called "HD Channels" on an HDTV that were heavily compressed and bit starved before transmission.


----------



## jonw747

Dan203 said:


> Have you tried the QS encoder in VideoReDo? We support interlaced video with QS encoder.


I'll pm you as this is getting off-topic.


----------



## lew

HarperVision said:


> On your last point, if the target file size is the same, then how will your DVR recordings be any smaller???


I'm comparing the old fashioned 1080i video against the new space saving 720p.

Did you write to the content owner? Do you subscribe to HD Net? Tweet mark Cuban.


----------



## keenanSR

lew said:


> I'm comparing the old fashioned 1080i video against the new space saving 720p.
> 
> Did you write to the content owner? Do you subscribe to HD Net? Tweet mark Cuban.


Cuban doesn't care, many years ago we discussed this with him over at AVS and the result was, he simply doesn't care. The fact is, most of these networks don't care as long as they're getting their subscription fees from the cableco.

So you've got networks who basically couldn't care less what the provider does with their signal and you have unknowledgeable viewers who don't understand that reducing a 1080i image to 720p results in a loss of image quality along with viewers who flat out don't care about image quality at all and you can see why Comcast will succeed in making this happen. There's just not enough of us to make the amount of noise needed to force Comcast to rethink their plan.

The only thing that will make a difference is if you drop Comcast as your video provider, and even then it would take several 100,000 subscribers to even register with Comcast.

The other option is the media if there was a site or someone with some visibility in the industry to bring the issue to a wider audience, that might work as well. I hate to say it, but an email to Phillip Swann would be a place to start as he has somewhat of a track record poking these providers in the side about issues like this.

Otherwise, say goodbye to quality video from Comcast.


----------



## HarperVision

keenanSR said:


> Cuban doesn't care, many years ago we discussed this with him over at AVS and the result was, he simply doesn't care. The fact is, most of these networks don't care as long as they're getting their subscription fees from the cableco. So you've got networks who basically couldn't care less what the provider does with their signal and you have unknowledgeable viewers who don't understand that reducing a 1080i image to 720p results in a loss of image quality along with viewers who flat out don't care about image quality at all and you can see why Comcast will succeed in making this happen. There's just not enough of us to make the amount of noise needed to force Comcast to rethink their plan. The only thing that will make a difference is if you drop Comcast as your video provider, and even then it would take several 100,000 subscribers to even register with Comcast. The other option is the media if there was a site or someone with some visibility in the industry to bring the issue to a wider audience, that might work as well. I hate to say it, but an email to Phillip Swann would be a place to start as he has somewhat of a track record poking these providers in the side about issues like this. Otherwise, say goodbye to quality video from Comcast.


Very well said, thanks Keenan! I did send a note to Dave Zatz on his "Contact Us" page, linking to this topic. Not sure if he'll take the ball and run with it though.

I haven't sent anything to anyone else as of yet, and as you say it's going to take an army and building up its initial patriots I think should start here, as it was first discovered by our fellow unwitting TiVo Roamio owners. I'll check into Mr Swann's site.


----------



## Dan203

Bigg said:


> They have to be encoded differently anyway. QAM channels are stat multiplexed for a cable QAM, whereas IP streaming is set for a target average bitrate and can use VBR and a little bit of buffer.


No they don't. You can use VBR encoding and just fill out the rest of the TS with null packets.


----------



## HarperVision

THIS is why Comcast so brazenly will do what they did.....because no one cares about anything enough anymore to put up a fight when they're being taken advantage of!

This is the complete answer I got from one publisher I gave this link and info to:


> Have written about the practice which is done by most if not all providers.


----------



## TonyD79

HarperVision said:


> THIS is why Comcast so brazenly will do what they did.....because no one cares about anything enough anymore to put up a fight when they're being taken advantage of! This is the complete answer I got from one publisher I gave this link and info to:


Most if not all? I don't know of another case that a provider actually changes the resolution. Bit rate and encoding but not resolution.


----------



## HarperVision

TonyD79 said:


> Most if not all? I don't know of another case that a provider actually changes the resolution. Bit rate and encoding but not resolution.


That was EXACTLY my reply back to him/her! I did say that I thought I read that DISH sort of down converts their 1920x1080i to something like 1360x1080i or some such though, but that's still not as bad as all the way down to 1280x720!

I also mentioned streaming services like SlingTV and Vue may have to do it initially so they can have the most reliable and steady stream until they perfect their technology for adaptive live TV streaming.


----------



## rainwater

TonyD79 said:


> I don't know of another case that a provider actually changes the resolution.


That is because it has generally been cheaper just to re-encode at a lower a quality. Personally, I don't know why switching from 1080i to 720p would get anyone more upset than some of the poor quality encoding I have seen some cable companies do for years. Both methods can be just as bad or as good as the cable company wants it to be.


----------



## TonyD79

rainwater said:


> That is because it has generally been cheaper just to re-encode at a lower a quality. Personally, I don't know why switching from 1080i to 720p would get anyone more upset than some of the poor quality encoding I have seen some cable companies do for years. Both methods can be just as bad or as good as the cable company wants it to be.


Oh yes. Because Comcast is delivering the best of 720p. They are doing all of the above plus transcoding for no real reason.


----------



## rainwater

TonyD79 said:


> Oh yes. Because Comcast is delivering the best of 720p. They are doing all of the above plus transcoding for no real reason.


Ha. Yeah, like I said, both methods can be just as bad. It is strange Comcast is going this route but it is hardly surprising. I've seen some TWC markets that have unwatchable HD channels so ruining the quality of HD channels is hardly anything new. Luckily I have Charter currently, and they hardly compress anything very much in my market.


----------



## HarperVision

rainwater said:


> That is because it has generally been cheaper just to re-encode at a lower a quality. Personally, I don't know why switching from 1080i to 720p would get anyone more upset than some of the poor quality encoding I have seen some cable companies do for years. Both methods can be just as bad or as good as the cable company wants it to be.





TonyD79 said:


> Oh yes. Because Comcast is delivering the best of 720p. They are doing all of the above plus transcoding for no real reason.


I hope that was meant to be with a  in there TonyD? :up:


----------



## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> No they don't. You can use VBR encoding and just fill out the rest of the TS with null packets.


They're not going to fill their QAMs with null packets. They're compressing so hard in order to get more channels in their QAMs. So they are going to be compressed separately.



HarperVision said:


> That was EXACTLY my reply back to him/her! I did say that I thought I read that DISH sort of down converts their 1920x1080i to something like 1360x1080i or some such though, but that's still not as bad as all the way down to 1280x720!
> 
> I also mentioned streaming services like SlingTV and Vue may have to do it initially so they can have the most reliable and steady stream until they perfect their technology for adaptive live TV streaming.


Yeah, I've heard 1280x1080i, but same idea. DirecTV was doing this when they had MPEG-2 HD on 110W. Then they got Ka band, and now they are the nationwide leader on picture quality (excepting C-band or Google Fiber).


----------



## aaronwt

TonyD79 said:


> Most if not all? I don't know of another case that a provider actually changes the resolution. Bit rate and encoding but not resolution.


I thought DirecTv did it with some channels in the old days? But the resolution would be lowered to something like 1440x1080 from 1920x1080. At least something like that if I remember correctly. I had DirecTV back in the early 2000's for their handful of HD channels.

EDIT: I guess I'm a little slow. I see Bigg posted about it.


----------



## Dan203

Bigg said:


> They're not going to fill their QAMs with null packets. They're compressing so hard in order to get more channels in their QAMs. So they are going to be compressed separately


My theory was that they weren't just compressing to fit more into the QAMs but also to make the encoding compatible with streaming devices as an IP/OTT service. The goal would be to find a balance between what's acceptable to their traditional TV subscribers and any potential IP/OTT subscribers.

I have no idea if that's true, but if it were then then they could use VBR encoding for their QAM channels by filling out the TS muxrate with null packets. There are a lot of stations in Europe that do this. They maintain a constant muxrate of 15Mbps but the actual stream can vary wildly and the video bitrate can be significantly lower then that. The rest is just filled with null packets.


----------



## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> My theory was that they weren't just compressing to fit more into the QAMs but also to make the encoding compatible with streaming devices as an IP/OTT service. The goal would be to find a balance between what's acceptable to their traditional TV subscribers and any potential IP/OTT subscribers.
> 
> I have no idea if that's true, but if it were then then they could use VBR encoding for their QAM channels by filling out the TS muxrate with null packets. There are a lot of stations in Europe that do this. They maintain a constant muxrate of 15Mbps but the actual stream can vary wildly and the video bitrate can be significantly lower then that. The rest is just filled with null packets.


I certainly hope you're not trying to justify what they're doing Dan? No matter how you justify or slice it, this tactic sux and is a slimey move on Comcast's part!


----------



## HarperVision

I saw this picture on a linked forum, describing what Charter's Rutledge is doing to TWC and BH customers and thought it appropriate here describing Slimey Comcrap:
https://www.dslreports.com/speak/slideshow/30918424?c=2280667&ret=64urlL3Nob3duZXdzL0NoYXJ0ZXItQ29uZmlybXMtVGltZS1XYXJuZXItQ2FibGUtQnJvYWRiYW5kLVVwZ3JhZGVzLUtpbGxlZC0xMzc2MjQ


----------



## HarperVision

I caught a whiff of Comcast's latest Comcastic ad campaign!


----------



## kokishin

HarperVision said:


> I caught a whiff of Comcast's latest Comcastic ad campaign!


I dare you to post this at http://forums.xfinity.com/t5/XfinityTV-and-Equipment/1080i-channels-are-being-changed-to-720p60-channels/m-p/2778182

BTW, it's funny.


----------



## Dan203

HarperVision said:


> I certainly hope you're not trying to justify what they're doing Dan? No matter how you justify or slice it, this tactic sux and is a slimey move on Comcast's part!


Not justify, just explain a potential motivation that makes logical sense. If their ultimate goal is to have one stream serve both the QAM and IP portion of their business then converting to 720p makes the most sense. It's the most compatible with the widest range of devices and it allows them to squeeze the stream smaller so that it doesn't cause too much issue with internet delivery. I'm assuming of course that their ultimate goal here is to provide a Vue like service nationwide so they can break free of the areas they specifically service.


----------



## HarperVision

kokishin said:


> I dare you to post this at http://forums.xfinity.com/t5/XfinityTV-and-Equipment/1080i-channels-are-being-changed-to-720p60-channels/m-p/2778182 BTW, it's funny.


I was actually trying to, but I couldn't get the add picture function to work on my iPad for some reason. Probably due to pop ups or something. I'll have to try on my PC.


----------



## tivoyahoo

HarperVision said:


> I was actually trying to, but I couldn't get the add picture function to work on my iPad for some reason. Probably due to pop ups or something. I'll have to try on my PC.


maybe blur and fuzz up the image to make the point about your tv picture being lower resolution if you watch on comcast. maybe add a trash can to the side full of all the pixels that comcast just throws away that you never see.


----------



## HarperVision

tivoyahoo said:


> maybe blur and fuzz up the image to make the point about your tv picture being lower resolution if you watch on comcast. maybe add a trash can to the side full of all the pixels that comcast just throws away that you never see.


I consider it an open source image, so have at it and edit accordingly!


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## tivoyahoo

I am no good with image editing, but looks like someone wasn't worried about taking license with the comcast brand image...


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## HarperVision

tivoyahoo said:


> I am no good with image editing, but looks like someone wasn't worried about taking license with the comcast brand image...


Yeah I saw that too when I was searching for an image to use for mine and I almost used it myself!


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## Dan203

You have to figure that either intentionally, or via government regulation, current cable companies are going to essentially become dumb pipes providing internet access. At that point I suspect they will spin off their TV services into OTT style services that are available nationwide. (like SlingTV or Vue) Since they already have the relationships in place with the content providers this should be fairly simple for them. I mean that seems to be what SlingTVs purpose is, to provide Dish an alternative source of revenue once TV delivery becomes pure IP. (no need for a dish once that happens)


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## HarperVision

Same for AT&T with their purchase of DirecTV and the forthcoming DirecTV Now streaming service.


----------



## tivoyahoo

Am late to this thread and not up to speed with earlier posts, but did see the topic get picked up at dslreports from this thread and with this interesting post from dishrich:
https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30896830-

has the topic of comcast boxes being able to do native pass thru or not been covered in this thread?



> Well since I still have a DCX-3501, which I ALWAYS keep on native pass-thru, I just went & checked what my TV says is the resolution on each of those channels. SURE ENOUGH, they are doing it on our system as well; I also checked some others like Cooking, DIY & OWN, & those ALSO are all down-rezzed. Other channels like TV1, Weather & NFL Net are still 1080i, though.
> 
> Here's the problem though...since those "wonderful" X1 boxes have NO native PT, those folks will probably not see any diff...because those boxes convert EVERYTHING to 1 chosen resolution; no wonder CC purposely made those boxes that way. (and the majority of subs w/legacy boxes do the same thing, as that is how they come defaulted)


----------



## NashGuy

Dan203 said:


> You have to figure that either intentionally, or via government regulation, current cable companies are going to essentially become dumb pipes providing internet access. At that point I suspect they will spin off their TV services into OTT style services that are available nationwide. (like SlingTV or Vue) Since they already have the relationships in place with the content providers this should be fairly simple for them. I mean that seems to be what SlingTVs purpose is, to provide Dish an alternative source of revenue once TV delivery becomes pure IP. (no need for a dish once that happens)


Yeah, that seems like a reasonable projection, for way down the road. Or perhaps instead of only pure OTT services, we'll see more services like the new Layer3, which offers IPTV via their private backbone and then over local broadband partners' networks for the last stretch from their backbone to customers' homes. I could already imagine small cableco's deciding to just get out of the TV/video business altogether and partner with Layer3 to deliver full-service pay TV for those customers who want it.

Layer3 is currently launching now in Chicago. They're not going after the skinny-bundle bargain hunters though, Layer3 is about those fat-margin TV lovers who want the best quality picture, lots of channels, and a cutting-edge DVR/cloud player.


----------



## Dan203

I don't think AT&T needed Dish for the OTT service part though. They already had most/all of the content relationships they needed through their UVerse service. I think buying DirecTV was more of a stop gap designed to allow them to compete with cable short term until they can build out their network to better compete with cable in the IP space. 

Although I do expect them to spin off their TV service into a an OTT service eventually as well.


----------



## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> I don't think AT&T needed Dish for the OTT service part though. They already had most/all of the content relationships they needed through their UVerse service. I think buying DirecTV was more of a stop gap designed to allow them to compete with cable short term until they can build out their network to better compete with cable in the IP space.
> 
> Although I do expect them to spin off their TV service into a an OTT service eventually as well.


They needed "DirecTV" (not Dish) for their deal with the NFL for NFL Sunday Ticket and probably all their other deals with the sports leagues.

They ARE spinning it off to an OTT service......DirecTV NOW. They hjave also said that they will eventually convert all U-Verse over to DirecTV, either via satellite or IP.


----------



## Dan203

If all these cable companies spin their TV service off to OTT services then this whole CableCARD replacement thing might be moot. I don't think the FCC has any jurisdiction over OTT services that use the internet. So this could ultimately lead to the "apps" vision the MSOs want anyway.


----------



## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> If all these cable companies spin their TV service off to OTT services then this whole CableCARD replacement thing might be moot. I don't think the FCC has any jurisdiction over OTT services that use the internet. So this could ultimately lead to the "apps" vision the MSOs want anyway.


Excellent point Dan! I'm sure this was a calculated move for probably that very reason!


----------



## NashGuy

Dan203 said:


> If all these cable companies spin their TV service off to OTT services then this whole CableCARD replacement thing might be moot. I don't think the FCC has any jurisdiction over OTT services that use the internet. So this could ultimately lead to the "apps" vision the MSOs want anyway.


I think the apps model, at least as it currently exists, is a sort of makeshift midway point that bargain hunters are willing to put up with. I don't ever see it becoming the main way that Americans consume video entertainment. It's just unwieldy to jump between multiple apps. Somehow or another, things will get bundled again, whether that's through a single app that offers an increasing number of add-on services (e.g. Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, PS Vue, Sling TV, etc.) until it becomes the single interface you use, or through streaming devices that offer an overarching integrated UI that ties together content from various apps, essentially turning them into dumb video pipes (as TiVo has kinda tried to do with OnePass and Apple says they want to do with their devices). Time will tell...


----------



## Dan203

NashGuy said:


> I think the apps model, at least as it currently exists, is a sort of makeshift midway point that bargain hunters are willing to put up with. I don't ever see it becoming the main way that Americans consume video entertainment. It's just unwieldy to jump between multiple apps. Somehow or another, things will get bundled again, whether that's through a single app that offers an increasing number of add-on services (e.g. Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, PS Vue, Sling TV, etc.) until it becomes the single interface you use, or through streaming devices that offer an overarching integrated UI that ties together content from various apps, essentially turning them into dumb video pipes (as TiVo has kinda tried to do with OnePass and Apple says they want to do with their devices). Time will tell...


But in this scenario the MSOs will get to choose if their app can be linked in to directly by a 3rd party UI, rather then the FCC dictating to them that they have to allow it.

The more I think about it the more I believe that CableCARD is going to be the last consumer "friendly" way that we're ever going to have to access MSO programming. The MSOs are going to battle the FCC and delay until they get their apps off the ground, and then no one is going to care about a CableCARD replacement any more.

TiVo's only hope long term is to partner with one of these OTT services, or roll their own, so they can jump on the cloud DVR bandwagon. The long term prospects of a hardware DVR being able to record from cable are pretty grim.


----------



## NashGuy

Dan203 said:


> But in this scenario the MSOs will get to choose if their app can be linked in to directly by a 3rd party UI, rather then the FCC dictating to them that they have to allow it.
> 
> The more I think about it the more I believe that CableCARD is going to be the last consumer "friendly" way that we're ever going to have to access MSO programming. The MSOs are going to battle the FCC and delay until they get their apps off the ground, and then no one is going to care about a CableCARD replacement any more.
> 
> TiVo's only hope long term is to partner with one of these OTT services, or roll their own, so they can jump on the cloud DVR bandwagon. The long term prospects of a hardware DVR being able to record from cable are pretty grim.


We're sorta taking about different things. But yeah, I agree with that last sentence of yours. As far as retail devices that unite various OTT steaming sources together under the device maker's own universal (hopefully superior) UI -- this would, in a way, be the 21st century successor to TiVo -- I'd be pinning my hopes on Apple TV, or maybe Android TV or Roku. It's possible but I think doubtful that TiVo will be a meaningful player here, if at all.

For those folks who want traditional MSO-supplied TV service with DVR and on-demand service, I agree that you're either going to use the MSO-supplied hardware or, in fewer cases, use the MSO's app (that features pretty much the same UI) on a retail streaming device. I'm doubtful that TiVo will have any retail role to play here.


----------



## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> My theory was that they weren't just compressing to fit more into the QAMs but also to make the encoding compatible with streaming devices as an IP/OTT service. The goal would be to find a balance between what's acceptable to their traditional TV subscribers and any potential IP/OTT subscribers.


No. They are going to compress them separately. They have totally different encoding requirements and tradeoffs. They are simply packing as many channels as possible into a QAM so that they can get more internet bandwidth without actually upgrading the plants.



> I have no idea if that's true, but if it were then then they could use VBR encoding for their QAM channels by filling out the TS muxrate with null packets. There are a lot of stations in Europe that do this. They maintain a constant muxrate of 15Mbps but the actual stream can vary wildly and the video bitrate can be significantly lower then that. The rest is just filled with null packets.


No. They are using stat multi encoding in order to cram 8-10 HDs into a QAM, similarly how they are currently cramming 4 MPEG-2 HDs in a QAM, or double the number of channels that should be there.



HarperVision said:


> They ARE spinning it off to an OTT service......DirecTV NOW. They hjave also said that they will eventually convert all U-Verse over to DirecTV, either via satellite or IP.


As they renew contracts, the contracts will apply to both services. They are regulated differently, and by law will have slightly different lineups, but they may use the DirecTV brand for both at some point. They will need U-Verse for MDUs or places that have LOS issues. MDUs are going to be an ever bigger business for AT&T as they roll out G.Fast with IPTV that can push 300mbps+ over copper.


----------



## HarperVision

Bigg said:


> ....... They will need U-Verse for MDUs or places that have LOS issues. MDUs are going to be an ever bigger business for AT&T as they roll out G.Fast with IPTV that can push 300mbps+ over copper.


They don't need U-Verse for MDU business, they have tons of MDUs with DirecTV already. They have already announced they're phasing out U-Verse at some point and are making IRDs that can work on satellite and IP so it's consistent with whichever delivery version you have.


----------



## tenthplanet

Dan203 said:


> But in this scenario the MSOs will get to choose if their app can be linked in to directly by a 3rd party UI, rather then the FCC dictating to them that they have to allow it.
> 
> The more I think about it the more I believe that CableCARD is going to be the last consumer "friendly" way that we're ever going to have to access MSO programming. The MSOs are going to battle the FCC and delay until they get their apps off the ground, and then no one is going to care about a CableCARD replacement any more.
> 
> TiVo's only hope long term is to partner with one of these OTT services, or roll their own, so they can jump on the cloud DVR bandwagon. The long term prospects of a hardware DVR being able to record from cable are pretty grim.


 Cable card is got to be one the most consumer unfriendly things the gov't has ever try to foist upon us. I can't believe real engineers had a hand in coming up with the system unless they were smoking weed and looking at a Direct TV access card.


----------



## TonyD79

tenthplanet said:


> Cable card is got to be one the most consumer unfriendly things the gov't has ever try to foist upon us. I can't believe real engineers had a hand in coming up with the system unless they were smoking weed and looking at a Direct TV access card.


Cablecard by itself is not unfriendly. I've had perfect success with cable cards and TiVo on both Comcast and Verizon. And cable boxes themselves use them.

It is the inconsistency in implementation and support that is an issue with cablecards. Not the technology itself.


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## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> They don't need U-Verse for MDU business, they have tons of MDUs with DirecTV already. They have already announced they're phasing out U-Verse at some point and are making IRDs that can work on satellite and IP so it's consistent with whichever delivery version you have.


They can't necessarily install DirecTV at all MDUs. U-Verse they can, since they have the right to install equipment as the incumbent telco. They can also push standard VDSL2 closer to the property or even G.Fast through street cabinets, and not require access to the property at all.


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## tivoyahoo

Bigg said:


> No. They are going to compress them separately. They have totally different encoding requirements and tradeoffs. They are simply packing as many channels as possible into a QAM so that they can get more internet bandwidth without actually upgrading the plants.
> 
> No. They are using stat multi encoding in order to cram 8-10 HDs into a QAM, similarly how they are currently cramming 4 MPEG-2 HDs in a QAM, or double the number of channels that should be there.


what is meant by "stat multi encoding" ? can you expand on that? In the thread below (and in another) it's been observed that in June comcast changed a compression format parameter from High/4.0 to High/3.2 on certain 720p channels in multiple markets, and those channels have since been failing to record on Roamio:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10963300#post10963300


----------



## HarperVision

Bigg said:


> They can't necessarily install DirecTV at all MDUs. U-Verse they can, since they have the right to install equipment as the incumbent telco. They can also push standard VDSL2 closer to the property or even G.Fast through street cabinets, and not require access to the property at all.


I understand that, but you said.....*"They will need U-Verse for MDUs....."*, making it sound like they couldn't do MDU installs without it in the context you were using it. I guess you meant ....*"They will need U-Verse for SOME MDUs....."*, which I can see.


----------



## Bigg

tivoyahoo said:


> what is meant by "stat multi encoding" ? can you expand on that? In the thread below (and in another) it's been observed that in June comcast changed a compression format parameter from High/4.0 to High/3.2 on certain 720p channels in multiple markets, and those channels have since been failing to record on Roamio:


Statistical multiplexing takes a certain number of channels and puts them into the fixed bandwidth of a QAM or a TP. Originally, HD put two channels per QAM, with a CBR of 19mbps. However, cable companies started putting SDs in there too, and eventually 3 and then 4 HDs per QAM. Today, they are doing up to 10 HDs per QAM. In order to get this, you cannot simply run each HD at 3.8mbps CBR, as they would look like total crap. So in order to get them to look only semi-crappy, they use statistical multiplexing, which dynamically allocates bandwidth based on what's going on with each channel at each instant in time. So if they pack a news or shopping channel or two that has little motion and compresses well with a channel with action movies or sports, the action movie or sports channel will often get more bandwidth at any given instant than the news channel. DirecTV actually did a good job with statistical multiplexing by putting 6-7 MPEG-4 HDs into a TP, and they look excellent, even though their average bandwidth is only around 5-6mbps. U-Verse/Vantage TV uses a CBR, since it's IPTV, so even with more bandwidth, it looks like crap, as the compression struggles when there's a lot of motion, whereas statistical multiplexing usually works well, as long as there isn't an action scene or water or something hard to compress on all of the channels all at the same time.



HarperVision said:


> I understand that, but you said.....*"They will need U-Verse for MDUs....."*, making it sound like they couldn't do MDU installs without it in the context you were using it. I guess you meant ....*"They will need U-Verse for SOME MDUs....."*, which I can see.


Well, for most MDUs. Some have DirecTV, but many won't install special equipment in their MDUs for satellite TV service, so they have to go in on the phone lines from the street, where they already have access codified by law. What I said before is true, that they will not be able to install DirecTV at every MDU. Many will still require U-Verse IPTV.


----------



## HarperVision

So like I said....._"some"_ MDUs.


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## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> So like I said....._"some"_ MDUs.


Why are you being obnoxious about my post? I clearly said that no all MDUs can have DirecTV, implying that some can. DirecTV installed into MDUs is the exception to the rule, not the rule. If they want to be a serious player in that market, they need VDSL2 with short loop lengths and/or G.Fast.

On another note, I wonder if they can run G.Fast over coax in MFH2 installations? That should give them gigabit internet plus DirecTV on a single cable in the places that they do have DirecTV installed in an MDU. I'd imagine AT&T doesn't want to get into DOCSIS connectivity for DirecTV customers, although that isn't out of the possibility I suppose to set up a 32x8 DOCSIS 3 system for MFH2 MDUs. Or maybe they'd rather just have their MDU installation companies do that, and partner with them to provide MetroE to the building to connect their systems to.


----------



## HarperVision

Bigg said:


> Why are you being obnoxious about my post? I clearly said that no all MDUs can have DirecTV, implying that some can. DirecTV installed into MDUs is the exception to the rule, not the rule. If they want to be a serious player in that market, they need VDSL2 with short loop lengths and/or G.Fast.
> 
> On another note, I wonder if they can run G.Fast over coax in MFH2 installations? That should give them gigabit internet plus DirecTV on a single cable in the places that they do have DirecTV installed in an MDU. I'd imagine AT&T doesn't want to get into DOCSIS connectivity for DirecTV customers, although that isn't out of the possibility I suppose to set up a 32x8 DOCSIS 3 system for MFH2 MDUs. Or maybe they'd rather just have their MDU installation companies do that, and partner with them to provide MetroE to the building to connect their systems to.


Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I'm being too literal. I apologize. I don't really know enough about that other stuff to comment completely yet, but I'm curious why you say you'd imagine them not wanting to get into DOCSIS?


----------



## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I'm being too literal. I apologize. I don't really know enough about that other stuff to comment completely yet, but I'm curious why you say you'd imagine them not wanting to get into DOCSIS?


I'm sort of thinking out loud of how AT&T is going to combine their DirecTV systems with internet offerings. In many cases, they will use existing FTTN VDSL or FTTH, and they will add FTTB G.Fast, alongside DirecTV. However, for buildings wired for DirecTV, some already offer internet through a DirecTV installation company that runs a DOCSIS network that is dipexed with DirecTV. It seems too non-standard for AT&T to want to get involved with directly. I wonder how they will handle these types of systems, as to whether they want to compete with their own installers with G.Fast over copper, take over those systems entirely, or let the installers manage the in-building wiring, and somehow provide a bundle or revenue share setup while providing the fiber into the building for the DirecTV company to use to provide internet access.

There are far more MDUs that don't have DirecTV that AT&T is going to want to get into, push fiber close to, or maintain existing U-Verse services with, but the DirecTV-wired MDU market is not insignificant, and if AT&T had a well bundled internet service to go with DirecTV, they could be very compelling for some building owners/HOAs to go that route instead of only with cable.


----------



## tivoyahoo

There is a thread with some posts that say comcast h.264/1080i is breaking on iOS and and online.tivo.com streamed from roamio pro. and remember how comcast said they want to offer a "uniform HD experience across all devices, apps and screens"...



> This means that some channels that were delivered in 1080i will now be delivered in 720p60.
> 
> The progressive format offers a number of advantages, and is an important component of the transition to IP video delivery.
> 
> In addition, the transition to progressive format allows us to offer a uniform HD experience across all devices, apps and screens, ensuring a consistently excellent experience.


so I'm wondering if their encoding of h.264/1080i is problematic for roamio pro when it comes to streaming to other devices? is there something in the comcast stream that is problematic? and when comcast transcodes 1080i to 720p does that fix the issue for those non-tivo devices? because the report is that MPEG 2 channels (720 and 1080) and also MPEG-4 720P are fine. Here's the thread and I think I may have seen others describing potentially similar results.

Quality issues Streaming 1080/MPEG-4 Content
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10977759


----------



## rainwater

tivoyahoo said:


> There is a thread with some posts that say comcast h.264/1080i is breaking on iOS and and online.tivo.com streamed from roamio pro. and remember how comcast said they want to offer a "uniform HD experience across all devices, apps and screens"...


That statement from Comcast has nothing to do with TiVo streaming however. They are referring to their own streaming solutions. MPEG4 streaming from TiVo Stream devices is relatively untested as so few cable companies have used it (although it is becoming much more common lately) so it is no surprise there are issues.


----------



## tivoyahoo

rainwater said:


> That statement from Comcast has nothing to do with TiVo streaming however. They are referring to their own streaming solutions. MPEG4 streaming from TiVo Stream devices is relatively untested as so few cable companies have used it (although it is becoming much more common lately) so it is no surprise there are issues.


does the tivo pass the same stream that comcast delivers on to the other devices? why do the devices work on tivo stream for h.264/720p channels and not h.264/1080i channels? are you saying the issue is the tivo stream and has nothing to do with what comcast is sending as the source? so tivo is somehow re-coding the stream? and it doesn't root back to the source stream?

or are you saying it's just that tivo stream is unreliable? but again, why only on h.264/1080i channels is there an issue?

what I'm saying is that comcast's statement suggests that in cases where they transcode from 1080i to 720p, one of the reasons is to be more device compatible. and it is reportedly working on those channels in this case. i'm not trying to applaud comcast and give them a pat on the back and credit for the 720p channels that work with streaming. I'm just pointing out an interesting piece of data and seeing how it may or not fit. or maybe there is another fix to the 1080i problem reported by 2 posters?

I did post in the thread about trying a slingbox.


----------



## rainwater

tivoyahoo said:


> does the tivo pass the same stream that comcast delivers on to the other devices? why do the devices work on tivo stream for h.264/720p channels and not h.264/1080i channels? are you saying the issue is the tivo stream and has nothing to do with what comcast is sending as the source? so tivo is somehow re-coding the stream? and it doesn't root back to the source stream?


No, TiVo re-encodes all Tivo Online and TiVo app streams that come from TiVos. The only time TiVo doesn't encode video is when streaming to another TiVo. Initially no TiVo Stream models (standalone, Roamio Pro, Bolt) worked with h.264 at all. But they recently added support. However, because so few channels have been using h.264, I would probably chalk it up to an issue with the TiVo Stream.

Note: The Bolt doesn't technically have dedicated TiVo Stream hardware like the Roamios but it does the same process of encoding all video sent out.


----------



## JWhites

I'm so sick of hearing about SDV. It's a plague on anyone using a cable card, and for the life of me I don't know why it's even being discussed. There are plenty of other solutions that can be utilized without having to implement a crappy tuning adapter and annoying "Are you still watching?" prompt. Higher frequencies, MPEG4, DOCSIS 3.1, etc.


----------



## Bigg

JWhites said:


> I'm so sick of hearing about SDV. It's a plague on anyone using a cable card, and for the life of me I don't know why it's even being discussed. There are plenty of other solutions that can be utilized without having to implement a crappy tuning adapter and annoying "Are you still watching?" prompt. Higher frequencies, MPEG4, DOCSIS 3.1, etc.


If you don't have SDV, you're not going to be able to deliver 200 crystal clear HD channels AND gigabit internet AND digital voice AND VOD AND everything else they do, even if you're running a 1ghz plant. SDV, implemented properly can work well with CableCards, the MSOs just don't do a good job with it. No MSO has put all the pieces together, but with MPEG-4 AND SDV running on a 1ghz plant, you should be able to deliver amazing quality AND 200 HD channels.


----------



## JWhites

I'm still skeptical... But am keeping an open mind because of you.:up:


----------



## Bigg

JWhites said:


> I'm still skeptical... But am keeping an open mind because of you.:up:


Well look at it this way. Right now, Comcast can cram gigabit internet, and about 120 crappy look HD's on an 860mhz system. Even if you expand to a 1ghz plant, there's still no way to get 200 good looking HDs on there AND gigabit internet AND everything else. And even if you compressed the heck out of them, you're still missing sports packages completely in HD and expanded international offerings that you can do with SDV.


----------



## HarperVision

Bigg said:


> ......... And even if you compressed the heck out of them, ........


They're well on their way to that, unfortunately!


----------



## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> Well look at it this way. Right now, Comcast can cram gigabit internet, and about 120 crappy look HD's on an 860mhz system. Even if you expand to a 1ghz plant, there's still no way to get 200 good looking HDs on there AND gigabit internet AND everything else. And even if you compressed the heck out of them, you're still missing sports packages completely in HD and expanded international offerings that you can do with SDV.


As we've discussed before, Comcast's next step to address the issue is probably moving the highest tier(s) of niche channels from QAM to IP, which will require a STB that's part of the current-gen X1 platform (or, also likely, an upcoming X1 app that will be available on various retail streaming boxes). They considered SDV a few years back and decided against it. It's not on their roadmap.

Beyond that, I'd venture to say that the number of linear cable channels has peaked due to the realities of the business. As the number naturally decreases, that will help MSOs a bit with the bandwidth crunch.

Here's an interesting article on that topic:
http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/dem...-niche-cables-diminished-fortunes-1201840225/

The key passage is at the end:

_The swift reversal of fortune for niche cablers is a clear fallout of the Peak TV phenomenon. Not only are there too many shows, but many believe the glut of channel options is hurting the business overall. To see a network like Pivot shut down is not really a surprise in this market, Robson said.

NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke said last month during Comcasts earnings call that the company, one of cables largest programming groups, is looking at further paring down its holdings to plow more resources into its biggest brands.

There are just too many channels, Burke said._


----------



## Dan203

SDV is just a cheap imitation of IP anyway using VOD technology instead of real IP. If the ultimate goal is to switch to pure IP delivery then they might as well start now rather then using SDV as a stop gap.


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## keenanSR

Dan203 said:


> SDV is just a cheap imitation of IP anyway using VOD technology instead of real IP. If the ultimate goal is to switch to pure IP delivery then they might as well start now rather then using SDV as a stop gap.


Andrew Johnson, Comcast VP of Communications for the San Francisco market(at the time, he's now with Cisco) told us in the AVS Forum SF Comcast thread that while SDV was considered at one time they had scrapped the idea, and this was back in 2008-2009(?) maybe, sometime around then. I think there was a test market back east somewhere but everything I've read since that time indicates that Comcast has no plans at all to implement SDV anywhere.


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## Dan203

The main reason other MSOs decided to go with SDV is because it allowed them to expand the number of channels they offered while simultaneously extending the life of older equipment and older networks. IP is going to require upgrades at both the network level and of most/all of the converter boxes. Although with streaming devices/smart TVs being almost ambiguous these days they can just push the cost of upgrading the converter boxes on to the customer now. They'll lose some revenue from rental fees, but will save a lot in the purchase and maintenance of equipment so I bet it's close to a wash.


----------



## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> They're well on their way to that, unfortunately!


Right, but with ~120 HDs even on rebuilt plants, not 200 like other providers.



NashGuy said:


> As we've discussed before, Comcast's next step to address the issue is probably moving the highest tier(s) of niche channels from QAM to IP, which will require a STB that's part of the current-gen X1 platform (or, also likely, an upcoming X1 app that will be available on various retail streaming boxes). They considered SDV a few years back and decided against it. It's not on their roadmap.


Yeah, I know. They missed the boat on SDV, so now they just use ridiculous bundling practices to shove their crappy cable product down people's throats.



keenanSR said:


> Andrew Johnson, Comcast VP of Communications for the San Francisco market(at the time, he's now with Cisco) told us in the AVS Forum SF Comcast thread that while SDV was considered at one time they had scrapped the idea, and this was back in 2008-2009(?) maybe, sometime around then. I think there was a test market back east somewhere but everything I've read since that time indicates that Comcast has no plans at all to implement SDV anywhere.


Yeah, they basically missed the boat on SDV. For whatever reason, they just refused to do it, and now it's too late, since they would only use it for a few years before going IP. They should have done it back then. Comcast clearly got it wrong, as then BHN, TWC, Charter, and Cox all use SDV, some more heavily than others.

The combination of small nodes and SDV gives you an unlimited channel capacity without needing to compress channels heavily. Sadly, Comcast never took advantage of this.



Dan203 said:


> The main reason other MSOs decided to go with SDV is because it allowed them to expand the number of channels they offered while simultaneously extending the life of older equipment and older networks. IP is going to require upgrades at both the network level and of most/all of the converter boxes. Although with streaming devices/smart TVs being almost ambiguous these days they can just push the cost of upgrading the converter boxes on to the customer now. They'll lose some revenue from rental fees, but will save a lot in the purchase and maintenance of equipment so I bet it's close to a wash.


X1 can do IPTV just fine. It's a matter of the network and getting everyone on X1. Sadly, while TiVo works just fine with MPEG-4 and SDV, unless something is figured out with the FCC before the conversion, TiVo is probably toast on Comcast in a couple of years when some channels start becoming available only via IP.


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## HarperVision

Bigg said:


> ....... X1 can do IPTV just fine. It's a matter of the network and getting everyone on X1. Sadly, while TiVo works just fine with MPEG-4 and SDV, unless something is figured out with the FCC before the conversion, TiVo is probably toast on Comcast in a couple of years when some channels start becoming available only via IP.


Well, maybe not:

http://investor.tivo.com/mobile.view?c=106292&v=203&d=1&id=2173278

It seems like TiVo is a little more forward thinking than we give them credit for.


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## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> Well, maybe not:
> 
> http://investor.tivo.com/mobile.view?c=106292&v=203&d=1&id=2173278
> 
> It seems like TiVo is a little more forward thinking than we give them credit for.


That's of absolutely ZERO help unless Comcast is forced to allow TiVo onto their IPTV system by the FCC, or voluntarily chooses to do so. They have voluntarily given access to QAM-based VOD, so there is some precedent for this, but it's still fairly unlikely, given that they view X1 as a TiVo competitor, and a competitive advantage (even though it's not actually as good as TiVo).


----------



## HarperVision

Bigg said:


> That's of absolutely ZERO help unless Comcast is forced to allow TiVo onto their IPTV system by the FCC, or voluntarily chooses to do so. They have voluntarily given access to QAM-based VOD, so there is some precedent for this, but it's still fairly unlikely, given that they view X1 as a TiVo competitor, and a competitive advantage (even though it's not actually as good as TiVo).


The MSOs worked with them to get TAs off the ground, they've cooperated on their VOD apps and they clearly said Comcast assisted with developing their internet based TA embedded in the TiVo SW, although not used anywhere yet, so it's not unheard of.


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## BobCamp1

tivoyahoo said:


> does the tivo pass the same stream that comcast delivers on to the other devices? why do the devices work on tivo stream for h.264/720p channels and not h.264/1080i channels? are you saying the issue is the tivo stream and has nothing to do with what comcast is sending as the source? so tivo is somehow re-coding the stream? and it doesn't root back to the source stream?
> 
> or are you saying it's just that tivo stream is unreliable? but again, why only on h.264/1080i channels is there an issue?


From the 1080i Wikipedia article:

"Due to the chosen 16x16 pixel size for a compressed video packet known as a macroblock as used in ITU H.261 to H.264 video standards, a 1080 line video must be encoded as 1088 lines and cropped to 1080 by the de-compressor. The 720 line video format divides perfectly by 16 and therefore does not require any lines to be wasted."

In other words, it's really H.264/1088i. So if the receiving device (like Tivo) doesn't know the 1088 line trick, it won't decode H.264/1080i or H.264/1080p properly. No device will have problems with H.264/720p. So it's safer to transmit H.264 as 720p.

Plus, some people have reported occasional issues with interlaced content and H.264. Seems to have problems with both 480i and 1080i.

My NBC/CW affiliate transmits OTA using 720p for both at 12 and 4.85 Mbps respectively, but provides the uncompressed signal to TWC and FIOS at 1080i. That's because CW is a subchannel of NBC, and they have one more subchannel on top of that, so they need the bandwidth. I laugh whenever people say OTA gives a better picture.... Anyway, nobody complained about NBC being transmitted as 720p, even thought it's only at 12 Mbps.


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## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> X1 can do IPTV just fine. It's a matter of the network and getting everyone on X1.


I think Comcast started the year with maybe 30% of their video subscribers on X1 and they stated back in the spring they expect that number to hit 50% by year-end. And I would bet the % of subscribers to the highest (most expensive) channel tier who are on X1 is well above the overall figure. Wouldn't surprise me to see those upper tier channels start transitioning to IP-only sometime in 2017.


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## Dan203

BobCamp1 said:


> From the 1080i Wikipedia article:
> 
> "Due to the chosen 16x16 pixel size for a compressed video packet known as a macroblock as used in ITU H.261 to H.264 video standards, a 1080 line video must be encoded as 1088 lines and cropped to 1080 by the de-compressor. The 720 line video format divides perfectly by 16 and therefore does not require any lines to be wasted."
> 
> In other words, it's really H.264/1088i. So if the receiving device (like Tivo) doesn't know the 1088 line trick, it won't decode H.264/1080i or H.264/1080p properly. No device will have problems with H.264/720p. So it's safer to transmit H.264 as 720p.
> 
> Plus, some people have reported occasional issues with interlaced content and H.264. Seems to have problems with both 480i and 1080i.
> 
> My NBC/CW affiliate transmits OTA using 720p for both at 12 and 4.85 Mbps respectively, but provides the uncompressed signal to TWC and FIOS at 1080i. That's because CW is a subchannel of NBC, and they have one more subchannel on top of that, so they need the bandwidth. I laugh whenever people say OTA gives a better picture.... Anyway, nobody complained about NBC being transmitted as 720p, even thought it's only at 12 Mbps.


The encoding spec includes a cropping rectangle so when you encode a 1080i video it outputs 1088 pixels and sets the cropping rectangle to remove the extra 8 pixels. (usually the bottom, but not required to be) Any decoder written to spec will adhere to the cropping rectangle and output the 1080i video. There is no need to have a special "trick" to remove the extra lines.

The reason portable devices don't support interlaced video is not because they are any harder to decode it's because once they're decoded they have to apply some sort of deinterlacing to get them to display properly on their progressive displays. TVs have built in hardware just to do the deintrlacing. Portable devices do not. So they have to do it in software, which can really sap battery life. So instead they just don't allow interlaced video at all.


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## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> The MSOs worked with them to get TAs off the ground, they've cooperated on their VOD apps and they clearly said Comcast assisted with developing their internet based TA embedded in the TiVo SW, although not used anywhere yet, so it's not unheard of.


A TA is required by federal law if the system uses SDV. IPTV support is not. Whether they accommodate TiVo remains to be seen.



NashGuy said:


> I think Comcast started the year with maybe 30% of their video subscribers on X1 and they stated back in the spring they expect that number to hit 50% by year-end. And I would bet the % of subscribers to the highest (most expensive) channel tier who are on X1 is well above the overall figure. Wouldn't surprise me to see those upper tier channels start transitioning to IP-only sometime in 2017.


Agreed. I think we will see:

1. 4k X1 box with 4k channels available only via IPTV
2. A handful of new channels, maybe HD, maybe international, maybe sports that are IP-only.
3. Top-tier/premium HD channels will convert to IPTV
4. Over time, blocks of channels will convert to IPTV, until eventually only about 70 channels are available in SD on QAM, and maybe HD locals, leaving about 700mhz of the 810mhz downstream on an 860mhz plant for DOCSIS 3 and 3.1.

That will probably persist for a while to support DTA users, but eventually, the whole plant will be IP-only. I thinking the end of HDs on QAM, except for maybe local channels will probably happen around 2019-2020.


----------



## HarperVision

Bigg said:


> A TA is required by federal law if the system uses SDV. IPTV support is not. Whether they accommodate TiVo remains to be seen.
> .......


Are you sure about that? I could've sworn that the MSOs started using SDV and baked it into their STBs, which then left S3 TiVo owners out in the cold for those channels, so they got together and worked out the whole TA thing with the help and agreement of the MSOs?

EDIT:

After some Googling, it appears the FCC did try to fine TWC and Cox for deploying SDV, but then reversed it saying what they did was indeed legal and played by the cablecard rules.

http://www.multichannel.com/news/fcc/fcc-vacates-sdv-rulings-against-time-warner-cable-cox/296350


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## Dan203

Yeah they worked with TiVo on TAs as a way to stave off more regulation.


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## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> Are you sure about that? I could've sworn that the MSOs started using SDV and baked it into their STBs, which then left S3 TiVo owners out in the cold for those channels, so they got together and worked out the whole TA thing with the help and agreement of the MSOs?
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> After some Googling, it appears the FCC did try to fine TWC and Cox for deploying SDV, but then reversed it saying what they did was indeed legal and played by the cablecard rules.
> 
> http://www.multichannel.com/news/fcc/fcc-vacates-sdv-rulings-against-time-warner-cable-cox/296350


The law says that an MSO has to provide the same QAM channels to a CableCard device as they do to their own boxes. So if they have SDV, they, by law, have to provide a TA, or some alternate method of SDV, to TiVos. Whether every MSO has always followed the law, that's another story. Comcast is relatively TiVo-friendly, and I couldn't even get them to fix a borked self-install of a CableCard after an FCC complaint.

That story is basically that they didn't provide the federally-required 30-day notice before moving channels to SDV, not anything about SDV itself. That's the same notice required for analog to digital conversions, or any other type of channel conversion where people could lose access to channels. It will probably happen all over again for the IPTV conversion.


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## JWhites

HarperVision, dude, you really flipped out on the Comcast forum over this. lol


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## leiff

I just noticed a bunch of my channels including Animal Planet Discovery Channel TLC reporting as 720P. I checked on both my Romeo and Minis which are set to Output native resolution. Some channels like a vice and axs are still reporting as 1080i. I haven't read all the posts in this thread but I assume it's related? Anyways I'm very concerned to be losing a substantial amount of resolution since i use a large 65 inch display.


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## HarperVision

Thanks for reporting here, but I suggest you file a complaint with Comcast so they know you're an unhappy customer....if they even care.


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## danm628

leiff said:


> I just noticed a bunch of my channels including Animal Planet Discovery Channel TLC reporting as 720P. I checked on both my Romeo and Minis which are set to Output native resolution. Some channels like a vice and axs are still reporting as 1080i. I haven't read all the posts in this thread but I assume it's related? Anyways I'm very concerned to be losing a substantial amount of resolution since i use a large 65 inch display.


The short version -- Comcast is converting most 1080i channels to 720p in order to fit more video streams into a single QAM modulated carrier. This caused problems with some TiVo models.

Complain to Comcast about the new lower resolution. I suspect they are expecting most people to not notice.

- Dan


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## lessd

danm628 said:


> The short version -- Comcast is converting most 1080i channels to 720p in order to fit more video streams into a single QAM modulated carrier. This caused problems with some TiVo models.
> 
> Complain to Comcast about the new lower resolution. I suspect they are expecting most people to not notice.
> 
> - Dan


Even the OP did not notice, he just checked the input to his HDTV, for most people to walk into a room with a big HDTV (say 65" to 80") and say WOW why is your TiVo showing only 720P because all 1080P HDTVs convert the input signal to 1080P for the screen. Most all cable co compress the signal to some extent anyways, few people get the full 19Mb/s HDTV signal delivered to their DVR/HDTV.
Few people get the full pixel resolution they paid for with their 1080P HDTV except from a BD player.


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## HarperVision

lessd said:


> Even the OP did not notice, he just checked the input to his HDTV, for most people to walk into a room with a big HDTV (say 65" to 80") and say WOW why is your TiVo showing only 720P because all 1080P HDTVs convert the input signal to 1080P for the screen. Most all cable co compress the signal to some extent anyways, few people get the full 19Mb/s HDTV signal delivered to their DVR/HDTV. Few people get the full pixel resolution they paid for with their 1080P HDTV except from a BD player.


You and many others really don't get it, do you?


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## Dan203

My wife was watching football last weekend because she joined some fantasy thing at her work. She was switching between two games, one in 1080i and one in 720. I could clearly see the difference between them. I can't say for certain it was the resolution that made the difference, could have been cameras or lighting, but the 1080i game looked clearer to me. So I think HarperVision has a point here. Most people probably wont notice with standard TV programs, but with sports it does seem to matter.


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## schatham

I know I can't tell the difference. I only have a 32" tv, so a larger tv may be different. For me 720p gives me more space. A lot of football is on broadcast tv which is not compressed to 720p. 

Advise your Comcast friends who plan to buy a new tv to save money and buy a 720p tv. They cost less.


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## keenanSR

schatham said:


> I know I can't tell the difference. I only have a 32" tv, so a larger tv may be different. For me 720p gives me more space. A lot of football is on broadcast tv which is not compressed to 720p.
> 
> Advise your Comcast friends who plan to buy a new tv to save money and buy a 720p tv. They cost less.


Indeed, as I've stated elsewhere, while DirecTV is bringing 4K sports broadcasts to the masses Comcast is going in the opposite direction down to 720p. Very Craptastic of them.


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## Dan203

I think they're doing this in part because they want to clear up some bandwidth to do 4K. However they'll most likely do 4K via IP and DOCSIS 3.1 so it wont be compatible with TiVo, even if you have a Bolt.


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## keenanSR

Dan203 said:


> I think they're doing this in part because they want to clear up some bandwidth to do 4K. However they'll most likely do 4K via IP and DOCSIS 3.1 so it wont be compatible with TiVo, even if you have a Bolt.


Right, my sense is that yes, it's being done for IP delivery of 4K and to facilitate streaming options for the cell phone and tablet crowd; smaller payloads with 720p video. And to increase their HSI speed offerings, speed that I see very little use in having, 50 maybe 100 is more than I can imagine anyone every needing.

And to eliminate linear delivery and transition to IP delivery of all their cable TV channels.


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## atmuscarella

No different in the OTA world. ABC & Fox were always 720p and they keep cramming more SD stations on the same frequency all the time. In fact I have ABC (720p), CW (720p) and on SD station on one frequency. All the frequencies being used in my area now have at least 3 stations on them and some have up to 6. 

Bottom line is someone has decided quantity out shines quality. I have no idea who watches most of this crap but the advertisers must think someone does.


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## HarperVision

Thanks guys. At least some people "get it", and care. If I were in a "Con"cast area, I would definitely chose FiOS or DirecTV if available, in that order. And I would only take their internet service if nothing in the area competed, basically out of necessity.


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## BobCamp1

atmuscarella said:


> No different in the OTA world. ABC & Fox were always 720p and they keep cramming more SD stations on the same frequency all the time. In fact I have ABC (720p), CW (720p) and on SD station on one frequency. All the frequencies being used in my area now have at least 3 stations on them and some have up to 6.
> 
> Bottom line is someone has decided quantity out shines quality. I have no idea who watches most of this crap but the advertisers must think someone does.


And 75 miles east of you, the only two channels broadcasting in 1080i are CBS and PBS. The rest are broadcasting in 720p or 480i. 18 out of 20(ish) channels.


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## keenanSR

BobCamp1 said:


> And 75 miles east of you, the only two channels broadcasting in 1080i are CBS and PBS. The rest are broadcasting in 720p or 480i. 18 out of 20(ish) channels.


Just as a data point, they are 3 times as many 1080i native resolution networks than there are 720p, in other words, 1080i stations are far more common than 720p. Or at least they were before Comcast decided to make them "better".

Local stations will not have their resolution changed or switched to MPEG4.


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## Dan203

keenanSR said:


> Local stations will not have their resolution changed or switched to MPEG4.


Probably because Comcast is not going to include locals in their national IPTV offering or wholesale packages.


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## keenanSR

Dan203 said:


> Probably because Comcast is not going to include locals in their national IPTV offering or wholesale packages.


That makes sense, but since their entire lineup is encrypted, locals included, I'm not sure why they wouldn't down-convert and change them to MPEG4 as well. Retaining their current state doesn't seem to have any advantage that I can see, at least when you consider the way Comcast is looking at it.


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## Dan203

The locals would need to be transcoded at each individual local head end. The national stations can be transcoded in a central location before being sent out to the local head ends. I'd guess that the savings from transcoding a handful of local channels don't justify the cost of installing the equipment needed to do the transcode at each local head end.


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## leiff

If I had FiOS service available in my area this would give me a reason to switch. Im Stuck with at&t U-verse service out here. But I can easily see someone dropping comcast and picking up satailite tv because of this . lower resolution on a larger screen is definitely noticeable


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## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> The locals would need to be transcoded at each individual local head end. The national stations can be transcoded in a central location before being sent out to the local head ends. I'd guess that the savings from transcoding a handful of local channels don't justify the cost of installing the equipment needed to do the transcode at each local head end.


That's an interesting though. They may also have some basic cable subs with HD boxes that can't handle MPEG-2, although I'm not sure how big that niche is, so it's probably more about the practicality of installing and managing a new encoding system. Eventually everything will be IPTV, and I'm sure that Comcast will find ways to screw that up too.

What they are doing is unconscionable, and sets a new low in MSO quality.


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## HarperVision

keenanSR said:


> ..... Or at least they were before Comcast decided to make them "better"........


Not just "better"..........Comcastic!  :down:

Like I say their new motto should be......

*eXfinity....The Future of awful! It's "Con"castic!*


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## mlcarson

And just to make matters a bit worse, Comcast decides to put data caps on most of their customers starting 11/1 -- all of California is included. They're also raising the rates. I signed up for a Comcast triple play HD Preferred XF Bundle for 24 mo's that totals to $128.21 per mo after all of the bogus fees. I don't like the 720p resolution thing. I hate the data caps on Internet that are coming. I could probably get out of my contract but here's the rub -- there's nothing better in the area. 

This is a former Verizon area -- now Frontier. I can get 3Mbs DSL service and that's it. For TV service, the only alternatives are the satellite TV providers. Dish Network is probably no better in quality than Comcast. DirecTV would be better but it would be more expensive if I still have to get Internet from Comcast. Performance Pro Internet is $74.95 from Comcast and the most basic Performance 25 is $59.95. So I can get all outraged about what Comcast is doing but it's still the best option available. I think that's true for a lot of people.


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## lessd

HarperVision said:


> Thanks guys. At least some people "get it", and care. If I were in a "Con"cast area, I would definitely chose FiOS or DirecTV if available, in that order. And I would only take their internet service if nothing in the area competed, basically out of necessity.


I do get it, but with compression being the unknown 720P could have more information than 1080i, as example my 1/2 hour of ABC World News is 2.94 Gb or 5.88 Gb/hour and that is at 720P, NBC Nightly news is only 2.43 Gb or 4.86 Gb/hour and that is at 1080i, so what picture should be better looking on a high end (from 3 years ago) 1080P 80" HDTV ? I sure can't tell the difference, but others may be able to. Full resolution (no compression) should be about 8.5 Gb/hour or is that incorrect.


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## HarperVision

lessd said:


> I do get it, but with compression being the unknown 720P could have more information than 1080i, as example my 1/2 hour of ABC World News is 2.94 Gb or 5.88 Gb/hour and that is at 720P, NBC Nightly news is only 2.43 Gb or 4.86 Gb/hour and that is at 1080i, so what picture should be better looking on a high end (from 3 years ago) 1080P 80" HDTV ? I sure can't tell the difference, but others may be able to. Full resolution (no compression) should be about 8.5 Gb/hour or is that incorrect.


OK here's the deal, at least with just standard compression being used you ingest and maintain all of the original pixels which get logically compressed in the encoder and can be reconstructed on the other end when it gets decompressed by the decoder, but when you do a combination of resolution down-conversion first and and then apply compression (mpeg2, h.264, h.265/HEVC), you throw those extra pixels away and they are gone forever and they can never be brought back nor interpolated as well on the other end in your TiVo and your display device.

Would you buy a video processor/scaler like a DVDO or Lumagen, input 1080i and set the output to a fixed 720p if it's feeding a 1080p display???

An easy way to see the effects would be set your TiVo to only 720p out and tune to a nice 1080i channel, then switch it back to 1080i/p and see what the difference is. I remember people complaining that the the mini only did 1080i while the full TiVo DVRs were capable of 1080p/60 output. This is far worse!


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## Luke M

Whether 720 or 1080 looks better depends on the bitrate and whether there is motion. At high bitrates or no motion, 1080 is better.


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## atmuscarella

The reality is Comcast, OTA Networks, and the industry as a whole have decided that most people either can not tell the difference or don't care enough about video quality to do anything about it. 

I am not sure their calculation is wrong. First lets be honest there are allot of people who have setups where they can not actually tell the difference. They are running old SD TVs, have small or 720p HD TVs, improperly setup HD TVs, and/or watch at a distance where there eyes can not see the difference. Second look at all the people who still rent/buy DVDs instead of Blu-ray disks and/or intentionally watch/record SD channels.

The reality is h.264 has been around for what? over a decade? There is no technical reason all channels including OTA broadcast are not providing high quality 1080p video via a 18+/- Mbps h.264 stream. There is also no technical reason that any TV show or movie shot on 35 mm film can not be remastered resulting in a good 1080p version. The problem is cost, people do not appear willing to pay extra for higher quality so no one is willing to invest in the equipment and time to provide it. 

So we are where we are, Pay TV providers like Comcast and OTA broadcaster in general keep reducing quality because it pays to do so.

It will be interesting to see if this trend reverses itself any time soon.


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## BobCamp1

HarperVision said:


> OK here's the deal, at least with just standard compression being used you ingest and maintain all of the original pixels


I'm surprised you said that, as I thought lossy compression was used for both MPEG2 and MPEG4 video compression. Or am I misunderstanding something.

As I've said before, highly compressed 1080i looks a lot worse than moderately compressed 720p. When I had DirecTV, there were plenty examples of that. Around half of their channels.

If you want Comcast to keep it at 1080i but compress the crap out of it instead, be careful what you wish for.



HarperVision said:


> Would you buy a video processor/scaler like a DVDO or Lumagen, input 1080i and set the output to a fixed 720p if it's feeding a 1080p display???


No, but it would be typically feeding a 720p display. I have one 1080p display and seven 768p displays (tablets, smartphones, PC monitors), all under 50". And that is the general trend anyway. I actually WANT the cable company to output all channels at 720p, because that's the display I watch it on and I assume they have better equipment to do the conversion that than I do.

I already have my Tivo set to output only 720p resolution and I watch many 1080i channels. It didn't look as good when setting it to 1080i. I guess the Tivo is better than my TV at converting the signal.


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## BobCamp1

keenanSR said:


> Just as a data point, they are 3 times as many 1080i native resolution networks than there are 720p, in other words, 1080i stations are far more common than 720p. Or at least they were before Comcast decided to make them "better".
> 
> Local stations will not have their resolution changed or switched to MPEG4.


Sure, but my point is that OTA had to deal with substantial bandwidth restrictions first, and my local NBC/CW affiliate decided to transcode and broadcast OTA in 720p. And nobody noticed or cared because the average TV size is just 43". Back in 2008 they predicted the average size would be 60" by now, which is why most channels chose to deliver in 1080i. That turned out to be a bad choice.


----------



## lessd

HarperVision said:


> OK here's the deal, at least with just standard compression being used you ingest and maintain all of the original pixels which get logically compressed in the encoder and can be reconstructed on the other end when it gets decompressed by the decoder, !


Do you feel all compression being done by Comcast is standard compression and you maintain all of the original pixels that can be fully reconstructed on the other end ? I did not think that was true, if so why do I get a bigger file on my TiVo for ABC at 720P then for NBC at 1080i, does that not show more information for ABC at 720P then NBC at 1080i ? correct me if I am misunderstanding this process.


----------



## leiff

I've come to depend on Tivos fast mode to get me through my documentary/news programs 30% faster so I'm stuck with tivo/Comcast. I didnt think I'd like fast mode but I dont want to do without it now. FRom now on my 720p "50 kuro is going to get a lot more use and I'll relegate my 65 inch panny to non Comcast material


----------



## keenanSR

lessd said:


> Do you feel all compression being done by Comcast is standard compression and you maintain all of the original pixels that can be fully reconstructed on the other end ? I did not think that was true, if so why do I get a bigger file on my TiVo for ABC at 720P then for NBC at 1080i, does that not show more information for ABC at 720P then NBC at 1080i ? correct me if I am misunderstanding this process.


You can't compare local stations that way, different content, stations will have varying amounts of sub-channels, etc. There are any number of reasons why it's not a good comparison. For example, my NBC station is consistently the highest file size and bitrate whereas my ABC station is usually the lowest. NBC is 1080i and ABC is 720p. In some markets, they run a different resolution than the network native resolution. Simply put, trying to compare two local stations to try and come up with some sort of valid data set is a waste of time.


----------



## HarperVision

Luke M said:


> Whether 720 or 1080 looks better depends on the bitrate and whether there is motion. At high bitrates or no motion, 1080 is better.


That is no longer really true. Deinterlacing and motion interpolation has come a long way.



BobCamp1 said:


> I'm surprised you said that, as I thought lossy compression was used for both MPEG2 and MPEG4 video compression. Or am I misunderstanding something. ..........


I probably could have worded it differently. What I mean is that all of the picture elements (pixels) are there and presented at the input of the encoder, so you're starting off with a higher quality image, so therefore the encoder will be able to interpolate more of the original image which results in a higher quality image at the output of the decoder in your home.

Think of it like using a high quality picture and making a copy of it on a copy machine. The copy isn't quite as good as the original. Whereas if you use that copy to make another copy and compare it to the original copy, it will of course look even worse.



lessd said:


> Do you feel all compression being done by Comcast is standard compression and you maintain all of the original pixels that can be fully reconstructed on the other end ? I did not think that was true, if so why do I get a bigger file on my TiVo for ABC at 720P then for NBC at 1080i, does that not show more information for ABC at 720P then NBC at 1080i ? correct me if I am misunderstanding this process.


No, See above.


----------



## leiff

I still have a few remaining channels being shown 1080i including BBC America. hopefully it stays this way. Unfortunately now I see AMC and starz encore are in 720p. Does anyone know if HBO/shotime premium channels are also being downrezzed?


----------



## keenanSR

leiff said:


> I still have a few remaining channels being shown 1080i including BBC America. hopefully it stays this way. Unfortunately now I see AMC and starz encore are in 720p. Does anyone know if HBO/shotime premium channels are also being downrezzed?


Yes, they are. HBO, Starz and Cinemax have all been down-rezzed to 720p, Showtime hasn't been transitioned to AVC yet so it's still 1080i. BBCA is still MPEG2 and 1080i. This is in the SF market, north bay Santa Rosa system.


----------



## lessd

HarperVision said:


> That is no longer really true. Deinterlacing and motion interpolation has come a long way.
> 
> I probably could have worded it differently. What I mean is that all of the picture elements (pixels) are here presented at the input of the encoder, so you're starting off with a higher quality image, so therefore the encoder will be able to interpolate more of the original image which results in a higher quality image at the output of the decoder in your home.
> 
> Think of it like using a high quality picture and making a copy of it on a copy machine. The copy isn't quite as good as the original. Whereas if you use that copy to make another copy and compare it to the original copy, it will of course look even worse.
> 
> No, See above.


I just got the Comcast letter, the conversion will be done by Jan 2017, hope all (TiVos) works at that time, Hartford CT area.


----------



## morac

I got the Comcast letter stating they are switching to MPG4 on November 15 in my area (NJ outside Philadelphia). Does that mean I'll start getting the down-rezzed channels at the same time?

As it is now, if there is any kind of fast motion or flashing colors (think lightning), the picture completely breaks up so I'm not sure how Comcast could make things worse.

I don't suppose they are adding new channels with the room they are saving?


----------



## keenanSR

morac said:


> I got the Comcast letter stating they are switching to MPG4 on November 15 in my area (NJ outside Philadelphia). Does that mean I'll start getting the down-rezzed channels at the same time?
> 
> As it is now, if there is any kind of fast motion or flashing colors (think lightning), the picture completely breaks up so I'm not sure how Comcast could make things worse.
> 
> I don't suppose they are adding new channels with the room they are saving?


Yes, you will. Some channels that have been switched may not have their resolution changed right away but they will eventually. When they first started the MPEG2>MPEG4 switch in my system many channels retained their native resolution, but recently all those have now been down-rezzed.

There has been zero indication they are adding any new channels.


----------



## Bigg

lessd said:


> I just got the Comcast letter, the conversion will be done by Jan 2017, hope all (TiVos) works at that time, Hartford CT area.


Groton starts in early November. No clue what their plan is for our 625mhz system, probably just more DOCSIS 3 channels.



keenanSR said:


> Yes, you will. Some channels that have been switched may not have their resolution changed right away but they will eventually. When they first started the MPEG2>MPEG4 switch in my system many channels retained their native resolution, but recently all those have now been down-rezzed.
> 
> There has been zero indication they are adding any new channels.


If they're doing the muxes nationally, we will never see the 1080i/MPEG-4 channels, and go directly to the down-res'ed channels.

I have another cable company in my area, but they have even fewer channels than Comcast, so do I put up with Comcast's despicable practices, or do I lose channels? I'll probably stick with Comcast, as I hope to move out of the area soon anyway. If I end up in a Comcast area, I'll make sure I can get DirecTV.


----------



## HarperVision

keenanSR said:


> Yes, they are. HBO, Starz and Cinemax have all been down-rezzed to 720p, Showtime hasn't been transitioned to AVC yet so it's still 1080i. BBCA is still MPEG2 and 1080i. This is in the SF market, north bay Santa Rosa system.


That is what is _really_ despicable to me, since you actually pay extra for these channels as a so called "premium"! 

What may be even worse is the channel owners don't seem to even care!


----------



## leiff

has anyone compared the Xfinity HBO On Demand movie quality versus what is being shown on HBO channel 801 720P?
To compare first make sure you're watching a 1080i or 1080p source as whatever resolution you go into the Xfinity app at is the resolution you stay on


----------



## RyC

Here in the Portland OR market (where the H.264 conversion is supposed to be complete I think), I noticed many (if not all) of the remaining 1080i H.264 channels are now 720p H.264. This happened just in the last week. Interestingly though, the bitrate has gone up from ~3 mbps to ~4 mbps.


----------



## keenanSR

RyC said:


> Here in the Portland OR market (where the H.264 conversion is supposed to be complete I think), I noticed many (if not all) of the remaining 1080i H.264 channels are now 720p H.264. This happened just in the last week. Interestingly though, the bitrate has gone up from ~3 mbps to ~4 mbps.


Do you have some examples? I checked an episode of Van Helsing recorded at 1080i/MPEG2 with a later one at 720p/MPEG4 and it was half the file size and bitrate of the 1080i/MPEG2 version.

1080i/MPEG2


Spoiler






Code:


General
ID                                       : 1 (0x1)
Complete name                            : E:\Videos\Van Helsing\Van Helsing - Stay Inside (09_30_2016).ts
Format                                   : MPEG-TS
File size                                : 3.17 GiB
Duration                                 : 1h 0mn
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 7 561 Kbps
Movie name                               : VAN HELSING
Law rating                               : TV-14 (LSV)

Video
ID                                       : 3714 (0xE82)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : MPEG Video
Format version                           : Version 2
Format profile                           : [email protected]
Format settings, BVOP                    : Yes
Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom
Format settings, GOP                     : Variable
Format settings, picture structure       : Frame
Codec ID                                 : 2
Duration                                 : 1h 0mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 6 800 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 25.0 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan order                               : Top Field First
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.109
Time code of first frame                 : 00:00:00;00
Time code source                         : Group of pictures header
GOP, Open/Closed                         : Open
Stream size                              : 2.85 GiB (90%)

Audio
ID                                       : 3715 (0xE83)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Codec ID                                 : 129
Duration                                 : 59mn 59s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 384 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 fps (1536 spf)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Delay relative to video                  : -5ms
Stream size                              : 165 MiB (5%)
Language                                 : English





720p/MPEG4


Spoiler






Code:


General
ID                                       : 1 (0x1)
Complete name                            : E:\Videos\Van Helsing\Van Helsing - Coming Back (10_07_2016).ts
Format                                   : MPEG-TS
File size                                : 1.55 GiB
Duration                                 : 58mn 58s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 3 757 Kbps
Law rating                               : TV-14 (LSV)

Video
ID                                       : 3831 (0xEF7)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : 27
Duration                                 : 58mn 58s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 3 184 Kbps
Nominal bit rate                         : 20.0 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.058
Stream size                              : 1.31 GiB (85%)

Audio
ID                                       : 3832 (0xEF8)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Codec ID                                 : 129
Duration                                 : 58mn 57s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 384 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 fps (1536 spf)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 162 MiB (10%)
Language                                 : English





Also, consider that an hour long episode of 1080i MPEG2 video at 3.17 GB is on the very low end to begin with, it shows that Comcast has already been compressing the heck out of the channel even before down-rezzing it to 720p and converting to MPEG4.


----------



## RyC

keenanSR said:


> Do you have some examples? I checked an episode of Van Helsing recorded at 1080i/MPEG2 with a later one at 720p/MPEG4 and it was half the file size and bitrate of the 1080i/MPEG2 version.
> 
> 1080i/MPEG2
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> General
> ID                                       : 1 (0x1)
> Complete name                            : E:\Videos\Van Helsing\Van Helsing - Stay Inside (09_30_2016).ts
> Format                                   : MPEG-TS
> File size                                : 3.17 GiB
> Duration                                 : 1h 0mn
> Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
> Overall bit rate                         : 7 561 Kbps
> Movie name                               : VAN HELSING
> Law rating                               : TV-14 (LSV)
> 
> Video
> ID                                       : 3714 (0xE82)
> Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
> Format                                   : MPEG Video
> Format version                           : Version 2
> Format profile                           : [email protected]
> Format settings, BVOP                    : Yes
> Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom
> Format settings, GOP                     : Variable
> Format settings, picture structure       : Frame
> Codec ID                                 : 2
> Duration                                 : 1h 0mn
> Bit rate mode                            : Variable
> Bit rate                                 : 6 800 Kbps
> Maximum bit rate                         : 25.0 Mbps
> Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
> Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
> Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
> Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) fps
> Color space                              : YUV
> Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
> Bit depth                                : 8 bits
> Scan type                                : Interlaced
> Scan order                               : Top Field First
> Compression mode                         : Lossy
> Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.109
> Time code of first frame                 : 00:00:00;00
> Time code source                         : Group of pictures header
> GOP, Open/Closed                         : Open
> Stream size                              : 2.85 GiB (90%)
> 
> Audio
> ID                                       : 3715 (0xE83)
> Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
> Format                                   : AC-3
> Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
> Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
> Format settings, Endianness              : Big
> Codec ID                                 : 129
> Duration                                 : 59mn 59s
> Bit rate mode                            : Constant
> Bit rate                                 : 384 Kbps
> Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
> Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
> Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
> Frame rate                               : 31.250 fps (1536 spf)
> Compression mode                         : Lossy
> Delay relative to video                  : -5ms
> Stream size                              : 165 MiB (5%)
> Language                                 : English
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 720p/MPEG4
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> General
> ID                                       : 1 (0x1)
> Complete name                            : E:\Videos\Van Helsing\Van Helsing - Coming Back (10_07_2016).ts
> Format                                   : MPEG-TS
> File size                                : 1.55 GiB
> Duration                                 : 58mn 58s
> Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
> Overall bit rate                         : 3 757 Kbps
> Law rating                               : TV-14 (LSV)
> 
> Video
> ID                                       : 3831 (0xEF7)
> Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
> Format                                   : AVC
> Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
> Format profile                           : [email protected]
> Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
> Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
> Codec ID                                 : 27
> Duration                                 : 58mn 58s
> Bit rate mode                            : Constant
> Bit rate                                 : 3 184 Kbps
> Nominal bit rate                         : 20.0 Mbps
> Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
> Height                                   : 720 pixels
> Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
> Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) fps
> Color space                              : YUV
> Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
> Bit depth                                : 8 bits
> Scan type                                : Progressive
> Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.058
> Stream size                              : 1.31 GiB (85%)
> 
> Audio
> ID                                       : 3832 (0xEF8)
> Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
> Format                                   : AC-3
> Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
> Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
> Format settings, Endianness              : Big
> Codec ID                                 : 129
> Duration                                 : 58mn 57s
> Bit rate mode                            : Constant
> Bit rate                                 : 384 Kbps
> Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
> Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
> Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
> Frame rate                               : 31.250 fps (1536 spf)
> Compression mode                         : Lossy
> Stream size                              : 162 MiB (10%)
> Language                                 : English
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Also, consider that an hour long episode of 1080i MPEG2 video at 3.17 GB is on the very low end to begin with, it shows that Comcast has already been compressing the heck out of the channel even before down-rezzing it to 720p and converting to MPEG4.


Here's two episodes of Family Guy recorded on Cartoon Network last night, and one week ago. Let me know what you think!

1080i H.264


Spoiler






Code:


General
Complete name                            : E:\S2_UNFILED\VideoReDoFG\fg1.mp4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media
Codec ID                                 : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size                                : 617 MiB
Duration                                 : 32 min
Overall bit rate                         : 2 621 kb/s
Movie name                               : Family Guy
Genre                                    : other;cartoon
Law rating                               : TV-14 (DLSV)
Writing application                      : Lavf57.51.103

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 32 min
Bit rate                                 : 2 170 kb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
Minimum frame rate                       : 19.978 FPS
Maximum frame rate                       : 10000 000.000 FPS
Original frame rate                      : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan type, store method                  : Separated fields
Scan order                               : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.017
Stream size                              : 510 MiB (83%)
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Codec ID                                 : ac-3
Duration                                 : 32 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 448 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 spf)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 104 MiB (17%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Alternate group                          : 1





720p H.264


Spoiler






Code:


General
Complete name                            : E:\S2_UNFILED\VideoReDoFG\fg2.mp4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media
Codec ID                                 : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size                                : 839 MiB
Duration                                 : 32 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant
Overall bit rate                         : 3 562 kb/s
Movie name                               : Family Guy
Genre                                    : other;cartoon
Writing application                      : Lavf57.51.103

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 2 frames
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 32 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 3 174 kb/s
Nominal bit rate                         : 20.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
Minimum frame rate                       : 29.970 FPS
Maximum frame rate                       : 10000 000.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.057
Stream size                              : 747 MiB (89%)

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Codec ID                                 : ac-3
Duration                                 : 32 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 spf)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 88.7 MiB (11%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Alternate group                          : 1





The 720p recording does have 5.1 channel audio, the commercial at the beginning of the clip does not and it must have picked up on that.


----------



## HarperVision

Dang, that 1080i one is only 920x80 at ~31fps!

The 720p one is real 720p60. That probably explains your file size differences.

Nevermind it was just cutoff on my chart I see on Tapatalk on my phone.


----------



## keenanSR

RyC said:


> Here's two episodes of Family Guy recorded on Cartoon Network last night, and one week ago. Let me know what you think!
> 
> 1080i H.264
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> General
> Complete name                            : E:\S2_UNFILED\VideoReDoFG\fg1.mp4
> Format                                   : MPEG-4
> Format profile                           : Base Media
> Codec ID                                 : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
> File size                                : 617 MiB
> Duration                                 : 32 min
> Overall bit rate                         : 2 621 kb/s
> Movie name                               : Family Guy
> Genre                                    : other;cartoon
> Law rating                               : TV-14 (DLSV)
> Writing application                      : Lavf57.51.103
> 
> Video
> ID                                       : 1
> Format                                   : AVC
> Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
> Format profile                           : [email protected]
> Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
> Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
> Codec ID                                 : avc1
> Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
> Duration                                 : 32 min
> Bit rate                                 : 2 170 kb/s
> Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
> Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
> Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
> Frame rate mode                          : Variable
> Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
> Minimum frame rate                       : 19.978 FPS
> Maximum frame rate                       : 10000 000.000 FPS
> Original frame rate                      : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
> Color space                              : YUV
> Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
> Bit depth                                : 8 bits
> Scan type                                : Interlaced
> Scan type, store method                  : Separated fields
> Scan order                               : Top Field First
> Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.017
> Stream size                              : 510 MiB (83%)
> Color range                              : Limited
> Color primaries                          : BT.709
> Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
> Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
> 
> Audio
> ID                                       : 2
> Format                                   : AC-3
> Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
> Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
> Format settings, Endianness              : Big
> Codec ID                                 : ac-3
> Duration                                 : 32 min
> Bit rate mode                            : Constant
> Bit rate                                 : 448 kb/s
> Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
> Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
> Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
> Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 spf)
> Bit depth                                : 16 bits
> Compression mode                         : Lossy
> Stream size                              : 104 MiB (17%)
> Language                                 : English
> Default                                  : Yes
> Alternate group                          : 1
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 720p H.264
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> General
> Complete name                            : E:\S2_UNFILED\VideoReDoFG\fg2.mp4
> Format                                   : MPEG-4
> Format profile                           : Base Media
> Codec ID                                 : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
> File size                                : 839 MiB
> Duration                                 : 32 min
> Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant
> Overall bit rate                         : 3 562 kb/s
> Movie name                               : Family Guy
> Genre                                    : other;cartoon
> Writing application                      : Lavf57.51.103
> 
> Video
> ID                                       : 1
> Format                                   : AVC
> Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
> Format profile                           : [email protected]
> Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
> Format settings, ReFrames                : 2 frames
> Codec ID                                 : avc1
> Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
> Duration                                 : 32 min
> Bit rate mode                            : Constant
> Bit rate                                 : 3 174 kb/s
> Nominal bit rate                         : 20.0 Mb/s
> Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
> Height                                   : 720 pixels
> Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
> Frame rate mode                          : Variable
> Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
> Minimum frame rate                       : 29.970 FPS
> Maximum frame rate                       : 10000 000.000 FPS
> Color space                              : YUV
> Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
> Bit depth                                : 8 bits
> Scan type                                : Progressive
> Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.057
> Stream size                              : 747 MiB (89%)
> 
> Audio
> ID                                       : 2
> Format                                   : AC-3
> Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
> Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
> Format settings, Endianness              : Big
> Codec ID                                 : ac-3
> Duration                                 : 32 min
> Bit rate mode                            : Constant
> Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
> Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
> Channel positions                        : Front: L R
> Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
> Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 spf)
> Bit depth                                : 16 bits
> Compression mode                         : Lossy
> Stream size                              : 88.7 MiB (11%)
> Language                                 : English
> Default                                  : Yes
> Alternate group                          : 1
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The 720p recording does have 5.1 channel audio, the commercial at the beginning of the clip does not and it must have picked up on that.


Interesting, it seems as if Comcast has been compressing the crap out of 1080i video all along, which is no surprise. That show is cartoon content if I'm not mistaken, don't see why that would matter though.

Is that what you're seeing with other content? Do hour long dramas reflect the same increase(w/720p)?


----------



## Dan203

Those were recoded. Probably by Handbrake. I know that because they use variable frame rate. No broadcaster uses variable frame rate. 99.9% of the VFR files we see are from Handbrake.


----------



## keenanSR

Dan203 said:


> Those were recoded. Probably by Handbrake. I know that because they use variable frame rate. No broadcaster uses variable frame rate. 99.9% of the VFR files we see are from Handbrake.


Ah, so that might explain the odd file sizes then. Now that you mention it, it would also explain the file types being mp4 instead of transport stream. In other words, not "raw" untouched files.


----------



## RyC

I'm actually a WMC user (who's keeping watch on Tivo developments in case I decide I've had enough of WMC). MediaInfo can't read .wtv files directly so I used ffmpeg to change the container to mp4. I did not use Handbrake, and it definitely did not re-encode since it took like 15 seconds to create the new file. If that's not a valid method, let me know what I can do differently and I can try again.


----------



## Dan203

What are you using to capture those programs from cable? Are you using a CableCARD tuner like an HDHomeRun or Ceton? Or are you using a capture card like an HDPVR?

I have never seen a broadcast program with a variable frame rate. Although I guess it's possible that ffmpeg is just screwing up the PTS values when you remux the WTV and that's causing MediaInfo to read the frame rate wrong.


----------



## RyC

Dan203 said:


> What are you using to capture those programs from cable? Are you using a CableCARD tuner like an HDHomeRun or Ceton? Or are you using a capture card like an HDPVR?
> 
> I have never seen a broadcast program with a variable frame rate. Although I guess it's possible that ffmpeg is just screwing up the PTS values when you remux the WTV and that's causing MediaInfo to read the frame rate wrong.


Yes, I'm using a Ceton CableCARD tuner. I'll try looking at some other recordings and see if the framerate still reports variable.


----------



## Dan203

You can actually load the WTV file directly into MediaInfo. It doesn't show up as an option if you right click the WTV file like most other media files, but if you launch MediaInfo and drag and drop the WTV file into it then it will work.


----------



## Sgt Howl

For those who have seen down-rezzed MPEG-4 720p channels, what do you think? How do they look?

Also, are the on-demand offerings also down-rezzed?

My area (Denver) is apparently slated for this "upgrade" in November. I can currently easily see the difference between 1080i and 720p channels (big screens and a projector) - I am not a happy camper.


----------



## lessd

Sgt Howl said:


> For those who have seen down-rezzed MPEG-4 720p channels, what do you think? How do they look?
> 
> Also, are the on-demand offerings also down-rezzed?
> 
> My area (Denver) is apparently slated for this "upgrade" in November. I can currently easily see the difference between 1080i and 720p channels (big screens and a projector) - I am not a happy camper.


On-demand offerings are just put on some unused system channel, why would Comcast *not *have OD down-rezzed if getting more bandwidth is the Comcast objective for the down-rezzed.


----------



## HarperVision

Sgt Howl said:


> For those who have seen down-rezzed MPEG-4 720p channels, what do you think? How do they look? Also, are the on-demand offerings also down-rezzed? My area (Denver) is apparently slated for this "upgrade" in November. I can currently easily see the difference between 1080i and 720p channels (big screens and a projector) - I am not a happy camper.


Well, you have another great MSO option headquartered right there in Denver, DirecTV. I would voice my displeasure with my wallet and a letter to the CEO as to why I made that choice. This goes for ANYONE else reading this who has "Con"cast and cares enough to change providers out of principle.

Let's NOT *"give it a rest"*!


----------



## Sgt Howl

HarperVision said:


> Well, you have another great MSO option headquartered right there in Denver, DirecTV.[/b]!


I discovered this downgrade fiasco the day after I installed my new Bolt+. Hate to give it up, not to mention the cost. This is really crap.


----------



## HarperVision

Sgt Howl said:


> I discovered this downgrade fiasco the day after I installed my new Bolt+. Hate to give it up, not to mention the cost. This is really crap.


So, that just means you're within your 30 day return period! 

The DirecTV Genie isn't that bad actually. It's no TiVo but it's close and has a couple features I like that the TiVo doesn't. Plus, when the rubber hits the road and you're just sitting there enjoying your show on your high dollar 4K/UHD or HDTV, it's the image quality that matters! We don't watch tv for the fancy GUI, guide or menus, right?


----------



## davahad

Sgt Howl said:


> For those who have seen down-rezzed MPEG-4 720p channels, what do you think? How do they look?
> 
> Also, are the on-demand offerings also down-rezzed?
> 
> My area (Denver) is apparently slated for this "upgrade" in November. I can currently easily see the difference between 1080i and 720p channels (big screens and a projector) - I am not a happy camper.


I'm in the SF Bay Area and watching the Giants game last night was the first time I noticed an issue. This was on FS1 and it says 720P.

When a Giants player was in front of the background ad screen you would see a green halo around the outer edges of the player uniform. If it happens again tonight I will take a picture and post.

I also have the X1 and will compare and see if the Bolt and X1 have the same issue.


----------



## keenanSR

I notice it most during sports, especially baseball games. They use many different cameras from varying distances and it really shows up when they're doing a long distance shot, 720p-down-rez is not as sharp and crisp as the 1080i broadcast. With football it's much the same, close-up shots aren't an issue, it's when the camera gets further away from the action is where the 1080i image shines.

I have DirecTV and I've been watching Dodger games via the MLB-EI HD package on TWC Sportsnet LA(1080i) and comparing these FS1 and MLB Network playoff game images is no comparison, the Sportsnet LA image is superior, hands down.

Giants games at AT&T Park, especially night games, can be a bit hazy or less sharp even though the home RSN is 1080i and I believe it has to do with all the moisture in the air; the park sits right on the bay and at night the air can get very wet.


----------



## FLEABttn

davahad said:


> When a Giants player was in front of the background ad screen you would see a green halo around the outer edges of the player uniform. If it happens again tonight I will take a picture and post.


That's just awkward compositing of the game and the cgi ad that FS1 was inserting over the in stadium ad. It was visible on my Bolt on Fios. Also FS1 is broadcast at 720P so no Comcast resolution shenanigans there.


----------



## Bigg

I can see a big difference between 1080i and 720p for basketball with shots of the whole court. 1080i is just way sharper. ESPN does the best overall production, but the picture just isn't very clear because it's in 720p.


----------



## leiff

I'm shocked by comcast doing this. In other words if you want to watch high quality content on a large screen don't get Comcast i guess. Wow


----------



## lessd

leiff said:


> I'm shocked by comcast doing this. In other words if you want to watch high quality content on a large screen don't get Comcast i guess. Wow


Or don't get a 1080P HDTV


----------



## HarperVision

leiff said:


> I'm shocked by comcast doing this. In other words if you want to watch high quality content on a large screen don't get Comcast i guess. Wow





lessd said:


> Or don't get a 1080P HDTV


And it's even worse if you have a 4K UHD set because the image will be downconverted from 1080i to 720p, then up converted back to 1080p in your STB (most likely), then unconverted AGAIN to 2160p! What a horrible ass mess that'll probably be!


----------



## Dan203

HarperVision said:


> And it's even worse if you have a 4K UHD set because the image will be downconverted from 1080i to 720p, then up converted back to 1080p in your STB (most likely), then unconverted AGAIN to 2160p! What a horrible ass mess that'll probably be!


If you know all the channels are 720 anyway you might as well just set your TiVo to output 720 and avoid the exta conversion.

The conversion from 720 to 2160 is an even 3x so they can just display each original pixel as a block of 9 pixels on the 4k display without any adiitional quality loss. It would actually probably look better on a 4k TV then a 1080p TV since 720 to 1080 is only 1.5x and requires extra interpolation to upscale.


----------



## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> If you know all the channels are 720 anyway you might as well just set your TiVo to output 720 and avoid the exta conversion.
> 
> The conversion from 720 to 2160 is an even 3x so they can just display each *original pixel *as a block of 9 pixels on the 4k display without any adiitional quality loss. It would actually probably look better on a 4k TV then a 1080p TV since 720 to 1080 is only 1.5x and requires extra interpolation to upscale.


Well that's the problem Dan, it's NOT an "original pixel" if we're talking a 1080i to 720p downconverted channel.

Good points though, but as I said before, that's just polishing a turd. We shouldn't have to be even finding a solution for their greed and contempt for quality.


----------



## Dan203

Just making suggestions for making the best out of a bad situation. By going from a 720p "source" to 1080p then to 4k you're adding an extra level of conversion which might degrade the picture even more. If you go difrectly from 720p to 4k there is no interpolation required so the degradation should be minimized.


----------



## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> Just making suggestions for making the best out of a bad situation. By going from a 720p "source" to 1080p then to 4k you're adding an extra level of conversion which might degrade the picture even more. If you go difrectly from 720p to 4k there is no interpolation required so the degradation should be minimized.


I know, I get it. It's just a solution that we all shouldn't have had a problem for. 

I saw your other post regarding IPTV, etc and it made me think. If this is just a temporary thing for them to free up bandwidth for DOCSIS 3.1, 4K and IPTV to deliver BETTER quality in the long run then I'd be OK with it.....IF they would've just been honest with all their customers and sent a letter or email explaining their intentions. One step back for two steps forward and all, but they didn't. That's the rub!


----------



## alleybj

Dan203 said:


> If you know all the channels are 720 anyway you might as well just set your TiVo to output 720 and avoid the exta conversion.
> 
> The conversion from 720 to 2160 is an even 3x so they can just display each original pixel as a block of 9 pixels on the 4k display without any adiitional quality loss. It would actually probably look better on a 4k TV then a 1080p TV since 720 to 1080 is only 1.5x and requires extra interpolation to upscale.


Except that not all of the channels are 720p. They're not converting the national networks, so CBS, NBC and CW, for example, are 1080i. Question, though, wouldn't it work equally well to check all of the output formats on the Tivo so that it doesn't convert anything? thanks


----------



## Bigg

HarperVision said:


> And it's even worse if you have a 4K UHD set because the image will be downconverted from 1080i to 720p, then up converted back to 1080p in your STB (most likely), then unconverted AGAIN to 2160p! What a horrible ass mess that'll probably be!


We've got native output, but still. It's definitely a mess!



HarperVision said:


> I know, I get it. It's just a solution that we all shouldn't have had a problem for.
> 
> I saw your other post regarding IPTV, etc and it made me think. If this is just a temporary thing for them to free up bandwidth for DOCSIS 3.1, 4K and IPTV to deliver BETTER quality in the long run then I'd be OK with it.....IF they would've just been honest with all their customers and sent a letter or email explaining their intentions. One step back for two steps forward and all, but they didn't. That's the rub!


Who knows. I was hoping for better PQ with MPEG-4, doing 5:1 compression like FiOS, but no, they managed to screw that up. When I have the chance, I'm either going to DirecTV or OTT streaming if they have my sports channels (they don't right now).


----------



## slowbiscuit

Bigg said:


> I can see a big difference between 1080i and 720p for basketball with shots of the whole court. 1080i is just way sharper. ESPN does the best overall production, but the picture just isn't very clear because it's in 720p.


There are issues with 1080i on some channels - I agree that it's much sharper watching Sunday Night Football on NBC for example, but in return you get lots of macroblocking on fast action scenes that you don't see on ESPN. Golf and football on CBS, on the other hand, looks great all the time and is 1080i.

720p is particularly bad on ABC college football games here, have no idea why but it's much worse than ESPN even though they're the same conglomerate. Much fuzzier.


----------



## HarperVision

slowbiscuit said:


> There are issues with 1080i on some channels - I agree that it's much sharper watching Sunday Night Football on NBC for example, but in return you get lots of macroblocking on fast action scenes that you don't see on ESPN. Golf and football on CBS, on the other hand, looks great all the time and is 1080i.
> 
> 720p is particularly bad on ABC college football games here, have no idea why but it's much worse than ESPN even though they're the same conglomerate. Much fuzzier.


Macroblocking has nothing to do with interlaced vs progressive video. That's usually caused by a digital signal related issue. Combing, aliasing, motion blur, etc are artifacts of interlaced video during fast motion.


----------



## TBoyd

I'll join the chorus, the 720p feeds are hideously soft vs the 1080i feeds, even on my older 1080p Sony 52". If they're going to push this MUSH on us I expect a substantial monthly service discount!


----------



## leiff

I agree. in light of this Its hard to justify the cost. the only alternative is to put a satellite dish on my house which I'm not sure Id like to do


----------



## leiff

Hopefully they keep the few 1080i channels they have remaining including MGM movies


----------



## Dan203

alleybj said:


> Except that not all of the channels are 720p. They're not converting the national networks, so CBS, NBC and CW, for example, are 1080i. Question, though, wouldn't it work equally well to check all of the output formats on the Tivo so that it doesn't convert anything? thanks


Yes that does work. But most TVs have a bit of a flicker, and some completely freak out, when the resolution changes. And for some stations the resolution will actually change mid program because the commercials are a different resolution then the main program. So having that setup can be a bit annoying.


----------



## Dan203

HarperVision said:


> Macroblocking has nothing to do with interlaced vs progressive video. That's usually caused by a digital signal related issue. Combing, aliasing, motion blur, etc are artifacts of interlaced video during fast motion.


Macroblocking is also caused by insufficient bitrate. Interlaced video is harder to encode and as such requires higher bitrates. So a 30fps 1080p would have less macroblocking then a 1080i signal given the same bitrate. So it's reasonable that a user might notice less macroblocking on a progressive source when the MSO is artificially limiting the bitrate.


----------



## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> Macroblocking is also caused by insufficient bitrate. Interlaced video is harder to encode and as such requires higher bitrates. So a 30fps 1080p would have less macroblocking then a 1080i signal given the same bitrate. So it's reasonable that a user might notice less macroblocking on a progressive source when the MSO is artificially limiting the bitrate.


Yes, while true that still goes back to what I said. It's a digital signal issue, in this case bit starvation. I see that all the time on my NFL Network channel here on TWC. It's not inherently an interlaced vs progressive issue, but I agree it could cause it if the provider didn't allocate enough bandwidth for the 1080i source.

Thanks for your awesome knowledge, Dan!


----------



## Dan203

Hopefully one day 4K will be the norm and interlaced will be a thing of the past. The H.265 codec has no concept of interlacing so 4K will always be progressive. Interlacing is a huge PITA when dealing with digital encoding and I wish they would have dumped it when they went to HD. Unfortunately they were still using MPEG-2 at the time and bandwidth constraints forced them to use 1080i instead of 1080p.


----------



## Bigg

slowbiscuit said:


> There are issues with 1080i on some channels - I agree that it's much sharper watching Sunday Night Football on NBC for example, but in return you get lots of macroblocking on fast action scenes that you don't see on ESPN. Golf and football on CBS, on the other hand, looks great all the time and is 1080i.
> 
> 720p is particularly bad on ABC college football games here, have no idea why but it's much worse than ESPN even though they're the same conglomerate. Much fuzzier.


That has to do with compression, not 1080i vs. 720p. ESPN mandates certain bitrates by their cable providers, so they aren't as compressed as most other channels. Your local ABC affiliate is probably over-compressing.


----------



## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> That has to do with compression, not 1080i vs. 720p. ESPN mandates certain bitrates by their cable providers, so they aren't as compressed as most other channels. Your local ABC affiliate is probably over-compressing.


I was curious about my cable feed. I get ABC sharing NBC (NBC has two SD sub-channels). I get ESPN sharing C-SPAN (no subchannels ) at 1080i.

One hour of ABC needs 4.05GB and one hour of ESPN needs 7.44GB. I guess ESPN has a much better bit rate since both are 720p and DD 5.1. Seems my ABC feed is pretty bad.

Sorry to go off topic. I only get MPEG-2.


----------



## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> I was curious about my cable feed. I get ABC sharing NBC (NBC has two SD sub-channels). I get ESPN sharing C-SPAN (no subchannels ) at 1080i.
> 
> One hour of ABC needs 4.05GB and one hour of ESPN needs 7.44GB. I guess ESPN has a much better bit rate since both are 720p and DD 5.1. Seems my ABC feed is pretty bad.
> 
> Sorry to go off topic. I only get MPEG-2.


Yeah, much higher bitrate. In terms of sharing a QAM, there are basically no channels with just 2 HDs per QAM. If you can only find 2 HD channels, then there are probably a few SDs crammed in there.


----------



## leiff

Comcast just finished downrezzing the rest of all my channels. I think from when I started noticing it on three separate occasions more and more channels converted to 720P. About a week or two in total I think. My last Channells that converted over were vice BBC America and MGM. Now the only 1080i channels now showing for me are locals. Time to dump cable tv i guess.


----------



## leiff

I Just watched an hbo movie on Xfinity app and picture definitely looks sharper than 720p so if you subscribe to a premium channel you mAy better off viewing content through the Xfinity app. Remember to change your resolution to 1080i or 1080p before launching Xfinity app though since you're stuck with it with whatever resolution you're at when you launch the app


----------



## HarperVision

leiff said:


> I Just watched an hbo movie on Xfinity app and picture definitely looks sharper than 720p so if you subscribe to a premium channel you mAy better off viewing content through the Xfinity app. Remember to change your resolution to 1080i or 1080p before launching Xfinity app though since you're stuck with it with whatever resolution you're at when you launch the app


That's just sad.


----------



## morac

HarperVision said:


> That's just sad.


I wonder if they do that on purpose since fast forwarding is disabled for most channels in OnDemand, though not for Premium channels.


----------



## Dan203

leiff said:


> I Just watched an hbo movie on Xfinity app and picture definitely looks sharper than 720p so if you subscribe to a premium channel you mAy better off viewing content through the Xfinity app. Remember to change your resolution to 1080i or 1080p before launching Xfinity app though since you're stuck with it with whatever resolution you're at when you launch the app


On what device? Is this only when watching VOD? What if you tune a live channel with the app?


----------



## HarperVision

morac said:


> I wonder if they do that on purpose since fast forwarding is disabled for most channels in OnDemand, though not for Premium channels.


Not really a reason to FF with OD for a premium channel since there's no commercials.


----------



## andyf

Dan203 said:


> Just making suggestions for making the best out of a bad situation. By going from a 720p "source" to 1080p then to 4k you're adding an extra level of conversion which might degrade the picture even more. If you go difrectly from 720p to 4k there is no interpolation required so the degradation should be minimized.


I tried changing my TiVo output from 1080p to 720p into my Sony 4K TV. There is a big difference. TiVo menus are sharper and any text on the screen is a lot sharper. Can't say the picture is a lot different but then my eyes aren't great. One thing, the ticker on CNBC has always been jerky with pauses and glitches all the time. I assumed it was the source, but at 720p I see a smooth horizontal ticker with no jittering at all. Maybe it was an effect of the conversion in the TV?


----------



## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> Yeah, much higher bitrate. In terms of sharing a QAM, there are basically no channels with just 2 HDs per QAM. If you can only find 2 HD channels, then there are probably a few SDs crammed in there.


Almost all my HD channels are two 1080i/720p per 6MHz. My SD channels are 10 or more. A few months ago my NBC and CBS stations added two 480i subs. If I was OTA they would have been nice, now not so much. As it was, I used to need 8GB for an hour of those channels. Now it's only 6GB. My cable feed doesn't mix HD and SD on the same channel except for premium networks. I have mapped all 420 channels.


----------



## morac

JoeKustra said:


> Almost all my HD channels are two 1080i/720p per 6MHz. My SD channels are 10 or more. A few months ago my NBC and CBS stations added two 480i subs. If I was OTA they would have been nice, now not so much. As it was, I used to need 8GB for an hour of those channels. Now it's only 6GB. My cable feed doesn't mix HD and SD on the same channel except for premium networks. I have mapped all 420 channels.


From what I've read Comcast packs 4 MPEG2 or 8-10 MPEG4 HD channels per QAM which is why they look so bad.

As to why, I believe it has to do with Comcast's centralized video processing. They send the same feed to all their system, including ones that haven't been updated in ages and max out at about 650 MHz. To be able to provide the same channels and Internet speeds to those systems they have to compress the hell out of everything, which means everyone suffers.


----------



## JoeKustra

morac said:


> From what I've read Comcast packs 4 MPEG2 or 8-10 MPEG4 HD channels per QAM which is why they look so bad.
> 
> As to why, I believe it has to do with Comcast's centralized video processing. They send the same feed to all their system, including ones that haven't been updated in ages and max out at about 650 MHz. To be able to provide the same channels and Internet speeds to those systems they have to compress the hell out of everything, which means everyone suffers.


I've been following this thread. It's sad to mess with quality that way. My cable was upgraded two years ago to 860MHz, so there are a lot of blank channels. My highest is on my cable modem at 825MHz. I swear if Comcast makes noise about buying my cable company I'll move. But there are few places left that aren't Comcast or don't need a TA. For now I'll count my blessings.


----------



## morac

The most comical aspect of this (if anything is) is that Comcast considers themselves a premium product, comparing themselves to Mercedes and Tesla.

http://www.philly.com/philly/busine...as_Comcast_discovers_its_own_innovations.html

I'm assuming Comcast is looking towards the end game where everything is delivered as IPTV. Once that happens none of this will matter. Currently though they are using the same base stream for all devices and platforms. That means the same stream they provide for TV is the same stream they use for mobile phones, though I'm assuming the delivery is adaptive for the later.

See https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30914450-

In the meantime though, they appear to be taking advantage of their Internet caps they are continuing to roll out. I've read that HBO Go/Now now looks better than HBO on Comcast (plus its 1080p as opposed to 720p) so Comcast has downgraded channels so badly that streaming services look better. Streaming more will result in Comcast getting more money as they charge for Internet overages, despite not having to pay more. They actually get paid by streaming providers like Netflix, the more Comcast's customers use their service so it's a win-win situation for Comcast.

By the way there is a huge thread about this over at https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r3...n-rezzing-some-1080i-channels-to-720p-w-mpeg4 which spun off from a link to this thread.


----------



## lessd

TBoyd said:


> I'll join the chorus, the 720p feeds are hideously soft vs the 1080i feeds, even on my older 1080p Sony 52". If they're going to push this MUSH on us I expect a substantial monthly service discount!


I hope you don't hold your breath waiting for your Comcast service discount 

The resizing will screw up TiVo disk use meter, I would guess.


----------



## leiff

Dan203 said:


> On what device? Is this only when watching VOD? What if you tune a live channel with the app?


playing the same content on demand has better picture quality vs dvr it. Il be using ondemand much more because of this. 
Regarding output resolution of tivo using xfinity app-
on demand If your TiVo is set to Output native resolution you need to make sure you're watching a 1080i or 1080p screen at the time you launch the Xfinity app because you will remain on whatever resolution you're on at the time of launching the app. Press the info button on your TV's remote to check after you launch xfinity app. If you Use native resolution output it's going to be a lot harder to go to 1080 resolution first and tune into that first like cbs or nbc since almost every other channel is now 720p


----------



## Dan203

Is the station ypu're watching 720p or 1080i? If it's 720p then you're mich better off having the TiVo output 720p since the TV can display 720p natively by simply using a 3x3 block of pixels for each pixel in yhe source. When you have the TiVo convert to 1080p first you're doing a 1.5x bicubic resample of the 720p source, which can cause some quality loss. 

Ideally I'd think that for a 4K TV you'd want to have both 720p and 1080p checked. That *should* cause the TiVo to output 720p native while doing an internal deinterlace on 1080i content and native output of 1080p content. Should produce less resolution changes on the TV then also having 1080i checked.


----------



## Dan203

JoeKustra said:


> I was curious about my cable feed. I get ABC sharing NBC (NBC has two SD sub-channels). I get ESPN sharing C-SPAN (no subchannels ) at 1080i.
> 
> One hour of ABC needs 4.05GB and one hour of ESPN needs 7.44GB. I guess ESPN has a much better bit rate since both are 720p and DD 5.1. Seems my ABC feed is pretty bad.
> 
> Sorry to go off topic. I only get MPEG-2.


That's about 9Mbps for ABC and 16.5Mbps for ESPN. For 720p 9Mbps is pretty standard for MPEG-2. The ESPN feed seems high. That's more then enough for a 1080i stream, let alone a 720p stream. No wonder you don't see any macroblocking on that channel.


----------



## leiff

...


----------



## leiff

Dan203 said:


> Is the station ypu're watching 720p or 1080i? If it's 720p then you're mich better off having the TiVo output 720p since the TV can display 720p natively by simply using a 3x3 block of pixels for each pixel in yhe source. When you have the TiVo convert to 1080p first you're doing a 1.5x bicubic resample of the 720p source, which can cause some quality loss


Dan, I was trying to reply to your earlier questions to me about on-demand. My basic point was if you didn't catch it; is that native resolution output does not work in the Xfinity app.
Thanks for the advice on what signals to send.


----------



## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> Almost all my HD channels are two 1080i/720p per 6MHz.


Local channels might be, depending on market. Most national HDs in MPEG-2 are 3 or 4 to a QAM, possibly 2 with some SDs mixed in.



Dan203 said:


> That's about 9Mbps for ABC and 16.5Mbps for ESPN. For 720p 9Mbps is pretty standard for MPEG-2. The ESPN feed seems high. That's more then enough for a 1080i stream, let alone a 720p stream. No wonder you don't see any macroblocking on that channel.


Yeah, sadly, 19mbps was the standard, then we went to like 15, with an SD or two snuck in on the QAM, then Comcast pioneered 3:1 muxing, which was horrible at first, and got way better as the encoders got better, then they re-invested those gains in 4:1 muxing, which put us back where we were with 3:1 muxing in the beginning, maybe even marginally worse, and now they go to MPEG-4 and down-convert to 720p to go from a 9:1 mux to a 10:1 mux in some cases. Bleh.

It also depends on the channel. News channels look nice at low bitrates, but during the Olympics, with sailing on MSNBC, it was a mess, as there was water all over the place that just turned into a blocky mess. NBCSN is like 15-16mbps, but still looked bad for some reason, while some other channels look excellent at 10-12mbps, depending on the content (which other content looks awful).

It's sad that streaming is far better. I was streaming some stuff on Roku last night, and it's amazing how much better it looks than what I can get through Comcast.


----------



## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> Local channels might be, depending on market. Most national HDs in MPEG-2 are 3 or 4 to a QAM, possibly 2 with some SDs mixed in.


I used to say all cable is local, but nobody got the joke.

My lowest frequency is 141MHz, my highest 855Mhz. My cable internet uses 16 channels from 735MHz to 825MHz and I have 4 upstream that are not contiguous.

So the math works out to about 119 6MHz channels. Of my HD, there are never more than 2 per 6MHz, sometime just 1 (usually sports). The SD have 10 to 12 with a total feed of 420 channels last time I did a scan with my Premiere. No HD is combined with SD except for premium, like HBO. I do have most HD paired with another HD. There are many empty channels.

You did say national. My cable company ranks about 200, so we are pretty small with 300k or so subs. Not so national. I was pissed when my NBC and CBS feeds added sub-channels, since they were running about 18Mbps and my feed doesn't alter the signal except for stripping the PSIP.

I still have 2 clear QAM 480i and 5 vsb/NTSC channels for AGC testing. The analog channels are from 2 to 135.

I know my feed. It gives me something to talk about.


----------



## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> I used to say all cable is local, but nobody got the joke.
> 
> My lowest frequency is 141MHz, my highest 855Mhz. My cable internet uses 16 channels from 735MHz to 825MHz and I have 4 upstream that are not contiguous.
> 
> So the math works out to about 119 6MHz channels. Of my HD, there are never more than 2 per 6MHz, sometime just 1 (usually sports). The SD have 10 to 12 with a total feed of 420 channels last time I did a scan with my Premiere. No HD is combined with SD except for premium, like HBO. I do have most HD paired with another HD. There are many empty channels.
> 
> You did say national. My cable company ranks about 200, so we are pretty small with 300k or so subs. Not so national. I was pissed when my NBC and CBS feeds added sub-channels, since they were running about 18Mbps and my feed doesn't alter the signal except for stripping the PSIP.
> 
> I still have 2 clear QAM 480i and 5 vsb/NTSC channels for AGC testing. The analog channels are from 2 to 135.
> 
> I know my feed. It gives me something to talk about.


Oooh, I thought you were talking about Comcast. That's definitely NOT how Comcast runs things. Most Comcast QAMs have 3-4 HDs or 2 HDs and some SDs. They pack stuff tight and compress heavily to give more bandwidth to their HSI product.


----------



## Dan203

Bigg said:


> It's sad that streaming is far better. I was streaming some stuff on Roku last night, and it's amazing how much better it looks than what I can get through Comcast.


Streaming has a few major advantages. It's pre-encoded so they can apply pretty sophisticated multipass encoding. Most of the content is 24fps which increases the bits per pixel. They use H.264 where as most cable companies are still using MPEG-2.

The other big one is that between the original source material and your TV most broacast content is recoded at least a half dozen times. Stream services use the source material and encode it once creating a nearly prestine copy.


----------



## JoeKustra

Dan203 said:


> Streaming has a few major advantages. It's pre-encoded so they can apply pretty sophisticated multipass encoding. Most of the content is 24fps which increases the bits per pixel. They use H.264 where as most cable companies are still using MPEG-2.
> 
> The other big one is that between the original source material and your TV most broacast content is recoded at least a half dozen times. Stream services use the source material and encode it once creating a nearly prestine copy.


When I see a movie on the guide, I do a search for it. When I see it on Prime, it means better quality, audio and no commercials. I'll do streaming any day.


----------



## leiff

Will the majority of people adopt an inferior feed Or will most people be doing on demand or some other type of service? Comcast offered me 3 months free HBO Showtime. All shows ondemand with Xfinity app look better. What would the cost be to install an antenna on the roof of my house for local channels in case I can get a signal then I could cancel comcast for my roamio basic. I'm watching a lot more shows on demand now instead.
I Notice the following channels are stil 1080i:
weather channel 776
Nba 727
Nbcsports 723


----------



## leiff

For The last 2 days my on demand been getting v301 error temporarily unavailable.
I fear the Xfinity app is unrealiable


----------



## Bigg

Dan203 said:


> Streaming has a few major advantages. It's pre-encoded so they can apply pretty sophisticated multipass encoding. Most of the content is 24fps which increases the bits per pixel. They use H.264 where as most cable companies are still using MPEG-2.
> 
> The other big one is that between the original source material and your TV most broacast content is recoded at least a half dozen times. Stream services use the source material and encode it once creating a nearly prestine copy.


This is all true, but broadcast can look amazing if given the proper bandwidth, i.e. 19mbps MPEG-2, or even better, 15+mbps MPEG-4 like the master feeds are that Google Fiber pushes down directly without re-encoding.


----------



## HarperVision

Wow, they get Emmys for this garbage......seriously? 

http://corporate.comcast.com/comcas...2Y0ttVkZYOFluNlZrcGpUcXdYeiszc3R2MVBHQTQ9In0=


----------



## kbmb

HarperVision said:


> And it's even worse if you have a 4K UHD set because the image will be downconverted from 1080i to 720p, then up converted back to 1080p in your STB (most likely), then unconverted AGAIN to 2160p! What a horrible ass mess that'll probably be!


Chiming in for the first time in this thread to follow it. This was the exact situation I just ran into this weekend. Bought a 4K TV that's hooked up to my Tivo Plus. I knew deep down that anything cable related wasn't going to look great - but man I didn't realize just how bad it did look. This was Saturday afternoon with all the College Football games on.....they were BAD!

We are still MPEG-2 here (for now).

Watching Vudu HDX streams at least the picture looked about the same as my 1080p TV.

Needless to say I returned the TV for now since 90% of our viewing is all cable from Comcast. This does have me thinking - can we cut the cord?!?

-Kevin


----------



## Bigg

kbmb said:


> Chiming in for the first time in this thread to follow it. This was the exact situation I just ran into this weekend. Bought a 4K TV that's hooked up to my Tivo Plus. I knew deep down that anything cable related wasn't going to look great - but man I didn't realize just how bad it did look. This was Saturday afternoon with all the College Football games on.....they were BAD!


Yeah, every new TV I get, Comcast looks that much worse. It's pretty bad on my 65" 4k TV. I stream everything I can, and a lot of the new shows I'm interested in are available in 4k on Netflix. When I move, I will be looking for a place where I can put up a DirecTV dish.


----------



## randian

What's the point of Comcast continually downgrading its signal if they aren't going to give us channels to occupy the saved bandwidth? Comcast has by far the smallest HD channel lineup of the national cablecos.

I'd seriously consider a dish if I didn't live in Florida. Heavy rainstorms are common and even moderate rain (which may be heavier than what people in other parts of the country might call moderate) seems to cause signal loss in the installations I've seen. Of course I'd still have to have Comcast's service for Internet even if I went with a dish, and I'm not sure I'd save all that much money since there aren't any cheap bundle deals with ala carte internet.


----------



## rainwater

randian said:


> What's the point of Comcast continually downgrading its signal if they aren't going to give us channels to occupy the saved bandwidth? Comcast has by far the smallest HD channel lineup of the national cablecos.


More likely they are using the saved spectrum for more internet/data bandwidth. TV services are no longer money makers for cable companies. Now, data services are much more profitable.


----------



## BobCamp1

randian said:


> What's the point of Comcast continually downgrading its signal if they aren't going to give us channels to occupy the saved bandwidth? Comcast has by far the smallest HD channel lineup of the national cablecos.
> 
> I'd seriously consider a dish if I didn't live in Florida. Heavy rainstorms are common and even moderate rain (which may be heavier than what people in other parts of the country might call moderate) seems to cause signal loss in the installations I've seen. Of course I'd still have to have Comcast's service for Internet even if I went with a dish, and I'm not sure I'd save all that much money since there aren't any cheap bundle deals with ala carte internet.


I think they're doing it to make way for faster Internet and maybe 4k channels.

You're going to have some rain fade in Florida, but only when the radar is orange, red, or purple. Regular rain is OK.

DirecTV picture quality is uneven. Some channels aren't compressed and some are compressed to death. Don't get Dish.


----------



## BobCamp1

Dan203 said:


> That's about 9Mbps for ABC and 16.5Mbps for ESPN. For 720p 9Mbps is pretty standard for MPEG-2. The ESPN feed seems high. That's more then enough for a 1080i stream, let alone a 720p stream. No wonder you don't see any macroblocking on that channel.


I can confirm you'll see macroblocking at 9Mbps, even on 1080i.

It's not the 1080i vs. 720p that gets you (unless you have a 60" TV), it's that increase in compression that really makes fast motion scenes look bad.

On FIOS, on a 50" TV, IMO there isn't a noticeable difference in 720p vs. 1080i as long as neither one is compressed. But I'm guessing Comcast also bumped up the compression a bit at the same time they switched to 720p.

Either way it's a mess.


----------



## randian

BobCamp1 said:


> DirecTV picture quality is uneven. Some channels aren't compressed and some are compressed to death. Don't get Dish.


What happened to Dish? They used to have a good reputation for video quality.


----------



## Bigg

randian said:


> What's the point of Comcast continually downgrading its signal if they aren't going to give us channels to occupy the saved bandwidth? Comcast has by far the smallest HD channel lineup of the national cablecos.
> 
> I'd seriously consider a dish if I didn't live in Florida. Heavy rainstorms are common and even moderate rain (which may be heavier than what people in other parts of the country might call moderate) seems to cause signal loss in the installations I've seen. Of course I'd still have to have Comcast's service for Internet even if I went with a dish, and I'm not sure I'd save all that much money since there aren't any cheap bundle deals with ala carte internet.


More bandwidth for internet, which, all considering is strange, since they face a lot of competition for TV, but not for internet. If they had just done SDV, they would have plenty of bandwidth for everything, but they refused to use it, whereas Cox, Charter, TWC, BHN, and others have deployed it in various forms over the years. Comcast also has done some plant upgrades and not others.


----------



## kbmb

Bigg said:


> More bandwidth for internet, which, all considering is strange, since they face a lot of competition for TV, but not for internet. If they had just done SDV, they would have plenty of bandwidth for everything, but they refused to use it, whereas Cox, Charter, TWC, BHN, and others have deployed it in various forms over the years. Comcast also has done some plant upgrades and not others.


They just upped my Blast! to 200 down today.

-Kevin


----------



## BobCamp1

randian said:


> What happened to Dish? They used to have a good reputation for video quality.


That must have been a very long time ago.

http://www.dbstalk.com/topic/220557...hinking-about-switching-to-dish-from-directv/


----------



## keenanSR

BobCamp1 said:


> That must have been a very long time ago.
> 
> http://www.dbstalk.com/topic/220557...hinking-about-switching-to-dish-from-directv/


Yes, Dish has been 1440x1080 for at least a decade, probably more. When it comes to sat PQ DirecTV is the only choice. And now, with Comcast lowering the resolution of all of its cable nets to 1280x720 they are even worse than Dish.


----------



## leiff

Any news from Comcast whether they plan on staying at 720P? I'm probably going to drop Comcast TV untill they return 1080p. Unfortunately for me there's very little competition in my area. The next step for me is to see what locals I can get with a roof antenna since inside antenna gets nothing. At least the Weather Channel still looks good at 1080i. one of only three 1080i channels remaining on Comcast


----------



## HarperVision

They never were 1080p for broadcast channels, just 1080i, so you'll be waiting a long time!


----------



## Bigg

leiff said:


> Any news from Comcast whether they plan on staying at 720P? I'm probably going to drop Comcast TV untill they return 1080p. Unfortunately for me there's very little competition in my area. The next step for me is to see what locals I can get with a roof antenna since inside antenna gets nothing. At least the Weather Channel still looks good at 1080i. one of only three 1080i channels remaining on Comcast


At first I thought that's a bizarre channel to be 1080i, but then I remembered it is very localized on cable, so they don't have the equipment to do MPEG-4 encoding on hundreds of different localized Weather Channels, just like they don't do MPEG-4 for locals.


----------



## SFDave

Comcast isn't just down-converting video, they're down-converting audio. In the Bay Area, channel 702 (Fox) is being down-converted from 5.1 surround to 2.0 stereo. I have a Premiere XL with both OTA and cable tuners. The OTA tuner gets 5.1 surround. The cable tuner gets only 2.0 surround. So far, it's only occurring on one channel. I tried calling Comcast, but they didn't even know what 5.1 surround was. They just want to reset my cable card. I gave up.


----------



## HarperVision

SFDave said:


> Comcast isn't just down-converting video, they're down-converting audio. In the Bay Area, channel 702 (Fox) is being down-converted from 5.1 surround to 2.0 stereo. I have a Premiere XL with both OTA and cable tuners. The OTA tuner gets 5.1 surround. The cable tuner gets only 2.0 surround. So far, it's only occurring on one channel. I tried calling Comcast, but they didn't even know what 5.1 surround was. They just want to reset my cable card. I gave up.


Would not surprise me at all!


----------



## leiff

I agree no surprise there, I tried explaining the whole issue to Comcast reps and they kept insisting it was because I wasn't paying for HD I couldn't seem to make them understand the problem.


----------



## leiff

Unfortunately for me DirecTV isnt an option because I've become addicted to fast mode playback tivo feature so I'm kind of stuck with Tivo. I never would have guessed Comcast would resort to this to free up bandwidth. I can't think of a better use of bandwidth than to get good quality 1080i content. Unfortunately Comcast doesn't feel this way.


----------



## BobCamp1

leiff said:


> I can't think of a better use of bandwidth than to get good quality 1080i content.


Faster Internet, which is what millennials want since they don't watch TV but stream instead. Combine that with the fact that they prefer 720p since they watch content on small progressive scan devices.

Comcast has also said they will start broadcasting in 4k and/or IP pretty soon, so they also need bandwidth for that.

Finally, hardly anybody will notice. Aside from this thread, the one in dslreports, and the one in the xfinity website (with many of the same people posting in all three locations), nobody else seems to care.

Though I still don't know why they didn't deploy SDV.


----------



## leiff

What do you mean "IP"? if you mean "on demand", unfortunately fast mode won't work for that. Nor will ondemand even let you fast forward the commercials.


----------



## JoeKustra

leiff said:


> What do you mean "IP"? if you mean "on demand", unfortunately fast mode won't work for that. Nor will ondemand even let you fast forward the commercials.


IP, in this context, usually means the content will be from the internet. That's either good or bad depending on many factors.


----------



## keenanSR

SFDave said:


> Comcast isn't just down-converting video, they're down-converting audio. In the Bay Area, channel 702 (Fox) is being down-converted from 5.1 surround to 2.0 stereo. I have a Premiere XL with both OTA and cable tuners. The OTA tuner gets 5.1 surround. The cable tuner gets only 2.0 surround. So far, it's only occurring on one channel. I tried calling Comcast, but they didn't even know what 5.1 surround was. They just want to reset my cable card. I gave up.


Is this during FOX prime time, 8pm to 10pm, and what shows have you noticed this on?


----------



## morac

BobCamp1 said:


> Faster Internet, which is what millennials want since they don't watch TV but stream instead. Combine that with the fact that they prefer 720p since they watch content on small progressive scan devices.


At some point faster Internet is pointless. Comcast updated me recently from 150 Mbps down to 200 Mbps down and really, I can't tell the difference. It's not like video streams faster at that speeds and I'm not downloading movies or anything large enough to matter. Anything large I do download like PS4 games already seem to max out at about 40 Mbps per download, so the higher speeds do nothing.

It would be nice if they used some of that free bandwidth to increase upload speeds which have been stuck at 10 Mbps for years now.


----------



## Bigg

If they had used SDV like all the other major MSOs, they could have done more broadband bandwidth AND good picture quality AND lots of HD channels. But they didn't want to do that, and they haven't upgraded a lot of systems, so we're stuck with an either-or scenario. They need to add DOCSIS bandwidth for the eventual transition to IPTV, as well as offering faster and faster internet speeds so that they have some way to justify jacking up their rates for internet year after year.


----------



## lessd

morac said:


> At some point faster Internet is pointless. Comcast updated me recently from 150 Mbps down to 200 Mbps down and really, I can't tell the difference. It's not like video streams faster at that speeds and I'm not downloading movies or anything large enough to matter. Anything large I do download like PS4 games already seem to max out at about 40 Mbps per download, so the higher speeds do nothing.
> 
> It would be nice if they used some of that free bandwidth to increase upload speeds which have been stuck at 10 Mbps for years now.


I agree, except for Windows updates most sights don't use the extra bandwidth, my speed is about 175Mb/s, only Windows updates use that speed as I checked using the task manger.


----------



## mattyro7878

I guess I should count my blessings. Cox in CT is a good provider, no data usage issues; picture quality is fine. My biggest gripe is the constant "add a phone line". Cox advertises as being "family owned". Maybe they have a soul, unlike Comcast....and now TWC and ATT?


----------



## keenanSR

mattyro7878 said:


> I guess I should count my blessings. Cox in CT is a good provider, no data usage issues; picture quality is fine. My biggest gripe is the constant "add a phone line". Cox advertises as being "family owned". Maybe they have a soul, unlike Comcast....and now TWC and ATT?


Time Warner Cable is no longer part of the parent company Time Warner and hasn't been for about 6 years. AT&T is buying Time Warner, the content creation company. Some of Time Warner's properties are Turner Broadcasting(CNN, TNT, TBS, etc.) and premium channels like HBO and Cinemax. Time Warner also owns Warner Bros studios which produces films, content for TV(many of the DC shows are TW property) and is half owner of The CW.

TWC was purchased recently by Charter and I believe the combined, new company is called Spectrum.


----------



## jth tv

keenanSR said:


> Time Warner Cable is no longer part of the parent company Time Warner and hasn't been for about 6 years.....


Saturday's CBS news showed a Time Warner Cable van during their story about ATT. And they showed a Motorola DVR during their story about DYN cyberattacks.

Why are so many people so bad at their jobs ?


----------



## keenanSR

jth tv said:


> Saturday's CBS news showed a Time Warner Cable van during their story about ATT. And they showed a Motorola DVR during their story about DYN cyberattacks.
> 
> Why are so many people so bad at their jobs ?


Sloppy and lazy research and even sloppier editorial control.


----------



## HerronScott

jth tv said:


> Saturday's CBS news showed a Time Warner Cable van during their story about ATT. And they showed a Motorola DVR during their story about DYN cyberattacks.
> 
> Why are so many people so bad at their jobs ?


Better than the ones that showed a TiVo Bolt!

http://www.the-news-daily.com/your-hijacked-help-epic-cyberattack_611948

I saw this on my phone through MSN news as a USA Today article.

Scott


----------



## Bigg

mattyro7878 said:


> I guess I should count my blessings. Cox in CT is a good provider, no data usage issues; picture quality is fine. My biggest gripe is the constant "add a phone line". Cox advertises as being "family owned". Maybe they have a soul, unlike Comcast....and now TWC and ATT?


Cox in CT caps, Comcast does not. Cox has a more advanced network overall, but in terms of monopolistic behavior, they are basically a mini-Comcast.


----------



## SFDave

keenanSR said:


> Is this during FOX prime time, 8pm to 10pm, and what shows have you noticed this on?


I first noticed this on Thursday, 10/20, when I recorded "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" on FOX (KTVU). Since then, I've compared KTVU using an OTA tuner (channel 2.1) to a cable tuner (channel 702). At all times, day or evening, when the OTA signal carried 5.1 audio, the cable tuner only carried 2.0 audio.


----------



## HarperVision

SFDave said:


> I first noticed this on Thursday, 10/20, when I recorded "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" on FOX (KTVU). Since then, I've compared KTVU using an OTA tuner (channel 2.1) to a cable tuner (channel 702). At all times, day or evening, when the OTA signal carried 5.1 audio, the cable tuner only carried 2.0 audio.


"xfinity.......the future of awful"


----------



## rainwater

Bigg said:


> More bandwidth for internet, which, all considering is strange, since they face a lot of competition for TV, but not for internet.


It isn't that strange. Cable companies are making more profit off of providing internet than TV.


----------



## KingsFan6

A couple recent recordings of Empire on KTVU in the Bay Area (ch. 702) had 2.0 sound. If this is the only channel with down-converted sound from the source, then I wonder if it's just a bug that needs to be fixed and not intentional on Comcast's part. At least around here, I was always under the belief that the signal from the local stations are simply passed through by Comcast. Would be a shame if they messed with those signals any further, since some stations (Fox and ABC affiliates) already suffer from super heavy compression.


----------



## keenanSR

SFDave said:


> I first noticed this on Thursday, 10/20, when I recorded "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" on FOX (KTVU). Since then, I've compared KTVU using an OTA tuner (channel 2.1) to a cable tuner (channel 702). At all times, day or evening, when the OTA signal carried 5.1 audio, the cable tuner only carried 2.0 audio.


It appears you're right. I don't watch a lot of FOX, but I recovered some episodes of some prime time and they all have just 2.0 audio; Gotham, Rosewood, Pitch and Lethal Weapon.

I don't have any NFL games recorded so I don't know if it's happening there as well.


----------



## keenanSR

KingsFan6 said:


> A couple recent recordings of Empire on KTVU in the Bay Area (ch. 702) had 2.0 sound. If this is the only channel with down-converted sound from the source, then I wonder if it's just a bug that needs to be fixed and not intentional on Comcast's part. At least around here, I was always under the belief that the signal from the local stations are simply passed through by Comcast. Would be a shame if they messed with those signals any further, since some stations (Fox and ABC affiliates) already suffer from super heavy compression.


It has to be a mistake as I don't see any reason why they would change the audio from 5.1 to 2.0 on purpose. The trick will be, who, exactly would you contact to have it fixed? I'm certainly not in the mood to sit on hold waiting to talk to someone at Comcast who will have no clue what I'm even talking about.


----------



## KingsFan6

keenanSR said:


> It has to be a mistake as I don't see any reason why they would change the audio from 5.1 to 2.0 on purpose. The trick will be, who, exactly would you contact to have it fixed? I'm certainly not in the mood to sit on hold waiting to talk to someone at Comcast who will have no clue what I'm even talking about.


Seems like an obvious job for a KTVU engineer to bring up the issue with Comcast. After all, it is the quality of their signal that is being messed up by a distributor.


----------



## keenanSR

KingsFan6 said:


> Seems like an obvious job for a KTVU engineer to bring up the issue with Comcast. After all, it is the quality of their signal that is being messed up by a distributor.


You'd be surprised at how uninterested some station engineers are about hearing something is wrong with their signal and that is if you can even reach them, many stations today are completed automated and there is nobody to talk to. They will very likely tell you to call Comcast, and there's a very high probability that it's fine on their end and it is something that Comcast is doing.

I sent an email to a Comcast service rep I've been dealing with the last several years and asked him if there was anything he could do. I may try and call KTVU tomorrow.


----------



## Bigg

rainwater said:


> It isn't that strange. Cable companies are making more profit off of providing internet than TV.


Yeah, but in most areas, they could offer 50/10, and they'd have a ironclad monopoly on the market. They have competition with DirecTV, DISH, and now OTT streaming services nationwide.


----------



## randian

keenanSR said:


> It has to be a mistake as I don't see any reason why they would change the audio from 5.1 to 2.0 on purpose.


More bandwidth savings, however trivial. I find it interesting that the cable companies are complaining about "cord cutters", while making cord cutting more attractive by downgrading their television product and massively increasing internet speeds.


----------



## KingsFan6

Does anyone know whether On Demand has or will be converted to H.264 and 720p?


----------



## morac

randian said:


> More bandwidth savings, however trivial. I find it interesting that the cable companies are complaining about "cord cutters", while making cord cutting more attractive by downgrading their television product and massively increasing internet speeds.


That's why Cable Company's are buying content providers and channels. Comcast owns NBC and AT&T will soon partially own CW.


----------



## rainwater

Bigg said:


> Yeah, but in most areas, they could offer 50/10, and they'd have a ironclad monopoly on the market. They have competition with DirecTV, DISH, and now OTT streaming services nationwide.


Where do you think this bandwidth savings is going? It certainly isn't going directly to the customers. Cable companies are using this bandwidth to provide their own services (like OTT programming). It isn't just about giving customers faster internet.


----------



## RyC

Here's MediaInfo for a 1 hour show (Conan) that was 1080i 2 weeks ago but is now 720p. MediaInfo was able to read the wtv file directly this time for some reason, but I'm not sure if the info seems correct (no bitrate for 1080i?/missing the audio portion)

1080i


Spoiler






Code:


General
Complete name                            : C:\Users\WinBench\Desktop\Conan_TBSHD_2016_10_06_22_58_00.wtv
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
File size                                : 2.34 GiB

Video
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : @L24.2 / @L14.7 / [email protected]
MultiView_Count                          : 1 / 1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan type, store method                  : Separated fields
Scan order                               : Top Field First
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709





720p


Spoiler






Code:


General
Complete name                            : C:\Users\WinBench\Desktop\Conan_TBSHD_2016_10_24_22_58_00.wtv
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
File size                                : 1.83 GiB
Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant

Video
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : @L14.0 / [email protected]
MultiView_Count                          : 1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 20.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.362


----------



## Bigg

rainwater said:


> Where do you think this bandwidth savings is going? It certainly isn't going directly to the customers. Cable companies are using this bandwidth to provide their own services (like OTT programming). It isn't just about giving customers faster internet.


Yes, some of it is for XoD, cloud DVR, etc, and eventually IPTV, but they want to crank up the consumer bandwidth so that they can justify price increase after price increase, while going "well the price per megabit went down". Ok, sure that's mathematically correct, but most people don't care.


----------



## leiff

KingsFan6 said:


> Does anyone know whether On Demand has or will be converted to H.264 and 720p?


Yes Xfinity on demand looks way better. I'm sure it must be 1080 resolution but in order to get that higher resolution you have to first change the resolution of your TiVo prior to launching Xfinity app as whatever resolution your TV is on when you launch the app is what resolution your TiVo will stay on. In other words native resolution does not work for the Xfinity app so if you're using native resolution go to a local 1080i channel  such as CBS/NBC before launching Xfinity. because of comcasts recent downrezzing I will be using Xfinity On Demand app allot more and recording a lot less. Im Not at all happy about this and every time I call Comcast and ask about it no one has a clue.


----------



## KingsFan6

Actually, programs in On Demand can be 720p, depending on the network, just like on the linear channels. I was just wondering whether Comcast is going to (or perhaps already has) down-rezzed all OD 1080i content to 720p just like they're doing with the linear channels. And will OD also be converted to H.264 just like all the channels are? I used to be able to tell the resolution of OD programs because I had the Roamio set to native output and the TV would tell you the resolution of the incoming source. But, as you mentioned, native output of OD doesn't work anymore. I actually called out this exact issue earlier this year right here on this board. I mentioned the stupid thing about the resolution of OD locking on whatever resolution you happened to enter OD at (e.g., if coming in from ESPN, then HD programs in OD will all be 720p). It's so stupid, and I know it hasn't been fixed yet. It was caused by a firmware update earlier in the year -- the same update that caused audio dropout issues (which didn't affect me), a whiteout of the picture with OD (which did affect me), and a few other issues.


----------



## leiff

If they had of downrezzed the 1080i on demand content I would have noticed I'm pretty sure. The image is much sharper verses that of a recording from channel.


----------



## Dan203

RyC said:


> Here's MediaInfo for a 1 hour show (Conan) that was 1080i 2 weeks ago but is now 720p. MediaInfo was able to read the wtv file directly this time for some reason, but I'm not sure if the info seems correct (no bitrate for 1080i?/missing the audio portion)
> 
> 1080i
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> General
> Complete name                            : C:\Users\WinBench\Desktop\Conan_TBSHD_2016_10_06_22_58_00.wtv
> Format                                   : AVC
> Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
> File size                                : 2.34 GiB
> 
> Video
> Format                                   : AVC
> Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
> Format profile                           : @L24.2 / @L14.7 / [email protected]
> MultiView_Count                          : 1 / 1
> Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
> Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
> Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
> Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
> Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
> Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
> Color space                              : YUV
> Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
> Bit depth                                : 8 bits
> Scan type                                : Interlaced
> Scan type, store method                  : Separated fields
> Scan order                               : Top Field First
> Color range                              : Limited
> Color primaries                          : BT.709
> Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
> Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 720p
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> General
> Complete name                            : C:\Users\WinBench\Desktop\Conan_TBSHD_2016_10_24_22_58_00.wtv
> Format                                   : AVC
> Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
> File size                                : 1.83 GiB
> Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant
> 
> Video
> Format                                   : AVC
> Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
> Format profile                           : @L14.0 / [email protected]
> MultiView_Count                          : 1
> Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
> Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
> Bit rate mode                            : Constant
> Bit rate                                 : 20.0 Mb/s
> Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
> Height                                   : 720 pixels
> Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
> Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
> Color space                              : YUV
> Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
> Bit depth                                : 8 bits
> Scan type                                : Progressive
> Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.362


Interesting. Everything about the 720p stream screams mobile compatibility to me. That encode would work on pretty much any mobile device or streaming box in existance.

Oh and I don't think the bitrate for the 720p stream is accurate, so you can look at them both as having no bitrate. Based on the file size the 720p stream is about 4Mbps, and the 1080i is like 5.2Mbps.


----------



## HarperVision

Dan203 said:


> Interesting. Everything about the 720p stream screams mobile compatibility to me. That encode would work on pretty much any mobile device or streaming box in existance.........


Yay, such high quality and care for our expensive HDTVs and UHD TVs! They really are "the Mercedes of cable", aren't they?


----------



## Dan203

It suggests that they are pushing away from linear cable toward IP delivery. Perhaps via a PS Vue style service that's available in all areas and not just the ones they service. Given the current regulatory landscape it makes sense for them, as a business, to do that.

Although they could also do 1080p and get almost the same compatibility with modern mobile and streaming devices, so there is some level of bandwidth control at play here as well.


----------



## SFDave

keenanSR said:


> It has to be a mistake as I don't see any reason why they would change the audio from 5.1 to 2.0 on purpose. The trick will be, who, exactly would you contact to have it fixed? I'm certainly not in the mood to sit on hold waiting to talk to someone at Comcast who will have no clue what I'm even talking about.


I went back through my old FOX recordings. Everything recorded prior to 4/18/16 had 5.1 audio. Everything after 4/24/16 had 2.0 audio, so this has been an issue for months. Since dealing with Comcast is useless, I tried going to KTVU. I emailed them under a link on their website entitled "Signal Problems?" They responded that they'd forward my email to their Chief Engineer. Hopefully they'll have better luck dealing with Comcast than I did.


----------



## randian

SFDave said:


> I went back through my old FOX recordings. Everything recorded prior to 4/18/16 had 5.1 audio. Everything after 4/24/16 had 2.0 audio, so this has been an issue for months. Since dealing with Comcast is useless, I tried going to KTVU. I emailed them under a link on their website entitled "Signal Problems?" They responded that they'd forward my email to their Chief Engineer. Hopefully they'll have better luck dealing with Comcast than I did.


I doubt they're happy being down-rezzed by Comcast, but unless the carriage agreement forbids it they haven't a leg to stand on.


----------



## SFDave

SFDave said:


> I went back through my old FOX recordings. Everything recorded prior to 4/18/16 had 5.1 audio. Everything after 4/24/16 had 2.0 audio, so this has been an issue for months. Since dealing with Comcast is useless, I tried going to KTVU. I emailed them under a link on their website entitled "Signal Problems?" They responded that they'd forward my email to their Chief Engineer. Hopefully they'll have better luck dealing with Comcast than I did.


I just received this reply from KTVU:
"This is being investigated. Not a Comcast issue but looks like it can be resolved at our facility."

They haven't fixed it yet, but now there's hope.


----------



## Brendan4786

I have Comcast in Seattle and over the last week I noticed that Comedy Central and Food Network are now broadcast in 720p. If they touch HBO I'm cancelling that and going to HBO NOW


----------



## leiff

Brendan4786 said:


> I have Comcast in Seattle and over the last week I noticed that Comedy Central and Food Network are now broadcast in 720p. If they touch HBO I'm cancelling that and going to HBO NOW


Once Comcast started converting my channels it only took about a week before they were all converted including HBO. Besides locals the only 1080i Channels remaining is the Weather Network and NBC Sports. comcraptisc the future of terrible


----------



## Brendan4786

leiff said:


> Once Comcast started converting my channels it only took about a week before they were all converted including HBO. Besides locals the only 1080i Channels remaining is the Weather Network and NBC Sports. comcraptisc the future of terrible


I just checked and they already did it to STARZ and HBO. Hello, streaming on FireTV!


----------



## leiff

Brendan4786 said:


> I just checked and they already did it to STARZ and HBO. Hello, streaming on FireTV!


 the same time Comcast has done this they have also instituted internet bandwidth cap so using other streaming services will count against your data cap beware. Using your TiVo Xfinity app you can still get 1080i content and I presume that won't count against Comcasts new 1 terabit monthly cap limit


----------



## alleybj

Is it confirmed that Comcast is streaming in 1080i? I watched a show from BBC America, and it was in 720p, while the Broadcast channel used to be 1080i before the recent 720p conversion.


----------



## KingsFan6

A solution to all of the ills with down-rezzing to 720p is to move your couch back 10 feet. j/k

BTW, when folks here say that Comcast is moving to IP delivery, what does that mean? Does it mean that signals will be sent over the internet but through the current physical infrastructure? Is this what U-verse does? BTW, last time I checked, U-verse was sending their channels at 5.5 Mbps across the board, so the fact that Comcast is now sending channels at 3.5 - 4 Mbps is just terrible.


----------



## Brendan4786

This whole thing is just beyond comprehension. If they wanted to transfer to progressive format, why not 1080p? With tv screens getting bigger and bigger, why would you purposely downgrade your picture quality?

Side topic: does anyone know how resolution output works for on demand? I was picking various shows from HBO (now 720p) and CBS (still 1080i) and the output resolution was always the same as from the live broadcast channel I left when I entered the on demand listings, not what the on demand program's resolution would be if it were on the air.


----------



## KingsFan6

Brendan4786 said:


> Side topic: does anyone know how resolution output works for on demand? I was picking various shows from HBO (now 720p) and CBS (still 1080i) and the output resolution was always the same as from the live broadcast channel I left when I entered the on demand listings, not what the on demand program's resolution would be if it were on the air.


It's supposed to work as you expect: Resolution depends on the content (CBS/NBC = 1080i, ABC/Fox = 720p). But there's a bug that was introduced in a firmware update earlier in the year that caused what you now see in which the resolution is stuck on what it was at when you entered OD. No idea when they'll fix it.


----------



## Dan203

KingsFan6 said:


> BTW, when folks here say that Comcast is moving to IP delivery, what does that mean? Does it mean that signals will be sent over the internet but through the current physical infrastructure? Is this what U-verse does? BTW, last time I checked, U-verse was sending their channels at 5.5 Mbps across the board, so the fact that Comcast is now sending channels at 3.5 - 4 Mbps is just terrible.


There are two ways they could do IP. They could convert their internal infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.1 and then dedicate a portion of that to non-internet streaming of linear channels. Or they could convert their internal infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.1 and then dedicate the entire thing to the internet and then offer their linear channels as a sort of OTT app, similar to SlingTV or PSVue. If they did the later then they could offer that service to everyone throughout the country, even if they're in a non-comcast serviced area.

Personally I think we'll eventually end up with all the MSOs doing #2. Their current infrastructure will basically just be a dumb pipe into the internet and their video portion will spin off into a separate OTT service with a separate monthly fee. They could still offer bundle deals to people who have both, but they could also sell their video service nationwide even to people who aren't serviced by their infrastructure.


----------



## morac

Dan203 said:


> There are two ways they could do IP. They could convert their internal infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.1 and then dedicate a portion of that to non-internet streaming of linear channels. Or they could convert their internal infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.1 and then dedicate the entire thing to the internet and then offer their linear channels as a sort of OTT app, similar to SlingTV or PSVue. If they did the later then they could offer that service to everyone throughout the country, even if they're in a non-comcast serviced area.
> 
> Personally I think we'll eventually end up with all the MSOs doing #2. Their current infrastructure will basically just be a dumb pipe into the internet and their video portion will spin off into a separate OTT service with a separate monthly fee. They could still offer bundle deals to people who have both, but they could also sell their video service nationwide even to people who aren't serviced by their infrastructure.


Doing #2 means MSOs would actually have to compete instead of most of them having a monopoly in their area. That would mean they'd need to lower prices and/or provide better service. I don't see that happening.


----------



## KingsFan6

Dan203 said:


> There are two ways they could do IP. They could convert their internal infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.1 and then dedicate a portion of that to non-internet streaming of linear channels. Or they could convert their internal infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.1 and then dedicate the entire thing to the internet and then offer their linear channels as a sort of OTT app, similar to SlingTV or PSVue. If they did the later then they could offer that service to everyone throughout the country, even if they're in a non-comcast serviced area.
> 
> Personally I think we'll eventually end up with all the MSOs doing #2. Their current infrastructure will basically just be a dumb pipe into the internet and their video portion will spin off into a separate OTT service with a separate monthly fee. They could still offer bundle deals to people who have both, but they could also sell their video service nationwide even to people who aren't serviced by their infrastructure.


Very interesting. Seems like they are part way there with option #2 with the Xfinity TV app. Are their economies to what they're doing with converting linear channels to H.264 and 720p, in the sense that that those linear channels will basically be on par with the streams?


----------



## Dan203

KingsFan6 said:


> Very interesting. Seems like they are part way there with option #2 with the Xfinity TV app. Are their economies to what they're doing with converting linear channels to H.264 and 720p, in the sense that that those linear channels will basically be on par with the streams?


Converting to H.264 720p gives them maximum compatibility with stream devices. No mobile devices or streaming boxes out there support MPEG-2, so H.264 is a given. And very, very, few support interlaced video. They could have gone with 1080p instead, but that would have increased the bandwith of a stream by at least 1/3. There are also still a few devices out there that can't do 1080p, so 720p is also the safer choice for compatibility.


----------



## cherry ghost

Might just be coincidence, but ever since they started doing this fast forward is no longer choppy on h.264 channels.


----------



## Dan203

For compatibility they're probably using a consistent, small, GOP size.


----------



## Bigg

Converting linear channels to 720p has nothing to do with streaming compatibility, as those would be a different set of streams anyway, as they are a more consistent bitrate, have buffering, and don't have to put 8 or 9 or 10 channels in exactly 38mbps. This is a conversion to save bandwidth because they didn't use SDV, and still have many non-rebuild systems that aren't running at 860mhz. They will have STBs for decades to come, and those will operate off of IPTV streams. X1 is already capable of running this way, and I suspect that within a year, there will be some channels (possibly sports packages in HD or foreign channels) that are on IPTV, and are thus X1-only. As time goes on, more channels will go IP-only. There may also be an OTT-like offering on Roku/FireTV/Chromecast/etc like TWC developed, but that would be in addition to, not instead of, a STB-based system. They didn't invest the big bucks in X1 to abandon it a couple of years later. If anything, they may try to add more services to X1, like they did with Netflix to compete with Roku and FireTV. It makes sense for them to at least add services like Netflix that don't directly compete with XoD, as they want to tie themselves more and more into people's viewing habits to fight cord cutting.


----------



## kbmb

Beautiful new Samsung 4K TV + Comcast cable = throwing up in my mouth a little  :dizzy: :thumbsdown:

I knew it was bad before.....but seeing it on a 4K TV just makes me sick. It's like they say, garbage in, garbage out! My Vudu streams in HDX all look great upscaled. Even Hulu looks good upscaled.

Going to start to compile a list of our shows that we can watch on the various services.....and might have to start to think about DirecTV.

-Kevin


----------



## lessd

kbmb said:


> Beautiful new Samsung 4K TV + Comcast cable = throwing up in my mouth a little  :dizzy: :thumbsdown:
> 
> I knew it was bad before.....but seeing it on a 4K TV just makes me sick. It's like they say, garbage in, garbage out! My Vudu streams in HDX all look great upscaled. Even Hulu looks good upscaled.
> 
> Going to start to compile a list of our shows that we can watch on the various services.....and might have to start to think about DirecTV.
> 
> -Kevin


Funny the world is going to 4K and Comcast is going backwards to 720P, unless Comcast is making room for QAM 4K if such a thing exists.


----------



## Sgt Howl

kbmb said:


> Going to start to compile a list of our shows that we can watch on the various services.....and might have to start to think about DirecTV.


I was thinking about switching to DirecTV, too, but I've arrived at the conclusion that streaming services might be more future proof.

Comcast is truly Craptastic.


----------



## kbmb

Sgt Howl said:


> I was thinking about switching to DirecTV, too, but I've arrived at the conclusion that streaming services might be more future proof.
> 
> Comcast is truly Craptastic.


Yeah, I'm currently taking all our SP and seeing where they are available. I like the idea of the streaming services except for the lack of true DVR functions. I can't go back to commercials  I don't mind the Hulu commercial free plan even with the pre/post roll commercials, but I can't stand if we watch something on VOD and have to sit through the commercial breaks.

-Kevin


----------



## alexb

How do I get XOD to play in 1080. Is it possible?


----------



## aridon

Well, at least their guide works


----------



## Bigg

lessd said:


> Funny the world is going to 4K and Comcast is going backwards to 720P, unless Comcast is making room for QAM 4K if such a thing exists.


They could do QAM-based 4k, but they're not going to. It will be IP-based if/when they actually do it.


----------



## alexb

I was shocked just now to see my NBC affiliate channel in 1080i - seems it is local content. Same for NFL game on my CBS affiliate is 1080i. But NFL game on fox is 720p.

Is this truly a Comcast decision or does the broadcaster in someway involved?


----------



## keenanSR

alexb said:


> I was shocked just now to see my NBC affiliate channel in 1080i - seems it is local content. Same for NFL game on my CBS affiliate is 1080i. But NFL game on fox is 720p.
> 
> Is this truly a Comcast decision or does the broadcaster in someway involved?


NBC and CBS are native 1080i channels. FOX and ABC are native 720p channels. Local affiliates may transmit in resolutions other than the network default. Local broadcast channels have not been converted to MPEG4, as of yet anyway.


----------



## thyname

Where is Dave Harper anyway? I have not seen him around here in a while. Maybe on vacation, but where would one go on vacation if living in Hawaii?


----------



## kbmb

keenanSR said:


> NBC and CBS are native 1080i channels. FOX and ABC are native 720p channels. Local affiliates may transmit in resolutions other than the network default. Local broadcast channels have not been converted to MPEG4, as of yet anyway.


For me on my 4K TV, the 1080i channels look better to me. But it varies....for me ABC is 1080i.....but it's noticeably softer than CBS. FOX is overall pretty bad.....CBS is the best.

-Kevin


----------



## keenanSR

kbmb said:


> For me on my 4K TV, the 1080i channels look better to me. But it varies....for me ABC is 1080i.....but it's noticeably softer than CBS. FOX is overall pretty bad.....CBS is the best.
> 
> -Kevin


Here in the SF bay area the 1080i NBC station, KNTV, has the best PQ. Currently, the FOX station KTVU is the worst but they have something wrong with their signal which they say they're working on. ABC is always soft. CBS usually looks good but their audio can be really bad at times, no dynamic range, everything is the same loudness.


----------



## JoeKustra

thyname said:


> Where is Dave Harper anyway? I have not seen him around here in a while. Maybe on vacation, but where would one go on vacation if living in Hawaii?


He has been on AVSForum recently.


----------



## Bigg

kbmb said:


> For me on my 4K TV, the 1080i channels look better to me. But it varies....for me ABC is 1080i.....but it's noticeably softer than CBS. FOX is overall pretty bad.....CBS is the best.
> 
> -Kevin


ABC is 720p, so if your local ABC is broadcasting in 1080i for some weird reason, then they are up-converting the network feed, which is probably why is looks soft. They *might* do local programming in 1080i. Usually it's the other way around, with NBC and/or CBS sharing a channel with another provider in some markets, and down-converting to 720p as a result (although with the way Comcast encodes, they could get 1080i into 9mbps).


----------



## kbmb

Bigg said:


> ABC is 720p, so if your local ABC is broadcasting in 1080i for some weird reason, then they are up-converting the network feed, which is probably why is looks soft. They *might* do local programming in 1080i. Usually it's the other way around, with NBC and/or CBS sharing a channel with another provider in some markets, and down-converting to 720p as a result (although with the way Comcast encodes, they could get 1080i into 9mbps).


Both the Boston affiliate and our NH affiliate for ABC are shown as 1080i in TiVo info. I always thought ABC was 720p.....so not real sure when that changed.

-Kevin


----------



## Jed1

keenanSR said:


> Here in the SF bay area the 1080i NBC station, KNTV, has the best PQ. Currently, the FOX station KTVU is the worst but they have something wrong with their signal which they say they're working on. ABC is always soft. CBS usually looks good but their audio can be really bad at times, no dynamic range, everything is the same loudness.


The ABC network feeds will always look soft because the main network feed is stat muxing two HD channels on their 6Mhz feed. I also believe your ABC station is O&O (owned and operated) by the main network in NYC, which in turn is owned by Disney Corp. Here is a TS reading from your ABC feed:
SI Parsing by TSReader 2.8.46g
At the moment this was captured the main ABC HD feed was running at 6.79mbps and Live Well HD was running at 8.92mbps. Normally the main ABC HD feed runs at 9mpbs and that is the best it will be. This is the same feed the cable and sat providers get and running those feeds at bit rates higher than what is coming form the source will not improve the video quality. The old saying garbage in garbage out applies. Fox network and their affiliates have the same issue. Now CBS and NBC are starting to do the same thing so video quality will start to decline there also in the coming years as they try to cram more and more video signals on their feeds.
Here is the list of OTA broadcast station in the US.
RabbitEars.Info
Just click on your market and the list will expand and then select the station. underneath the station will have technical data and screen caps. On the bottom of that will be the TS reader results that were captured at a specific time. Just click on that and at the bottom you will see what is being put out over the air. This is the same feed your local cable/sat provider gets.

Comcast is starting to convert their feeds to 720p as they are gearing up to convert to an all IP feed. This will not go over the internet but be sent down to their own boxes over their DOCSIS feed. The new STB will need to have a DOCSIS cable modem in them to receive the signal. Their X1 boxes have that capability as the X1 uses DSG protocol (DOCSIS set top gateway) instead of the using the OOB signal like traditional cable and TiVo boxes use. Once the cable ops shutdown the old OOB Aloha and Davic protocols then our TiVo's will be junk. I would not purchase a cable only TiVo as it will be useless and worthless once this transition takes place. The base models and OTA only models will be good for quite a while.


----------



## BobCamp1

Jed1 said:


> Just click on that and at the bottom you will see what is being put out over the air. This is the same feed your local cable/sat provider gets.


Totally false. Many stations convert formats or increase compression prior to transmitting OTA. Sometimes OTA is better and sometimes cable is better. Sometimes DBS gets it directly from the air and sometimes they have their own link to the local affiliate. It varies from affiliate to affiliate.

Everything else you said is correct, except I wouldn't purchase a new Tivo PERIOD if I lived in a Comcast area. I suspect most people want DVR functionality for all their channels, not just a handful of them.


----------



## kbmb

So if/when Comcast switches to IP delivery......will their local DVR functionalities still work (best guess)? Or will they be moving to these crap cloud based DVRs where you only get so much space for a limited amount of time? And will they care about massively compressing those IP signals like they do now? In other words.....will moving to IP get us better picture quality? I'm guessing so since some have mentioned 4K streams.

All I know right now is......we have both Comcast and Hulu. For a lot of Fox shows, we are watching directly on Hulu because the 1080p signal is so much better on our 4K TV. Even some of the ABC shows we will watch there. And we pay for no commercials, so we don't have to worry about that. However I know that it's pretty unlikely NBC or CBS will ever be on Hulu.

-Kevin


----------



## Bigg

Jed1 said:


> Comcast is starting to convert their feeds to 720p as they are gearing up to convert to an all IP feed. This will not go over the internet but be sent down to their own boxes over their DOCSIS feed. The new STB will need to have a DOCSIS cable modem in them to receive the signal. Their X1 boxes have that capability as the X1 uses DSG protocol (DOCSIS set top gateway) instead of the using the OOB signal like traditional cable and TiVo boxes use. Once the cable ops shutdown the old OOB Aloha and Davic protocols then our TiVo's will be junk. I would not purchase a cable only TiVo as it will be useless and worthless once this transition takes place. The base models and OTA only models will be good for quite a while.


Is the old OOB required to push the keys to the CableCard? Doesn't Comcast have to support CableCard by law as long as they have QAM channels available? I don't foresee locals or expanded basic SD going off of QAM for the next 10 years or so. Certainly cable HD channels will be going over to IP over the course of the next few years, depending on the market and system. Wouldn't they want to keep their DCT, DCH, and DCX boxes running for a while longer for basic and SD customers? Once they get all the cable HD, and maybe the digital cable SD, then they will have plenty of DOCSIS bandwidth to run IPTV and gigabit internet, at least on their 860mhz systems.



BobCamp1 said:


> Totally false. Many stations convert formats or increase compression prior to transmitting OTA. Sometimes OTA is better and sometimes cable is better. Sometimes DBS gets it directly from the air and sometimes they have their own link to the local affiliate. It varies from affiliate to affiliate.


Yeah, cable and satellite tend to be lower quality, but they could be better depending on the market, as some providers get direct fiber feeds. If they are using an OTA feed, then it can only get worse from what is available OTA.


----------



## Bigg

kbmb said:


> So if/when Comcast switches to IP delivery......will their local DVR functionalities still work (best guess)? Or will they be moving to these crap cloud based DVRs where you only get so much space for a limited amount of time? And will they care about massively compressing those IP signals like they do now? In other words.....will moving to IP get us better picture quality? I'm guessing so since some have mentioned 4K streams.


We don't know the answers to those questions. Comcast's cloud DVR looks and feels the same to the end user as local, but in theory in the future they could put limitations on content storage. We don't know on IP. In theory, it should free up a LOT of bandwidth, and allow them to provide much higher quality streams, but again, we don't know, as Comcast has repeatedly used every advance in bandwidth and encoding technology to cram more channels and offer higher internet speeds at the cost of picture quality.


----------



## Bigg

Jed1 said:


> RabbitEars.Info
> Just click on your market and the list will expand and then select the station. underneath the station will have technical data and screen caps. On the bottom of that will be the TS reader results that were captured at a specific time. Just click on that and at the bottom you will see what is being put out over the air. This is the same feed your local cable/sat provider gets.


Oh man, that is a gold mine of info. Interestingly enough, the O&O stations in NYC have much higher bitrates and fewer subchannels than the affiliates in Hartford-New Haven. What sort of baffles me is that WEDH, WEDN, and WEDW, all broadcasting CPTV, are running all different bitrates, and the sites claims they are constant. I have to think it's one single feed that's a statistical multiplex, and those wildly different numbers are different snapshots in time from each station.


----------



## Jed1

Bigg said:


> Is the old OOB required to push the keys to the CableCard? Doesn't Comcast have to support CableCard by law as long as they have QAM channels available? I don't foresee locals or expanded basic SD going off of QAM for the next 10 years or so. Certainly cable HD channels will be going over to IP over the course of the next few years, depending on the market and system. Wouldn't they want to keep their DCT, DCH, and DCX boxes running for a while longer for basic and SD customers? Once they get all the cable HD, and maybe the digital cable SD, then they will have plenty of DOCSIS bandwidth to run IPTV and gigabit internet, at least on their 860mhz systems.


I really don't know. If they remove all the legacy modulated channels and make them all DCOSIS, I think they can drop CableCard support as all their non DOCSIS boxes will also have to be decommissioned. As you state they can leave a small slice of their spectrum and just offer their lineup in heavily compressed SD as HD is not a requirement of the 1996 Telecom Act.
If they are moving to MPEG4 then the only older box that supports that is the DCX series. The DCT and DCH series only support MPEG2 so they are already being pulled out of the system. Comcast has been actively upgrading non X1 customers to the X1 platform.
Also the broadcast industry won really big on the 8th of November and now have their most favored party in control of the 3 branches of government. They have been drooling at the mouth for a number of years to get Congress to rewrite the 1996 Telecom Act, which is now very likely with this election. If this does happen then CableCards will be swept away with a single stroke of a pen, along with a lot of other things in the old Telecom Act. It is just wait and see now. We will know sometime next year if the end is near for the CableCard. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst is the best advice I can give.



Bigg said:


> Oh man, that is a gold mine of info. Interestingly enough, the O&O stations in NYC have much higher bitrates and fewer subchannels than the affiliates in Hartford-New Haven. What sort of baffles me is that WEDH, WEDN, and WEDW, all broadcasting CPTV, are running all different bitrates, and the sites claims they are constant. I have to think it's one single feed that's a statistical multiplex, and those wildly different numbers are different snapshots in time from each station.


I pretty sure that most if not all broadcast stations use variable rate encoders. So does the cable/sat companies. And yes those readouts are just a capture of the signal so each capture will show different numbers. Some of the readings are getting pretty old as the owner of that site gets them from members in those markets. If nobody turns in any new readings then the old ones will remain on the site.


----------



## Bigg

Jed1 said:


> I really don't know. If they remove all the legacy modulated channels and make them all DCOSIS, I think they can drop CableCard support as all their non DOCSIS boxes will also have to be decommissioned. As you state they can leave a small slice of their spectrum and just offer their lineup in heavily compressed SD as HD is not a requirement of the 1996 Telecom Act.
> If they are moving to MPEG4 then the only older box that supports that is the DCX series. The DCT and DCH series only support MPEG2 so they are already being pulled out of the system. Comcast has been actively upgrading non X1 customers to the X1 platform.


They need DTAs to continue working for a while, and I think QAM will be around for expanded basic (70 channels) SD, and local HD for 5-10 years.



> I pretty sure that most if not all broadcast stations use variable rate encoders. So does the cable/sat companies. And yes those readouts are just a capture of the signal so each capture will show different numbers. Some of the readings are getting pretty old as the owner of that site gets them from members in those markets. If nobody turns in any new readings then the old ones will remain on the site.


Yeah, I would think that they would. It says constant bitrate, but maybe they switched to variable a while back, and then the readings were taken. I find it hard to believe that they would have a different statistical multiplexer for each station.


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## NashGuy

kbmb said:


> So if/when Comcast switches to IP delivery......will their local DVR functionalities still work (best guess)? Or will they be moving to these crap cloud based DVRs where you only get so much space for a limited amount of time? And will they care about massively compressing those IP signals like they do now? In other words.....will moving to IP get us better picture quality? I'm guessing so since some have mentioned 4K streams.
> 
> All I know right now is......we have both Comcast and Hulu. For a lot of Fox shows, we are watching directly on Hulu because the 1080p signal is so much better on our 4K TV. Even some of the ABC shows we will watch there. And we pay for no commercials, so we don't have to worry about that. However I know that it's pretty unlikely NBC or CBS will ever be on Hulu.
> 
> -Kevin


I have commercial-free Hulu as well. Hulu is only 720p but I can see why you might think it's 1080p compared to the quality you're using to seeing on Comcast. Content on Hulu even looks better than the same shows from my local ABC and NBC OTA stations (and OTA TV typically looks better than cable). I'd say Fox shows look about the same here on OTA vs. Hulu. (BTW, yes, all NBC shows are available on Hulu, although very few CBS shows are.) I just got an LG 4K OLED TV and the difference in picture quality is even more noticeable than it was on my old 1080p LCD. I started watching a recent episode of SNL recorded from my local NBC station and then switched to the same show on Hulu using the TV's built-in app -- wow! Definitely better on Hulu!


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## kbmb

NashGuy said:


> I have commercial-free Hulu as well. Hulu is only 720p but I can see why you might think it's 1080p compared to the quality you're using to seeing on Comcast. Content on Hulu even looks better than the same shows from my local ABC and NBC OTA stations (and OTA TV typically looks better than cable). I'd say Fox shows look about the same here on OTA vs. Hulu. (BTW, yes, all NBC shows are available on Hulu, although very few CBS shows are.) I just got an LG 4K OLED TV and the difference in picture quality is even more noticeable than it was on my old 1080p LCD. I started watching a recent episode of SNL recorded from my local NBC station and then switched to the same show on Hulu using the TV's built-in app -- wow! Definitely better on Hulu!


Oh wow....that's even worse for Comcast huh? Never realized Hulu only did 720p. Man I hate Comcast!

-Kevin


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## kbmb

Anyone here have an X1? Curious, does the X1 look any better than the Roamio? (can't imagine why it would). I'm looking more specifically for displaying on a 4K TV. 

The more I look into things and learn that most streaming providers (other than Netflix & Amazon) are all 720p. This includes, Hulu, HBO Go, Showtime Anywhere. The streams I can get from those look light years better than what I am getting on my Roamio with Comcast. 

-Kevin


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## Bigg

kbmb said:


> Anyone here have an X1? Curious, does the X1 look any better than the Roamio? (can't imagine why it would). I'm looking more specifically for displaying on a 4K TV.
> 
> The more I look into things and learn that most streaming providers (other than Netflix & Amazon) are all 720p. This includes, Hulu, HBO Go, Showtime Anywhere. The streams I can get from those look light years better than what I am getting on my Roamio with Comcast.
> 
> -Kevin


I used to have both side by side on a 1080p display, but never X1 on a 4k display. They both pretty much looked the same. I thought HBO Go was 720p, but I could be wrong.


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## alexb

Bigg said:


> I used to have both side by side on a 1080p display, but never X1 on a 4k display. They both pretty much looked the same. I thought HBO Go was 720p, but I could be wrong.


I have both (I am in my 30 day evaluation), i watched westworld on my TiVo last night, noticed some banding in the credits, gonna compare with the X1 recording. Will report back, but my local 1080i channels on TiVo looks great, watching 720p ESPN upscaled on my 4K vizio and looks great. The jets look crappy as usual but that's not the TiVo fault


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## kbmb

Really funny (and frustrating) example of just what Comcast is doing to their signals.

We have a new 4K Samsung TV which looks great except for most Comcast signals. Today I walked by the living room as my wife was watching some recorded Lifetime show. It was recorded on a TiVo Basic. It actually looked really good! Then I realized.....this was a recording from June this year. Before Comcast started making the MPEG-4 switch and down rezzing everything to 720p. Sure enough, when I brought up the info, the recording showed 1080i.

I compared to Grey's Anatomy that was on Lifetime live today.....oh my. I really think Comcast is making their signal absolute crap for anyone with a 4K TV. This 1080i->720p MPEG2->MPEG4 I think is resulting in overly compressed garbage!!!!

-Kevin


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## keenanSR

Yes, I posted(somewhere) about how I have about 20 episodes of two different Syfy shows and they all have the same bitrate and file size for all of them which tells me that the content is being pushed to the max(encoding and bandwidth) and it's still not enough as they look awful. I'd like to hope that Comcast is still adjusting the stat muxing on these converted channels but they've been doing this for a year now and if they've haven't got it right by now I doubt it will ever get any better. 

Time to look for alternative sources for the cablenet shows I watch.


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## kbmb

keenanSR said:


> Yes, I posted(somewhere) about how I have about 20 episodes of two different Syfy shows and they all have the same bitrate and file size for all of them which tells me that the content is being pushed to the max(encoding and bandwidth) and it's still not enough as they look awful. I'd like to hope that Comcast is still adjusting the stat muxing on these converted channels but they've been doing this for a year now and if they've haven't got it right by now I doubt it will ever get any better.
> 
> Time to look for alternative sources for the cablenet shows I watch.


For Fox, we see a huge difference even with Hulu at 720p. That's where we watch Fox shows now because Comcast is so soft.

Our ABC, CBS and NBC are still 1080i and look ok. But just barely.

I won't even start getting into the cable channels

-Kevin


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## keenanSR

kbmb said:


> For Fox, we see a huge difference even with Hulu at 720p. That's where we watch Fox shows now because Comcast is so soft.
> 
> Our ABC, CBS and NBC are still 1080i and look ok. But just barely.
> 
> I won't even start getting into the cable channels
> 
> -Kevin


Here in the SF bay the local channels haven't been converted but some do look better than others, but they've been that way for quite some time. NBC is the clear winner in both PQ/AQ, CBS is probably 2nd or 3rd in PQ but their audio is a compressed mess, ABC PQ is a mushy soft mess and their audio is bad too, popping and dropouts, FOX has some very good PQ, especially shows like Gotham and their audio is very good as well, as long as you get it OTA as currently FOX on Comcast looks like their old 480p widescreen and we're only getting 2.0 audio.

Lately, I've been mostly using my TiVo for the streaming services and live sports, it's not really getting much usage viewing primetime content.


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## kbmb

keenanSR said:


> Here in the SF bay the local channels haven't been converted but some do look better than others, but they've been that way for quite some time. NBC is the clear winner in both PQ/AQ, CBS is probably 2nd or 3rd in PQ but their audio is a compressed mess, ABC PQ is a mushy soft mess and their audio is bad too, popping and dropouts, FOX has some very good PQ, especially shows like Gotham and their audio is very good as well, as long as you get it OTA as currently FOX on Comcast looks like their old 480p widescreen and we're only getting 2.0 audio.
> 
> Lately, I've been mostly using my TiVo for the streaming services and live sports, it's not really getting much usage viewing primetime content.


Same here....locals are still MPEG2.....but they still look awful most times. Cable channels are just really bad. I thought I made a huge mistake buying a 4K TV as I watched Comcast. Wish I could invite a Comcast exec over to watch some Brooklyn Nine Nine on their feed and then switch to Hulu so they can see that 720p doesn't HAVE to look like crap on a 4K TV.

I tried Playstation Vue just to see the quality and wasn't impressed, plus no locals for us except CBS. Pretty sure most of the streaming services max at 720p as well. Vudu HDX is a real nice picture. And obviously Netflix and Amazon in 4K are awesome. Hulu even started some 4K stuff.....so here's hoping they start to move the rest of their shows to at least 1080p in the future.

-Kevin


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## kupe

OMG I thought I was imagining that HBO-HD on Comcast in Atlanta used to be 1080i. So glad I found this discussion.

I just checked my collection of the first season of Westworld on my Roamio Pro. I'm on Comcast in Atlanta- HBO-HD is channel 880. The first episode of Westworld on October 2 was 1080i. Every episode since then has been 720p. THERE IS SIMPLY NO COMPARISON.

The 720p episodes look like mud compared to the 1080i episode. How in 2016 (almost 2017) are we going backward while Comcast prices go up up up???

This is absolutely unacceptable for a Premium HD channel that we are paying good money for.


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## kbmb

kupe said:


> OMG I thought I was imagining that HBO-HD on Comcast in Atlanta used to be 1080i. So glad I found this discussion.
> 
> I just checked my collection of the first season of Westworld on my Roamio Pro. I'm on Comcast in Atlanta- HBO-HD is channel 880. The first episode of Westworld on October 2 was 1080i. Every episode since then has been 720p. THERE IS SIMPLY NO COMPARISON.
> 
> The 720p episodes look like mud compared to the 1080i episode. How in 2016 (almost 2017) are we going backward while Comcast prices go up up up???
> 
> This is absolutely unacceptable for a Premium HD channel that we are paying good money for.


Total awful right? Wife and I just started our season of Halt and Catch Fire on AMC. We recorded the whole season on TiVo back when all the channels were 1080i. Looks good on our 4K TV. I'm sure if it was on now it would look like mud.

I think they are not only changing from MPEG2 1080i to MPEG4 720p, but I think they are compressing more.

Glad my fees will go up shortly for this!!

-Kevin


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## thyname

I never watch HBO anymore. That is live on tv or recorded on Bolt+. HBO Go only. Much better picture quality


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## kupe

thyname said:


> I never watch HBO anymore. That is live on tv or recorded on Bolt+. HBO Go only. Much better picture quality


I'll make a point when I can of doing a comparison with HBO Go and my Tivo'd 720p HBO programming. I recall comparing it back when Comcast HBO was 1080i and that seemed superior to HBO Go. But now who knows.

HBO needs to get serious and move HBO Go to 4K. Even more so now that Comcast is selling them short with 720p.


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## Bigg

It's not MPEG-4 that the issue. MPEG-4 generally looks better at the equivalent bitrates. Even downrezzed 720p could look really good (although you will lose sharpness. It's all about the bitrate that Comcast is using. It's just too low. I was watching DirecTV the other day, and it looked amazing. Clear, sharp, good detail, and they are packing quite a bit on their TPs, just not nearly as bad as how Comcast is doing it. I really want DirecTV, but I don't think I can justify the dough for it.


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## kbmb

Bigg said:


> It's not MPEG-4 that the issue. MPEG-4 generally looks better at the equivalent bitrates. Even downrezzed 720p could look really good (although you will lose sharpness. It's all about the bitrate that Comcast is using. It's just too low. I was watching DirecTV the other day, and it looked amazing. Clear, sharp, good detail, and they are packing quite a bit on their TPs, just not nearly as bad as how Comcast is doing it. I really want DirecTV, but I don't think I can justify the dough for it.


Agree - I just think Comcast reduced the bitrate overall as they made the switch. That's clear when comparing just about any of the other streaming services (ie. Hulu, HBO Go or Showtime Anytime). All which are likely MPEG4 720p and all which looks vastly superior to Comcast.

I've hear good things about DirecTV's picture.....but I'm not sure I want to go through the hassle getting it setup. In the end, having to have Comcast for Internet as well, DirecTV would cost quite a bit.

-Kevin


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## danm628

kbmb said:


> Agree - I just think Comcast reduced the bitrate overall as they made the switch. That's clear when comparing just about any of the other streaming services (ie. Hulu, HBO Go or Showtime Anytime). All which are likely MPEG4 720p and all which looks vastly superior to Comcast.


After the initial switch to 720p it still looked ok for me. Not as good as the 1080i had been but still reasonably sharp. So I complained about the 720p but could put up with it.

Sometime since then things got much worse. I'm assuming that's when they dropped the bit rate. I don't know exactly when this happened though. It was at least a few weeks after the switch to 720p.


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## keenanSR

Bigg said:


> It's not MPEG-4 that the issue. MPEG-4 generally looks better at the equivalent bitrates. Even downrezzed 720p could look really good (although you will lose sharpness. It's all about the bitrate that Comcast is using. It's just too low. I was watching DirecTV the other day, and it looked amazing. Clear, sharp, good detail, and they are packing quite a bit on their TPs, just not nearly as bad as how Comcast is doing it. I really want DirecTV, but I don't think I can justify the dough for it.


I agree, there are several shows on Syfy where the resulting bitrate and file size are identical(1.65GB @ 3.94Mbp/s per kmttg) for over 20 episodes since the conversion which tells me that there's a hard bandwidth allocation setting in the stat-muxing and that the amount simply isn't enough, and these shows are banging up against it resulting in very poor quality images. If I was recording more shows on Syfy I have no doubt they would all have the same bandwidth and bitrate.

I just remembered an applet that can illustrate this. The top image is pre-conversion and the below is post-conversion.



















Note what looks like a "hard ceiling" on the post-conversion MPEG4 version and how the pre-conversion MPEG2 version has a much more dynamic flow of data peaks and valleys; the content is getting some "room" to express itself. The post-conversion file is pretty much locked into pounding a ceiling at around 3200kbps; it's "screaming out" for more bandwidth.

And for comparison purposes, I grabbed an episode from a file sharing site. It is also in the MPEG4 format but it's been ripped from a streaming site, presumably Amazon. Note the dynamics in the peaks and valleys of the bitrate. This version is also 1080p/24fps and it looks much better than either of the two Comcast versions. Also, note the file size, but to be fair, this file has had the luxury of being processed after the fact, it's not a direct on the fly broadcast version.


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## Bigg

kbmb said:


> I've hear good things about DirecTV's picture.....but I'm not sure I want to go through the hassle getting it setup. In the end, having to have Comcast for Internet as well, DirecTV would cost quite a bit.


Yeah, the problem. The way Comcast bundles, it's way cheaper to have their crappy TV service than DirecTV's good TV service, as their internet-only prices are insane. What they are doing is illegal, but the government doesn't enforce anti-trust laws against them.



keenanSR said:


> Note what looks like a "hard ceiling" on the post-conversion MPEG4 version and how the pre-conversion MPEG2 version has a much more dynamic flow of data peaks and valleys; the content is getting some "room" to express itself. The post-conversion file is pretty much locked into pounding a ceiling at around 3200kbps; it's "screaming out" for more bandwidth.


I think what you're seeing is the stat multiplex can only go so low on any individual channel, so when they were running 3 or 4 MPEG-2 channels per QAM, it could re-allocate bandwidth quite a bit, but with 9 or 10 MPEG-4 channels, it can only go so low, so there's not a lot of room to gain the benefit of statistical multiplexing. It's weird because DirecTV is almost the other way around. With MPEG-4, they can comfortably put 6-7 channels per TP, and as a result, they have a bit more bandwidth to re-allocate, so my sense is the raw average bitrate doesn't tell the whole story. When DirecTV stat multiplexes, they are getting a LOT more incremental quality out of that incremental bandwidth over what Comcast is doing. It's a shame too, as the difference in the number of QAMs used isn't that significant between what DirecTV is doing and what Comcast is doing, but Comcast just won't invest in plant upgrades, and is hell bent on more internet bandwidth at the expense of TV quality.


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## kupe

FCC complaint submitted. I can't even watch it...it makes me sick to think I am paying ever-increasing money to watch this muddy pixelated Comcast crap on my Roamio Pro and my 4K UHD TV. Tonight I was watching some of my favorite Tivo'd shows from before the October downgrade. Hard to believe the difference.

For those that haven't yet, here is the FCC page:
FCC Complaints

This is the text of my FCC complaint if anyone cares:

Since mid-October, Comcast Cable in Atlanta has slashed the resolution of its cable High Definition (HD) channels from 1080i to 720p. Even worse, they have done on this on premium pay channels including HBO and Showtime. No notice was given to customers about this, nor was any reduction in monthly fees offered.

I have compared recorded programming from before and after the change, and the difference is dramatic. The change spans dozens of channels, and the result is a muddy pixelated image that doesn't remotely compare to the product before the October change.

Even more insulting is that Comcast apparently has tried to dismiss this as an "upgrade". The simple fact is that Comcast is trying to slash bandwidth on their cable offerings to favor viewers on phones and tablets, at the expense of viewers on home televisions, including my high-end 4K UHD television.

Simply put, the downgraded product is terrible, and Comcast has done this without offering any reduction in monthly subscription cost or with any notice to consumers. Even worse, they have done this on premium pay channels as well.

I am asking that FCC direct Comcast to reinstate 1080i broadcast on all cable channels that offered this prior to the system-wide downgrade.


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## Bigg

kupe said:


> FCC complaint submitted. I can't even watch it...it makes me sick to think I am paying ever-increasing money to watch this muddy pixelated Comcast crap on my Roamio Pro and my 4K UHD TV. Tonight I was watching some of my favorite Tivo'd shows from before the October downgrade. Hard to believe the difference.


And the sad part is, while I have no doubt you can see the difference, their picture quality was junk before. It's not so much about the resolution as the bandwidth. If they gave them enough bandwidth, 720p channels could look almost as good as 1080i channels, but then there would be no point in 720p since they'd have plenty of bandwidth for 1080i.


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## webminster

I submitted a similar complaint on 11/15. No written response yet from Comcast, 2 days left to deadline. I've gotten a couple of calls from their "executive office", unfortunately from rather technically-unsophisticated people who have tried to convince me they're not changing the signal at all. Feels unlikely I'll ever hear from an engineer, or see any sort of happy resolution.


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## Bigg

webminster said:


> I submitted a similar complaint on 11/15. No written response yet from Comcast, 2 days left to deadline. I've gotten a couple of calls from their "executive office", unfortunately from rather technically-unsophisticated people who have tried to convince me they're not changing the signal at all. Feels unlikely I'll ever hear from an engineer, or see any sort of happy resolution.


They're not going to do anything about it. I wonder how engineering feels about this? It must suck to be the people running the encoding system, and know that you're pumping garbage out. It's sad too, as they are saving basically 4 or 5 QAMs versus doing MPEG-4 DirecTV's way and having excellent picture quality. We're talking a max of 30mhz on an 860mhz system.


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## kbmb

Bigg said:


> And the sad part is, while I have no doubt you can see the difference, their picture quality was junk before. It's not so much about the resolution as the bandwidth. If they gave them enough bandwidth, 720p channels could look almost as good as 1080i channels, but then there would be no point in 720p since they'd have plenty of bandwidth for 1080i.


Spot on! Hulu and other streaming services prove that 720p can look good because of the bandwidth. Comcast is sending mud down the wires, all while raising our rates. Garbage in - garbage out.

Here's hoping this is a transition to some kind of IP delivery where they get back to caring about picture quality. Honestly, you can't walk into an electronics store and easily find a non-4K TV. And the people buying the 4K TVs see the 4K picture in the store and think "wow - when I get this home my TV viewing is going to look great!"

Heck my Samsung TV updated this morning and I was checking out 4K HDR videos from YouTube. While they were stunning, what was even funnier was the 15-30 ads between videos looked better than my Comcast channels!

Comcast - where you'd rather watch YouTube ads!

-Kevin


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## Sgt Howl

kupe said:


> FCC complaint submitted...For those that haven't yet, here is the FCC page: FCC Complaints


Thank you. I submitted a similar complaint.

Re: DirecTV, I am torn between wanting the apparently much superior picture quality and buying into a technology (satellite) that may be approaching the end of its life cycle. It's a big deal for me to switch from Comcast cable to satellite, with the cabling and equipment start-up hassle not to mention ongoing fees. Plus I would miss my TiVo despite its warts.


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## Bigg

kbmb said:


> Spot on! Hulu and other streaming services prove that 720p can look good because of the bandwidth. Comcast is sending mud down the wires, all while raising our rates. Garbage in - garbage out.
> 
> Here's hoping this is a transition to some kind of IP delivery where they get back to caring about picture quality. Honestly, you can't walk into an electronics store and easily find a non-4K TV. And the people buying the 4K TVs see the 4K picture in the store and think "wow - when I get this home my TV viewing is going to look great!"


I would caution comparing Comcast to Netflix or Hulu, since those services can do offline multi-pass encoding and a ton of VBR since they can buffer. However, DirecTV is almost an exact comparison, as one TP has 38mbps of bandwidth, while Comcast's QAMs have 38mbps of bandwidth. DirecTV puts 6 or 7 channels per TP, Comcast is doing 9 or 10 per QAM, and the difference is the one of the best in the industry versus the one of the worst in the industry. Once you have enough bandwidth, you no longer need to down-rez, as 1080i will work fine 6 or 7 to a QAM/TP.

Yeah, streaming stuff looks MUCH better than Comcast, and has for a while, and the gap is just widening. I have watched the MPEG-4 channels for a few minutes, like MTV Live, and they are just garbage. In theory, they could crank the bitrates up with IPTV, I'm not sure if they actually will, however, and it will be years before the most popular channels have been moved over to IP.



Sgt Howl said:


> Re: DirecTV, I am torn between wanting the apparently much superior picture quality and buying into a technology (satellite) that may be approaching the end of its life cycle. It's a big deal for me to switch from Comcast cable to satellite, with the cabling and equipment start-up hassle not to mention ongoing fees. Plus I would miss my TiVo despite its warts.


The costs are high, and you can't have any modern TiVo devices (The THR22 is basically a Series 3 or HR10-250 with SWiM and MPEG-4). I hear you about the picture quality. I want DirecTV, but I can't justify the cost for what amounts to sports for me. Everything else I stream, and PBS I can get OTA, no need to send it to space and back. I'll look into DirecTV NOW, PS Vue, Sling TV, or other streaming services that I can pick up and drop for the basketball season when they have all the sports channels I need (mainly SNY and CBSSN).

However, I would say that while DBS has peaked out in terms of the number of subscribers, it is absolutely not going anywhere as a platform. DirecTV has huge numbers of dorms, hotels, MDUs, bars, restaurants, etc, using the service who can't easily just stream, large families/households/heavy TV users who would blow data caps, and various mobile users like RVs, boats, and commercial airliners that move from place to place or use TV while in transit. I have seen a huge push into hotels in the past year or two, with many places I go now having DirecTV boxes in-room, and a few using SMATV-type of systems fed by DirecTV. You add all those up plus rural users, and ~20 million subs might be ~5 or 10 million subs in 5 years, but DirecTV's DBS system isn't going anywhere for the forseeable future. The big costs are the programming, and DirecTV/AT&T has themselves covered, at least so long as people have some sort of pay TV, since they operate an IPTV MSO, a brand new OTT service, as well as the evolved 1990's era DBS system. DBS could also allow AT&T to get into MDU deals in markets that they don't currently serve by doing fixed wireless for internet and phone to the building, and DBS for video, so that's another way to leverage the existing DBS system. And even if all of those other use cases fall apart over time, there are still the rural users who aren't getting cable tv or broadband capable of streaming hundreds of GB of TV a mo anytime soon. DBS is still a very efficient delivery method of a massive amount of linear TV content to a very big area. DirecTV's coverage stretches from Florida and Maine to Hawaii and part of Alaska.


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## Bigg

So Comcast converted Groton, CT over either last night or maybe the night before. I turned my TV on this morning, and I noticed the ESPN looks like it was printed on a fuzzy sweater or underwater or something, and sure enough, everything tuned on the TiVo was listed as H.264, and even SNY has been converted down to 720p. In a fit of rage (sort of) I drove down the street to the other cable company, and schedule installation on Tuesday. They are missing a few HD channels, even from what Comcast has, but theirs look spectacular, so it's a fair trade-off at this point. I'll hopefully be moving in a few months, so it's temporary, but I will turn in my Comcast cable card and cancel out the account on Tuesday evening or Wednesday. In the mean time, I'll do some recordings and 2-way/3-way comparisons between Comcast, TVC (the overbuilder), and OTA for our Fox, NBC, and PBS affiliates.


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## Sgt Howl

Wow, Bigg, you are lucky - you have another cable company!


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## Bigg

Sgt Howl said:


> Wow, Bigg, you are lucky - you have another cable company!


Yes, definitely better than not having one. They aren't a great competitor on the TV side, as while their picture quality is stunning, they have even fewer HD channels than Comcast, and there's one channel that I will lose from TiVo completely, but it's ESPNNews so oh well. It's only available in analog, and since my TiVo can't do analog, I'll just have it on my TV. Supposedly next year they are going all-digital, but by that point I will hopefully be out of the area. When they do, they will crush Comcast, as they are running an 860mhz plant vice Comcast's 625mhz plant that was originally built in 1979, and hasn't been upgraded/rebuilt probably since the 1990's. Their internet-only pricing is great though, and they don't do teaser rate crap like Comcast. Their regular rates are only slightly higher than Comcast's teaser rates. They offer 27/5 standalone internet for $38/mo, which is great. However, Comcast has gotten to the point where it's unwatchable, so most of my bball games in stunning HD, and a few in SD seems like a decent compromise to me at this point.

I'll definitely be looking at OTT services next season, but as of right now, none of them have picked up SNY, which is the home of the UConn Huskies, so they're sort of useless for following the Huskies at the moment.

EDIT: I'm getting the rough equivalent of XF Preferred with the overbuilder, as well as 155/20 internet. It's $110/mo, but they don't include a CableCard in the price like Comcast does, so after all is said and done, it will be about $135/mo.


----------



## KingsFan6

Bigg said:


> I would caution comparing Comcast to Netflix or Hulu, since those services can do offline multi-pass encoding and a ton of VBR since they can buffer. However, DirecTV is almost an exact comparison, as one TP has 38mbps of bandwidth, while Comcast's QAMs have 38mbps of bandwidth. DirecTV puts 6 or 7 channels per TP, Comcast is doing 9 or 10 per QAM, and the difference is the one of the best in the industry versus the one of the worst in the industry. Once you have enough bandwidth, you no longer need to down-rez, as 1080i will work fine 6 or 7 to a QAM/TP.
> 
> Yeah, streaming stuff looks MUCH better than Comcast, and has for a while, and the gap is just widening. I have watched the MPEG-4 channels for a few minutes, like MTV Live, and they are just garbage. In theory, they could crank the bitrates up with IPTV, I'm not sure if they actually will, however, and it will be years before the most popular channels have been moved over to IP.


I would probably also caution comparing Comcast to Hulu/Netflix due to the streaming services being just 30 fps. They essentially need just half the bandwidth for equivalent pixel/picture quality to cable, though at reduced motion smoothness.


----------



## KingsFan6

Bigg said:


> So Comcast converted Groton, CT over either last night or maybe the night before. I turned my TV on this morning, and I noticed the ESPN looks like it was printed on a fuzzy sweater or underwater or something, and sure enough, everything tuned on the TiVo was listed as H.264, and even SNY has been converted down to 720p.


Ouch! Here in the Bay Area, ESPN networks and our two RSNs are still at MPEG2 and at their much fuller bitrates (15+ Mbps). I hope they don't get touched.


----------



## Bigg

KingsFan6 said:


> I would probably also caution comparing Comcast to Hulu/Netflix due to the streaming services being just 30 fps. They essentially need just half the bandwidth for equivalent pixel/picture quality to cable, though at reduced motion smoothness.


Yes, many are 24p. However, 1080i is also a 60i format, which is theory, would have the same bandwidth as 1080p30, although 1080p24 is slightly less.



KingsFan6 said:


> Ouch! Here in the Bay Area, ESPN networks and our two RSNs are still at MPEG2 and at their much fuller bitrates (15+ Mbps). I hope they don't get touched.


Yeah. Ouch is right. SNY actually used to look really good on Comcast. Now it looks like garbage. I've seen ESPN on the local cable company, it is stunning. I don't know the bitrates, I'll post some comparisons once I switch.


----------



## keenanSR

Are you sure they've converted ESPN to MPEG4? I haven't heard of them doing that, they haven't here in the SF bay area, it's still MPEG2.


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## danm628

keenanSR said:


> Are you sure they've converted ESPN to MPEG4? I haven't heard of them doing that, they haven't here in the SF bay area, it's still MPEG2.


ESPN converted here in the Portland, OR market. I'm not sure if it was the same time as the others, I don't watch it every day.

But they also converted HBO and Showtime. Where lots of people noticed.

They don't care about the video quality. Or the fact that people pay extra for a channel. They just want to squeeze more channels in.

And, maybe, someday, offer higher internet speeds. For a large fee.


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## kbmb

keenanSR said:


> Are you sure they've converted ESPN to MPEG4? I haven't heard of them doing that, they haven't here in the SF bay area, it's still MPEG2.


Our ESPN was converted as well.

-Kevin


----------



## Bigg

keenanSR said:


> Are you sure they've converted ESPN to MPEG4? I haven't heard of them doing that, they haven't here in the SF bay area, it's still MPEG2.


It is showing H.264 in diagnostics. They even managed to get our Weather Channel, which many markets did not convert due to the necessity for local MPEG-4 encoders for the localized channel. They are cramming whatever they can wherever they can on this creaky old 625mhz plant.

If I can figure out how to tell what is H.264 and what is not on X1, I can report on what Branford, CT, which is an 860mhz rebuild system, is doing in January when it converts over.


----------



## Sgt Howl

FYI, I received the following reply to my FCC complaint. If I do receive a response from Comcast, I expect it will be instructions on how to output 1080i from an X1 DVR. :-( I've called Comcast several times and have not found one employee who has a clue about what the company did.

Your Ticket No. 1234567 was served on Comcast Cable Communications on Dec 15 for its review and response. Comcast Cable Communications will likely contact you in an effort to resolve your issue.

A response is due to the FCC no later than 30 days from today. Comcast Cable Communications will respond to you directly by postal mail.

You can view a list of frequently asked questions at: Filing a Complaint Questions and Answers. We appreciate your submission and help in furthering the FCC's mission on behalf of consumers.


----------



## webminster

Comcast missed the 30-day deadline for responding to my complaint. Still waiting for the required written response. I've gotten a couple of calls from clueless "executive office" people, just asking for more info.


----------



## kupe

webminster said:


> Comcast missed the 30-day deadline for responding to my complaint. Still waiting for the required written response. I've gotten a couple of calls from clueless "executive office" people, just asking for more info.


I am also awaiting a response to my FCC complaint. In the meantime though, I did receive an email from a Patrick H. at Executive Customer Relations. I'm not sure if this was in response to my FCC complaint or my email to Tom Karinshak, Senior VP of Customer Relations. I've called Patrick H. and awaiting a return. Meanwhile, if you wish to email Tom Karinshak, here is the form:
https://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/vp-contact-form

Kupe


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## keenanSR

Can't seem to get the multi-quote option to work.

Anyway, that's interesting about ESPN being converted to MPEG4 in some markets, maybe it has something to with the local capture facility and the type of equipment being used. As noted previously, here it's still MPEG2 and has a very healthy bitrate(in the teens), especially for a 720p channel.


----------



## cherry ghost

Still MPEG2 here


----------



## JoeKustra

keenanSR said:


> Can't seem to get the multi-quote option to work.


Same here. The plus sign changes to a minus sign, but stays that way.


----------



## danm628

keenanSR said:


> Can't seem to get the multi-quote option to work.





JoeKustra said:


> Same here. The plus sign changes to a minus sign, but stays that way.


You need to click the "Insert Quotes" button to add the additional quotes to the reply.


----------



## Sgt Howl

If you care about this issue, please contact the FCC and Comcast. It might not help, but it's worth a try. Thanks.


----------



## morac

Since I don't think Comcast is technically violating any FCC regulations, I don't know what if anything the FCC can do and anyone from Comcast who cares to reply will state it's being done to "improve" things.


----------



## Bigg

How do you even contact Comcast about it? I can't really do an FCC filing, as I'm cancelling next Wednesday as a result of this mess, but I understand others don't have as easy of a transition path to something else, depending on who has broadband available in the area, and if they want to continue using TiVo.


----------



## keenanSR

danm628 said:


> You need to click the "Insert Quotes" button to add the additional quotes to the reply.


Well, that just seems silly, I wouldn't have hit the +Quote button if I didn't want to add them to the post. I guess there must be a reason it's that way but I'm not seeing it.


----------



## kbmb

I did open a forum post at the Comcast direct forum at DSLreports. Not expecting much, but at least I can talk directly to an employee. 

-Kevin


----------



## kupe

kbmb said:


> I did open a forum post at the Comcast direct forum at DSLreports. Not expecting much, but at least I can talk directly to an employee.
> 
> -Kevin


Kevin-

Give us a link. I'll be glad to chime in.

Kupe


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## kbmb

kupe said:


> Kevin-
> 
> Give us a link. I'll be glad to chime in.
> 
> Kupe


Here's the forum I'm talking about:
Comcast Direct forum | DSLReports, ISP Information

All threads are private between you and the Comcast rep.

I've had good luck on here getting actual help on the cable side. This is my first thread regarding tv. Just hoping that I can get some of these issues up the chain.

-Kevin


----------



## kupe

Bigg said:


> ...I understand others don't have as easy of a transition path to something else, depending on who has broadband available in the area, and if they want to continue using TiVo.


Bigg-

Who among us, as Tivo users, has an easy transition path? i.e. one that doesn't involve dumping our Tivos?

I'm lucky I suppose in that my neighborhood has ATT Uverse, Google Fiber, DirecTV (of course), and, ahem, Comcast. But only the last one is compatible with my Tivo Roamio Pro (which is less than a year old.) My strongest inclination right now is to dump it all and switch to a Digital Antenna and OTA combined with Netflix, Amazon, and HBO Now. But that means dumping my new Roamio Pro which is not OTA compatible.

I tried again tonight and simply can't watch any of the muddy spew coming from the coax hole that is my very expensive Comcast subscription. And I get physically ill when I tune it to HBO and Showtime that I am paying big bucks for.

How the hell did this happen???


----------



## Bigg

kupe said:


> Bigg-
> 
> Who among us, as Tivo users, has an easy transition path? i.e. one that doesn't involve dumping our Tivos?
> 
> I'm lucky I suppose in that my neighborhood has ATT Uverse, Google Fiber, DirecTV (of course), and, ahem, Comcast. But only the last one is compatible with my Tivo Roamio Pro (which is less than a year old.) My strongest inclination right now is to dump it all and switch to a Digital Antenna and OTA combined with Netflix, Amazon, and HBO Now. But that means dumping my new Roamio Pro which is not OTA compatible.
> 
> I tried again tonight and simply can't watch any of the muddy spew coming from the coax hole that is my very expensive Comcast subscription. And I get physically ill when I tune it to HBO and Showtime that I am paying big bucks for.
> 
> How the hell did this happen???


I don't want to rub it in anyone's faces, since I do have an easy transition path, but I am switching to a local overbuilder. The process involves moving the drop at the tap, registering my modem's MAC address, and switching the CableCard over. The local company has a few channels that I'm not sure I can even get on my TiVo, since they may be analog only, but everything I want is available either as HD or in a digital tier, so they will show up from the CableCard.

There are some areas with FiOS, RCN, and either Comcast or Charter in NYC, DC, and Boston. Any area with FiOS has FiOS and Comcast, although those users are probably already on FiOS, unless this pushes them over the edge. I realize that most areas only have one QAM-based option, and going to DirecTV messes up bundle pricing for Double Play or Triple Play packages.

In your case, I would say what the heck are you doing on Comcast? Google Fiber has better picture quality than anyone else, period. They don't re-compress anything, they just pass it right along. I know their DVR sucks, but I'd take Google Fiber any day over my local cable company or RCN or FiOS or anything else QAM-based. While we're talking about one provider offering ESPN at ~4mbps MPEG-4 versus ~6mbps MPEG-4, Google Fiber's ESPN is something like 14 or 15mbps MPEG-4, directly off C-band bit for bit.


----------



## Bigg

I have done some initial testing with Comcast and OTA here in Hartford-New Haven. The results are rather interesting, actually. I know that most channels on Comcast used to be between 9 and 17mbps MPEG-2, with most falling in the 10-12mbps range, often tri-muxed on a QAM. Now, under the MPEG-4 system, virtually all channels are between 3.4 and 4.0mbps, with most falling right around 3.8mbps. Remember that these are all averages, but it suggests that there isn't a whole lot of room for statistical multiplexing to work properly with the level of compression that we're seeing.

Where it gets even more interesting is that it appears Comcast is passing PBS and FOX through directly, while re-compressing NBC. I have no data for CBS or ABC, as I can't pick them up OTA, but on Comcast CBS is running around 10mbps, and I haven't gotten data on ABC yet. This is really interesting because PBS is running around 9mbps, so it appears that they are giving WAY too much bandwidth to a subchannel, and not enough to the main feed. FOX looks great, it's around 13mbps at 720p, crystal clear, while NBC is about 10.6mbps on cable, and 12.6mbps on OTA. Of course this will vary from market to market.


----------



## kupe

Bigg said:


> In your case, I would say what the heck are you doing on Comcast? Google Fiber has better picture quality than anyone else, period.


I assume your question is rhetorical. I'm on Comcast for the same reason as most of us- Tivo Evangelista, crazy Tivo loyalist, call it whatever. Gawd you'd think I'd have learned my lesson when I had to throw my perfectly fine Tivo HD in the garbage last year thanks to Comcast. But Google Fiber wasn't here yet. Instead I bought a Roamio Pro and a couple Tivo Minis.

We are soooo screwed.


----------



## kbmb

Bigg said:


> I have done some initial testing with Comcast and OTA here in Hartford-New Haven. The results are rather interesting, actually. I know that most channels on Comcast used to be between 9 and 17mbps MPEG-2, with most falling in the 10-12mbps range, often tri-muxed on a QAM. Now, under the MPEG-4 system, virtually all channels are between 3.4 and 4.0mbps, with most falling right around 3.8mbps. Remember that these are all averages, but it suggests that there isn't a whole lot of room for statistical multiplexing to work properly with the level of compression that we're seeing.
> 
> Where it gets even more interesting is that it appears Comcast is passing PBS and FOX through directly, while re-compressing NBC. I have no data for CBS or ABC, as I can't pick them up OTA, but on Comcast CBS is running around 10mbps, and I haven't gotten data on ABC yet. This is really interesting because PBS is running around 9mbps, so it appears that they are giving WAY too much bandwidth to a subchannel, and not enough to the main feed. FOX looks great, it's around 13mbps at 720p, crystal clear, while NBC is about 10.6mbps on cable, and 12.6mbps on OTA. Of course this will vary from market to market.


All interesting stats. Thanks for sharing. I know here it's different from where you are. FOX is a soft mess. Hulu's stream is 10x better.

CBS is probably the best, closely followed by NBC and ABC. Although some shows on ABC are worse than others.

-Kevin


----------



## danm628

I'm dealing with the Comcast 720p mess for now. I don't want to give up my TiVo yet. 

I also don't have any alternative other than DirectTV or going OTA. No other cable companies or FIOS where I live. Fortunately my Series 3 does do OTA though I need to get a better antenna for it to be useful.

I've complained to Comcast. I'll file a complaint with the FCC also. I would suggest people contact online technical news sites (e.g. Ars Technica) and report. I doubt Comcast will respond to a direct complaint and probably won't respond to a FCC complaint in a useful way. They might respond to bad press if enough places pick it up.

At some point I'm going to switch to OTA and streaming.


----------



## Bigg

kupe said:


> I assume your question is rhetorical. I'm on Comcast for the same reason as most of us- Tivo Evangelista, crazy Tivo loyalist, call it whatever. Gawd you'd think I'd have learned my lesson when I had to throw my perfectly fine Tivo HD in the garbage last year thanks to Comcast. But Google Fiber wasn't here yet. Instead I bought a Roamio Pro and a couple Tivo Minis.
> 
> We are soooo screwed.


Yeah, I'd throw those on Ebay and go with Google Fiber. Where I am, outside of these two towns with an overbuilder, it's not as easy, as DirecTV is mega expensive, and you can't bundle with internet, since AT&T sold us off to Frontier. I'm waiting for one of these streaming services to pick up SNY and CBSSN, and I think I'd be done with traditional pay TV, and just subscribe to streaming for 5 months of the year. I watch TV, but it's mostly PBS or streaming. I'm personally not worried about my Premiere XL4, as it's put in it's 4 years to break even, so anything more is basically a bonus.

On top of being technically superior, you could bundle your internet and TV together for like $130/mo with GF versus paying $70/mo to Google for internet and then whatever your cable bill is on top of that.



kbmb said:


> All interesting stats. Thanks for sharing. I know here it's different from where you are. FOX is a soft mess. Hulu's stream is 10x better.


Yup every market is going to be different. I don't know what Comcast's standard practice is for locals, as it doesn't seem to be consistent even within the market.


----------



## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> Yup every market is going to be different. I don't know what Comcast's standard practice is for locals, as it doesn't seem to be consistent even within the market.


Sometimes it's the source that changes. I'm still on MPEG2. My CBS and NBC channels were both without sub-channels until earlier this year. Then both added two subs and the bit rate dropped from about 18Mbps to 14Mbps. My cable feed can't make those channels look better and can only work with what they get from the supplier.


----------



## slowbiscuit

keenanSR said:


> Are you sure they've converted ESPN to MPEG4? I haven't heard of them doing that, they haven't here in the SF bay area, it's still MPEG2.


Agreed, none of the sports channels were converted here in the ATL. All sports and locals are still mpeg2.


----------



## HerronScott

kupe said:


> I assume your question is rhetorical. I'm on Comcast for the same reason as most of us- Tivo Evangelista, crazy Tivo loyalist, call it whatever. Gawd you'd think I'd have learned my lesson when I had to throw my perfectly fine Tivo HD in the garbage last year thanks to Comcast. But Google Fiber wasn't here yet. Instead I bought a Roamio Pro and a couple Tivo Minis.


Did your area move to MPEG4 before the HD was upgraded to support it? Hopefully you didn't really throw it in the "garbage"... 

Scott


----------



## cherry ghost

slowbiscuit said:


> Agreed, none of the sports channels were converted here in the ATL. All sports and locals are still mpeg2.


What about FS1, Golf, Tennis? Those are h.264 here.


----------



## Sgt Howl

Here's part of the response I received from the office of Tom Karinshak at Comcast (https://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/vp-contact-form). As expected.

I will be assisting you today. I am very sorry that the upgrades made to your area are affecting you negatively. Certainly that is not the way Comcast wants changes to present themselves to our customers.

As you point out, at this time there are no options that I have for you.

The changes have been made and do not seem to be in danger of being reversed. I will be happy to provide your feedback to the team who supports these changes. It is by listening to customers that we try to be in the loop as far as what works and what does not.


----------



## ej42137

The best thing about this thread is that it causes me to have a little less hatred for Spectrum's tuning adapters. A little.


----------



## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> Sometimes it's the source that changes. I'm still on MPEG2. My CBS and NBC channels were both without sub-channels until earlier this year. Then both added two subs and the bit rate dropped from about 18Mbps to 14Mbps. My cable feed can't make those channels look better and can only work with what they get from the supplier.


Comcast doesn't want to offer a higher bitrate than what the providers offer OTA, since they still have to provide subchannels, but I don't think there's any technical reason that they couldn't do it. I had heard that in some markets, DirecTV has their encoders in the TV stations' equipment racks, and are taking a direct HD-SDI feed of the channel before it goes to the station's own encoder, so in theory, DirecTV could have a better signal than what cable or OTA has. I would think that Comcast could request something like a 15mbps MPEG-4 feed over fiber if they wanted it, but let's face it, they aren't going to, as they clearly don't care about picture quality, so they'll just take whatever the station sends them, re-modulate 2 8VSB channels per QAM and send it out bit for bit. Except apparently for my local NBC, where their bitrate is lower than OTA.

I'm not sure what a provider like Google Fiber is doing, in theory they could push much higher quality feeds than what is available OTA. If anything, the TV stations would want to push the best signal possible to MSOs that pay them retransmission consent fees, and then subchannel the crap out of their OTA feed. I wish it were the opposite, and they got rid of all subchannels, and went to 19mbps MPEG-2 for everything, back to the glory days of gorgeous HD.



HerronScott said:


> Did your area move to MPEG4 before the HD was upgraded to support it? Hopefully you didn't really throw it in the "garbage"...
> 
> Scott


Yeah hopefully not in the actual garbage, but maybe it was a TCD648, which weren't able to be upgraded? The TCD652's and later got the software update to handle MPEG-4.



ej42137 said:


> The best thing about this thread is that it causes me to have a little less hatred for Spectrum's tuning adapters. A little.


Yeah, I'd take a pesky TA over the horrible channels anyday. Instead, I'm moving to a small provider with a hodge-podge of gorgeous HD, SD digital, and analog, but at least their HD channels look freaking amazing.


----------



## kupe

HerronScott said:


> Did your area move to MPEG4 before the HD was upgraded to support it? Hopefully you didn't really throw it in the "garbage"...
> 
> Scott


Hi Scott-

Yes indeed, that was the problem. Our area converted to MPEG 4 and my Tivo HD was a casualty (this was many months prior to the upgrade to fix that, or even the rumor of it.) We replaced the HD with our current Tivo Roamio and deactivated the HD (we weren't product lifetime and so I needed to stop the monthly billing for the HD.)

When I heard that a fix had been pushed for the HD, I called Tivo to enquire about re-activating it for use in another room, or for possible sale. They absolutely, unequivocally stated that they would not under any circumstances activate a Tivo HD. I elevated it to a supervisor....no help. I appealed as a longtime Tivo multi-box household, etc, etc. Nada. And of course, with no Activation, I couldn't receive the update (I did try several times though in an unactivated state and forced multiple Tivo connections....nothing.)

Now, faced with a box that couldn't even be activated for myself or anyone else, what else could I do? So yes, it got recycled. 

Kupe


----------



## HerronScott

kupe said:


> Yes indeed, that was the problem. Our area converted to MPEG 4 and my Tivo HD was a casualty (this was many months prior to the upgrade to fix that, or even the rumor of it.) We replaced the HD with our current Tivo Roamio and deactivated the HD (we weren't product lifetime and so I needed to stop the monthly billing for the HD.)


Oh an HD with monthly support. Sorry we've always gone lifetime (and we replaced our 2 S3 OLEDs with a Roamio Pro in October 2015 when they were offering the specials for longtime users due to the upcoming MPEG4 move and the increase in All-in pricing) so didn't even think of monthly.

Scott


----------



## kupe

HerronScott said:


> Oh an HD with monthly support. Sorry we've always gone lifetime (and we replaced our 2 S3 OLEDs with a Roamio Pro in October 2015 when they were offering the specials for longtime users due to the upcoming MPEG4 move and the increase in All-in pricing) so didn't even think of monthly.
> 
> Scott


Hi Scott-

Your timing was better than mine. Our MPEG-4 change came that summer of 2015, and I had indeed heard of the specials for longtime customers facing this dilemma. You don't get much longer-time than us, or with more boxes activated.

So I called and the only thing they were offering were refurbed basic Roamios (Pros had sold out for this offer with no estimated time for more.) This was needless to say a gut-check time for us and Tivo. Comcast X1s were being deployed in our area. We decided to bite the bullet and go the Roamio Pro route. Absent any special deal from Tivo (and that hurt), we went with what was then a pretty good deal- the Spherular coupon. But the all-in price including Lifetime was a little more than we could bite off then, so once again, we are on monthly. I know I know.

Now I'm facing the prospect of dumping the Pro and going with a Bolt that is OTA compatible and dumping Comcast. This is what makes me worry for Tivo....that there are maybe three other chumps like me left to keep Tivo in business. And I keep coming back (in no small part because my wife loves Tivo.)

Thank you sir, may I have another! :weary:

Kupe


----------



## Bigg

kupe said:


> Hi Scott-
> 
> Yes indeed, that was the problem. Our area converted to MPEG 4 and my Tivo HD was a casualty (this was many months prior to the upgrade to fix that, or even the rumor of it.) We replaced the HD with our current Tivo Roamio and deactivated the HD (we weren't product lifetime and so I needed to stop the monthly billing for the HD.)


Oh yeah, a monthly unit is no loss. If it had Lifetime, I assume you would have either kept it for OTA or sold it....



kupe said:


> Now I'm facing the prospect of dumping the Pro and going with a Bolt that is OTA compatible and dumping Comcast. This is what makes me worry for Tivo....that there are maybe three other chumps like me left to keep Tivo in business. And I keep coming back (in no small part because my wife loves Tivo.)
> 
> Thank you sir, may I have another! :weary:


I got a Roamio OTA for $199, and I upgraded the hard drive. I figure if I say screw it with pay TV, I can keep using that for OTA, if I live somewhere with a semi-competent cable provider, I'll just have more capability and tuners, and if I go with DirecTV, then I can use the TiVo for the networks and keep a toe in the water with TiVo and have Genie for day to day use.


----------



## kbmb

Bigg said:


> In your case, I would say what the heck are you doing on Comcast? Google Fiber has better picture quality than anyone else, period. They don't re-compress anything, they just pass it right along. I know their DVR sucks, but I'd take Google Fiber any day over my local cable company or RCN or FiOS or anything else QAM-based. While we're talking about one provider offering ESPN at ~4mbps MPEG-4 versus ~6mbps MPEG-4, Google Fiber's ESPN is something like 14 or 15mbps MPEG-4, directly off C-band bit for bit.


@Bigg - is there anyway I can find out what my channels are using for a bitrate? Is this done with some special equipment or do you just need the file from TiVo? And I'm also guessing the stations aren't consistent? Meaning, they could bump up the bitrate for prime time vs day time? Or even per show?

For example, we record a bunch of the ABC comedies. We think The Middle often looks the worse of them all. Something like American Housewife to us actually looks better?! Note, for some reason our local ABC channels are 1080i, not 720p.

-Kevin


----------



## KingsFan6

kbmb said:


> @Bigg - is there anyway I can find out what my channels are using for a bitrate? Is this done with some special equipment or do you just need the file from TiVo? And I'm also guessing the stations aren't consistent? Meaning, they could bump up the bitrate for prime time vs day time? Or even per show?
> 
> For example, we record a bunch of the ABC comedies. We think The Middle often looks the worse of them all. Something like American Housewife to us actually looks better?! Note, for some reason our local ABC channels are 1080i, not 720p.
> 
> -Kevin


When you look up the "info" for a recording, you can scroll to the bottom and get the file size. I just take the file size (which is in GB), multiply by 1024, multiply by 8, divide by minutes of the recording, then divide by 60. This will give you an approximation of Mbps. That's how I do it.


----------



## HerronScott

kbmb said:


> For example, we record a bunch of the ABC comedies. We think The Middle often looks the worse of them all. Something like American Housewife to us actually looks better?! Note, for some reason our local ABC channels are 1080i, not 720p.


Kevin,

Comcast is not moving broadcast channels to MPEG4 (and 720p). Odd that your local ABC channel would be 1080i since ABC and Fox broadcast in 720p while NBC and CBS broadcast in 1080i?

Scott


----------



## keenanSR

HerronScott said:


> Kevin,
> 
> Comcast is not moving broadcast channels to MPEG4 (and 720p). Odd that your local ABC channel would be 1080i since ABC and Fox broadcast in 720p while NBC and CBS broadcast in 1080i?
> 
> Scott


Could be a non-O&O station, many independent affiliates transmit in formats that are not native to the national network.


----------



## kbmb

KingsFan6 said:


> When you look up the "info" for a recording, you can scroll to the bottom and get the file size. I just take the file size (which is in GB), multiply by 1024, multiply by 8, divide by minutes of the recording, then divide by 60. This will give you an approximation of Mbps. That's how I do it.


Thanks for the info. I'm going to look into some numbers and post back.



HerronScott said:


> Kevin,
> Comcast is not moving broadcast channels to MPEG4 (and 720p). Odd that your local ABC channel would be 1080i since ABC and Fox broadcast in 720p while NBC and CBS broadcast in 1080i?
> Scott


Yeah, I know locals didn't make the switch - and to be honest, we got our 4K TV after the switch, so I can't be sure how they looked before things. All we know is what we can compare to other sources. Our FOX broadcasts now, look much worse than the same show via Hulu. So that leads me to believe that even though locals didn't switch to MPEG4 - they are still being compressed to heck!!

Similar to cable channels. Recordings prior to the switch look better, and recordings now compared to their steaming counterparts look worse.

-Kevin


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## keenanSR

If the station is WMUR then it's a Hearst station and they use 1080i despite the network(ABC) being 720p.


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## kbmb

keenanSR said:


> If the station is WMUR then it's a Hearst station and they use 1080i despite the network(ABC) being 720p.


Yup, in Southern NH. Both WMUR and the Boston station WCVB are 1080i.

-Kevin


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## Bigg

kbmb said:


> @Bigg - is there anyway I can find out what my channels are using for a bitrate? Is this done with some special equipment or do you just need the file from TiVo? And I'm also guessing the stations aren't consistent? Meaning, they could bump up the bitrate for prime time vs day time? Or even per show?


TiVo gives you the length, and if you hit "info" then "channel down", you can see the file size. From there, take the file size and calculate out the bitrate. I created a spreadsheet to do it, which took all of 30 seconds, since I was doing a whole bunch of them. Most stations use statistical multiplexing, which Comcast also uses for cable channels, which varies the bitrate between the various streams in that physical channels second to second, depending on the needs of each channel. When done correctly, it is very efficient.

Comcast passes some OTA channels on directly, and re-compresses others, at least in my market. If you take two ATSC-8VSB channels, and re-modulate them to ATSC-QAM, you can fit two full channels, with all the subchannels intact into one channel bit for bit, as ATSC-8VSB is 19mbps per channel, and ATSC-QAM is 38mbps per channel, due to the nature of OTA broadcasting versus a closed cable system. Most channels used to be broadcast on C-band at 19mbps MPEG-2, and Verizon was one of the few providers to drop them directly on their system without re-compression, while Comcast was tri-muxing. As encoders got better, Verizon has tri-muxed some channels, and Comcast has even quad-muxed MPEG-2. C-band is mostly MPEG-4 now, at fairly high bitrates, so no provider other than Google Fiber, and a handful of channels that are available to the public through C-band are available without some form of re-compression or transcoding, in some cases from MPEG-4 back to MPEG-2, like on Verizon FiOS.

It gets even more squirrely when you get to local channels, as most providers are taking the OTA signal and either using it intact (cable), or compressing it again (satellite with MPEG-4 LiL service), but I have heard that DirecTV has equipment in some broadcasters' studios that can compress to their MPEG-4 LiL standards directly from an HD-SDI feed before the station's own compressor, but I'm not sure how widespread this practice is. Are you in Boston or Portland? I'm looking at RabbitEars.info, and it's showing WCVB, WMUR, and WMTW all as running 1080i, which makes no sense, as they would have to convert the ABC feed to 1080i in order to broadcast it, and goes against ABC's standard of 720p across their network.


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## Bigg

kbmb said:


> Yup, in Southern NH. Both WMUR and the Boston station WCVB are 1080i.


Posts crossed, but that's very strange. I did not realize that the famous WMUR used 1080i.


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## kbmb

Bigg said:


> Posts crossed, but that's very strange. I did not realize that the famous WMUR used 1080i.


Thanks for all the info. Never heard WMUR called famous before though ;-)

I'm going through now and noting in a spreadsheet some of my numbers.

Any idea what a good cable bitrate would be? And how would that compare to something like Hulu?

BTW good luck with your install this week. Looking forward to hearing you get a nice quality picture!

-Kevin


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## kbmb

So no idea if these are good or bad, all I know on my 4K, none really look good. Here are some averages based on station that I found using @KingsFan6 formula:

ABC 13.84 Mbps
CBS 14.20 Mbps
FOX 11.89 Mbps
NBC 15.46 Mbps
FXX 5.83 Mbps
NBCSN 4.05 Mbps
PBS 6.28 Mbps

Again, I know locals weren't converted - just trying to figure out why they look so bad compared to streaming.

Also looking at a show recorded before and after the transition:

AMC before: 7.93 Mbps
AMC after: 3.66 Mbps

-Kevin


----------



## JoeKustra

kbmb said:


> Any idea what a good cable bitrate would be? And how would that compare to something like Hulu?
> -Kevin


In the past, when I was using kmttg, and my NBC and CBS stations had no subchannels, and my feed was 1080i with 720p on one QAM channels, I was seeing bit rates just over 18Mbps. Since those channels have added two sub-channels, they have dropped to 15Mbps. Most of my basic cable channels are 16Mbps. My ABC feed is about 12Mbps. All numbers are approximate.

Note that my cable feed does not change bit rates, which is why the NBC and CBS dropped since the source dropped. Even though sub-channels have been added to the OTA, my cable feed has not added them yet.


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## alleybj

Well, I filed an FCC complaint and received a couple of calls from Comcast. The person who called wasn't aware of the change to 720p but said he would inquire. He called back today and said that he was told that it was an unintentional result of an update made around the August time frame. He also said that, if I had a Comcast box, I could go into settings and allow the 1080i shows to once again display as 1080i. I explained to him that I had a Tivo and a cablecard and he had no idea what to do from there. Any thoughts? Total BS or an actual possibility. Does anyone also have an X1 who can check to see if what he says is correct? Could repairing the cablecard possibly fix it? Thanks


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## kbmb

alleybj said:


> Well, I filed an FCC complaint and received a couple of calls from Comcast. The person who called wasn't aware of the change to 720p but said he would inquire. He called back today and said that he was told that it was an unintentional result of an update made around the August time frame. He also said that, if I had a Comcast box, I could go into settings and allow the 1080i shows to once again display as 1080i. I explained to him that I had a Tivo and a cablecard and he had no idea what to do from there. Any thoughts? Total BS or an actual possibility. Does anyone also have an X1 who can check to see if what he says is correct? Could repairing the cablecard possibly fix it? Thanks


(shakes head at Comcast) Man are they clueless. You know what I would do.....I would actually PAY to have support from people that KNOW what they are talking about. Doesn't matter whether it's Comcast or Verizon or Apple.

The settings on a cable box have nothing to do with the signal received by the cable box. Our TiVos for example are fully capable to taking the 720p resolution and outputting it as 1080p or 1080i, or 480i. In fact, that's what I have my Roamio doing - outputting 1080p. But that doesn't change what the signal is coming into the box. When you are watching a channel/show and you press Info - you will see the resolution that the channel is being sent to your TiVo.

And I believe on all the latest X1 boxes - they are doing the same. Everything is output at 1080p from the box.

And the person who said it was unintentional was incorrect. Comcast employees have publicly stated that when they switched from MPEG2 to MPEG4, they also switched to 720p.

Comcast's problem is: Garbage In -> Garbage Out.

-Kevin


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## bmgoodman

kbmb said:


> Comcast's problem is: Garbage In -> Garbage Out.
> -Kevin


Isn't it more like "Garbage Out -> Profit In"? Why have just 30 beautiful HD channels when they can fit 300 muddy ones in the same space? After all, isn't more channels more better?


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## kbmb

bmgoodman said:


> Isn't it more like "Garbage Out -> Profit In"? Why have just 30 beautiful HD channels when they can fit 300 muddy ones in the same space? After all, isn't more channels more better?


I recently had to talk to someone to renew my cable package to try to get a discount (because my bill was set to go up $35/month). It was funny how each person I talked to raved about all the channels I could watch. Each time I told them, I'd gladly take 1/4 of the channels if that meant they were all good quality. That usually shut them up 

-Kevin


----------



## Bigg

kbmb said:


> Thanks for all the info. Never heard WMUR called famous before though ;-)


Every 4 years for a couple of months WMUR is very famous. It's the "WMUR poll this" and the "MWUR poll that", and then no one heard about them again until 4 years later haha.



> Any idea what a good cable bitrate would be? And how would that compare to something like Hulu?
> 
> BTW good luck with your install this week. Looking forward to hearing you get a nice quality picture!


That's a loaded question. It depends on how good the encoding is, and how effectively they are using statistical multiplexing. Traditionally, HD was 19.3mbps MPEG-2, today very few channels run at that bandwidth, and typically 12-15mbps MPEG-2 is good, below 10 is lousy. MPEG-4 is even more squirrely, as it's used on IPTV, DBS, and cable, and DBS and cable are much more similar than IPTV, as they have statistical multiplexing, but 5.5-7.5mbps average is generally good, anything less is bad with stat multi, with IPTV, basically 6mbps is lousy and 14+mbps is amazing, but that's because those are the only two systems I know off the top of my head, AT&T U-Verse and Google Fiber respectively.

So I got it installed. Long story short, the guy didn't finish pairing the CableCard. He seemed to like working with TiVo though, as he used to work with Mediacom, I guess they are a TiVo MSO. Some guys at work have TiVos through Atlantic Broadband, which is one town over, but doesn't overlap with Thames Valley Communications. He also claimed everything is available in digital, which is not true, there are a few analog channels that are not available in HD, and thus are not available in digital, thus TiVo cannot tune them at all, but I knew that might be the case going into it. There's this huge gap in the CableCard mapping, as it's all analog, which may as well not exist to the TiVo. Everything important is available in HD though.

The picture quality is all over the place. The channels I had seen previously are pretty darn good looking, basically the ESPNs. Other channels are a crapshoot. Their SD is much better than Comcast's, FWIW, as there are a few channels that neither carries in HD, but some of their HDs are miserable, including SNY and MSNBC. I don't care about MSNBC, as I usually listen to it, not watch it, but SNY is a major channel for me. It's kind of a mess on TVC, but it's unwatchable on Comcast. TVC is a total hodgepodge, Comcast is consistently awful on the TV side with the exception of locals.

The biggest problem is that their internet is slow as molasses. I have the 155mbps package, but I'm only getting 4-6mbps. On Comcast, I had the 75mbps package, and I would usually get 89mbps, but it could drop to about 30mbps at times, but it was at least usable for 4k streaming. They are going to call me back tomorrow about the speed issues, as their senior technical person was not in. From what I can tell based on their internal speedtest and regular speedtest is that their physical plant is doing about 165-170mbps, and their connection to the internet is completely saturated. Comcast has the opposite problem, they have an incredible backbone, but a problematic last mile.

This morning I talked to an engineer at Comcast who worked on encoding in New Hampshire, and we talked about the encoding, and he claimed that it was mostly TiVo users complaining, and that the channels look better on X1, which isn't really very helpful, and even if X1 is better at decoding and eliminating the jaggies and smears and jiggies and blocks, the channels are still going to look very soft and blurry. It's possible that there is something there, or it's possible that the technically inclined users have TiVo, and TiVo users are more technically inclined.

I'm toying with just saying screw it and cutting the cord, which I'd do with Thames, not Comcast, as Thames is $38/mo for 27/5 versus $75/mo for Comcast's 25/5, even if Thames is really only 4mbps a lot of the time. Frontier's picture is basically just as bad as Comcast. I really want to watch basketball, but neither cable company can deliver a watchable picture on all the channels. At least Thames offers a good picture on some channels, but SNY is still lousy, although it is 1080i, so that's a plus.


----------



## Bigg

bmgoodman said:


> Isn't it more like "Garbage Out -> Profit In"? Why have just 30 beautiful HD channels when they can fit 300 muddy ones in the same space? After all, isn't more channels more better?


How about 200 crystal clear ones? Do a plant rebuild on old plants, and use SDV. Yeah, then we have to deal with TAs, but at least we'd have 200 gorgeous HD channels.


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## kbmb

Bigg said:


> That's a loaded question. It depends on how good the encoding is, and how effectively they are using statistical multiplexing. Traditionally, HD was 19.3mbps MPEG-2, today very few channels run at that bandwidth, and typically 12-15mbps MPEG-2 is good, below 10 is lousy. MPEG-4 is even more squirrely, as it's used on IPTV, DBS, and cable, and DBS and cable are much more similar than IPTV, as they have statistical multiplexing, but 5.5-7.5mbps average is generally good, anything less is bad with stat multi, with IPTV, basically 6mbps is lousy and 14+mbps is amazing, but that's because those are the only two systems I know off the top of my head, AT&T U-Verse and Google Fiber respectively.


Thanks for the info. Based on my numbers it looks like my locals aren't too bad. Still in most cases a Hulu/HBO Go/Showtime Anytime stream can look better.



Bigg said:


> So I got it installed. Long story short, the guy didn't finish pairing the CableCard. He seemed to like working with TiVo though, as he used to work with Mediacom, I guess they are a TiVo MSO. Some guys at work have TiVos through Atlantic Broadband, which is one town over, but doesn't overlap with Thames Valley Communications. He also claimed everything is available in digital, which is not true, there are a few analog channels that are not available in HD, and thus are not available in digital, thus TiVo cannot tune them at all, but I knew that might be the case going into it. There's this huge gap in the CableCard mapping, as it's all analog, which may as well not exist to the TiVo. Everything important is available in HD though.
> 
> The picture quality is all over the place. The channels I had seen previously are pretty darn good looking, basically the ESPNs. Other channels are a crapshoot. Their SD is much better than Comcast's, FWIW, as there are a few channels that neither carries in HD, but some of their HDs are miserable, including SNY and MSNBC. I don't care about MSNBC, as I usually listen to it, not watch it, but SNY is a major channel for me. It's kind of a mess on TVC, but it's unwatchable on Comcast. TVC is a total hodgepodge, Comcast is consistently awful on the TV side with the exception of locals.
> 
> The biggest problem is that their internet is slow as molasses. I have the 155mbps package, but I'm only getting 4-6mbps. On Comcast, I had the 75mbps package, and I would usually get 89mbps, but it could drop to about 30mbps at times, but it was at least usable for 4k streaming. They are going to call me back tomorrow about the speed issues, as their senior technical person was not in. From what I can tell based on their internal speedtest and regular speedtest is that their physical plant is doing about 165-170mbps, and their connection to the internet is completely saturated. Comcast has the opposite problem, they have an incredible backbone, but a problematic last mile.


Well I guess this is good and bad news. Sounds as if they are really small. The internet is a bummer. 4-6mbps is really too low to be useful. Hopefully they can figure it out for you.



Bigg said:


> This morning I talked to an engineer at Comcast who worked on encoding in New Hampshire, and we talked about the encoding, and he claimed that it was mostly TiVo users complaining, and that the channels look better on X1, which isn't really very helpful, and even if X1 is better at decoding and eliminating the jaggies and smears and jiggies and blocks, the channels are still going to look very soft and blurry. It's possible that there is something there, or it's possible that the technically inclined users have TiVo, and TiVo users are more technically inclined.


That's very interesting, and something I really didn't want to hear  I can't imagine that the TiVo would really be that much a the problem here. Wish I could test an X1 just so I'd know for sure if it does any better. I think in the long run, we'll be on the X1 in the end, especially if they move to IPTV. We would certainly miss the TiVos, but with the current direction it seems the company is going, they are certainly making easier and easier to consider leaving. I do imagine that the TiVo users are probably all a little more informed about things than the normal X1 user.



Bigg said:


> I'm toying with just saying screw it and cutting the cord, which I'd do with Thames, not Comcast, as Thames is $38/mo for 27/5 versus $75/mo for Comcast's 25/5, even if Thames is really only 4mbps a lot of the time. Frontier's picture is basically just as bad as Comcast. I really want to watch basketball, but neither cable company can deliver a watchable picture on all the channels. At least Thames offers a good picture on some channels, but SNY is still lousy, although it is 1080i, so that's a plus.


Nice that you have some choice - gives you at least the chance to have options and maybe get competitive rates. Here we don't really have a choice in internet unless we want to drop out speeds way down with DSL from Fairpoint. That's what made it easy to re-up a contract with Comcast knowing that I would likely always keep their internet - they only require you keep 1 service to satisfy the contract. This is really the holy grail though - cut the cord and get everything you want. I've been testing some of the streaming services and so far not impressed either with picture quality or with features. Can't deal with commercials - ever. Can't deal with not having live locals. Can't deal with no fast forward in OnDemand. Really would miss the true DVR. Hulu commercial free plan so far has 
been the best - best quality and decent selection. Just wish Hulu offered all my shows.

-Kevin


----------



## Sgt Howl

Bigg said:


> This morning I talked to an engineer at Comcast who worked on encoding in New Hampshire, and we talked about the encoding, and he claimed that it was mostly TiVo users complaining, and that the channels look better on X1, which isn't really very helpful, and even if X1 is better at decoding and eliminating the jaggies and smears and jiggies and blocks, the channels are still going to look very soft and blurry. It's possible that there is something there, or it's possible that the technically inclined users have TiVo, and TiVo users are more technically inclined.


Could we test the engineer's hypothesis by setting our TiVo's to output 720p only? Our TVs or receivers would then handle scaling, perhaps better or worse than the TiVo.


----------



## kbmb

Sgt Howl said:


> Could we test the engineer's hypothesis by setting our TiVo's to output 720p only? Our TVs or receivers would then handle scaling, perhaps better or worse than the TiVo.


I did do some very quick tests of setting my Tivo to 720p and 1080i - so that is would basically pass the actual signal to the TV. I didn't really notice much difference, however, these were very quick tests. Maybe I set those again and see.

Someone in another thread I think mentioned about the upscaling from lower resolutions to 4K and how maybe not having the Tivo upscale to 1080p that it would result in a better picture.

-Kevin


----------



## alleybj

Sgt Howl said:


> Could we test the engineer's hypothesis by setting our TiVo's to output 720p only? Our TVs or receivers would then handle scaling, perhaps better or worse than the TiVo.


I have my Tivos set to display all available resolutions, and it seems to pass them through to my Samsung TV (at least the TV says it's receiving 720p for most channels). The Tivo doesn't seem to be upscaling to 1080p


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## kbmb

alleybj said:


> I have my Tivos set to display all available resolutions, and it seems to pass them through to my Samsung TV (at least the TV says it's receiving 720p for most channels). The Tivo doesn't seem to be upscaling to 1080p


We've also setup our Tivos to output 1080p only, mainly because on our old Samsung 1080p TV - this was best. It allowed the TV to not have to wait to switch resolution.

-Kevin


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## KingsFan6

Sgt Howl said:


> Could we test the engineer's hypothesis by setting our TiVo's to output 720p only? Our TVs or receivers would then handle scaling, perhaps better or worse than the TiVo.


With my 2010 model Samsung plasma, I don't notice a difference in PQ whether I output native or 1080p, so I just go with 1080p.


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## KingsFan6

Bigg said:


> This morning I talked to an engineer at Comcast who worked on encoding in New Hampshire, and we talked about the encoding, and he claimed that it was mostly TiVo users complaining, and that the channels look better on X1, which isn't really very helpful, and even if X1 is better at decoding and eliminating the jaggies and smears and jiggies and blocks, the channels are still going to look very soft and blurry. It's possible that there is something there, or it's possible that the technically inclined users have TiVo, and TiVo users are more technically inclined.


Hmm, not sure about that. If X1 is "better at decoding and eliminating the jaggies and smears", then that would imply that the X1 box is doing some processing on the picture instead of just sending it through. Having a box do video processing is akin to enabling edge enhancements, increasing sharpness setting, and enabling other video "enhancements" from a TV's settings menu, all of which is a general no-no. If the TiVo merely passes the signal received without further processing, that is as pure and non-artificially enhanced picture we could get and would theoretically be no worse than an X1 -- at least from a videophile standpoint, which I don't claim to be


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## KingsFan6

To this day, I still have not come across articles in the media about what Comcast has been doing. Comcast needs to be called out on this! Should figure out a way to get a hold of someone with influence at CNET, Arstechnica, the Verge, etc.


----------



## keenanSR

Bigg said:


> This morning I talked to an engineer at Comcast who worked on encoding in New Hampshire, and we talked about the encoding, and he claimed that it was mostly TiVo users complaining, and that the channels look better on X1, which isn't really very helpful, and even if X1 is better at decoding and eliminating the jaggies and smears and jiggies and blocks, the channels are still going to look very soft and blurry. It's possible that there is something there, or it's possible that the technically inclined users have TiVo, and TiVo users are more technically inclined.


The reason TiVo users are the ones complaining the most is because TiVo viewers are usually more discerning viewers when it comes to picture quality. I have my Pro output native to an Opp 103D(and then on to a 64" Samsung 1080p plasma) and I can guarantee that the X1 can't hold a candle to the video processing capabilities of the Oppo, there really isn't much on the market that can unless you're willing to spend upwards of $1000 or more for a stand alone vid/proc.

And also because savvy TiVo users can "see" more data about the video they are watching, they can manipulate the files and get hard data from them, something you can't do that with an X1.

I'm not saying the X1 may not have some newer video processing capability but to pass through native resolution is really not that hard to do, but also remember that the X1 is designed to be built in massive quantities for as cheaply as possible, at the end of the day, it's still a cheaply built cable STB.


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## kbmb

keenanSR said:


> The reason TiVo users are the ones complaining the most is because TiVo viewers are usually more discerning viewers when it comes to picture quality. I have my Pro output native to an Opp 103D(and then on to a 64" Samsung 1080p plasma) and I can guarantee that the X1 can't hold a candle to the video processing capabilities of the Oppo, there really isn't much on the market that can unless you're willing to spend upwards of $1000 or more for a stand alone vid/proc.
> 
> And also because savvy TiVo users can "see" more data about the video they are watching, they can manipulate the files and get hard data from them, something you can't do that with an X1.
> 
> I'm not saying the X1 may not have some newer video processing capability but to pass through native resolution is really not that hard to do, but also remember that the X1 is designed to be built in massive quantities for as cheaply as possible, at the end of the day, it's still a cheaply built cable STB.


This isn't the first time I've heard someone mention an Oppo. So this is a Blu-ray player that you can run other sources through and it will take whatever it receives and upscales to 4K? Guessing it does a really good job since I hear most people rave about it?

-Kevin


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## keenanSR

kbmb said:


> This isn't the first time I've heard someone mention an Oppo. So this is a Blu-ray player that you can run other sources through and it will take whatever it receives and upscales to 4K? Guessing it does a really good job since I hear most people rave about it?
> 
> -Kevin


Yes, in fact, high-dollar brands have taken the Oppo guts, put them in their own branded case and sold them for thousands of dollars.

OPPO Digital - Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Players - Buy Direct from the Manufacturer

The BDP-103 is being replaced by the 203 which is a true UHD disc player.

With the 103 you have two HDMI inputs which can be used for a TiVo, for example, and any other device you want such a media streamer, another DVR(during baseball season I have my DirecTV DVR plugged into it).

If you search for reviews you'll find a wealth of information about them, with far more detail than I can even begin to go into here. They are recognized as if not the best, very near the top as being best disc players in the world.


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## morac

KingsFan6 said:


> To this day, I still have not come across articles in the media about what Comcast has been doing. Comcast needs to be called out on this! Should figure out a way to get a hold of someone with influence at CNET, Arstechnica, the Verge, etc.


When this first came to light I submitted it as news to DSLReports, which tends to be fairly anti-Comcast, and they ignored it. I guess someone could submit it to consumerist.com or something.


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## Bigg

Sgt Howl said:


> Could we test the engineer's hypothesis by setting our TiVo's to output 720p only? Our TVs or receivers would then handle scaling, perhaps better or worse than the TiVo.


I have native mode on. I could have set my video processor to 720p output so that there isn't a 720p>1080p>2160p conversion going on, but that would give only a very marginal advantage. I switched to the overbuilder, and some of their channels are amazing, like both ESPN and ESPN2 are 19mbps MPEG-2, others, like news channels are heavily (and poorly) compressed. I have a feeling that I'm going back to Comcast tomorrow though, as the overbuilder's internet can't seem to break 10mbps most of the time, and is usually much less than that. They are going to come over to take a look at it tomorrow, but it appears to be a core network problem. Ultimately Internet>>>TV so if it's a choice between the two, I have to pick internet.



keenanSR said:


> The reason TiVo users are the ones complaining the most is because TiVo viewers are usually more discerning viewers when it comes to picture quality. I have my Pro output native to an Opp 103D(and then on to a 64" Samsung 1080p plasma) and I can guarantee that the X1 can't hold a candle to the video processing capabilities of the Oppo, there really isn't much on the market that can unless you're willing to spend upwards of $1000 or more for a stand alone vid/proc.
> 
> And also because savvy TiVo users can "see" more data about the video they are watching, they can manipulate the files and get hard data from them, something you can't do that with an X1.
> 
> I'm not saying the X1 may not have some newer video processing capability but to pass through native resolution is really not that hard to do, but also remember that the X1 is designed to be built in massive quantities for as cheaply as possible, at the end of the day, it's still a cheaply built cable STB.


Yeah, I think that's probably more the case. It's possible that they are doing some video processing on the X1 to "hide" the poor video quality, but I can't imagine that they invested a whole lot in powerful video processing chips in there to try and massage the video.



morac said:


> When this first came to light I submitted it as news to DSLReports, which tends to be fairly anti-Comcast, and they ignored it. I guess someone could submit it to consumerist.com or something.


Interesting. I'm surprised Karl didn't take the chance to slam Comcast, although they are more broadband centric.


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## jalind

I found out about the Comcast MPEG4 when my 648 Series 3 HD was picking up near zero HD channels. It has since been replaced with a 748 refurb Premiere XL. It's now up and working with another Premiere XL and a TiVo HD-XL (658). I'm tempted to pursue replacing the HD-XL with another Premiere XL.

Got everything working and discovered the HD, for all but a few local broadcast stations, was not only MPEG4, it was 720p/60. If the transport stream from the content provider (e.g. ESPN or NFL Red Zone) is being created by them in 720p/60 then it's appropriate to push that downstream to the subscriber. However, transcoding 1080i/30 to 720p/60 causes some problems. In addition to the resolution reduction, they've cranked up the compression to a severely high level. I don't watch much sports, but look at the movies. This is a nightmare for the cinema channels. I see judder and stutter now in scene pans and it's extremely obvious when credits scroll. The reason for this is the 3:2 pulldown used to convert 24 fps cinema content (movies are shot at 24 fps and have been for many decades) compounded with de-interlacing. 3:2 pulldown uses alternating frame repetition with cinema frame one being repeated 3x, frame two 2x, frame three, 3x and frame four 2x, repeating the alternation of 3x and 2x frame repetition. The result is the juddering and stuttering in panning and motion.

To make matters worse I'm seeing severe color banding and plainly visible 16x16 pixel macroblocks, plus loss of fine texture details. Actor's faces in close-up look like they're made of wax no. Zero skin texture, and anything else with fine texture such as sand, grass, stucco walls, tweed and herringbone coats, etc. has major patches showing massive detail loss (some would call this smearing). High contrast fine edges and lines are now blurred. When I can see all this on a 25.5 inch 1920x1200 (16:10) combo TV and monitor, there's something very seriously wrong. It's even more appalling on a 32 inch 1080p Sony Bravia TV and it's hideous on a 46 inch 1080p Sony Bravia TV. Do the Comcast executives watch their own cable system . . . with the same exact transport stream content they're feeding to customers? Are they suffering from glaucoma, macular degeneration and severe cataracts? The issue isn't H.264 MPEG4 transport streams. It's actually a better encoding method than MPEG2 Layer 2 that not only reduces required size or bit rate some for same PQ (emphasis on some), it improves color and chroma rendition. That's presuming all else is equal. The real issue is the combination of reducing resolution to 720p and then cranking up the compression to severe levels, with the compression level doing the much of the damage unrelated to 3:2 pulldowns, de-interlacing and changing the frame rate.

I'm calling Comcast Customer Solutions on Tuesday (presuming they'll be closed Monday).

John


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## Bigg

Great post Jalind. 46" TV? Imagine it on a 65" SUHDTV. Yeah, it's bad. I may be back on Comcast in a couple of days if Thames Valley Communications can't get their internet to work properly. I think movies are kind of a lost cause on TV, I'd rather stream or watch them on disc, but for sports, there's no choice, you've got to have a pay-TV provider.


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## Sgt Howl

Seems to me that there's a big disconnect in the industry. TV manufacturers want to sell UHD, while Comcast moves in the opposite direction. Also sad that the industry press - like Sound & Vision - don't cover this.


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## Bigg

As an update to my situation, Thames Valley Communications' internet went from ~5% functional to about 95% functional over the weekend, so if it stays this way until Tuesday or Wednesday (depending on my schedule), I will drop Comcast. They were doing some upgrades to their network, so something must have gone very wrong. At least I can watch my sports for now with decent quality.


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## Bigg

Sgt Howl said:


> Seems to me that there's a big disconnect in the industry. TV manufacturers want to sell UHD, while Comcast moves in the opposite direction. Also sad that the industry press - like Sound & Vision - don't cover this.


I agree that there is a total disconnect in terms of Comcast and the rest of the industry. In terms of industry magazines covering it, I think this is a more general-audience type of thing. The videophiles who want sports content on high-end equipment are using DirecTV if they don't have Verizon FiOS or Google Fiber available. This is something that has gotten so bad now your average Joe can tell that it looks bad. My girlfriend, who is not technically inclined at all, could tell the difference when I was watching basketball.


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## WorldBandRadio

I noticed that Comcast is down-converting MTVLive in my area. It used to be 1080i, now it is 720p. 

Additionally, kmttg no longer works with anything recorded on that channel since the down-conversion started. kmttg will copy the audio over to my pc, but not the video.

So, in addition to the down-converting, Comcast is also doing something that prevents kmttg from working properly.


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## HerronScott

WorldBandRadio said:


> I noticed that Comcast is down-converting MTVLive in my area. It used to be 1080i, now it is 720p.
> 
> Additionally, kmttg no longer works with anything recorded on that channel since the down-conversion started. kmttg will copy the audio over to my pc, but not the video.
> 
> So, in addition to the down-converting, Comcast is also doing something that prevents kmttg from working properly.


It sounds like you've missed the posts and news about Comcast moving to MPEG4 for all HD channels except broadcast? You need to switch to TS downloads for channels that have been moved to MPEG4 (H.264).

Scott


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## WorldBandRadio

HerronScott said:


> It sounds like you've missed the posts and news about Comcast moving to MPEG4 for all HD channels except broadcast? You need to switch to TS downloads for channels that have been moved to MPEG4 (H.264).
> 
> Scott


I knew Comcast was moving to MPEG4, but I missed the TS aspect.

All is working properly now.

Thanks!


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## Bigg

MTVLive was one of the 10 channels in the first QAM to move over for us, then a few weeks later everything else (except locals) cut over. And yes, they are not only compressing the crap out of the channels, down-rezzing 1080i channels to 720p, including NBCU-owned channels. One arm doesn't know what the other is doing. Those NBCU channels are still in glorious 1080i on DirecTV.


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## webminster

I finally got a response on my FCC complaint... someone named "Nicole B" responded to the FCC that it was all because I had equipment not compatible with MPEG4, and I could rent an X1 to solve the problem. The once we did talk on phone she denied Comcast was altering the signal, they only carried what the broadcasters fed them. Kept trying to tell her the equpment (Bolt+) was fine, she stuck to her story.

Just called back to reiterate the issue and complain about the "inaccuracy" of their response. Not that it will help anything - maybe I just like windmill tilting. Or hopeful that someone at Comcast will mistakenly care about it.


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## BobCamp1

kbmb said:


> So no idea if these are good or bad, all I know on my 4K, none really look good. Here are some averages based on station that I found using @KingsFan6 formula:
> 
> ABC 13.84 Mbps
> CBS 14.20 Mbps
> FOX 11.89 Mbps
> NBC 15.46 Mbps
> FXX 5.83 Mbps
> NBCSN 4.05 Mbps
> PBS 6.28 Mbps
> 
> Again, I know locals weren't converted - just trying to figure out why they look so bad compared to streaming.
> 
> Also looking at a show recorded before and after the transition:
> 
> AMC before: 7.93 Mbps
> AMC after: 3.66 Mbps
> 
> -Kevin


Easy. Your locals will look pretty good but not great, and those other channels will look horrible. It's not a 1080i vs. 720p issue, as no human can tell the difference if the TV is under 60". At just over 3.5 Mbps, AMC will look like 8-bit graphics especially when there is a lot of movement. And NBCSN, a sports network, only having 4 Mbps is just sad.


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## Bigg

BobCamp1 said:


> Easy. Your locals will look pretty good but not great, and those other channels will look horrible. It's not a 1080i vs. 720p issue, as no human can tell the difference if the TV is under 60". At just over 3.5 Mbps, AMC will look like 8-bit graphics especially when there is a lot of movement. And NBCSN, a sports network, only having 4 Mbps is just sad.


I beg to differ. I can see the 1080i vs. 720p difference very easily. However, I would agree that the bitrate is more of an issue than the resolution. The 1080i channels would look pretty good at 720p60 if they were given 6mbps+. The thing is, the entire purpose of down-converting to 720p is so that they could stuff 10 channels per QAM, not 7 or 8.


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## morac

BobCamp1 said:


> Easy. Your locals will look pretty good but not great, and those other channels will look horrible. It's not a 1080i vs. 720p issue, as no human can tell the difference if the TV is under 60". At just over 3.5 Mbps, AMC will look like 8-bit graphics especially when there is a lot of movement. And NBCSN, a sports network, only having 4 Mbps is just sad.


You don't need a 60" TV to see the differences. It depends on how far away you sit. You can see the difference on a 40 inch screen if you sit less than 8 feet away.


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## kbmb

BobCamp1 said:


> *Easy. Your locals will look pretty good but not great, and those other channels will look horrible.* It's not a 1080i vs. 720p issue, as no human can tell the difference if the TV is under 60". At just over 3.5 Mbps, AMC will look like 8-bit graphics especially when there is a lot of movement. And NBCSN, a sports network, only having 4 Mbps is just sad.


That about sums up my feelings on it 

That and the entire TV industry is moving to 4K and Comcast is making everything they have look like crap on 4K. There really is no excuse for it either. You don't need 4K to have a 4K TV look good. Streaming services have proven that. The 4K sets really do bring out the worst in Comcast's signal. You can argue that these overly compressed channels look "ok" on a 1080p TV - but they look awful on 4K. Would love to walk a Comcast exec through the Best Buy showroom and have him try to find a 1080p TV - it's not easy.

-Kevin


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## Bigg

I did some comparisons of OTA, Comcast, and our local overbuilder, Thames Valley Communications. I got some pretty interesting results. TVC does not use MPEG-4, so all TVC and OTA results are MPEG-2.

CBS- WFSB-DT- 10.7mpbs Comcast and TVC. I can't get their OTA signal.

NBC-WVIT-DT- 10.6mbps Comcast and TVC, 12.6mbps OTA. Appears to be a different feed they are giving to cable providers.

FOX- WTIC-DT- 12.8mbps Comcast, TVC, and OTA. I got about 10mbps on TVC, but the same show recorded on OTA at the same time was also 10mbps, so it was due to statistical multiplexing. Apparently judge/jury shows are bad tests since they compress too easily.

ABC- WTNH-DT- 13mbps on TVC. Apparently I never tested on Comcast, and I can't pick it up OTA. Appears to be OTA feed without re-compression based on bitrate.

PBS- WGBH-DT- 11.7mbps on Comcast. TVC does not carry in HD, too far for OTA. Appears to be OTA without re-compression.
PBS-WEDH-DT- 9.9mbps on Comcast and OTA
PBS-WEDN-DT- sister station to WEDH-DT, and in theory an exact mirror- 9.5-10.6mbps, appears to be statistical multiplexing and use same feed as WEDH-DT.

CNN- 3.5mbps Comcast MPEG-4/13.9mbps TVC
TWC- 3.9mbps Comcast MPEG-4/did not test TVC
NBCSN- 3.9mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 15.7mbps TVC
SNY- 4.1mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 15mbps TVC
MSNBC- 3.5mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 9.8mbps Comcast MPEG-2/ 9.8mbps TVC
ESPN- 3.8mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 16.4mbps TVC (Sportscenter, so average likely higher)
ESPN2- 3.8mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 17mbps TVC
ESPNU- 4mbps Comcast SD/ 5.1mbps TVC SD
CBSSN- 3.8mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 2.93mbps Comcast SD/ 3.14mbps TVC SD
NESN- 15.7mpbs TVC
NFLNET- 16.9mbps TVC
CNBCHD- 17.3mbps TVC
AXSTV- 10.5mbps TVC


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## KingsFan6

Bigg said:


> CNN- 3.5mbps Comcast MPEG-4/13.9mbps TVC
> TWC- 3.9mbps Comcast MPEG-4/did not test TVC
> NBCSN- 3.9mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 15.7mbps TVC
> SNY- 4.1mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 15mbps TVC
> MSNBC- 3.5mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 9.8mbps Comcast MPEG-2/ 9.8mbps TVC
> ESPN- 3.8mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 16.4mbps TVC (Sportscenter, so average likely higher)
> ESPN2- 3.8mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 17mbps TVC
> ESPNU- 4mbps Comcast SD/ 5.1mbps TVC SD
> CBSSN- 3.8mbps Comcast MPEG-4/ 2.93mbps Comcast SD/ 3.14mbps TVC SD
> NESN- 15.7mpbs TVC
> NFLNET- 16.9mbps TVC
> CNBCHD- 17.3mbps TVC
> AXSTV- 10.5mbps TVC


OMG, TVC is awesome! I should move to where you are.

Here in the Bay, here's a list of channels I know of that have yet to convert to 720p MPEG-4:
Locals
RSNs (CSN Bay Area, CSN California)
ESPN
ESPN2
ESPNU
NBCSN
NFL Net
NBA TV
MLB Net

Good thing that most of my TV viewing is on these channels.


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## KingsFan6

webminster said:


> I finally got a response on my FCC complaint... someone named "Nicole B" responded to the FCC that it was all because I had equipment not compatible with MPEG4, and I could rent an X1 to solve the problem. The once we did talk on phone she denied Comcast was altering the signal, they only carried what the broadcasters fed them. Kept trying to tell her the equpment (Bolt+) was fine, she stuck to her story.
> 
> Just called back to reiterate the issue and complain about the "inaccuracy" of their response. Not that it will help anything - maybe I just like windmill tilting. Or hopeful that someone at Comcast will mistakenly care about it.


This is so ridiculous. I get the feeling that internally, the downconversion to 720p is known by only management and the engineers. The information hasn't filtered down to others. Remember that this stuff was never announced publicly "officially". MPEG-4 was, but 720p was not. It took some sleuthing from technically-inclined users on forums like this to call it out. No real articles have been written about it yet. Remember years ago when digital news sites wrote about HD compression, bitrates, how cable compares to Blu Ray, etc. Maybe the subject is too old hat now.


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## KingsFan6

I'm currently on a double play promo. Whenever it expires, I know I can get back on a promo -- I always have. If I get rid of the TV portion and go with DirecTV, how easy will it be to constantly be on promos for both DirecTV and Comcast internet, since I won't be bundling anything? Does anyone have experience with this kind of arrangement? I know that I'd lose out on bundled pricing.


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## BobCamp1

morac said:


> You don't need a 60" TV to see the differences. It depends on how far away you sit.


I'm familiar with that chart, and I think it assumes everybody has 20/15 vision. That's been my experience anyway. I have 20/20 vision.

You're saying 1080i and 1080p are the same. They are only if there is no motion. So you either have a big pixel or smaller pixels that motion blur into a bigger pixel. Also, that table assumes no compression is being used, which is very rare in cable systems. I can tell the difference between minimum compression (FIOS) 1080i and Blu-Ray 1080p. But no real difference in 720p vs. 1080i.

Finally, most people sit farther away from their TV than that. From that same web page, "My couch is 10' away from my TV, which according to the chart means I need a 75 inch TV. This is insane!". Most people with a 50" TV (which is all they could afford) sit at least 10' away from it, and the chart says you most likely won't notice a difference. I sit 8' away with a 50" TV and still don't notice a difference, and my vision is still pretty good. I even sat 3' away from it and STILL really can't tell the difference. Because of that, I turned off native mode in my FIOS DVR and set the output for 1080i. I've also tried it with a Tivo Bolt and still don't see the difference except for the Tivo menus. But who cares how crystal clear the menus are?

Can HD look worse on a 4k TV than it does on an HDTV, in the same way SD can look worse on an HDTV than an SDTV? That could be a problem as well.


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## Bigg

KingsFan6 said:


> OMG, TVC is awesome! I should move to where you are.


It's better to have a choice than not, but they have a limited HD lineup (~60 channels), there are some channels still in analog, so my TiVo can't see them at all, and their encoding is mediocre at best. Their picture quality is still very good, as they are throwing a ton of bitrate at most channels, but they have some weird artifacts that I've cleaned out with my video processor. That being said, they don't do promos, and their regular rates are cheap compared to Comcast, as the service is all local. Their headend and satellite downlinks are literally down the street. I could walk there from my apartment.

The only provider left that's really good with TiVo is FiOS, otherwise Google Fiber or DirecTV is where it's at for picture quality.



BobCamp1 said:


> Can HD look worse on a 4k TV than it does on an HDTV, in the same way SD can look worse on an HDTV than an SDTV? That could be a problem as well.


Yup. Even good HD from my local cable company has completely lost the "wow" factor. The "wow" factor is not only there for 2160p content from Netflix, YouTube, or UHD-BD (or probably Amazon if I ever bothered to watch anything off there).


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## Sgt Howl

BobCamp1 said:


> I can tell the difference between minimum compression (FIOS) 1080i and Blu-Ray 1080p. But no real difference in 720p vs. 1080i.


For myself and many others here and on other forums, the "before" and "after" MPEG4/720P change is very apparent and a significant downgrade in quality. I choose to believe my eyes rather than theory.


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## Bigg

Sgt Howl said:


> For myself and many others here and on other forums, the "before" and "after" MPEG4/720P change is very apparent and a significant downgrade in quality. I choose to believe my eyes rather than theory.


I can absolutely tell the difference between not only 720p and 1080i, but the bigger difference is between MPEG-2 720p and Comcast's super compressed MPEG-4 720p. Keeping in mind that 4k is very limited in TV, so we're only looking at 1080i/720p, here's how I would rank the relative picture quality of various services out of 10:

10... Blu-Ray
9... Netflix/Vudu/Amazon
8... DirecTV
7... FiOS
6... Local broadcast MPEG-2 (average, ranges from 5 to 8 depending on channel)
5... Comcast MPEG-2 (average)/AT&T U-Verse/Thames Valley Communications MPEG-2 (average)
3... Frontier VantageTV (IMO looks worse than when AT&T was running it)
2... Comcast MPEG-4

It's kind of subjective, but that's just based on my observations in uncontrolled environments, and are only of providers that serve within an hour of where I live. There are all sorts of caveats in there, like a few channels on Thames Valley Communications are better than Comcast, others are not, local broadcast is all over the place depending on the channel, Amazon isn't quite as sharp as Netflix, but I find it very pleasing to watch nonetheless, and they throw a lot of bitrate at it, DirecTV compresses a lot more than FiOS, but with MPEG-4, they have dialed into a "sweet spot" with heavy compression and great picture quality with statistical multiplexing.


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## BobCamp1

Bigg said:


> I can absolutely tell the difference between not only 720p and 1080i, but the bigger difference is between MPEG-2 720p and Comcast's super compressed MPEG-4 720p. Keeping in mind that 4k is very limited in TV, so we're only looking at 1080i/720p, here's how I would rank the relative picture quality of various services out of 10:
> 
> 10... Blu-Ray
> 9... Netflix/Vudu/Amazon
> 8... DirecTV
> 7... FiOS
> 6... Local broadcast MPEG-2 (average, ranges from 5 to 8 depending on channel)
> 5... Comcast MPEG-2 (average)/AT&T U-Verse/Thames Valley Communications MPEG-2 (average)
> 3... Frontier VantageTV (IMO looks worse than when AT&T was running it)
> 2... Comcast MPEG-4
> 
> It's kind of subjective, but that's just based on my observations in uncontrolled environments, and are only of providers that serve within an hour of where I live. There are all sorts of caveats in there, like a few channels on Thames Valley Communications are better than Comcast, others are not, local broadcast is all over the place depending on the channel, Amazon isn't quite as sharp as Netflix, but I find it very pleasing to watch nonetheless, and they throw a lot of bitrate at it, DirecTV compresses a lot more than FiOS, but with MPEG-4, they have dialed into a "sweet spot" with heavy compression and great picture quality with statistical multiplexing.


There's no way DirecTV is higher than FIOS. It's very apparent with DirecTV that some channels are over-compressed. Watching the end of Twister on DirecTV I saw a few dozen big gray blocks that were supposed to be the inside of a tornado. But other channels looked great. They are smart about which channels need the bandwidth, and I would switch to them again if I lost FIOS. Of course, each FIOS VHO may be different, so maybe if I saw it at your house I'd agree with you.


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## BobCamp1

Sgt Howl said:


> For myself and many others here and on other forums, the "before" and "after" MPEG4/720P change is very apparent and a significant downgrade in quality. I choose to believe my eyes rather than theory.


That's because it came with a 50% cut in bandwidth. HD needs more than 4 Mbps for bandwidth, period. The resolution is irrelevant in that case.


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## Bigg

BobCamp1 said:


> There's no way DirecTV is higher than FIOS. It's very apparent with DirecTV that some channels are over-compressed. Watching the end of Twister on DirecTV I saw a few dozen big gray blocks that were supposed to be the inside of a tornado. But other channels looked great. They are smart about which channels need the bandwidth, and I would switch to them again if I lost FIOS. Of course, each FIOS VHO may be different, so maybe if I saw it at your house I'd agree with you.


To be fair, I have seen both on different TVs at totally different points in time, and sometimes in restaurants and bars where they are usually on the popular sports channels, where DirecTV is allocating more bandwidth. That being said, I'm giving DirecTV more credit as to me, MPEG-4 artifacts are much more tolerable (up to a point) than MPEG-2 artifacts, so even with more compression, I just "like" the look of DirecTV, and yes it is depending on the individual channel, and somewhat subjective.

I live SE CT, which is nowhere near CT's small FiOS area down in Greenwich, but I do see it sometimes over in RI. A couple of friends of mine over in RI have FiOS TV, and I know people here with DirecTV.



BobCamp1 said:


> That's because it came with a 50% cut in bandwidth. HD needs more than 4 Mbps for bandwidth, period. The resolution is irrelevant in that case.


Yeah, that's absolutely true. HD seems to need 5.5-7.5mbps with MPEG-4 statistical multiplexing, as that is where DirecTV is, and they are getting very good results. Verizon FiOS is giving 7.6mbps average to their MPEG-4 channels, but they are obscure channels that no one watches, so we have little analysis of how they look. If they are doing a halfway decent job encoding, they probably look pretty good. Could you imagine 1080i at 3.8mbps? It would be far worse than their 720p mess, which is why they are converting everything to 720p.


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## davahad

kupe said:


> FCC complaint submitted. I can't even watch it...it makes me sick to think I am paying ever-increasing money to watch this muddy pixelated Comcast crap on my Roamio Pro and my 4K UHD TV. Tonight I was watching some of my favorite Tivo'd shows from before the October downgrade. Hard to believe the difference.
> 
> For those that haven't yet, here is the FCC page:
> FCC Complaints
> 
> This is the text of my FCC complaint if anyone cares:
> 
> Since mid-October, Comcast Cable in Atlanta has slashed the resolution of its cable High Definition (HD) channels from 1080i to 720p. Even worse, they have done on this on premium pay channels including HBO and Showtime. No notice was given to customers about this, nor was any reduction in monthly fees offered.
> 
> I have compared recorded programming from before and after the change, and the difference is dramatic. The change spans dozens of channels, and the result is a muddy pixelated image that doesn't remotely compare to the product before the October change.
> 
> Even more insulting is that Comcast apparently has tried to dismiss this as an "upgrade". The simple fact is that Comcast is trying to slash bandwidth on their cable offerings to favor viewers on phones and tablets, at the expense of viewers on home televisions, including my high-end 4K UHD television.
> 
> Simply put, the downgraded product is terrible, and Comcast has done this without offering any reduction in monthly subscription cost or with any notice to consumers. Even worse, they have done this on premium pay channels as well.
> 
> I am asking that FCC direct Comcast to reinstate 1080i broadcast on all cable channels that offered this prior to the system-wide downgrade.


I filed a complaint as well and followed your letter template. Received a call back the next day from the Corporate offices. The lady did not understand what I was saying but finally today I got a call from a guy in corporate that agreed with the issue but seemed to think this time next year it would be much better with the new stuff they have coming. He said they are hearing the complaints but it would take alot more complaints to do anything immediately. Said the # was in the low hundreds.

Also, I got another call today from the San Jose Ops Mgr regarding the issue and he agreed as well that 720P was reducing video quality, especially when trying to watch on a 4K TV. While he agreed he said not much he could do locally other than he could offer me one months credit to my account ($190)

Perhaps to get more visibility make the FCC complaint its' own thread and put that in all of the appropriate Main Forums here. For the little time I spent a $190 credit is pretty good and now I have the direct contact locally of the Ops guy if I have any tech issues which he said to call him directly.


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## Sgt Howl

davahad said:


> For the little time I spent a $190 credit is pretty good and now I have the direct contact locally of the Ops guy if I have any tech issues which he said to call him directly.


I don't think the one-time credit is worth poor picture quality indefinitely. On the other hand, your experience was much better than mine. In essence, I was told that I was confused and that my TiVo equipment is to blame for any problems (I have a Bolt+ as well as Xfinity X1's). I was promised a return call for which I am still waiting. I did talk with field representatives, who, as best I understood, were aware of the change to MPEG4, but none of the other issues (bit rate, 720P). A field representative did get back in touch to acknowledge that there was indeed a change to 720P, but there was nothing he could do. It's infuriating that not only does Comcast fail to notify its customers in an honest fashion, but it also apparently fails to inform even more senior employees.


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## davahad

Sgt Howl said:


> I don't think the one-time credit is worth poor picture quality indefinitely. On the other hand, your experience was much better than mine. .


I did not mean to imply that the $190 credit was worth the trade-off in picture quality as it definitely is not. It did take 15 days after the initial call I received before I got the two calls today. Before the calls today I figured there would be no more communication.

Also, I basically followed the letter template and the Ops Mgr offered up the 1 month credit. Also, he said that he volunteered to call me as no one else from his group wanted to make the call as they thought I was going to be very angry.

The corporate guy says that they do listen but it will take many more complaints before it would move the needle for them to make any changes.


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## Bigg

davahad said:


> The corporate guy says that they do listen but it will take many more complaints before it would move the needle for them to make any changes.


That's sad. This mess should never have gotten out of the lab!


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## delgadobb

This won't come as news to many of you, but add another data point ... was visiting family over the holidays & my Mom has Comcast. Family was watching football & my brother asked me to turn it to the HD channel. I walked in the room & BLECHHH; checked the channel & it was indeed the HD channel. Fuzzy as hell, reminded me of my astigmatism pre-LASIK. Tuning it to a lower SD channel actually looked BETTER. 

I'm sure someone at Comcast corporate will find a way to spin this as 'improving the customer experience'. After all, the Casinos starting to charge for parking in Las Vegas are doing so 'to improve the customer parking experience'. This has to be an improvement, right? 

/sarcasm


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## Sgt Howl

delgadobb said:


> I'm sure someone at Comcast corporate will find a way to spin this as 'improving the customer experience'. ... This has to be an improvement, right?/sarcasm


You're exactly right. This change is positioned as an "improvement." The language from Comcast includes "crystal clear" pictures.


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## morac

delgadobb said:


> I'm sure someone at Comcast corporate will find a way to spin this as 'improving the customer experience'.


They've already spun it as an improvement. The following was a response by an official Comcast employee in their Forums where they state the interlaced format is bad so they went to 720p.

The thing is 720p can look okay, but they are way over compressing it to make room for faster Internet. I'm not sure why. My area hasn't switched over to MPEG-4, though it was scheduled to do so in November, and Internet speeds here are over 200 Mbps.

1080i channels are being changed to 720p60 channel... - Xfinity Help and Support Forums



> In regards to 720p delivery, some of your HD Channels have transitioned from 1080i to 720p60. As part of our ongoing work to improve and modernize the way we deliver HD channels, we are transitioning all of our HD streams to "progressive" format. We are making this change in conjunction with the transition to MPEG-4. This means that some channels that were delivered in 1080i will now be delivered in 720p60.
> 
> The progressive format offers a number of advantages, and is an important component of the transition to IP video delivery.
> 
> In addition, the transition to progressive format allows us to offer a uniform HD experience across all devices, apps and screens, ensuring a consistently excellent experience.
> 
> The interlaced format reduces the effective resolution of 1080i significantly. Most video delivery is moving toward progressive formats. Many leading HD channels already deliver video in 720p60, and the progressive format renders motion more effectively. Progressive formats are necessary for advanced IP video delivery.
> 
> Based on extensive testing and research, we're confident the combination of MPEG-4 encoding and the progressive format will allow us to deliver superior video performance to our customers.


----------



## Bigg

After I switched to my local overbuilder, I lost CBSSN in HD. The Connecticut game yesterday was on CBSSN, so I had to watch in SD. The graphics were definitely less sharp, but it was easier to watch than Comcast's MPEG-4 HD. The MPEG-4 HD that Comcast is doing is jarring to watch, because a relatively static close-up image will get nice and clear, and the on-screen score and graphics look nice, but when they go out to a full-court shot, or there is a lot of motion, everything gets blurry and blocky, and it's very disorienting to keep going back and forth between blurry and blocky and crisp and clear. With MPEG-2 SD on my local overbuilder, the bitrate is similar to Comcast's "HD" MPEG-4, but it's consistently soft, and much easier to watch, even if not HD.

morac, they want to move to DOCSIS 3.1, gigabit internet, and eventually IPTV. I'm not sure what the rush on internet bandwidth is, since they are way above any of their competitors, except for FiOS, where they are going to get killed on picture quality. They also still have a hodge-podge of different rebuilt and non-rebuilt plants that is holding them back on offering consistent service as well.


----------



## morac

I'm fairly certain the conversion to 720p is somewhat related to the rumored plans of Comcast offering their own streaming TV service. Having already heavily compressed channels makes that easier. Of course if the quality is that bad, I don't know why anyone would subscribe to that.

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/bauminator/comcast-eyes-stream-tv-standalone-iptv-service/403744


----------



## Bigg

morac said:


> I'm fairly certain the conversion to 720p is somewhat related to the rumored plans of Comcast offering their own streaming TV service. Having already heavily compressed channels makes that easier. Of course if the quality is that bad, I don't know why anyone would subscribe to that.
> 
> Comcast Eyes Standalone Option for Stream TV Service | Multichannel


That's what I keep hearing, but what doesn't make any sense is why they would use the same compression on QAM and streaming? It's a totally different technology with different limitations. A company as huge as Comcast should be able to do them separately, like DirecTV NOW, DirecTV, and U-Verse all encode totally differently.


----------



## kbmb

Thanks Comcrap! You've made watching bowl games on ESPN on my 4K tv an absolute joke! 

I'm so disgusted with them. 

-Kevin


----------



## cherry ghost

davahad said:


> I filed a complaint as well and followed your letter template. Received a call back the next day from the Corporate offices. The lady did not understand what I was saying but finally today I got a call from a guy in corporate that agreed with the issue but seemed to think this time next year it would be much better with the new stuff they have coming. He said they are hearing the complaints but it would take alot more complaints to do anything immediately. Said the # was in the low hundreds.
> 
> Also, I got another call today from the San Jose Ops Mgr regarding the issue and he agreed as well that 720P was reducing video quality, especially when trying to watch on a 4K TV. While he agreed he said not much he could do locally other than he could offer me one months credit to my account ($190)
> 
> Perhaps to get more visibility make the FCC complaint its' own thread and put that in all of the appropriate Main Forums here. For the little time I spent a $190 credit is pretty good and now I have the direct contact locally of the Ops guy if I have any tech issues which he said to call him directly.


I got a call from an "Executive Care Specialist" today. She at first insisted that I must be watching SD since I'm not being billed for "HD Tech." Once I was finally able to convince her I do in fact get HD channels, she admitted that I probably knew more about this than her and her boss would call me. He wasn't much better and also brought up the fact that I don't pay for "HD Tech." In the end, it got me nothing but frustration. Maybe I'll hear from someone else down the line.


----------



## webminster

I've spoken to several of those "Executive" people recently. They're to a one completely tech clueless and have little context on what Comcast is doing. Their principal function appears to be to deflect complaints and champion Comcast's not-our-fault position.

Just tried to watch a few minutes of SYFYHD movie. So much dithering - man this is just no fun anymore. The future of awesome!


----------



## kbmb

Just wanted to ask this here as there seems to be a lot of people who know a thing or two about video  With this crappy Comcast picture - I've been trying to watch more and more shows on streaming providers. Typically it's been Hulu - which overall looks better on my 4K TV than Comcast does.

One question I had was FPS (Frames per second) of video -or at least I think that's what I'm asking about. What FPS is cable TV shown at? How does this compare to streaming services? 

The reason I ask isn't so much for Hulu - as that typically looks good. But where I do notice more of a stuttering effect is when I use a couple apps on my Roku like HBO Go and PBS. Watching those there is a lot of frame stuttering when panning or action is shown. I'm guessing this is because some of the streaming services are offering a lower FPS?

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

-Kevin


----------



## JoeKustra

kbmb said:


> Just wanted to ask this here as there seems to be a lot of people who know a thing or two about video  With this crappy Comcast picture - I've been trying to watch more and more shows on streaming providers. Typically it's been Hulu - which overall looks better on my 4K TV than Comcast does.
> 
> One question I had was FPS (Frames per second) of video -or at least I think that's what I'm asking about. What FPS is cable TV shown at? How does this compare to streaming services?
> 
> The reason I ask isn't so much for Hulu - as that typically looks good. But where I do notice more of a stuttering effect is when I use a couple apps on my Roku like HBO Go and PBS. Watching those there is a lot of frame stuttering when panning or action is shown. I'm guessing this is because some of the streaming services are offering a lower FPS?
> 
> Thanks for any insight you can provide.
> 
> -Kevin


I'm sure you'll get more accurate feedback, but here's my observations. Cable networks (and OTA) are 60 or 30fps, depending on your definition. To get movie-like video, usually 24fps, you can get that from Netflix and Amazon. That applies to movies. I can't answer about home grown series.

Stuttering: at one time a Roamio would allow you to set 24fps only, and it would convert 60fps to 24fps and it looked really bad. That bug has been fixed. A Roku has to convert 24fps to 60fps for movies you stream on Amazon since a Roku doesn't support 24fps. Also, to get 24fps on your TV, it needs to have a refresh rate divisible by 12. A 60Hz display can't do it.

Just a few ideas. You'll get more. BTW, I stream Amazon Prime on my Roamio. It's easier, but not better, than using my TV.


----------



## KingsFan6

cherry ghost said:


> I got a call from an "Executive Care Specialist" today. She at first insisted that I must be watching SD since I'm not being billed for "HD Tech." Once I was finally able to convince her I do in fact get HD channels, she admitted that I probably knew more about this than her and her boss would call me. He wasn't much better and also brought up the fact that I don't pay for "HD Tech." In the end, it got me nothing but frustration. Maybe I'll hear from someone else down the line.


I got an e-mail yesterday in response to my FCC complaint, so I'll be talking to someone soon in Executive Customer Relations. Have a feeling I'll get the same lame response.


----------



## KingsFan6

kbmb said:


> One question I had was FPS (Frames per second) of video -or at least I think that's what I'm asking about. What FPS is cable TV shown at? How does this compare to streaming services?


Cable TV is shown at 60 fps (frames per second). Even 1080i, though 30 fps, is going to display as 60 fields per second.

Streaming services are mostly 720p at 30 fps. One main reason why streaming services may look better to the eye is that by delivering at 30 fps, they essentially need only half the bitrate/file size to have an equivalent picture to cable TV. At the same bitrate as cable TV, it's essentially more twice the bits being thrown to each delivered pixel, since there are half the number of pixels. That's a reason why at the same bitrate, a streaming video can look much better. But of course, the picture will look less smooth. With Comcast's down-rezzed channels coming in at 3.7 to 3.9 Mbps and the plethora of streaming video coming in at at least 2 to 3 Mbps (Netflix being much better), and combined with what may be inferior encoding by Comcast, the math alone can show that streaming HD will produce higher quality.

I'm sure someone else here can also speak to the inherent advantages of encoding for streaming vs. linear programming. This is another factor that allows streaming to look better than cable TV, all else being equal (such as bitrate).


----------



## Sgt Howl

kbmb said:


> JBut where I do notice more of a stuttering effect is when I use a couple apps on my Roku like HBO Go and PBS. Watching those there is a lot of frame stuttering when panning or action is shown.


What speed is your Internet service? Could be the cause of "stuttering."


----------



## kbmb

JoeKustra said:


> I'm sure you'll get more accurate feedback, but here's my observations. Cable networks (and OTA) are 60 or 30fps, depending on your definition. To get movie-like video, usually 24fps, you can get that from Netflix and Amazon. That applies to movies. I can't answer about home grown series.
> 
> Stuttering: at one time a Roamio would allow you to set 24fps only, and it would convert 60fps to 24fps and it looked really bad. That bug has been fixed. A Roku has to convert 24fps to 60fps for movies you stream on Amazon since a Roku doesn't support 24fps. Also, to get 24fps on your TV, it needs to have a refresh rate divisible by 12. A 60Hz display can't do it.
> 
> Just a few ideas. You'll get more. BTW, I stream Amazon Prime on my Roamio. It's easier, but not better, than using my TV.


Thanks for the input Joe! I used to stream most stuff from my TiVo and I do have both 1080p and 1080p/24 selected in the settings. However, since upgrading to a 4K TV, most streaming is done via the Roku. My TV does have a 120Hz native refresh rate.



KingsFan6 said:


> Cable TV is shown at 60 fps (frames per second). Even 1080i, though 30 fps, is going to display as 60 fields per second.
> 
> Streaming services are mostly 720p at 30 fps. One main reason why streaming services may look better to the eye is that by delivering at 30 fps, they essentially need only half the bitrate/file size to have an equivalent picture to cable TV. At the same bitrate as cable TV, it's essentially more twice the bits being thrown to each delivered pixel, since there are half the number of pixels. That's a reason why at the same bitrate, a streaming video can look much better. But of course, the picture will look less smooth. With Comcast's down-rezzed channels coming in at 3.7 to 3.9 Mbps and the plethora of streaming video coming in at at least 2 to 3 Mbps (Netflix being much better), and combined with what may be inferior encoding by Comcast, the math alone can show that streaming HD will produce higher quality.
> 
> I'm sure someone else here can also speak to the inherent advantages of encoding for streaming vs. linear programming. This is another factor that allows streaming to look better than cable TV, all else being equal (such as bitrate).


Well that definitely helps explain why most streaming services look better than the Craptasic recordings I get from Comcast. I don't notice any issues with stuttering on major services like Netflix/Amazon/Hulu. Are these all doing 30fps?

It's been mainly HBO Go and PBS. We recorded the new episode of Sherlock on PBS the other night and I decided to watch it via the PBS app on Roku because it looked better than the Comcast recording. Overall it was ok - but anytime there was movement or panning across a room, I'd notice the lower frame rate. In a very noticeable scene I switched back to the Tivo recording and obviously there was no stutter - so it got me thinking about these streaming services.



Sgt Howl said:


> What speed is your Internet service? Could be the cause of "stuttering."


200Mbps (About the only thing good Comcast manages to do these days)

The stuttering is definitely the frame rate of the video - not the internet connection.

-Kevin


----------



## morac

kbmb said:


> The stuttering is definitely the frame rate of the video - not the internet connection.


Stuttering can also be caused by processing the TV does. I had some pretty bad stuttering on my Sony Bravia with some Comcast channels and found that there was a setting on the TV where it tries to process the video to take into account how some videos are converted from 24 fps to 30 fps. Apparently something Comcast was doing was causing my TV to freak out. Once I changed that, the stuttering went away.


----------



## kbmb

morac said:


> Stuttering can also be caused by processing the TV does. I had some pretty bad stuttering on my Sony Bravia with some Comcast channels and found that there was a setting on the TV where it tries to process the video to take into account how some videos are converted from 24 fps to 30 fps. Apparently something Comcast was doing was causing my TV to freak out. Once I changed that, the stuttering went away.


On my TV that would be film mode. That can only be enabled on interlaced sources. In all my cases, the app would be outputted to the TV in a device resolution. In the case of my Apple TV, everything is outputted as 1080p/60. The Roku is 2160p/60 (I believe).

It's very subtle, but I notice it. And I can clearly see it I'm only asking because I believe I've read in the past, but can't find it, that a lot of the streaming services only do 30fps, which can cause some panning/movement to not be as smooth.

I typically don't have any motion/jutter reduction on either as I don't like the SOE.

I've also tested this on multiple devices and different TVs (both 1080 and 4K). Same result on both.

-Kevin


----------



## keenanSR

KingsFan6 said:


> Cable TV is shown at 60 fps (frames per second). Even 1080i, though 30 fps, is going to display as 60 fields per second.
> 
> Streaming services are mostly 720p at 30 fps. One main reason why streaming services may look better to the eye is that by delivering at 30 fps, they essentially need only half the bitrate/file size to have an equivalent picture to cable TV. At the same bitrate as cable TV, it's essentially more twice the bits being thrown to each delivered pixel, since there are half the number of pixels. That's a reason why at the same bitrate, a streaming video can look much better. But of course, the picture will look less smooth. With Comcast's down-rezzed channels coming in at 3.7 to 3.9 Mbps and the plethora of streaming video coming in at at least 2 to 3 Mbps (Netflix being much better), and combined with what may be inferior encoding by Comcast, the math alone can show that streaming HD will produce higher quality.
> 
> I'm sure someone else here can also speak to the inherent advantages of encoding for streaming vs. linear programming. This is another factor that allows streaming to look better than cable TV, all else being equal (such as bitrate).


Netflix, Amazon, Vudu and others have 1080p/24fps content, in fact, it will default to that for most of those providers unless it's determined that the sink equipment is not capable of that particular format. It's a bit misleading to say most are 720p as in my experience that's not the case at all. It may be true for streaming TV services like DirecTV Now and Playstation Vue, but for at least those major OTT providers their streams are most always 1080p/24fps. HBO, Starz and other premiums all have 1080p/24fps as well, along with lower quality streams for equipment that can't handle the higher quality stream,


----------



## keenanSR

kbmb said:


> On my TV that would be film mode. That can only be enabled on interlaced sources. In all my cases, the app would be outputted to the TV in a device resolution. In the case of my Apple TV, everything is outputted as 1080p/60. The Roku is 2160p/60 (I believe).
> 
> It's very subtle, but I notice it. And I can clearly see it I'm only asking because I believe I've read in the past, but can't find it, that a lot of the streaming services only do 30fps, which can cause some panning/movement to not be as smooth.
> 
> I typically don't have any motion/jutter reduction on either as I don't like the SOE.
> 
> I've also tested this on multiple devices and different TVs (both 1080 and 4K). Same result on both.
> 
> -Kevin


That's why my main streaming device is my TiVo as it can handle 1080p/24fps which is what Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and others will provide if your equipment is capable of it. And it's why I don't use my Roku anymore as it can't do 24Hz playback.


----------



## kbmb

keenanSR said:


> That's why my main streaming device is my TiVo as it can handle 1080p/24fps which is what Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and others will provide if your equipment is capable of it. And it's why I don't use my Roku anymore as it can't do 24Hz playback.


That's fine if you don't want 4K. For Netflix/Amazon we watch all the original shows in 4K. And in my case here, the PBS app or HBO Go, neither of which are on the Tivo (HBO Go is, but not for Comcast).

-Kevin


----------



## keenanSR

kbmb said:


> That's fine if you don't want 4K. For Netflix/Amazon we watch all the original shows in 4K. And in my case here, the PBS app or HBO Go, neither of which are on the Tivo (HBO Go is, but not for Comcast).
> 
> -Kevin


Right, I'm still in love with my 1080p plasma and don't have any plans to go 4K yet, but you're right, if you want that, other solutions are needed.


----------



## kbmb

keenanSR said:


> Right, I'm still in love with my 1080p plasma and don't have any plans to go 4K yet, but you're right, if you want that, other solutions are needed.


Oh you crazy plasma owners!! 

-Kevin


----------



## laria

keenanSR said:


> Right, I'm still in love with my 1080p plasma and don't have any plans to go 4K yet


*high fives fellow crazy plasma owner*


----------



## keenanSR

kbmb said:


> Oh you crazy plasma owners!!
> 
> -Kevin





laria said:


> *high fives fellow crazy plasma owner*


That's right and we're proud of it, plasma or bust!


----------



## lessd

kbmb said:


> Just wanted to ask this here as there seems to be a lot of people who know a thing or two about video  With this crappy Comcast picture - I've been trying to watch more and more shows on streaming providers. Typically it's been Hulu - which overall looks better on my 4K TV than Comcast does.
> 
> One question I had was FPS (Frames per second) of video -or at least I think that's what I'm asking about. What FPS is cable TV shown at? How does this compare to streaming services?
> 
> The reason I ask isn't so much for Hulu - as that typically looks good. But where I do notice more of a stuttering effect is when I use a couple apps on my Roku like HBO Go and PBS. Watching those there is a lot of frame stuttering when panning or action is shown. I'm guessing this is because some of the streaming services are offering a lower FPS?
> 
> Thanks for any insight you can provide.
> 
> -Kevin


Frame per second are standard at 24fps (that what movies use) 30FPS or in some cases 60FPS, the picture quality is from the amount of data (pixels) in each frame, and the aspect ratio of each frame. Your TV will then convert the input to match the TVs screen. A 4K TV will be able handle about 8 million pixels and a HDTV can handle only about 2 million pixels. Compression can downgrade your picture on any HDTV or 4K TV.


----------



## Bigg

kbmb said:


> One question I had was FPS (Frames per second) of video -or at least I think that's what I'm asking about. What FPS is cable TV shown at? How does this compare to streaming services?


Most streaming is 720p24, 1080p24, or 2160p24. WatchESPN seems to be using 720p30, which looks jerky compared to 720p60 or 1080i60. 1080i60 looks darn close to 1080p60 if you have a good de-interlacer, even though it's technically half the data, and it's harder to compress than 720p60.



KingsFan6 said:


> Cable TV is shown at 60 fps (frames per second). Even 1080i, though 30 fps, is going to display as 60 fields per second.


Sort of. 1080i60 is exactly that, interlaced. A good de-interlacer can take the interlaced frames, which have the same amount of data as 1080p30, but are refreshing every other line twice as often, and pretty effectively re-create something very close to 1080p60.



> One main reason why streaming services may look better to the eye is that by delivering at 30 fps, they essentially need only half the bitrate/file size to have an equivalent picture to cable TV. At the same bitrate as cable TV, it's essentially more twice the bits being thrown to each delivered pixel, since there are half the number of pixels. That's a reason why at the same bitrate, a streaming video can look much better. But of course, the picture will look less smooth. With Comcast's down-rezzed channels coming in at 3.7 to 3.9 Mbps and the plethora of streaming video coming in at at least 2 to 3 Mbps (Netflix being much better), and combined with what may be inferior encoding by Comcast, the math alone can show that streaming HD will produce higher quality.


That's true, but it's a massive oversimplification of the differences between live TV and streaming. With a linear QAM broadcast (or DirecTV's TPs for that matter), there is a fixed bitrate each second in the statistical multiplex, 38mbps for a 6mhz wide channel. The statistical multiplexer has to make all the streams in that physical channel add up to 38mbps _each and every second_. With streaming, there is no such requirement. Beacuse you can buffer a bit, all you're looking for is a time average, and the bitrate can go all over the place, and the buffering evens out the data transfer over the network.

From what I have seen from the bitrate graphs people have put out there is that there is a "sweet spot" for statistical multiplexing. If you're sending the "full" 19.3mbps MPEG-2, which is about equivalent to 9.6mbps MPEG-4, you don't really need statistical multiplexing, because you have enough bitrate all the time. On the flip side, Comcast has crammed so many streams into one physical channel that the statistical multiplexing doesn't really work, and everything suffers, as there is little extra bandwidth to re-allocate dynamically.

DirecTV seems to be at the "sweet spot" where they have put 5-7 HD channels on a 38mbps transponder, fitting 1-3 "extra" HD channels in over the "full" 9.6mbps, which would be 4 channels on a QAM/TP, but still leaving enough "extra" bandwidth on the TP to allow statistical multiplexing to re-allocate bandwidth most of the time, giving usually excellent results with less bandwidth. DirecTV is also much more strategic in what channels they give some more breathing room, and what channels they really cram in there, giving more bandwidth to the sports channels that are inherently harder to compress. Comcast, however, has gone with a brute-force one-size-fits-all approach every everything is 9-10 channels per QAM, and the result is this mess that we're seeing.

Further, encoding in real-time or near real-time is a lot harder than offline encodes. Netflix can put a huge amount of computational power behind encodes, and tweak and experiment with them to get them looking really, really gorgeous. Pay-tv providers have to do it in near real-time, with no ability to go back and play with the encode.



kbmb said:


> It's been mainly HBO Go and PBS. We recorded the new episode of Sherlock on PBS the other night and I decided to watch it via the PBS app on Roku because it looked better than the Comcast recording. Overall it was ok - but anytime there was movement or panning across a room, I'd notice the lower frame rate. In a very noticeable scene I switched back to the Tivo recording and obviously there was no stutter - so it got me thinking about these streaming services.


Yeah, it's usually 1080p24 or 1080p30, and those formats are great for TV shows, as it makes them look cinematic. Many shows were shot at 24fps, so they look great as well. But try a ticker or live sports, and it looks horrible.


----------



## delgadobb

Add me to the list of crazy plasma owners ... 3 of my 4 TVs are Plasmas, the 4th being a 73" Mitsubishi DLP (yeah, it's still around & on the original bulb - I baby the thing).

Weird story about 2 of the Plasma TVs: I bought them at Sears of all places (combination of a really unique deal & 10% Discover cashback by going through their portal). They are labeled as Zenith from the post-LG buyout days & I had heard they were really LG inside. Ordered one & sure enough the Tivo remote only worked with LG codes - it was a specific LG model rebadged as a Zenith & sold cheaper. Picture was so good & I was so happy with it I ordered another when a similar deal was available. No way would I have ordered a Zenith for the Zenith name  Both are still going strong & look as good as the day I bought them. Solid black levels.

Now I have a 50" Plasma in the Master Bedroom. Overkill


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## Finalrinse

laria said:


> *high fives fellow crazy plasma owner*


Right on! Still enjoying my 60" Pioneer Kuro from 2007!


----------



## atmuscarella

Another crazy (and very happy) Plasma owner here. Really glad Sony & Panasonic have OLED TVs at CES this year. When the time comes my Plasma will be replaced by an OLED.


----------



## webminster

Back on topic... The dithering during transitions is just so bad, especially on say FX movies or CNN and Fox News. Could dump Comcast, wife really doesn't want to go back to DBS though. I could call Comcast, again, but I'm betting they'll just tell me I should try an X1 setup, maybe that'd help. Can't see how, but can't see any way to fight back anymore.

And, OLED rocks... but really shows how bad Comcast is.


----------



## kbmb

webminster said:


> Back on topic... The dithering during transitions is just so bad, especially on say FX movies or CNN and Fox News. Could dump Comcast, wife really doesn't want to go back to DBS though. I could call Comcast, again, but I'm betting they'll just tell me I should try an X1 setup, maybe that'd help. Can't see how, but can't see any way to fight back anymore.
> 
> And, OLED rocks... but really shows how bad Comcast is.


I was testing my AVR last night on the new NBC Boston, and tuned to Blindspot. This particular scene had people fighting outside in a wooded area with lots of leaves on the ground. Holy crap it was awful looking on my Samsung 4K. So many blocky effects it was close to unwatchable.

-Kevin


----------



## Sgt Howl

webminster said:


> I could call Comcast, again, but I'm betting they'll just tell me I should try an X1 setup, maybe that'd help.


I have X1 equipment in addition to a Bolt+. Picture quality is the same - lousy on both device types.


----------



## KingsFan6

Bigg said:


> Most streaming is 720p24, 1080p24, or 2160p24. WatchESPN seems to be using 720p30, which looks jerky compared to 720p60 or 1080i60. 1080i60 looks darn close to 1080p60 if you have a good de-interlacer, even though it's technically half the data, and it's harder to compress than 720p60.


What happens when a device such as my Roku does not support 24fps passthrough? Does the stream still come in at 24fps, and then the Roku would add frames to it to make it 60fps, essentially doing its own 2:3 pulldown?


----------



## morac

So Comcast implemented this change now in my area. So far the only channel I've found is HBO. I don't see any pixelation, but it looks like someone smeared Vaseline over the camera lens. The picture is way too soft now.


----------



## Bigg

I had an extensive discussion with a Comcast engineer who has wide technical knowledge of the encoding, Comcast's offerings, and the physical plant. The sense I got is that they have extensive technical knowledge and investment in their backend, even if their last-mile plant is a hodge-podge of various local systems and product offerings that differ market to market. They have gone through a number of generations of encoding technology, and their encoding efficiency has gone way up in the time that they have been encoding HD. They started just putting already-encoded 19.3mbps MPEG-2 feeds onto half a QAM, and then have moved to tri- and quad-muxing MPEG-2, and now to MPEG-4.

They did research into what format and bitrate looked best, both with subjective and objective measurements, and their tests found that most people basically can't tell the difference between 3.8mbps 720p and the MPEG-2 encoding they were using previously that maintained the source resolution, which in my tests ranged anywhere from about 9mbps to 17mbps. He gave the impression that things could change over time as the encoding technology changes, or as the channel lineup or delivery mechanisms change. I told him how unhappy I was with the video quality, and how bad it looks to me and others on the forums. He said they are using CBR for the MPEG-4, although that is not consistent with the posts earlier in this thread, so I'm not sure if they switched at some point, or if some channels are stat muxes, and some are CBR so that they can "slot in" other channels locally or regionally without having wasted bandwidth, i.e. The Weather Channel, RSNs, etc.

They have done some tests with TiVos to ensure that they are working the same way X1 is in decoding the signal, and work closely with TiVo to integrate the offerings (i.e. TiVo VOD). We agreed that TiVo users are complaining at far higher percentages than X1 users, since TiVo users are more tech-savvy in the first place. What is interesting is that X1 supports HEVC, so I would deduce that this means that they could encode in HEVC in the future if they got rid of the narrow range of MPEG-4 capable pre-X1 boxes like the DCX series, but this would also break TiVo Series 3 through 5, with only the Bolt being able to access the signals if they ever did HEVC on QAM prior to IP. If not, I guess Netflix on X1 could be using HEVC now, or could in the future use HEVC.


----------



## morac

I happened to have a 111 minute movie recorded off of HBO recorded when it was still 1080i MPEG-2 and another 111 minute movie recorded off of HBO recorded at 720p MPEG-4, so I did a direct size comparison. 

The 1080i MPEG-2 video is 5.6 GB, which is 6.89 Mbps. That's low for 1080i, but HBO has always had somewhat low bit rates. The 720p MPEG-4 video is 2.98 GB or 3.67 Mbps. Since MPEG-4 has roughly the same quality at half the bit rate of MPEG-2 that means the quality should actually be better than previously despite the reduction in resolution.

I watched the entire movie and didn't notice any blocking or anything, but as I said the picture isn't as sharp because of the lower resolution. I'm not sure the average person would notice.

On a side note, my LCD is rather old. It's a Sony Bravia capable of 120 Hz 1080p, but its main feature is it has excellent SD picture quality, unlike most TVs I looked at around the same time which looked horrible when tuned to a SD channel. That might mitigate some of the issues with having every being 720p, but it won't ever be a sharp as a 1080i video.


----------



## Bigg

That's a surprisingly low bitrate for 1080i. I haven't had HBO for a while, but 6.89mbps MPEG-2 is awful to begin with. When I had it, it looked OK, but I'm not sure what the bitrate was at the time.


----------



## kbmb

Bigg said:


> I had an extensive discussion with a Comcast engineer who has wide technical knowledge of the encoding, Comcast's offerings, and the physical plant. The sense I got is that they have extensive technical knowledge and investment in their backend, even if their last-mile plant is a hodge-podge of various local systems and product offerings that differ market to market. They have gone through a number of generations of encoding technology, and their encoding efficiency has gone way up in the time that they have been encoding HD. They started just putting already-encoded 19.3mbps MPEG-2 feeds onto half a QAM, and then have moved to tri- and quad-muxing MPEG-2, and now to MPEG-4.
> 
> They did research into what format and bitrate looked best, both with subjective and objective measurements, and their tests found that most people basically can't tell the difference between 3.8mbps 720p and the MPEG-2 encoding they were using previously that maintained the source resolution, which in my tests ranged anywhere from about 9mbps to 17mbps. He gave the impression that things could change over time as the encoding technology changes, or as the channel lineup or delivery mechanisms change. I told him how unhappy I was with the video quality, and how bad it looks to me and others on the forums. He said they are using CBR for the MPEG-4, although that is not consistent with the posts earlier in this thread, so I'm not sure if they switched at some point, or if some channels are stat muxes, and some are CBR so that they can "slot in" other channels locally or regionally without having wasted bandwidth, i.e. The Weather Channel, RSNs, etc.
> 
> They have done some tests with TiVos to ensure that they are working the same way X1 is in decoding the signal, and work closely with TiVo to integrate the offerings (i.e. TiVo VOD). We agreed that TiVo users are complaining at far higher percentages than X1 users, since TiVo users are more tech-savvy in the first place. What is interesting is that X1 supports HEVC, so I would deduce that this means that they could encode in HEVC in the future if they got rid of the narrow range of MPEG-4 capable pre-X1 boxes like the DCX series, but this would also break TiVo Series 3 through 5, with only the Bolt being able to access the signals if they ever did HEVC on QAM prior to IP. If not, I guess Netflix on X1 could be using HEVC now, or could in the future use HEVC.


Thanks for the info!! If you end up talking to him again, make sure to let him know that this change is being felt even worse for us with 4K TVs. If people think the picture is bad on a 1080p set - it's 10x worse on 4K!

-Kevin


----------



## HerronScott

morac said:


> The 1080i MPEG-2 video is 5.6 GB, which is 6.89 Mbps. That's low for 1080i, but HBO has always had somewhat low bit rates. The 720p MPEG-4 video is 2.98 GB or 3.67 Mbps. Since MPEG-4 has roughly the same quality at half the big rate of MPEG-2 that means the quality should actually be better than previously despite the reduction in resolution.


That does seem very low. We only have 1 HD HBO channel here (Comcast) and a recent 2 hour 36 minute movie is showing as 10,500MB so that works out to 8.97Mbps (November 26th). Interestingly, an older Game of Thrones episode comes in at 7.51Mbps (3550MB for a 1 hour 3 minute show).

Scott


----------



## Bigg

kbmb said:


> Thanks for the info!! If you end up talking to him again, make sure to let him know that this change is being felt even worse for us with 4K TVs. If people think the picture is bad on a 1080p set - it's 10x worse on 4K!
> 
> -Kevin


Yeah, I told him about that. I have a 4k TV as well.


----------



## compnurd

Dont the X1 Boxes just have Cable cards in them? In theory there shouldnt be a difference with how the Tivo or the Pace box decodes the signal


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## KingsFan6

Alrighty, I just got off the phone with someone in Comcast's Executive Customer Relations. This was in response to my FCC complaint. It took them just a few days to respond.

She basically wanted me to contact tech support to help resolve my issues. She said that the switch to MPEG-4 was supposed to be an "upgrade", so her solution upfront on the call was to work with tech support. Of course, as we know, that won't lead anywhere, and I told her that and then went into the whole shpiel about how the end result with the picture wasn't an upgrade. I mentioned that as customers, we were deceived because the switch to MPEG-4 was accompanied by two things that we were never notified about: 1) 1080i down-converted to 720p and 2) severe overcompression that negated any theoretical improvements by moving to MPEG-4. I said that what happened was an engineering decision and that folks in her department and tech support are likely to not be in the know. She listened very well, hopefully took good notes, and said that she'd relay my concerns to engineering and appropriate folks in management/leadership.


----------



## Bigg

webminster said:


> I could call Comcast, again, but I'm betting they'll just tell me I should try an X1 setup, maybe that'd help. Can't see how, but can't see any way to fight back anymore.


It won't. The stream is just too compressed, no amount of processing or tweaking will make it look good.


----------



## Bigg

compnurd said:


> Dont the X1 Boxes just have Cable cards in them? In theory there shouldnt be a difference with how the Tivo or the Pace box decodes the signal


Not sure if they have CC or not, but it wouldn't make a difference. It's decoding the same MPEG-4 stream.


----------



## bootman_head_fi

...all to free up RF bandwidth for their internet service.
The push to 1G internet to the home over RF (vs fiber) is the driver here since the future is IP video anyway.
Just saying....


----------



## Bigg

It's more about limited plant bandwidth than just freeing up space for IP. They could have freed up space for IP and still offered decent video quality with MPEG-4 if they rebuilt all the plants to 860mhz, put MPEG-4 channels 5 or 6 to a QAM as opposed to 8 or 9 to a QAM, and slowly transitioned to IPTV in several rounds, like they did with going from analog to digital and HD.


----------



## bootman_head_fi

Bigg said:


> It's more about limited plant bandwidth than just freeing up space for IP. They could have freed up space for IP and still offered decent video quality with MPEG-4 if they rebuilt all the plants to 860mhz, put MPEG-4 channels 5 or 6 to a QAM as opposed to 8 or 9 to a QAM, and slowly transitioned to IPTV in several rounds, like they did with going from analog to digital and HD.


Rebuilding RF plant isn't going to happen. Just not cost effective.
Look up remote phy to see why that is the future of RF plant.

But that still isn't an excuse for crappy encoding.


----------



## Bigg

bootman_head_fi said:


> Rebuilding RF plant isn't going to happen. Just not cost effective.
> Look up remote phy to see why that is the future of RF plant.
> 
> But that still isn't an excuse for crappy encoding.


They upgraded most of their cable plants up to 860mhz in CT, then they just sort of stopped, and left a few of them at 625/650mhz. Even with remote PHY, you still have to rebuild the last mile to support 860mhz operation.


----------



## bootman_head_fi

Bigg said:


> They upgraded most of their cable plants up to 860mhz in CT, then they just sort of stopped, and left a few of them at 625/650mhz. Even with remote PHY, you still have to rebuild the last mile to support 860mhz operation.


Remote Phy is a 1.2GHz product. Well past the 860 plant of the last 20 years.


----------



## Bigg

bootman_head_fi said:


> Remote Phy is a 1.2GHz product. Well past the 860 plant of the last 20 years.


Then you have to rebuild it to 1.2ghz if that's what you want. No matter what, that last mile is getting rebuilt, whether it's 625mhz to 860mhz or 1002mhz or 1.2ghz.


----------



## NashGuy

morac said:


> I happened to have a 111 minute movie recorded off of HBO recorded when it was still 1080i MPEG-2 and another 111 minute movie recorded off of HBO recorded at 720p MPEG-4, so I did a direct size comparison.
> 
> The 1080i MPEG-2 video is 5.6 GB, which is 6.89 Mbps. That's low for 1080i, but HBO has always had somewhat low bit rates. The 720p MPEG-4 video is 2.98 GB or 3.67 Mbps. Since MPEG-4 has roughly the same quality at half the bit rate of MPEG-2 that means the quality should actually be better than previously despite the reduction in resolution.





Bigg said:


> That's a surprisingly low bitrate for 1080i. I haven't had HBO for a while, but 6.89mbps MPEG-2 is awful to begin with. When I had it, it looked OK, but I'm not sure what the bitrate was at the time.





HerronScott said:


> That does seem very low. We only have 1 HD HBO channel here (Comcast) and a recent 2 hour 36 minute movie is showing as 10,500MB so that works out to 8.97Mbps (November 26th). Interestingly, an older Game of Thrones episode comes in at 7.51Mbps (3550MB for a 1 hour 3 minute show).


Morac, are you sure that the 1080i movie you recorded off of HBO was encoded in MPEG-2, not MPEG-4? I ask because HBO switched over nearly 9 years ago from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 for providing their linear channels via satellite to cable systems. IIRC, HBO uses somewhere around 8 Mbps for each channel in MPEG-4.

HBO Bets Big on MPEG-4 | Light Reading

Now, I guess if there are cable systems that don't have MPEG-4 capable STBs deployed (are there still any out there that don't?), then they're taking all MPEG-4 encoded cable channels like HBO and re-encoding them in MPEG-2.


----------



## morac

NashGuy said:


> Morac, are you sure that the 1080i movie you recorded off of HBO was encoded in MPEG-2, not MPEG-4? I ask because HBO switched over nearly 9 years ago from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 for providing their linear channels via satellite to cable systems. IIRC, HBO uses somewhere around 8 Mbps for each channel in MPEG-4.
> 
> HBO Bets Big on MPEG-4 | Light Reading
> 
> Now, I guess if there are cable systems that don't have MPEG-4 capable STBs deployed (are there still any out there that don't?), then they're taking all MPEG-4 encoded cable channels like HBO and re-encoding them in MPEG-2.


I'm quite sure it was MPEG-2. Comcast wasn't sending out MPEG-4 encoded video until within the last year or two and even then they didn't migrate my area over until within the last few months. Comcast certainly wasn't sending out MPEG-4 encoded video 9 years ago, so they had to be re-encoding it to MPEG-2. Even now they are re-encoding it from MPEG-4 to compressed MPEG-4.


----------



## NashGuy

morac said:


> I'm quite sure it was MPEG-2. Comcast wasn't sending out MPEG-4 encoded video until within the last year or two and even then they didn't migrate my area over until within the last few months. Comcast certainly wasn't sending out MPEG-4 encoded video 9 years ago, so they had to be re-encoding it to MPEG-2. Even now they are re-encoding it from MPEG-4 to compressed MPEG-4.


OK. So basically Comcast has been sending out crappy HBO signals for years, first by re-encoding the original MPEG-4 signal into MPEG-2 at about the same bitrate (but keeping the resolution at the original 1080i) and now by taking the original 1080i MPEG-4 signal and en-coding it at 720p MPEG-4 at half the bitrate.


----------



## Bigg

NashGuy said:


> Morac, are you sure that the 1080i movie you recorded off of HBO was encoded in MPEG-2, not MPEG-4? I ask because HBO switched over nearly 9 years ago from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 for providing their linear channels via satellite to cable systems. IIRC, HBO uses somewhere around 8 Mbps for each channel in MPEG-4.
> 
> HBO Bets Big on MPEG-4 | Light Reading
> 
> Now, I guess if there are cable systems that don't have MPEG-4 capable STBs deployed (are there still any out there that don't?), then they're taking all MPEG-4 encoded cable channels like HBO and re-encoding them in MPEG-2.


Wow, I didn't realize the bitrates were that low. I've heard ESPN is 14mbps or higher, but I'm not sure if that is, in fact, the case. At 8mbps, they should be taking the major channels and just dumping them to cable without doing any encoding! Some channels are probably fine getting squished, like news channels, and low-rated channels, but ESPN, HBO, and anything sports is awful at 3.8mbps....



NashGuy said:


> OK. So basically Comcast has been sending out crappy HBO signals for years, first by re-encoding the original MPEG-4 signal into MPEG-2 at about the same bitrate (but keeping the resolution at the original 1080i) and now by taking the original 1080i MPEG-4 signal and en-coding it at 720p MPEG-4 at half the bitrate.


Some of their MPEG-2 was decidedly not crappy. You will never have *exactly* the same quality if you transcode, but if you transcode an 8mbps MPEG-4 stream to 16mbps MPEG-2, you should, in theory, have virtually the same quality. Comcast didn't have that high of a bitrate, but some of the their MPEG-2 channels were decent.


----------



## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> Some of their MPEG-2 was decidedly not crappy. You will never have *exactly* the same quality if you transcode, but if you transcode an 8mbps MPEG-4 stream to 16mbps MPEG-2, you should, in theory, have virtually the same quality. Comcast didn't have that high of a bitrate, but some of the their MPEG-2 channels were decent.


Right, but I was basing my comment on Morac's report that Comcast was re-encoding HBO to MPEG-2 at 6.89 Mbps, nowhere close to 16 Mbps.


----------



## Bigg

NashGuy said:


> Right, but I was basing my comment on Morac's report that Comcast was re-encoding HBO to MPEG-2 at 6.89 Mbps, nowhere close to 16 Mbps.


Agreed. That is way too low. I'm not sure what was going on with HBO. I haven't had it for a while, but when I had it, it looked pretty good, and I'm pretty sure it was 10+mbps, so I'm not sure if it is regionalized or east/west, or if they kept dropping the bitrate down.


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## Mike Richardson

removed


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## hybucket

I don't understand most of the postings here, but I do notice that it looks like crap. I'm on Comcast in Boston, and I am bombarded with calls to get theit X1 box, so I assumed my bad pic was a TIVO situation. Guess not. And my comcast bill just went up. Hello 2017.


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## Bigg

I don't think eastern MA is converted yet- but maybe they have gotten to it finally. They are really going to lose subs when they go Eastern MA, NJ, PA, and around DC, where they have a lot of FiOS overlap.


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## hybucket

Possibly not FULLY converted in E. MA, but there are definitely many channels (USA, HBO to name a couple) that are now coming up in Boston as 720, but the locals are still in 1020. FIOS is making a SLOW entrance into certain areas of Boston, and will definitely gain some Comcast subs because of pricing, but, in my circles anyway, most cannot tell the quality difference.


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## kbmb

For those interested, Comcast released their Xfinity TV beta app for Roku:
Roku

Played around a little bit. Still looks to be a crappy 720p stream. Still nowhere near even the quality stream of Hulu. Does seem to act like an X1 box, from the little I've played with one.

-Kevin


----------



## cherry ghost

cherry ghost said:


> I got a call from an "Executive Care Specialist" today. She at first insisted that I must be watching SD since I'm not being billed for "HD Tech." Once I was finally able to convince her I do in fact get HD channels, she admitted that I probably knew more about this than her and her boss would call me. He wasn't much better and also brought up the fact that I don't pay for "HD Tech." In the end, it got me nothing but frustration. Maybe I'll hear from someone else down the line.


Got this in an email yesterday.

"Your Ticket was served on your carrier for its review and response.

Your carrier has provided the FCC with a response to your complaint. You should receive a copy of the response from the carrier within 7-10 days via postal mail. As such, no further action is required. Your complaint is closed.

We appreciate your submission and help in furthering the FCC's mission on behalf of consumers."


----------



## webminster

kbmb said:


> For those interested, Comcast released their Xfinity TV beta app for Roku:
> Roku
> 
> Played around a little bit. Still looks to be a crappy 720p stream. Still nowhere near even the quality stream of Hulu. Does seem to act like an X1 box, from the little I've played with one.
> 
> -Kevin


Installed it, after activating it says "only works on your in-home Xfinity Wifi" and exits. Have a hardwire to the Roku on my Comcast Business Internet account. Losers, why would they do that?


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## kbmb

webminster said:


> Installed it, after activating it says "only works on your in-home Xfinity Wifi" and exits. Have a hardwire to the Roku on my Comcast Business Internet account. Losers, why would they do that?


What cable modem do you have? Check out this FAQ:
https://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/xfinity-apps/xfinity-tv-app-on-roku-faqs

Do you have any Comcast TV equipment? I only have 2 cablecards, no Comcast cable boxes. I also have one of their gateways (voice/data). Note, my Roku is hardwired in my network as well.

-Kevin


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## kbmb

Nice how they fully intend to charge for this like an additional outlet fee 

_Is there a charge for using the XFINITY TV Beta app on Roku?_
Customers will not pay equipment charges with respect to their use of Roku devices. All other fees associated with a customer's service will apply, except that, during the Beta trial, additional outlet charges for services to outlets connected to Roku devices are being waived. On conclusion of the trial, you will be informed of the charges that will apply for connecting this device with your XFINITY TV service and will have the opportunity to opt in.

-Kevin


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## atmuscarella

I guess there is some logic behind the recommendations I have seen lately on some financial sites listing Comcast as a good dividend paying stock to own for ever. 

Bend over and smile!


----------



## JoeKustra

atmuscarella said:


> I guess there is some logic behind the recommendations I have seen lately on some financial sites listing Comcast as a good dividend paying stock to own for ever.
> 
> Bend over and smile!


Their yield is under 1%. I would be wary of those sites. I went with my electricity provider (I use it, so why not) and get 4%.  I would consider Comcast as a good growth stock though.


----------



## webminster

The outlet charge is insane. Have no other Comcast boxes. Maybe it's because I have Comcast biz Internet, not the residential... think I remember some people with X1 and biz network having to call and have the accounts linked somehow so it knew the biz service...


----------



## morac

kbmb said:


> Nice how they fully intend to charge for this like an additional outlet fee
> 
> _Is there a charge for using the XFINITY TV Beta app on Roku?_
> Customers will not pay equipment charges with respect to their use of Roku devices. All other fees associated with a customer's service will apply, except that, during the Beta trial, additional outlet charges for services to outlets connected to Roku devices are being waived. On conclusion of the trial, you will be informed of the charges that will apply for connecting this device with your XFINITY TV service and will have the opportunity to opt in.
> 
> -Kevin


I couldn't add it since it said my Roku device wasn't supported, but it sounds like I don't want it anyway based on this.


----------



## alleybj

morac said:


> I couldn't add it since it said my Roku device wasn't supported, but it sounds like I don't want it anyway based on this.


Can someone tell me how to find it in the Roku channel store? thanks


----------



## morac

alleybj said:


> Can someone tell me how to find it in the Roku channel store? thanks


Just click the link from the original post.


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## kbmb

alleybj said:


> Can someone tell me how to find it in the Roku channel store? thanks


If you have access to a computer you can find it online here
Roku

-Kevin


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## keenanSR

webminster said:


> The outlet charge is insane. Have no other Comcast boxes. Maybe it's because I have Comcast biz Internet, not the residential... think I remember some people with X1 and biz network having to call and have the accounts linked somehow so it knew the biz service...


The first Comcast STB is included in the TV package, additional devices are charged an Additional Outlet fee, usually $9.95. Many current subscribers do not pay an Additional Outlet as they are "grandfathered in", though, who knows how long that will last.


----------



## keenanSR

kbmb said:


> Nice how they fully intend to charge for this like an additional outlet fee
> 
> _Is there a charge for using the XFINITY TV Beta app on Roku?_
> Customers will not pay equipment charges with respect to their use of Roku devices. All other fees associated with a customer's service will apply, except that, during the Beta trial, additional outlet charges for services to outlets connected to Roku devices are being waived. On conclusion of the trial, you will be informed of the charges that will apply for connecting this device with your XFINITY TV service and will have the opportunity to opt in.
> 
> -Kevin


From Ars Technica,



> (UPDATE: Comcast responded to us and confirmed that Roku devices will be treated similarly to CableCard devices in terms of pricing. Customers who use a Roku as a "primary outlet" after the beta is over will get a $2.50 credit on their bill; the "primary outlet" isn't an itemized fee but is included as part of paying for a TV subscription. Using a Roku as an "additional outlet" will cost $9.95, but the $2.50 credit will lower the price to $7.45. Xfinity TV app access on phones and tablets does not cost extra.)
> Comcast will charge extra fee for watching TV on Roku boxes


The comment section is a must-read.


----------



## Chris Gerhard

keenanSR said:


> From Ars Technica,
> 
> The comment section is a must-read.


I read some comments but couldn't understand the complaints, mostly nonsensical whining is all I could get from it. Justifying piracy because of something Comcast is doing, that sort of typical whining I see often. I have been using Xfinity TV go on a PC and tablet for a while and like it well enough. I have a Roku 2XS in the den I don't use much although it works fine and thought I would see if I could check out the beta but it doesn't qualify.

My experience with Comcast has been good, internet and economy cable, I wouldn't use the service if I didn't like it. This thread brought up a valid complaint I wasn't aware of, down converting to 720p but since I am using a 720p plasma display and 720p LCD projector, that issue isn't very concerning for me yet. I hope Comcast comes to their senses and quits that in any event.


----------



## kbmb

Chris Gerhard said:


> I read some comments but couldn't understand the complaints, mostly nonsensical whining is all I could get from it. Justifying piracy because of something Comcast is doing, that sort of typical whining I see often. I have been using Xfinity TV go on a PC and tablet for a while and like it well enough. I have a Roku 2XS in the den I don't use much although it works fine and thought I would see if I could check out the beta but it doesn't qualify.
> 
> My experience with Comcast has been good, internet and economy cable, I wouldn't use the service if I didn't like it. This thread brought up a valid complaint I wasn't aware of, down converting to 720p but since I am using a 720p plasma display and 720p LCD projector, that issue isn't very concerning for me yet. I hope Comcast comes to their senses and quits that in any event.


That's likely the use-case for this setup right now. If you have another TV(s) that has Roku and no cablebox or even an outlet - you could get Live TV etc from the app. In true Comcast fashion - they basically just want to charge for that, even though they aren't supplying anything new (no equipment). You already get the signal into the home. It's a 100% money grab.

Only reason I tried it was to see if they improved the quality of the signal at all.....which they didn't. It's still garbage. 1080i, 720p - doesn't matter with Comcast. They compress the living crap out of it and it's worthless to me. Hulu has my money for the foreseeable future because of their quality streams (whether they are 720/1080, who knows). Thankfully Comcast's CBS signal is decent as those shows aren't "yet" on Hulu.

There's no need to nickel and dime people. But they do it - for greed and this latest "beta" is nice for some, but if they do end up charging, why not just get a cable box from them?!?

-Kevin


----------



## Chris Gerhard

kbmb said:


> It's a 100% money grab.


Really, it cost Comcast nothing to develop the apps, nothing to provide necessary equipment and customer service to offer the streaming service? Pretty amazing. I had always assumed if an internet provider increases available bandwidth to provide more data, faster speeds, more services, there was a cost and therefore a need to provide a return on that investment. If there is no cost, all internet providers can easily provide all of the data, fastest speeds and all services customers might want at no additional cost, why aren't all internet providers doing that?

If there is an additional cost for the customer and the service isn't worth the additional fee to me, I am not buying the service.


----------



## kbmb

Chris Gerhard said:


> Really, it cost Comcast nothing to develop the apps, nothing to provide necessary equipment and customer service to offer the streaming service? Pretty amazing. I had always assumed if an internet provider increases available bandwidth to provide more data, faster speeds, more services, there was a cost and therefore a need to provide a return on that investment. If there is no cost, all internet providers can easily provide all of the data, fastest speeds and all services customers might want at no additional cost, why aren't all internet providers doing that?


For the amount I'm already paying for Internet/Cable/Phone - yeah, they can afford to develop these apps. There is no need to charge me an additional fee to use the signal that's already coming into my home with my own equipment that they don't support. The additional outlet fee has always been crap. I have no problem paying to rent their equipment. They have to support it. But when I have my own equipment that they are not obligated to support, I have a problem with them charging me.

Why not charge me if I use their app on my iPhone, or tablet? They have to support that as well no?

And BTW - I'm more than happy to pay for things. Yet somehow, each and every year my Comcast bill goes up, with no additional services provided. Same speeds, same channels, same bad customer service and this past year, a severe reduction in picture quality. So at this point I'm paying more, for less.

-Kevin


----------



## bmgoodman

kbmb said:


> Same speeds, same channels, same bad customer service and this past year, a severe reduction in picture quality. So at this point I'm paying more, for less.


"Comcastic"
They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.


----------



## morac

keenanSR said:


> The first Comcast STB is included in the TV package, additional devices are charged an Additional Outlet fee, usually $9.95. Many current subscribers do not pay an Additional Outlet as they are "grandfathered in", though, who knows how long that will last.


They are only "grandfathered in" until they get a letter stating a routine audit discovered a "discrepancy" in their account at which point the fees get added.


----------



## keenanSR

morac said:


> They are only "grandfathered in" until they get a letter stating a routine audit discovered a "discrepancy" in their account at which point the fees get added.


Did you get one of these letters? I ask as this condition has been the case for over 10 yrs. For me that is, I haven't had an AO fee for at least that long.


----------



## morac

kbmb said:


> Why not charge me if I use their app on my iPhone, or tablet? They have to support that as well no?


I'm sure that's coming at some point. Comcast already keeps track of how many devices are currently streaming video.


----------



## morac

keenanSR said:


> Did you get one of these letters?


Yes a few years ago. I wasn't paying the outlet fees and got a letter and suddenly 2 outlet fees were on my account. I called in and had them remove the fees and in a few months another letter came and the fees were back. This time when I called in, they wouldn't remove it, so I've been stuck with it. I ended up returning most of my cards since the current TiVo boxes have 6 tuners.

The "Additional Outlet fee" is like the "HD Technology fee". Once Comcast adds it to your account, it's next to impossible to get it removed. If you do manage to get it removed (like I did), you'll see it's just a money grab since you don't lose HD channels.


----------



## keenanSR

morac said:


> Yes a few years ago. I wasn't paying the outlet fees and got a letter and suddenly 2 outlet fees were on my account. I called in and had them remove the fees and in a few months another letter came and the fees were back. This time when I called in, they wouldn't remove it, so I've been stuck with it. I ended up returning most of my cards since the current TiVo boxes have 6 tuners.
> 
> The "Additional Outlet fee" is like the "HD Technology fee". Once Comcast adds it to your account, it's next to impossible to get it removed. If you do manage to get it removed (like I did), you'll see it's just a money grab since you don't lose HD channels.


Yes, I noticed that game being played over a decade ago when I had a few of their Moto STBs. And now with the "dismantling' of the FCC we can expect many more nickel and dime changes to start showing up on our bills.


----------



## KingsFan6

Oh no! It's happened. It appears that the rest of the channels that held out from conversion to overcompressed 720p H.264 has now converted. That includes ESPN networks and the stable of other sports networks, including the Comcast-owned RSNs. This is for the Bay Area. The locals are still native.


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## leiff

I hope this isn't true. Big sports fan here. And 720 p sucks. Should we dump tivo /comcast and go back to U-verse? Other alternatives?


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## BillyClyde

Yes it's true. I would say another provider that has cablecards so you can still use your TiVos. FiOS preferred since they don't use the adapters, just like Comcast doesn't.


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## leiff

I don't think uverse AT&T areas overlap with Verizon FiOS areas unfortunately


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## jcrandall

KingsFan6 said:


> Oh no! It's happened. It appears that the rest of the channels that held out from conversion to overcompressed 720p H.264 has now converted. That includes ESPN networks and the stable of other sports networks, including the Comcast-owned RSNs. This is for the Bay Area. The locals are still native.


I thought ESPN networks (and ABC) were native 720p, are you indicating you've noticed a significant change in picture quality, because it should have previously been 720p?


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## keenanSR

jcrandall said:


> I thought ESPN networks (and ABC) were native 720p, are you indicating you've noticed a significant change in picture quality, because it should have previously been 720p?


Yes, the ESPN nets have always been 720p, they were just converted to MPEG4 which means their usable bandwidth has likely been reduced to under 4 Mbps as Comcast has been squeezing about 10 MPEG4 channels per QAM.

The local bay area RSNs, NBCSBA and NBCSCA, were 1080i and now they're 720p. Being a Dodger fan but living in the SF bay area I'm forced to watch the local RSN to see the Dodgers/Giants games and I was a bit struck at how unfocused, flat and blurry the image was. When viewing home plate from the center field camera, the shot you see when the pitcher is throwing a pitch, I noticed how flat and unfocused the grass was, the area from the mound to the plate; it looked like a green carpet, almost as if it was painted concrete. I watch Dodger games with my DirecTV MLBEI account and I can say without any doubt that with a good, clean and sharp 1080i feed(Sportsnet LA) you can see blades of grass in that same green area, players faces and even crowd faces are more defined and sharp. There is almost no comparing the two feeds, the local RSN looks like crap and the LA 1080i station looks like a different technology in comparison. While I love these matchups between the two teams I hate having to watch the local station, even when it was 1080i it had sub-par image quality and now it's even worse.


----------



## Bigg

leiff said:


> I don't think uverse AT&T areas overlap with Verizon FiOS areas unfortunately


Not anymore. There used to be one town in Texas that did, that's Frontier now. For the SF area, Wave/Astound would be the only other option that is QAM-based.

EDIT: Only certain parts of SF and surround areas have Wave/Astoud, many do not.


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## lessd

I can't see any difference on my 80" HDTV with the new H.264 on non network programs, if not for this Forum I would not have known that it happened, I did check FX (*The Americans*) and it now is in H.264 at 720P, before it was in 1080i. (I looked at an old one from last year from the deleted list)


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## Bigg

lessd said:


> I can't see any difference on my 80" HDTV with the new H.264 on non network programs, if not for this Forum I would not have known that it happened, I did check FX (*The Americans*) and it now is in H.264 at 720P, before it was in 1080i. (I looked at an old one from last year from the deleted list)


FX is Fox-owned, so it was 720p before. Still, the quality going from 9mbps MPEG-2 CBR encode to a 3.8mbps MPEG-4 CBR encode is going to show a noticeable drop in quality, even though the starting point wasn't that great in the first place. However, the drop is much more noticeable on 1080i channels, and regionalized sports channels that had higher bitrates on MPEG-2.


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## laria

This is on a network (CBS) from tonight, it's still listed as 1080i, but I keep getting these lines through the picture. I managed to get it paused while one was showing, they flicker through quickly. Is this the kind of thing that all these changes cause? It's the dark to light line a few inches from the top.


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## leiff

Comcast locals 1080i natives channels remain 1080i. As far as I know they have no plans to change this. If they did I would cancel my basic local package which I'm paying $25 a month for


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## laria

I know it is still 1080i but there has been talk about the compression and stuff too, and I'm trying to figure out if that is what could be causing these lines.


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## webminster

laria said:


> This is on a network (CBS) from tonight, it's still listed as 1080i, but I keep getting these lines through the picture. I managed to get it paused while one was showing, they flicker through quickly. Is this the kind of thing that all these changes cause? It's the dark to light line a few inches from the top.


I'm betting it's this: Asking advice - CBS black "streaks"

Same thing I saw, especially since you say CBS.


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## Bigg

leiff said:


> Comcast locals 1080i natives channels remain 1080i. As far as I know they have no plans to change this. If they did I would cancel my basic local package which I'm paying $25 a month for


They want to MPEG-4/720p encode locals too, but that's a ways off at this point.


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## laria

webminster said:


> I'm betting it's this: Asking advice - CBS black "streaks"
> 
> Same thing I saw, especially since you say CBS.


Yeah, it seems like it.  It is super distracting and flickery.


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## morac

In my area Comcast seems to have halted the transition to 720p MPEG4. A handful of channels were converted around January, but nothing since.


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## KingsFan6

morac said:


> In my area Comcast seems to have halted the transition to 720p MPEG4. A handful of channels were converted around January, but nothing since.


Give it some more time. In the Bay Area, it started with a handful around last Aug. Then a huge batch around Oct. Then the rest of the cable networks this month. So, it was about 9 months end to end.


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## Jed1

laria said:


> This is on a network (CBS) from tonight, it's still listed as 1080i, but I keep getting these lines through the picture. I managed to get it paused while one was showing, they flicker through quickly. Is this the kind of thing that all these changes cause? It's the dark to light line a few inches from the top.


Just finished watching this and I am seeing the same thing so this is coming from the source as I have Service Electric for cable and they are not converting anything here. This is coming directly from the CBS national feed to the affiliates. I have to say it is quite distracting.


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## laria

Well, at least it's one thing that isn't Comcast's fault.


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## Jed1

Just for reference to the CBS issue here is a picture from the same scene as Laria posted. I have Service Electric Cablevision for my cable provider and Nexstar owns the CBS affiliate WYOU in the Wilkes Barre market.


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## JoeKustra

Jed1 said:


> Just for reference to the CBS issue here is a picture from the same scene as Laria posted. I have Service Electric Cablevision for my cable provider and Nexstar owns the CBS affiliate WYOU in the Wilkes Barre market.


It can be quite distracting.


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## Jed1

JoeKustra said:


> It can be quite distracting.


Yes Madam Secretary had a lot of them early on in the show but it seemed to dissipate as the show went on. Had a couple of quick streaks of tiling on Scorpion last night also.


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## leiff

Yep here in Bay Area all channels are down to 720p accept locals. Interesting caveat The Weather Channel 776 remains 1080i some cool storm shows on this channel.


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## KingsFan6

leiff said:


> Yep here in Bay Area all channels are down to 720p accept locals. Interesting caveat The Weather Channel 776 remains 1080i some cool storm shows on this channel.


Ha! Someone tell Comcast that they forgot one lonesome channel.


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## leiff

Hopefully they leave The Weather Channel in 1080i because if they put it to 720P I'll stop watching it. Tornado footage on this channel is quite breathtaking blurry 720p images would not be good


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## danm628

I still receive the Food Network in 1080i along with my local channels. The others seem to all be 720p now. (I haven't checked every single channel; quite a few I've never watched so I don't know what they were originally.)


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## leiff

I'll check the Food Network I haven't watched that channel in a while. Any good shows on it?


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## Bigg

KingsFan6 said:


> Ha! Someone tell Comcast that they forgot one lonesome channel.


They didn't forget it. It is created locally in each market. For some reason, however, some markets have theirs in 1080i MPEG-2, and others in 720 MPEG-4.


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## KingsFan6

danm628 said:


> I still receive the Food Network in 1080i along with my local channels. The others seem to all be 720p now. (I haven't checked every single channel; quite a few I've never watched so I don't know what they were originally.)


Over here, Food Network is the overcompressed 720p.


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## PSU_Sudzi

I am in the Philly suburbs and they just started the 720p conversion of premiums, right now only the main HBO and Cinemax have it so far. I am watching The Revenant now and it's very muddy and even pixelated at times on the edges and dark sections of the screen. I recorded it and watched it a few months ago from HBO and was amazed how good it looked on TV after having seen it in the theatre. Now it's ****e. Looks like Comcast will be losing another subscriber at some point.


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## Bigg

PSU_Sudzi said:


> I am in the Philly suburbs and they just started the 720p conversion of premiums, right now only the main HBO and Cinemax have it so far. I am watching The Revenant now and it's very muddy and even pixelated at times on the edges and dark sections of the screen. I recorded it and watched it a few months ago from HBO and was amazed how good it looked on TV after having seen it in the theatre. Now it's ****e. Looks like Comcast will be losing another subscriber at some point.


I just can't imagine watching The Revenant like that! It is an *incredible* movie, and should be watched on UHD-BD with HDR and DTS-HD MA to truly enjoy. It is a feast for the senses, meanwhile a brutal movie to watch. Even relatively good 1080i on cable would look terrible compared to high bitrate HEVC encoded 2160p with HDR.


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## PSU_Sudzi

Bigg said:


> I just can't imagine watching The Revenant like that! It is an *incredible* movie, and should be watched on UHD-BD with HDR and DTS-HD MA to truly enjoy. It is a feast for the senses, meanwhile a brutal movie to watch. Even relatively good 1080i on cable would look terrible compared to high bitrate HEVC encoded 2160p with HDR.


It's probably my favorite movie of the past 5 years or so, almost every thing about it is incredible--lighting, sound, acting, music, directing. I am limited by my own tech to just my TiVo or Blu Ray. I was pleasantly surprised how great it looked on 1080i on my 4K Samsung when seeing it a second time after the theatre and dismal watching it last night. Couldn't stand to see more than the first 10 minutes and that was it. I hope more people complain to Comcast about this but sadly Comcast probably doesn't care and half of their customers probably think it looks fine.


----------



## Bigg

PSU_Sudzi said:


> It's probably my favorite movie of the past 5 years or so, almost every thing about it is incredible--lighting, sound, acting, music, directing. I am limited by my own tech to just my TiVo or Blu Ray. I was pleasantly surprised how great it looked on 1080i on my 4K Samsung when seeing it a second time after the theatre and dismal watching it last night. Couldn't stand to see more than the first 10 minutes and that was it. I hope more people complain to Comcast about this but sadly Comcast probably doesn't care and half of their customers probably think it looks fine.


You said you saw it in theaters, so you know what it really looks like, but you haven't seen it at home until you've seen it on UHD-BD with HDR. It is amazing. Comcast doesn't care, most of their customers can't tell the difference, which is also sad, since it's so obvious when you see it. It's a total mess.


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## chrishicks

I didn't see it mentioned in this topic but it looks like Comcast flipped the 720p switch in the Taylor/Detroit area. I noticed there were a few incorrect channels in the Tivo guide which was messing up the "press D to watch in HD" option so I was comparing between my X1 and Tivo to get the correct lineup reported. After that I went to watch something on StarzHD and thought it looked off(like a poorly done upconverted DVD) so I pulled up the info to make sure I was actually on the HD channel because I wasn't sure if it was another weird Tivo issue or what. I then noticed the signal was 720p. I started going channel by channel and outside of a few channels(mainly locals) everything HD is showing as 720p.


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## idksmy

Bigg said:


> ... most of their customers can't tell the difference...


Just curious...How do you know this?


----------



## Sgt Howl

Clearly, the market segment that cares about picture and sound quality is a niche to Comcast. Look at what they promote: mobility, voice control, etc.


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## morac

Sgt Howl said:


> Clearly, the market segment that cares about picture and sound quality is a niche to Comcast. Look at what they promote: mobility, voice control, etc.


I think Comcast believes that the fact that many people watch TV on mobile devices means that people don't care about picture quality. I don't think that's accurate.


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## Bigg

idksmy said:


> Just curious...How do you know this?


I had a discussion with someone fairly high up at Comcast about the MPEG-4 transition, and part of the answer about how they are doing this and why they are doing it boiled down to something along the lines of focus groups showing that it looks the same to most people. I don't doubt that, as you see a lot of people 15' away form a 55" TV, and some people not even caring about SD vs. HD. It's pathetic the lack of criticality that most people give to their TV veiwing.


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## PSU_Sudzi

Bigg said:


> I had a discussion with someone fairly high up at Comcast about the MPEG-4 transition, and part of the answer about how they are doing this and why they are doing it boiled down to something along the lines of focus groups showing that it looks the same to most people. I don't doubt that, as you see a lot of people 15' away form a 55" TV, and some people not even caring about SD vs. HD. It's pathetic the lack of criticality that most people give to their TV veiwing.


I try not to get angry or generalize, but whoever can't notice is as blind as a bat or has terrible eyes. It's so obvious it's ridiculous. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, I read on AVS Forum a few years ago that something like half of all people with a big screen HDTV don't have HD cable subscriptions and are watching SD.


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## BillyClyde

I saw an article today that said Comcast will be deploying their 4K set top soon. I wonder if it will be true 4K or some squashed down version that looks like crap?


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## morac

BillyClyde said:


> I saw an article today that said Comcast will be deploying their 4K set top soon. I wonder if it will be true 4K or some squashed down version that looks like crap?


It depends on what you call "true 4K". I can guarantee it won't be 4K Blu-ray quality, but it's possible it might be 4K streaming quality.

I wouldn't put it past Comcast to degrade picture quality for all non-4K channels and then charge a hefty premium for 4K.


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## BillyClyde

morac said:


> It depends on what you call "true 4K". I can guarantee it won't be 4K Blu-ray quality, but it's possible it might be 4K streaming quality.
> 
> I wouldn't put it past Comcast to degrade picture quality for all non-4K channels and then charge a hefty premium for 4K.


It sounds like they already did with the 1080i to 720p fiasco, in preparation for this 4K eventuality.


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## tommage1

Chicago area, yes, everything as far as I can tell compressed other than local channels. Guess they won't do that only because can get those uncompressed with an antenna, for FREE if you are lucky enough to have reception in your area. ESPN and Comcast SportsNet used to be about 7-9GB per hour recorded. Now about 2GB per hour of recording I think. Charging more and more (now by increasing/adding fees and rentals so they can hit those who took contracts, fees/rental not included in "price guarantee") and getting less and less, that's the Comcast way.


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## tommage1

For fun I just recorded 15 mins ESPN SD and HD, Comcast SN SD and HD, all same time slot.

ESPN HD 15 mins .43GB, about 1.72GB per hour.
ESPN SD 15 mins .46GB MORE than HD, 1.84GB per hour.
Comcast SN HD 15 mins .54GB, 2.16GB per hour.
Comcast SN SD 15 mins .31GB, 1.24GB per hour.

From what I see all HD other than locals channels is 1.x to about 2GB per hour. Well, more room on the hard drive is about the only "plus" I can see. Hey Trump, disband Comcast, even though some people might lose out on something that is one company I would not mind seeing go under.


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## Bigg

PSU_Sudzi said:


> I try not to get angry or generalize, but whoever can't notice is as blind as a bat or has terrible eyes. It's so obvious it's ridiculous. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, I read on AVS Forum a few years ago that something like half of all people with a big screen HDTV don't have HD cable subscriptions and are watching SD.


People don't seem to notice anything. It's obvious to me on my 4k TV, although I'll admit I had a hard time telling on my parents' 1080p TVs, so you definitely need a good display to tell the difference. Also, a lot of people have too small of a TV and sit too far away from it. Comcast, however, is going against the trend, which is bigger TVs and more 4k TVs.



tommage1 said:


> Chicago area, yes, everything as far as I can tell compressed other than local channels. Guess they won't do that only because can get those uncompressed with an antenna, for FREE if you are lucky enough to have reception in your area.


They want to do locals, but they need high bitrate fiber feeds and a localized encoding infrastructure to be able to do it. Right now, their MPEG-4 encoding is centralized nationally and distributed via IP over their national fiber network to headends that modulate onto QAM.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

tommage1 said:


> Chicago area, yes, everything as far as I can tell compressed other than local channels. Guess they won't do that only because can get those uncompressed with an antenna, for FREE if you are lucky enough to have reception in your area. ESPN and Comcast SportsNet used to be about 7-9GB per hour recorded. Now about 2GB per hour of recording I think. Charging more and more (now by increasing/adding fees and rentals so they can hit those who took contracts, fees/rental not included in "price guarantee") and getting less and less, that's the Comcast way.


How do the non premiums look compressed, like ESPN or any cable news channels, are they noticeably worse?


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

Bigg said:


> People don't seem to notice anything. It's obvious to me on my 4k TV, although I'll admit I had a hard time telling on my parents' 1080p TVs, so you definitely need a good display to tell the difference. Also, a lot of people have too small of a TV and sit too far away from it. Comcast, however, is going against the trend, which is bigger TVs and more 4k TVs.
> 
> They want to do locals, but they need high bitrate fiber feeds and a localized encoding infrastructure to be able to do it. Right now, their MPEG-4 encoding is centralized nationally and distributed via IP over their national fiber network to headends that modulate onto QAM.


I have a Samsung 4K, it's a year old but the pic quality is great so maybe that's why it's so noticeable.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> It depends on what you call "true 4K". I can guarantee it won't be 4K Blu-ray quality, but it's possible it might be 4K streaming quality.
> 
> I wouldn't put it past Comcast to degrade picture quality for all non-4K channels and then charge a hefty premium for 4K.


From my understanding this is a normal DVR box but can display a 4K stream via IP. Makes sense they would roll out 4K first via On Demand and charge $10 a movie.


----------



## tommage1

PSU_Sudzi said:


> How do the non premiums look compressed, like ESPN or any cable news channels, are they noticeably worse?


Hard to say, I don't have any old non compressed same channel to compare to. And am using a rather low end 1080p TV at this time. I have noticed more strange things happening like some tiling or audio going out for a bit during a show. Signal is very strong. Not sure if this has anything to do with the compression or not. One of these days may go strictly OTA, sacrificing a lot of sports and some cable TV series I enjoy but the pricing and providing less quality is very annoying, they probably would not miss me but it's the principle. Seems to me with all the alternatives out there instead of becoming more competitive pricewise Comcast is just gouging the people who don't care about cost or have no alternative and are going to stay regardless.


----------



## leiff

I got a new message about a ton of new channels on my guide in the four digits. 1000-2000. they appear to be mostly if not all duplicates. At the same time, all my locals suddenly look a lot worse. I pressed info on the remote to make sure my local networks were still being broadcast in 1080i and it says they are. I'll transfer some new shows to my PC later and look at the file details to see if the file looks different or is much smaller then some older Network recordings.


----------



## morac

leiff said:


> I got a new message about a ton of new channels on my guide in the four digits. 1000-2000. they appear to be mostly if not all duplicates. At the same time, all my locals suddenly look a lot worse. I pressed info on the remote to make sure my local networks were still being broadcast in 1080i and it says they are. I'll transfer some new shows to my PC later and look at the file details to see if the file looks different or is much smaller then some older Network recordings.


That's Comcast's nationwide channel restructuring to make all areas use the same channel numbers. It has nothing to do with converting to 720p.


----------



## TostitoBandito

People seem to fixate on the 1080i vs 720p holy war. That's irrelevant since both resolutions appear largely the same if all other variables (like bitrate) remain equal.

The infuriating issue for me is that the channels which have moved to MPEG4 and 720p are heavily compressed and at a much lower bitrate than before. 

When I first noticed this it was on HBO watching Game of Thrones. I thought there was something wrong with the broadcast because it looked like I was watching a 480p DVD on my HDTV. Colors were muted and detail fuzzy. Faces especially. Nope, nothing wrong except that Comcast had killed the quality of that and many other channels. At least for HBO I can go into HBO Go and stream the same shows in much higher quality and resolution. Really frustrating that I just bought a new Tivo bolt though, since I don't really see the point of having cable if this is the quality I can expect. I no longer watch any shows that I care about live or recorded. I stream them all so I get higher quality than broadcast.

I wrote to Comcast a number of times about this and got nowhere.


----------



## Bigg

TostitoBandito said:


> People seem to fixate on the 1080i vs 720p holy war. That's irrelevant since both resolutions appear largely the same if all other variables (like bitrate) remain equal.
> 
> The infuriating issue for me is that the channels which have moved to MPEG4 and 720p are heavily compressed and at a much lower bitrate than before.


Yes and no. The over-compression is the biggest issue here to be sure, but the switch from 1080i to 720p does absolutely lose sharpness on larger screens.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

TostitoBandito said:


> People seem to fixate on the 1080i vs 720p holy war. That's irrelevant since both resolutions appear largely the same if all other variables (like bitrate) remain equal.
> 
> The infuriating issue for me is that the channels which have moved to MPEG4 and 720p are heavily compressed and at a much lower bitrate than before.
> 
> When I first noticed this it was on HBO watching Game of Thrones. I thought there was something wrong with the broadcast because it looked like I was watching a 480p DVD on my HDTV. Colors were muted and detail fuzzy. Faces especially. Nope, nothing wrong except that Comcast had killed the quality of that and many other channels. At least for HBO I can go into HBO Go and stream the same shows in much higher quality and resolution. Really frustrating that I just bought a new Tivo bolt though, since I don't really see the point of having cable if this is the quality I can expect. I no longer watch any shows that I care about live or recorded. I stream them all so I get higher quality than broadcast.
> 
> I wrote to Comcast a number of times about this and got nowhere.


This is horrible to hear as I've been looking forward to GoT for over a year.


----------



## chiguy50

TostitoBandito said:


> When I first noticed this it was on HBO watching Game of Thrones. I thought there was something wrong with the broadcast because it looked like I was watching a 480p DVD on my HDTV. Colors were muted and detail fuzzy. Faces especially. Nope, nothing wrong except that Comcast had killed the quality of that and many other channels. *At least for HBO I can go into HBO Go and stream the same shows in much higher quality and resolution. *Really frustrating that I just bought a new Tivo bolt though, since I don't really see the point of having cable if this is the quality I can expect. I no longer watch any shows that I care about live or recorded. I stream them all so I get higher quality than broadcast.
> 
> I wrote to Comcast a number of times about this and got nowhere.


Do you have a separate subscription to HBO Go? Otherwise, how do you stream it to your TV in a higher resolution? I would love to stream it on my Android TV, but my HBO subscription through Comcast does not allow it.


----------



## Bigg

chiguy50 said:


> Do you have a separate subscription to HBO Go? Otherwise, how do you stream it to your TV in a higher resolution? I would love to stream it on my Android TV, but my HBO subscription through Comcast does not allow it.


HBO Go is included with your Comcast HBO subscription, and the video quality is a lot better since it's streamed from HBO, not Comcast. You can stream through Roku, Chromecast, web, and a few other platforms. Unfortunately, Comcast purposefully does not support certain platforms, like TiVo.


----------



## chiguy50

Bigg said:


> HBO Go is included with your Comcast HBO subscription, and the video quality is a lot better since it's streamed from HBO, not Comcast. You can stream through Roku, Chromecast, web, and a few other platforms. Unfortunately, Comcast purposefully does not support certain platforms, like TiVo.


No, as I stated, that does not work. With an HBO subscription through Comcast, I am locked out of natively streaming to my TV; when I try to log in, Xfinity is not listed among the designated providers. Of course, I can access HBO GO on my PC and mobile devices and cast from there to the TV, but that results in a garbage resolution.

ETA: I do not have Roku and can not comment on that method.


----------



## Bigg

chiguy50 said:


> No, as I stated, that does not work. With an HBO subscription through Comcast, I am locked out of natively streaming to my TV; when I try to log in, Xfinity is not listed among the designated providers. Of course, I can access HBO GO on my PC and mobile devices and cast from there to the TV, but that results in a garbage resolution.
> 
> ETA: I do not have Roku and can not comment on that method.


I can confirm that it will work with a supported device. Your TV must not be supported by Comcast. I'm not defending Comcast, they play all sorts of annoying and dirty tricks, but it still works on a lot of stuff. I use Comcast HBO Go on Chromecast and Roku, and it works fine. With Chromecast, you can stream at the same resolution you get on Roku, as long as you're streaming from HBO Go, not trying to stream the whole tab. I do the whole tab sometimes from XFinity Stream, and it looks like garbage. It's fine for Bill Maher while folding the laundry or something. I use Roku for viewing on my 65" SUHDTV, and it looks amazing.


----------



## chiguy50

Bigg said:


> *I can confirm that it will work with a supported device. Your TV must not be supported by Comcast.* I'm not defending Comcast, they play all sorts of annoying and dirty tricks, but it still works on a lot of stuff. I use Comcast HBO Go on Chromecast and Roku, and it works fine. With Chromecast, you can stream at the same resolution you get on Roku, as long as you're streaming from HBO Go, not trying to stream the whole tab. I do the whole tab sometimes from XFinity Stream, and it looks like garbage. It's fine for Bill Maher while folding the laundry or something. I use Roku for viewing on my 65" SUHDTV, and it looks amazing.


Well, that's the thing: My HBO sub through Comcast does not allow me to access HBO GO natively on my TV (Sony XBR-65Z9D, FWIW). I had assumed that this was a corporate-wide policy, but if other Comcast subscribers are able to stream HBO GO natively on their TV utilizing their Comcast HBO sub, then I would like to know how and whether it is applicable here as well. And Chromecast (built into my TV) doesn't do it for me either unless there's something I am missing. (ETA: I get similar results using the Chromecast puck attached to my second TV, a Sony XBR-55HX929.)

I should add that HBO on demand through my TiVo Premiere Elite's XoD app works just fine. Last night we discovered that our recording of HBO's _The Wizard of Lies_ had started late, so we watched it instead via XoD and the resolution was crystal-clear. On the extreme close-up shots of De Niro's face you could count the pores.. I compared the PQ to the recording, and XoD was marginally better.

I can live with the current restrictions (especially since I only pay $1 p.m. for HBO), but I already stream all my other OTT apps (Amazon Prime and Netflix 4K) on my UHD TV to take advantage of the best PQ and would like to do likewise for HBO GO if possible. However, I would not buy a Roku just for that purpose.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

chiguy50 said:


> No, as I stated, that does not work. With an HBO subscription through Comcast, I am locked out of natively streaming to my TV; when I try to log in, Xfinity is not listed among the designated providers. Of course, I can access HBO GO on my PC and mobile devices and cast from there to the TV, but that results in a garbage resolution.
> 
> ETA: I do not have Roku and can not comment on that method.


I have Comcast Xfinity and just set up all of my premium channels streaming apps on my Samsung 4K TV including HBO. I guess your tv doesn't have these apps? Just saw your previous post, odd Comcast doesn't support Sony TV apps.


----------



## Bigg

chiguy50 said:


> Well, that's the thing: My HBO sub through Comcast does not allow me to access HBO GO natively on my TV (Sony XBR-65Z9D, FWIW). I had assumed that this was a corporate-wide policy, but if other Comcast subscribers are able to stream HBO GO natively on their TV utilizing their Comcast HBO sub, then I would like to know how and whether it is applicable here as well. And Chromecast (built into my TV) doesn't do it for me either unless there's something I am missing. (ETA: I get similar results using the Chromecast puck attached to my second TV, a Sony XBR-55HX929.)
> 
> I should add that HBO on demand through my TiVo Premiere Elite's XoD app works just fine. Last night we discovered that our recording of HBO's _The Wizard of Lies_ had started late, so we watched it instead via XoD and the resolution was crystal-clear. On the extreme close-up shots of De Niro's face you could count the pores.. I compared the PQ to the recording, and XoD was marginally better.


Is your TV running Android TV? Comcast may not support that. What's weird is that it does work through Chromecast, so I'm not sure why you're not able to get it to work there. The app is horrible, but it does work, I've used that on occasion.

I use Roku Ultra and Chromecast Ultra, and I have abandoned the Samsung apps on my Samsung 4k TV, as they are complete garbage and crash a lot, and the ones on my Samsung UHD-BD player and TiVo are too slow or have other issues (no 4k on TiVo, etc).

The XoD VOD through TiVo is 9mbps MPEG-2, and with VOD they can do a really good encoding job for that bitrate. That is still QAM-based, the X1 platform is slowly moving over to MPEG-4 IP-based VOD, not sure the resolution on that.



PSU_Sudzi said:


> I have Comcast Xfinity and just set up all of my premium channels streaming apps on my Samsung 4K TV including HBO. I guess your tv doesn't have these apps? Just saw your previous post, odd Comcast doesn't support Sony TV apps.


They refuse to support TiVo as well. I'm not sure why, but they have arbitrary limits on what devices will work and which ones won't.


----------



## chiguy50

PSU_Sudzi said:


> I have Comcast Xfinity and just set up all of my premium channels streaming apps on my Samsung 4K TV including HBO. I guess your tv doesn't have these apps? Just saw your previous post, odd Comcast doesn't support Sony TV apps.


IDK where the arbitrary barrier is generated, but my Android 7 UHD TV does have the HBO Go and HBO Now apps, which came pre-installed; I just can't activate them with my Comcast HBO sub as illustrated below by the absence of Comcast/Xfinity as an approved provider.


----------



## chiguy50

Bigg said:


> Is your TV running Android TV? Comcast may not support that. What's weird is that it does work through Chromecast, so I'm not sure why you're not able to get it to work there. The app is horrible, but it does work, I've used that on occasion.


Yes, Android 7. So you think the hang-up is that Comcast doesn't support Android TV? Doesn't that seem a bit odd?



Bigg said:


> I use Roku Ultra and Chromecast Ultra, and I have abandoned the Samsung apps on my Samsung 4k TV, as they are complete garbage and crash a lot, and the ones on my Samsung UHD-BD player and TiVo are too slow or have other issues (no 4k on TiVo, etc).


I suspect that Roku Ultra and/or Chromecast Ultra may work for me, but as I have already stated, I would not invest in adding another device to my TV just for the sole purpose of streaming HBO when I have a good alternative in XoD. Now, if I could get UHD programming from HBO that way--although not nearly as useful as native streaming on the TV--I would probably be tempted into making the plunge.

Again, Amazon Prime and Netflix 4K stream very well natively on the Sony TV and the interface is perfectly acceptable.



Bigg said:


> The XoD VOD through TiVo is 9mbps MPEG-2, and with VOD they can do a really good encoding job for that bitrate. That is still QAM-based, the X1 platform is slowly moving over to MPEG-4 IP-based VOD, not sure the resolution on that.
> 
> They refuse to support TiVo as well. I'm not sure why, but they have arbitrary limits on what devices will work and which ones won't.


It seems inevitable that at some point in Comcast's IPTV conversion, my TiVo will stop functioning as a DVR/media streaming device with their service. But I'm hoping that will be light-years (in technology development terms) from now and I will have moved on to something else by then (8K TV?).

Thanks for your input. I was holding out a slim hope that someone would point out some key I had missed to unlock the service, but it appears there is none given the givens.


----------



## Bigg

chiguy50 said:


> Yes, Android 7. So you think the hang-up is that Comcast doesn't support Android TV? Doesn't that seem a bit odd?


Wrong? Of course. Odd? Not at all. They are known to not support TiVo, and for quite a while they refused to allow Roku to authenticate, until, one day, they allowed it to. You are at the whim of Comcast.



> I suspect that Roku Ultra and/or Chromecast Ultra may work for me, but as I have already stated, I would not invest in adding another device to my TV just for the sole purpose of streaming HBO when I have a good alternative in XoD. Now, if I could get UHD programming from HBO that way--although not nearly as useful as native streaming on the TV--I would probably be tempted into making the plunge.
> 
> Again, Amazon Prime and Netflix 4K stream very well natively on the Sony TV and the interface is perfectly acceptable.


Then use XoD through TiVo. I feel very strongly about not using built-in TV apps, but Android TV is a little bit different than the crappy apps I've had on Sharp and Samsung TVs, as it's actually a sort of platform. As a result of my experiences, I won't use built-in apps anymore, and I use Roku for most of my streaming.


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## ffitzgerald39

I use Comcast with HBO and have tried to log into HBO Go on both Sony and LG Smart TVs and Amazon Fire but it was not enabled by Comcast. When I called I was told it was not enabled since I could use Comcast VOD and it was not needed. No wonder Comcast is one above the bottom of the most disliked companies list and went down 6 points this year.


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## PSU_Sudzi

ffitzgerald39 said:


> I use Comcast with HBO and have tried to log into HBO Go on both Sony and LG Smart TVs and Amazon Fire but it was not enabled by Comcast. When I called I was told it was not enabled since I could use Comcast VOD and it was not needed. No wonder Comcast is one above the bottom of the most disliked companies list and went down 6 points this year.


Try HBO again along with any other premium apps you have. I can confirm I have Comcast and got them all to work this weekend. Make sure your Samsung TV has the latest OS installed along with any app updates.


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## chiguy50

ffitzgerald39 said:


> I use Comcast with HBO and have tried to log into HBO Go on both Sony and LG Smart TVs and Amazon Fire but it was not enabled by Comcast. When I called I was told it was not enabled since I could use Comcast VOD and it was not needed. No wonder Comcast is one above the bottom of the most disliked companies list and went down 6 points this year.


Yes, that is my situation, and the explanation that you got from a Comcast CSR is pretty much what I figured their rationale would be. I think it is perfectly logical from their corporate standpoint, although not exactly a customer-friendly approach (shocking to hear, isn't it?).

OTOH, I can access HBO GO on my mobile devices despite the fact that HBO on-demand programming is also available on those self-same devices via the Xfinity TV app. So much for logical consistency.


----------



## CCourtney

ffitzgerald39 said:


> I use Comcast with HBO and have tried to log into HBO Go on both Sony and LG Smart TVs and Amazon Fire but it was not enabled by Comcast. When I called I was told it was not enabled since I could use Comcast VOD and it was not needed. No wonder Comcast is one above the bottom of the most disliked companies list and went down 6 points this year.


Yeah, Comcast is being a real D!(# about this, but it should only affect certain devices. Comcast has basically forced the companies to make a financial agreement with them to allow the confirmation and agreement.

Work: Samsung TV, PC, Android Devices, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV Devices, XBox
Doesn't Work: PS3, PS4, TiVo Devices
Might Work: Various TV brands and models have different SW so it's a guessing game.

IMHO, it's the same kind of BS that they played with Netflix by degrading the speed of their servers through Comcast network until Netflix paid them. My preferences in order are TiVo, PS4, Roku, Samsung TV (but my AV receiver doesn't have feedback so I'd have to ad an optical cable or use Samsung speakers which isn't happening.) So I end up plugging in my Roku when I want to use it. Sorry, but I simply don't use the POS called an X1 Box (it's downstairs and the wife uses it)

FWIW, If when trying to 'Activate' HBO Go on a device, Comcast/Xfinity doesn't show up on the list, then that's a sure sign that no agreement is in place. If it does show up, and you can't get it to work, that's another techincal issue. But to my knowledge, no area is simply blocking HBO Go, the agreements are on a corporate level and not on a local level.


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## danm628

This is one of the many reasons people should support Net Neutrality. Doing away with that allows Comcast to treat different services and devices differently. So write you congressperson. (NOTE: This is at the edge of politics, so any follow ups should be in the political section.)


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## CCourtney

danm628 said:


> This is one of the many reasons people should support Net Neutrality. Doing away with that allows Comcast to treat different services and devices differently. So write you congressperson. (NOTE: This is at the edge of politics, so any follow ups should be in the political section.)


While I agree with supporting Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality would have no bearing on whether or not Comcast would be allowed to not provide the Activation Code for HBO Go on various devices. It's the same general type of BS actions, but it technically is not covered by Net Neutrality.


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## danm628

CCourtney said:


> While I agree with supporting Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality would have no bearing on whether or not Comcast would be allowed to not provide the Activation Code for HBO Go on various devices. It's the same general type of BS actions, but it technically is not covered by Net Neutrality.


It might have been covered under the new set top box rules that have been canceled.


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## Bigg

No, it's not relevant to STB rules either, that's for linear programming, not TV anywhere apps. This sucks, but it's not really covered under any of these issues.


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## kucharsk

When discussing video quality and 1080i vs 720p, don't forget that HBO crops most widescreen films to 16:9 because they stated their customers prefer them that way. 

We just can't win…


----------



## HerronScott

The letter from Comcast indicated that we needed to replace incompatible equipment by 6/13 but I haven't found any channels moved to MPEG4 yet.

Scott


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## morac

I think Comcast has either backed away or rethought what they are doing. I got a letter in November that my channels were being converted to MPEG4 (i.e. 720p). In January about 6 or 7 channels were converted, but nothing else has happened since then. Unfortunately HBO was one of the converted channels.


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## burdellgp

The letter-sending department at Comcast doesn't always (ever?) appear to know what the rest of the company is doing. My area got letters that our channel lineup was being massively shuffled (to the new 1000+ "neighborhoods", from the previous 1000+ "neighborhoods"), and that it would take place "on or about 4/8/2016". It still hasn't happened here - yet some other areas appear to have had the re-shuffle without warning.


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## NoVa

Bigg said:


> Yes and no. The over-compression is the biggest issue here to be sure, but the switch from 1080i to 720p does absolutely lose sharpness on larger screens.


So basically Comcast downcasting has finally hit me on my favorite sports channel no-less.
Was not aware of this until I was directed to this thread by boardmember JoeKustra via my thread here.
Am a Comcast sub in Richmond VA.
Channel 846 - Comcast Sportsnet Mid-Atlantic HD = equivalent SD channel 4.

What's displayed & outputted on screen is SD & not HD even though the info on my TiVo is showing 720p; but picture quality is definitely SD - 480p like in graininess & 80's soap opera-ish.

I compared side by side with other TV's in my house & what Comcast is showing for CSNMA on all the screens for 846 HD is the same as it's twin SD Channel 4.

1080i down converted to 720p = 480p! arghhh!


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## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> I think Comcast has either backed away or rethought what they are doing. I got a letter in November that my channels were being converted to MPEG4 (i.e. 720p). In January about 6 or 7 channels were converted, but nothing else has happened since then. Unfortunately HBO was one of the converted channels.


I thought I was lucky like you and it hovered at only a few channels for a while and I noticed today that they've all been converted save for locals (or at least all of the channels I have selected). I noticed some pixelation at times on Fox Sports 1 and the same in MLB Network now, it really sucks. As soon as I move, I am out as a Comcast customer. What's more annoying is that across the street they have FIOS but not on this side.


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## Bigg

NoVa said:


> I compared side by side with other TV's in my house & what Comcast is showing for CSNMA on all the screens for 846 HD is the same as it's twin SD Channel 4.
> 
> 1080i down converted to 720p = 480p! arghhh!


If there's a lot of motion, yes, it's basically like SD. What is jarring is that relatively still shots and the tickers/scores tend to look more like HD, so it's this weird mish-mash due to extreme overuse of compression.


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## danm628

Bigg said:


> If there's a lot of motion, yes, it's basically like SD. What is jarring is that relatively still shots and the tickers/scores tend to look more like HD, so it's this weird mish-mash due to extreme overuse of compression.


Comcast converted most of my channels months ago. Late last year.

Things have gotten worse the last month or two. Apparently they dropped the bit rate again.

I still have some channels in 1080i. Not the ones I would expect. Food Network. Retroplex. But HBO is all lower bit rate 720p with artifacts. It was 720p at a good bit rate with no artifacts.


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## NoVa

danm628 said:


> Comcast converted most of my channels months ago. Late last year.
> 
> Things have gotten worse the last month or two. Apparently they dropped the bit rate again.
> 
> I still have some channels in 1080i. Not the ones I would expect. Food Network. Retroplex. But HBO is all lower bit rate 720p with artifacts. It was 720p at a good bit rate with no artifacts.


So since this has been slowly rolled out system wide since last summer, I literally thought my eyes were getting worse & actually went to the optometrist a couple of times to complain about my vision.

Both times the OD said my vision was actually getting better - at least my prescription for contacts & glasses (ie less handicapped  ).

I am sooo pissed.


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## tarheelblue32

Comcast should have just started using SDV for the lesser-watched channels to save bandwidth. This downconverting and overcompressing is unacceptable.


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## Bigg

Or they could have locally/regionally stat muxed with MPEG-4 and saved almost as much bandwidth. Or just cut some channels that no one watches and upgraded all plants to at least 860mhz.


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## lessd

Bigg said:


> Or they could have locally/regionally stat muxed with MPEG-4 and saved almost as much bandwidth. Or just cut some channels that no one watches and upgraded all plants to at least 860mhz.


Some co.s do what they do because they can, like Comcast, I have friends with OELD 4K TVs that think they are getting a great picture with Comcast, without this forum I. with my 80" HDTV, would not have known about the 720P conversion. I think that over 99% of Comcast customers don't know or care about the 720P conversion.


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## morac

lessd said:


> Some co.s do what they do because they can, like Comcast, I have friends with OELD 4K TVs that think they are getting a great picture with Comcast, without this forum I. with my 80" HDTV, would not have known about the 720P conversion. I think that over 99% of Comcast customers don't know or care about the 720P conversion.


I can't see how that's possible. Watching the Game Of Thrones season 7 trailer, I thought I was tuned to the SD channel on my 40" 1080p TV when they showed those sweeping battlefield wide scenes. I can't imagine what it would look like on a 80" 4K TV. Fortunately in my area HBO2 is still 1080i and I think episodes repeat on that.

I will say that for talk shows like Last Week Tonight though, I don't notice the compression since there's very little motion and all shots are close ups.


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## Bigg

lessd said:


> Some co.s do what they do because they can, like Comcast, I have friends with OELD 4K TVs that think they are getting a great picture with Comcast, without this forum I. with my 80" HDTV, would not have known about the 720P conversion. I think that over 99% of Comcast customers don't know or care about the 720P conversion.


It should be extremely obvious if you're at all paying attention. I think Comcast is betting on people not noticing the significantly reduced PQ, or have enough captive with bundles that they put up with the garbage, since it would be way more per month to get DirecTV with Comcast internet instead of just doing a bundle with Comcast.


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## alleybj

Bigg said:


> It should be extremely obvious if you're at all paying attention. I think Comcast is betting on people not noticing the significantly reduced PQ, or have enough captive with bundles that they put up with the garbage, since it would be way more per month to get DirecTV with Comcast internet instead of just doing a bundle with Comcast.


I have Comcast and Directv, and I've been down converted by Comcast. I actually prefer the Comcast picture to Directv's. Mostly, I just watch CNN and Turner Classic Movies and stream everything else, but on those channels, Comcast looks better. I have four screens ranging in size from 90 inches to 70, and the one I watch the most is an 88 inch Samsung 4K. CNN and TCM from Comcast look great in it. I'm in Atlanta.


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## tarheelblue32

alleybj said:


> I have Comcast and Directv, and I've been down converted by Comcast. I actually prefer the Comcast picture to Directv's. Mostly, I just watch CNN and Turner Classic Movies and stream everything else, but on those channels, Comcast looks better. I have four screens ranging in size from 90 inches to 70, and the one I watch the most is an 88 inch Samsung 4K. CNN and TCM from Comcast look great in it. I'm in Atlanta.


Do you work for Comcast?


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## Gold51

Adios to Comcast on 5-18-2017. I spent about $120 for the antennas, mast, coax and amplified splitter. My monthly Comcast cable bill was, $120.


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## JoeKustra

Gold51 said:


> Adios to Comcast on 5-18-2017. I spent about $120 for the antennas, mast, coax and amplified splitter. My monthly Comcast cable bill was, $120.


That looks nice and I wish you success. However, Florida is overdue for bad weather and those trees could be an issue. The mounting doesn't look very strong, but I'm no engineer.

I lived in Tampa when Camille was moving up the Gulf. It was scary.


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## Gold51

Nylon guy ropes may be added soon. I did have to do some tree and palm thinning to improve my signal for one antenna.
This mast combo works good, the first 20ft is 2 pieces of 1-1/4" emt joined with a very tight 12" coupler made from 1-5/8" fence post. Go to a fence installer and beg for a scrap piece of post from them.
(you have to taper file conduit ends, oil them and drive them together into the coupler with a wood block and a 3 lb hammer, finish with a few self tapping screws) Then a 10ft piece of fence top rail slides into that- leaving 5ft of it, above the 1-1/4" emt, then a 10ft piece of emt slides into that, leaving about 4ft exposed for the top antenna . I did a bend test on the ground with concrete blocks. It's very strong. Double thickness for the bottom antenna and triple thick at the eave mount. The aluminum antennas will blow away before the mast fails. I have 30 years of ham radio experience.


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## Gold51

I was curious, so I just ran the numbers- I had stood on the mast to check deflection and there was no permanent bend made. I weight 160lbs. The total area of the mast and the antennas is less than 2 sq ft. The test I did has calculated out to be the same as a 125mph wind load. Like I said, the antennas will blow away first. I have two mast mounts, all with heavy lag bolts.
My buddy in Indiana has had to deal with straight line winds of 70-80 mph, tornados about 2 miles away and ice storms. He has 2 pieces 10ft emt put together, 18ft up for his mast, 5 ft above the roof. No mast damage so far. He did have to replace his antenna after the last ice storm broke it.


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## lessd

Bigg said:


> It should be extremely obvious if you're at all paying attention. I think Comcast is betting on people not noticing the significantly reduced PQ, or have enough captive with bundles that they put up with the garbage, since it would be way more per month to get DirecTV with Comcast internet instead of just doing a bundle with Comcast.


I know you see see the difference but outside this Forum nobady has told me about the lower PQ, I don't think they even know what PQ is, in the old days people would complain about the bad cable signal they were getting when cable was on analog, today everbody I know has not told me thrie getting a bad signal after the 720P conversion. Your friends may be more picture sophisticated than my friends or myself. I am sure side by side I may be able to tell the difference. I don't see any public uproar about this conversion, but i sure do when your cable bill goes up in $.


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## webminster

Can't say I've had anyone on the street mention it... there's been complaints in a lot of other forums (here, DSLReports, TGB, even Xfinity customer forums). I do think most cable viewers are not sophisticated enough, or have the equipment, to realize it. Besides, at least on Xfinity's forums, and with any attempts to talk to their CS people, they tell you it's "Enhanced HD," and visibly no worse (probably better!) than before. Why would you not believe them?


----------



## alleybj

tarheelblue32 said:


> Do you work for Comcast?


Ha ha. Maybe I'd get better service if I did. In fact, I have more of an ATT bias. The real story here, though, is that neither Comcast nor Directv can come close to matching the quality of the streaming feeds like Hulu, Amazon and Netflix. I try to watch everything on them that I can rather than cable or satellite.


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## Sgt Howl

My guess is that Comcast is targeting mobile device and casual users, not aficionados who visit forums like this. Their ads tell the story - not one mention of picture or sound quality, but much about voice control, accessing content away from home, etc. We are too small a market for Comcast to care. I think many of the streaming services are the same. Nothing like popping in a UHD Blu-ray...


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## kbmb

Sgt Howl said:


> My guess is that Comcast is targeting mobile device and casual users, not aficionados who visit forums like this. Their ads tell the story - not one mention of picture or sound quality, but much about voice control, accessing content away from home, etc. We are too small a market for Comcast to care. I think many of the streaming services are the same. Nothing like popping in a UHD Blu-ray...


Agree completely!! So far I have found Hulu (OnDemand content), Showtime Anytime, and HBO Go to provide a far better picture than Comcast! All I believe are 1080p. Yeah, Hulu is stereo still - but I can live with that for normal programming (comedies, dramas, etc).

The live streaming services aren't great - with many only 720p/30.

I've heard people who subscribe to things like Showtime through Amazon have excellent picture quality. I've always been impressed with the bandwidth Amazon has.

-Kevin


----------



## ggieseke

I love the small files (about 1.5GB/hour) for archiving, but the overall picture quality sucks with tons of break-ups. I can live with that for Food Network, but trying to watch a movie on HBO or Showtime shouldn't be a painful excercise in watching garbage. If they would quit down-rezzing the premium channels I could live with it.


----------



## Bigg

I flipped my parents' TV back to cable after watching a movie last night, and it was on Smithsonian, with a show about Bar Harbor. It showed some wide shots with trees, and then some shots with a sailboat (that I've been on but I digress) and water in the background, and they were absolutely atrocious. The scenes were sub-DVD quality, and had severe artifacting on them since the CBR encode just hit the ceiling and couldn't put enough bitrate at this very challenging scene. Utter garbage, but they have irrational dish phobia syndrome, so they refuse to switch to DirecTV, even with the garbage Comcast is feeding them.



tarheelblue32 said:


> Do you work for Comcast?


I was more thinking about what sorts of drugs are legal in GA now.... Comcast is in CO and Philly for the most part, except for local techs and stores.



lessd said:


> I know you see see the difference but outside this Forum nobady has told me about the lower PQ, I don't think they even know what PQ is, in the old days people would complain about the bad cable signal they were getting when cable was on analog, today everbody I know has not told me thrie getting a bad signal after the 720P conversion. Your friends may be more picture sophisticated than my friends or myself. I am sure side by side I may be able to tell the difference. I don't see any public uproar about this conversion, but i sure do when your cable bill goes up in $.


Your average person is so clueless, and can't even see what is obviously in front of them. I think part of the reason that you are seeing such an uproar on the TiVo forum is that most sophisticated users were already on DirecTV, we were on Comcast for TiVo, and now Comcast basically broke TV for TiVo users without FiOS or an overbuilder to switch to.



kbmb said:


> I've heard people who subscribe to things like Showtime through Amazon have excellent picture quality. I've always been impressed with the bandwidth Amazon has.


Amazon uses quite a bit higher bitrate, and they have their own CDN, so they must not mind pushing out a lot of bitrate, as their 1080p looks second to none IMO.


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## PSU_Sudzi

I test recorded on all of my HD premium channels since the conversion over the last week and they all have a bit rate in the 3-4.5 Mbps range, nothing more. I'm watching Inferno with Tom Hanks that I recorded from Starz 2weeks ago and it looks great at 14 Mbps. I hate Comcast.


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## morac

I don't know what Comcast did recently, but I tried watching HBO on Xfinity VOD and it looked just as bad as the channel does now.


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## webminster

I think they're trying to optimize all their services to work best on a 5" smartphone screen. It's the future.


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## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> I don't know what Comcast did recently, but I tried watching HBO on Xfinity VOD and it looked just as bad as the channel does now.


I think they are encoded in 720p now too. I did the same with The Revenant when Cinemax was converted (recorded and it pulled it up on demand) and it looked equally as bad both ways. I recorded some of the Game of Thrones marathon last week on HBO2 now also 720p and there were some scenes that looked pretty terrible. Sad thing is after a couple of weeks I'm getting used to it!


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## Bigg

It sounds like they are re-encoding for IP-VOD. I tried to compared IP-VOD to QAM VOD (at the time, the Xi3 was using IP-VOD while the XG1 was using QAM VOD), and they looked the same to me, but they may have been delivering MPEG-2 1080i to IP-VOD at the time, if they didn't have everything re-encoded over to whatever awful format they are going to use for that.

Previously, QAM VOD was 9mbps CBR MPEG-2, which gets you 4 streams per QAM, who knows what they are using for IP-VOD, like the same garbage that they are pushing for linear channels.

The 9mbps MPEG-2 stuff will most likely stay around as long as QAM VOD does, although there is theoretically nothing that would prevent them from using a 3.8mbps CBR MPEG-4 encode for QAM VOD and just cutting off MPEG-2 boxes from "HD" VOD. AFAIK, the Series 3 TiVo does not do Comcast VOD, so the TVD 648's wouldn't be affected by this anyway. TCD 652's and Premiere and newer can all do MPEG-4 linear, so I don't see why they couldn't handle VOD through the same IP-control QAM-delivery that they use now for MPEG-2 QAM VOD, or direct IP delivery if Comcast wanted to write an app on TiVo to do it.


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## PSU_Sudzi

My understanding of their desire for the conversion was to make their video streams the same across all methods of watching, e.g. web browser, phone or tablet, or cable box. Same resolution for all which is lazy.


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## Bigg

They make a lot of claims about making everything the same, which is basically nonsense lowest common denominator logic. It is a lot easier to localize and regionalize stuff when everything is CBR, and they can substitute one channel for another at the local headend without having to encode stat muxes on a local or regional basis. It's definitely the lazy way out.


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## morac

I tried watching the Game of Thrones Premiere on HBO and almost immediately ended up switching over to HBGo because the picture quality was so poor.

The 62 minute recording was 1.67 GB which is 3.71 Mbps. I'm recording the episode off of HBO2 (which is still MPEG2) tomorrow and will compare the bitrate and picture quality.


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## kbmb

morac said:


> I tried watching the Game of Thrones Premiere on HBO and almost immediately ended up switching over to HBGo because the picture quality was so poor.
> 
> The 62 minute recording was 1.67 GB which is 3.71 Mbps. I'm recording the episode off of HBO2 (which is still MPEG2) tomorrow and will compare the bitrate and picture quality.


Oh man.....the scene in the beginning with the snow and white walkers......it was a compressed mess!!! Does HBO Go stream live?


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## morac

kbmb said:


> Oh man.....the scene in the beginning with the snow and white walkers......it was a compressed mess!!! Does HBO Go stream live?


Yes the stream goes up at the same time the episode is aired.


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## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> I tried watching the Game of Thrones Premiere on HBO and almost immediately ended up switching over to HBGo because the picture quality was so poor.
> 
> The 62 minute recording was 1.67 GB which is 3.71 Mbps. I'm recording the episode off of HBO2 (which is still MPEG2) tomorrow and will compare the bitrate and picture quality.


You're lucky you still have HBO2 in mpeg2, they've switched all premiums where I live. The opening scene with the Walders also looked kind of blurry to me and I just watched it on HBO Go and its vastly better. Guess I will watch it there from now on.


----------



## keenanSR

Yes, in fact, it's rather surprising it's still at MPEG2 encoding. Are any of the other HBO multiplex channels still at MPEG2?


----------



## danm628

HBO2 is 720p mpeg4 for me. There are some random channels that are still 1080i but only a few.


----------



## kbmb

PSU_Sudzi said:


> You're lucky you still have HBO2 in mpeg2, they've switched all premiums where I live. The opening scene will the Walders also looked kind of blurry to me and I just watched it on HBO Go and its vastly better. Guess I will watch it there from now on.


Just checked it out on HBO Go as well.....Comcast "should" be embarrassed, but I know they aren't.


----------



## HerronScott

So although we got the mail saying we needed to upgrade our equipment by June 13th for the MPEG4 change, I hadn't seen any channels transitioned to MPEG4 either spot-checking channels moving from 1080i to 720p or checking for reduced sizes using kmttg .

Until last night of course.... 










Scott


----------



## tarheelblue32

kbmb said:


> Just checked it out on HBO Go as well.....Comcast "should" be embarrassed, but I know they aren't.


Besides being able to use a TiVo, I really can't think of a good reason to still be using Comcast for TV channels. You can get better video quality at a cheaper price from internet TV streaming services now. Comcast deserves to lose all of its TV subscribers.


----------



## morac

morac said:


> I tried watching the Game of Thrones Premiere on HBO and almost immediately ended up switching over to HBGo because the picture quality was so poor.
> 
> The 62 minute recording was 1.67 GB which is 3.71 Mbps. I'm recording the episode off of HBO2 (which is still MPEG2) tomorrow and will compare the bitrate and picture quality.


HBO2 recording was 61 mins at 3.97 GB. That's 8.82 Mbps. I tried doing a "side-by-side" comparison, which wasn't that easy. The 720p recording was definitely "softer", but in many places it wasn't that noticeable. My TV is only 40" though. It was more noticeable in the wide open shots and frequently faces lacked details.


----------



## Fuzzy Dunlop

I was actually thinking of switching to Xfinity w/ Tivo from Directv to save some money. I'm glad I did my homework first. It's amazing that they can get away with less and worse HD content. Where I am, they are the only game in town for broadband. I guess that's how.


----------



## davidscarter

Just signed up for the 7-day free trial of HBO via Amazon Channels, so I can stream on my FireTV. Watched the start of S7E1 of _GoT_ and the picture is much better than the muddied down-converted version that Comcast offered up. Assuming things stream well on Sunday evening, I'm cancelling HBO via Comcast. (And Starz too, which I had been hanging on to to watch _American Gods_...)

Honestly I don't notice much of a difference on a lot of the down-converted content that Comcast has switched over to MP4, but GoT was just awful (it's a dark show most of the time and the detail is getting muddied in the compression). Movies on the premium channels also seem 'soft'. So I'll likely get premium channels that I need in the future via Amazon.


----------



## WVZR1

YouTubeTV just came to the Washington DC market and aside from the convenience of TiVo and Comcast there's not much reason to stick around. I was contemplating DirecTV for quality but damn the contracts. I've trimmed some trees so I can do either of the Satellite providers but I believe I could very likely accomplish as much TV as I need with a streaming service. I'd think it won't be long and the'll have the DVR functions and maybe 5.1 working well. YouTubeTV looks to be a 9 month DVR. I don't know that it would satisfy a "family" but being just me I'm thinking.

Years ago I did ExpressVu here in the WV pan-handle and I had HD long before it was available to Adelphia cable customers. They pretty much terminated the "owned equipment" option when the DVR became a little more complicated and popular. My Canadian broker was getting much harder to deal with so eventually when Adelphia added HD and came into the neighborhood I got HSI and CATV.

I mentioned DirecTV to Comcast and they adjusted enough to keep me around with "no contract". I've got a new OLED 65" that will be delivered 1st of the month and I just believe I need something more than the Comcast offering. OTA is out of the question 50 ft doesn't get me over the trees.


----------



## morac

Just as an FYI, but Comcast has Internet caps in most areas (all but the NorthEast). They'll charge you up to $200 more if you go over unless you sign up for the unlimited plan for an extra $50. The cap is a TB, but if you stream all your TV it's probably not that hard to hit that. Comcast screws you either way.


----------



## davidscarter

Comcast will show you your history of data use so you can determine if you're close to the cap or not. They also give 2 "courtesy months" of going over the cap before they start to charge. I've never been close to the cap, so I'm not worried about streaming a couple of HBO shows each week.

If I were in an situation to get reliable OTA I'd strongly consider giving up on cable TV from Comcast and going with OTA + streaming. But I'm not, so I'm sticking with Comcast for at least basic cable service. But I ain't paying them extra for premium channels that are of poor quality.

(Also, Comcast just replaced the defunct UniversalHD with the Olympic Channel, which is awesome.)


----------



## aaronwt

morac said:


> Just as an FYI, but Comcast has Internet caps in most areas (all but the NorthEast). They'll charge you up to $200 more if you go over unless you sign up for the unlimited plan for an extra $50. The cap is a TB, but if you stream all your TV it's probably not that hard to hit that. Comcast screws you either way.


yes. No cap here in the DC area. Hopefully they don't implement one. Since if they ever do in the Northeast. I could see FiOS doing the same thing shortly after.


----------



## NorthAlabama

danm628 said:


> Comcast converted most of my channels months ago. Late last year.
> 
> Things have gotten worse the last month or two. Apparently they dropped the bit rate again...But HBO is all lower bit rate 720p with artifacts. It was 720p at a good bit rate with no artifacts.




morac said:


> I don't know what Comcast did recently, but I tried watching HBO on Xfinity VOD and it looked just as bad as the channel does now.



interesting. we migrated a few months back, and i'd never really noticed an issue with artifacts on hbo until the got marathon before last sunday night's premier. one of the season 6 episodes was clipped right when drogon was flying at the screen, no big deal, flipped over to xfinity vod, began playback where it left off, and the quality of the vod was incredibly better for the flying action shot - an enormous difference in quality.


----------



## morac

aaronwt said:


> yes. No cap here in the DC area. Hopefully they don't implement one. Since if they ever do in the Northeast. I could see FiOS doing the same thing shortly after.


Even without caps, if the Network Neutrality rules are repealed by the FCC, Comcast will be able to screw with streaming services by either slowing them down or charging customers more to use them.

Verizon just got caught throttling Netflix and YouTube yesterday, granted that's on their Wireless service.
Verizon accused of throttling Netflix and YouTube, admits to "video optimization"


----------



## Bigg

morac said:


> Even without caps, if the Network Neutrality rules are repealed by the FCC, Comcast will be able to screw with streaming services by either slowing them down or charging customers more to use them.


If they ever went that far, hopefully the FTC would investigate them, but in the meantime, VPN providers would do really well! The question is whether Comcast would sacrifice their remaining customers in FiOS areas and areas with other competition in order to completely screw over their monopoly customers? It's not that Verizon is some shining star of being a good company, but you can bet they would slam Comcast hard in TV and radio ads if they ever pulled a stunt like that.


----------



## danm628

Bigg said:


> If they ever went that far, hopefully the FTC would investigate them, but in the meantime, VPN providers would do really well! The question is whether Comcast would sacrifice their remaining customers in FiOS areas and areas with other competition in order to completely screw over their monopoly customers? It's not that Verizon is some shining star of being a good company, but you can bet they would slam Comcast hard in TV and radio ads if they ever pulled a stunt like that.


You do realize they have already done this in the past. Not just Comcast but most of the majors played games with Netflix until Netflix paid them.


----------



## Bigg

danm628 said:


> You do realize they have already done this in the past. Not just Comcast but most of the majors played games with Netflix until Netflix paid them.


Yes, but that was not actively slowing them down, it was letting the pipes get clogged up, letting their packets have some "accidents" and then asking for protection money to do the network upgrades that they should have done in the first place to avoid the packets having "accidents". You couldn't pay more to avoid the congestion, and off-peak it worked fine, it was a matter of a shakedown. That should have been prosecuted under RICO, but because Roberts is not Bonanno, Lucchese, Colombo, Genovese or Gambino, and there were no dead bodies, just dead packets, they could engage in racketeering all they want and not attract the attention of the feds.


----------



## HerronScott

morac said:


> HBO2 recording was 61 mins at 3.97 GB. That's 8.82 Mbps. I tried doing a "side-by-side" comparison, which wasn't that easy. The 720p recording was definitely "softer", but in many places it wasn't that noticeable. My TV is only 40" though. It was more noticeable in the wide open shots and frequently faces lacked details.


I was trying to compare some of the scenes that were in the intro that were from last year's final episode and as you said it was hard to flip back and forth on the same paused scene. I'll agree that on the ones that I was trying to compare it wasn't that noticeable as well on our 65" Panasonic plasma but those were mostly static scenes.

I didn't notice any artifacts that really stood out while watching it (certainly nothing that took me out of watching the show) and my wife didn't say anything (I didn't tell her about the change). I suspect it has to be more noticeable when there's more fast motion and brighter scenes. I agree that I got the impression of it being softer but could be my imagination. 

Scott


----------



## WVZR1

No CAPS here yet and this thought entered my mind but I've not investigated it yet. My TiVos are "Lifetime" and I believe that with just the Comcast "BASIC" you can retain your Cable-Card so you do locals/basics from Comcast so that the TiVo is of some value and "stream" the balance. If you wanted to do a "network" at the better resolution it's there(stream it) for you. I believe Comcast calls it "Limited Basic" and seems to have a good bit of content here locally, networks, PBS and some local independents all in HD. I guess you need to look into the "bundling" options but it seems practical. Sharing the "streaming" for some might work!


----------



## morac

I was watching a movie from HBO on Xfinity On Demand and there was a scene with lots of explosions that was a complete pixelated mess. I paused it and it was literally impossible to see what was going on in that scene. I switched to HBO GO and no pixelation. 

It's pretty obvious Comcast doesn't care anymore as they could at least encode their On Demand content so it's not bit rate starved. I'm not sure how HBO even allows them to get away with this. I decided to complain to HBO to see how they will respond.


----------



## keenanSR

morac said:


> I was watching a movie from HBO on Xfinity On Demand and there was a scene with lots of explosions that was a complete pixelated mess. I paused it and it was literally impossible to see what was going on in that scene. I switched to HBO GO and no pixelation.
> 
> It's pretty obvious Comcast doesn't care anymore as they could at least encode their On Demand content so it's not bit rate starved. I'm not sure how HBO even allows them to get away with this. I decided to complain to HBO to see how they will respond.


HBO probably cares to the extent that they continue to get their subscriber fees from Comcast, beyond that, probably not so much.

I use my TiVo for live sports, a few sitcoms and the occasional local channel content, everything else I use streaming services as the quality is much better. A bonus of this approach is that I've cut way back on my TV viewing, only watching content that I find very good and dropping the so-so stuff I used to watch, most of which is major broadcast net dramas. This gives me more free time to view TV content from various countries around the world and films, which too much TV watching has forced me to cut back on. So thanks for giving me back some of my life Comcast!


----------



## kbmb

So much better watching GoT tonight on HBO Go. We did have to switch from the Apple TV to the Roku after 25 mins or so as the stream got really low quality. Finished fine on Roku. 

I really wish I could find a way to cut down on comcast.....but with the promo I'm in, I would lose a ton for very little savings.


----------



## morac

kbmb said:


> So much better watching GoT tonight on HBO Go. We did have to switch from the Apple TV to the Roku after 25 mins or so as the stream got really low quality. Finished fine on Roku.
> 
> I really wish I could find a way to cut down on comcast.....but with the promo I'm in, I would lose a ton for very little savings.


I tried watching on Comcast, but gave up after about 5 minutes and switched to HBO Go.

Somewhat off topic, but I found the picture quality of HBO Go in general to be better on Roku than Apple TV. I'm not sure why that would be though. Last week I watched GoT on Apple TV and it looked marginally better than Comcast. This week I used Roku and it was a lot better.


----------



## kbmb

morac said:


> I tried watching on Comcast, but gave up after about 5 minutes and switched to HBO Go.
> 
> Somewhat off topic, but I found the picture quality of HBO Go in general to be better on Roku than Apple TV. I'm not sure why that would be though. Last week I watched GoT on Apple TV and it looked marginally better than Comcast. This week I used Roku and it was a lot better.


Wonder if maybe last week you weren't getting the full resolution on the Apple TV? Guessing even HBO's 720p is better than Comcast's 720p.

Our stream started great on the ATV (to our 4K 55" set).....but it would just degrade down to something like 420p suddenly. The first time that only lasted a couple seconds so we left it alone. Then within 5 minutes it degraded again and stayed that way. I didn't bother starting/stopping the ATV - just went over to Roku.


----------



## davidscarter

I unsubscribed from HBO & Starz from Comcast this afternoon. It was surprisingly easy to do through the Website; I just unchecked them from my list of added channels, clicked okay two or three times, and I was done. They were unauthorized from my cablecard within minutes. 

So now I have HBO & Showtime through Amazon, which I can watch via Amazon Prime (so on my FireTV, the Amazon Video app, or the Website). I can also authenticate to the Showtime Anytime app with Amazon (but not the HBO app). I'll likely drop both once GoT & Twin Peaks (respectively) are done. When American Gods returns, I'll subscribe to Starz via Amazon.


----------



## laria

davidscarter said:


> So now I have HBO & Showtime through Amazon, which I can watch via Amazon Prime (so on my FireTV, the Amazon Video app, or the Website). I can also authenticate to the Showtime Anytime app with Amazon (but not the HBO app). I'll likely drop both once GoT & Twin Peaks (respectively) are done. When American Gods returns, I'll subscribe to Starz via Amazon.


Are these on the Amazon app on the TiVo? If I sub to the channels through Amazon, I'll be able to watch them on the TiVo Amazon app?


----------



## keenanSR

laria said:


> Are these on the Amazon app on the TiVo? If I sub to the channels through Amazon, I'll be able to watch them on the TiVo Amazon app?


Yes, and in fact, it's how a lot of people get around Comcast's blocking of the standalone Starz app, just access it via Amazon Channels.

https://www.amazon.com/b/?ie=UTF8&filterId=OFFER_FILTER=SUBSCRIPTIONS&node=2858778011&ref=DVM_US_JK_PS_COACBRe1|c_168241665769_m_fjC6QaAU-dc_s__


----------



## laria

Wow, cool. I actually didn't know you could subscribe to channels on Amazon. Now that _Silicon Valley_ is done, I thought I would just uncheck HBO and save some money then add it back on Amazon and watch it through the TiVo app but... of course I went to my premium channels on Comcast and it says I don't have any additional channels, and HBO isn't in the list at all. :neutral:


----------



## kbmb

laria said:


> Wow, cool. I actually didn't know you could subscribe to channels on Amazon. Now that _Silicon Valley_ is done, I thought I would just uncheck HBO and save some money then add it back on Amazon and watch it through the TiVo app but... of course I went to my premium channels on Comcast and it says I don't have any additional channels, and HBO isn't in the list at all. :neutral:


That's what Comcast doesn't want you to do ;-) make it easy to unsubscribe.

If it's part of a bundle I don't think you can turn it off easily.


----------



## laria

kbmb said:


> That's what Comcast doesn't want you to do ;-) make it easy to unsubscribe.
> 
> If it's part of a bundle I don't think you can turn it off easily.


It's not part of a bundle. We just have Digital Starter and HBO.


----------



## davidscarter

laria said:


> It's not part of a bundle. We just have Digital Starter and HBO.


Huh. I originally added HBO & Starz through the Website, so maybe that's why I could remove them that way?

Strange and mysterious are the ways of Comcast...


----------



## laria

Maybe my account is just messed up.  I also can't access the "change my plan" page, it tells me to call CS. If I do that they're probably going to saddle me with some HD Technology fee that I'm supposed to be charged or something.  We aren't paying any HD fees for Digital Starter.


----------



## morac

davidscarter said:


> I unsubscribed from HBO & Starz from Comcast this afternoon. It was surprisingly easy to do through the Website; I just unchecked them from my list of added channels, clicked okay two or three times, and I was done. They were unauthorized from my cablecard within minutes.
> 
> So now I have HBO & Showtime through Amazon, which I can watch via Amazon Prime (so on my FireTV, the Amazon Video app, or the Website). I can also authenticate to the Showtime Anytime app with Amazon (but not the HBO app). I'll likely drop both once GoT & Twin Peaks (respectively) are done. When American Gods returns, I'll subscribe to Starz via Amazon.


FYI HBO is pulling it's shows off of Amazon Prime after 2018.

All HBO Shows Are Leaving Amazon Prime in 2018


----------



## moyekj

morac said:


> FYI HBO is pulling it's shows off of Amazon Prime after 2018.
> 
> All HBO Shows Are Leaving Amazon Prime in 2018


Well that really blows. Was really enjoying being able to subscribe for a month through Amazon to binge watch and then drop it. Sure as heck won't be subscribing to HBO any other way so HBO will be losing potential customers because of this change of heart.


----------



## keenanSR

morac said:


> FYI HBO is pulling it's shows off of Amazon Prime after 2018.
> 
> All HBO Shows Are Leaving Amazon Prime in 2018


I read that as saying you will no longer be able to watch HBO content for free with a Prime subscription but that the HBO app will still be sold and accessed through the Prime Video portal(Amazon Channels). Meaning nothing changes as far as new and current content goes, it's only the older library that was available without an HBO sub but was with a Prime sub.


----------



## alleybj

keenanSR said:


> Yes, and in fact, it's how a lot of people get around Comcast's blocking of the standalone Starz app, just access it via Amazon Channels.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/b/?ie=UTF8&filterId=OFFER_FILTER=SUBSCRIPTIONS&node=2858778011&ref=DVM_US_JK_PS_COACBRe1|c_168241665769_m_fjC6QaAU-dc_s__


Are you saying that if you subscribe to Starz on Comcast you can watch it on Amazon, or are you saying that people delete it from their Comcast subscriptions and subscribe through Amazon? If the former, how do you do it? thanks


----------



## moyekj

keenanSR said:


> I read that as saying you will no longer be able to watch HBO content for free with a Prime subscription but that the HBO app will still be sold and accessed through the Prime Video portal(Amazon Channels). Meaning nothing changes as far as new and current content goes, it's only the older library that was available without an HBO sub but was with a Prime sub.


I really hope that's the case. I don't care about the "free" HBO content via Amazon as long as one can still subscribe to HBO on monthly basis.


----------



## moyekj

alleybj said:


> Are you saying that if you subscribe to Starz on Comcast you can watch it on Amazon, or are you saying that people delete it from their Comcast subscriptions and subscribe through Amazon? If the former, how do you do it? thanks


Through Amazon Prime you can subscribe. Login to your Amazon account and search for "starz subscription". You can subscribe month to month via Amazon and don't need to have Starz in your Comcast lineup. Once subscribed in Amazon you can access all the Starz content via Amazon App. Same goes for HBO and Encore if you subscribe to those via Amazon. Much better option than subscribing through cable, and you get higher quality video to boot compared to what cable companies spew out, especially Comcast.


----------



## keenanSR

alleybj said:


> Are you saying that if you subscribe to Starz on Comcast you can watch it on Amazon, or are you saying that people delete it from their Comcast subscriptions and subscribe through Amazon? If the former, how do you do it? thanks


Unless something has changed, Comcast has been blocking the stand alone Starz app on their Internet service. Since the quality on the app is far better than what's on the regular linear channel many folks have wanted to drop their linear channel subscription and go with the app, but they couldn't because it was blocked. If you sign up for the Starz app through Amazon Channels it won't be blocked, Comcast probably sees it as normal Amazon video traffic.

Given the lousy picture quality and expensive pricing for premium channels on Comcast, I'm not sure why anyone would want to go that route instead of getting a lower price and much better quality via the networks Internet apps.

To be clear, no, if you subscribe to Starz on Comcast you cannot watch Starz content on Amazon. You can if you buy the service on Amazon, but you can't buy the service through the open Internet as Comcast blocks it.

I hope that makes sense and answers your question.


----------



## keenanSR

moyekj said:


> I really hope that's the case. I don't care about the "free" HBO content via Amazon as long as one can still subscribe to HBO on monthly basis.


Same here, I don't care about the free stuff either, if it disappeared tomorrow I wouldn't even notice, all I care about is being able to subscribe to HBO via the Amazon Channel service.


----------



## moyekj

keenanSR said:


> Same here, I don't care about the free stuff either, if it disappeared tomorrow I wouldn't even notice, all I care about is being able to subscribe to HBO via the Amazon Channel service.


If the "Update" section of the link below is right, Amazon Channels is not losing HBO, it's just the "free" HBO content on Prime going away. Haven't yet found an official confirmation of that via Amazon though.
Amazon Prime subscribers will lose the ability to stream HBO series in 2018 (update)


----------



## keenanSR

moyekj said:


> If the "Update" section of the link below is right, Amazon Channels is not losing HBO, it's just the "free" HBO content on Prime going away. Haven't yet found an official confirmation of that via Amazon though.
> Amazon Prime subscribers will lose the ability to stream HBO series in 2018 (update)


Exactly, basically what I said above, but thanks for confirming.


----------



## chiguy50

keenanSR said:


> Given the lousy picture quality and expensive pricing for premium channels on Comcast, I'm not sure why anyone would want to go that route instead of getting a lower price and much better quality via the networks Internet apps.


I agree if you are talking strictly about the full retail price on Comcast's published rate chart. However, you can frequently obtain very attractive discount pricing for add-on premium channels (not to mention bundling offers) if you know how to go about it. Right now I am paying $l.00 p.m. each for SHO and Cinemax (with a 24-month commitment) and am getting HBO for free (for nine months). Previously I had that same $1.00 p.m. 24-month contract for HBO and STARZ until it expired a couple of weeks ago. Granted, the PQ isn't always the best (although it's usually at least acceptable), but the pricing is unbeatable and makes the signal degradation a lot less painful.


----------



## WVZR1

With the latest HD FEE "add on" it would seem that there should be some "requirement" to deliver us a signal/resolution that is equal to that of an OTA antenna would provide us for at least the NETWORKS. The PREMIUM CHANNELS I'd think is sorta self explanatory "PREMIUM". I stopped by a Comcast Service Office here and a fellow was giving them a damn "ear full" regarding the FEE.

Someone here local mentioned that with their BASIC or LIMITED BASIC they didn't have that HD FEE but I haven't seen them since the new billing presentation. They mentioned that since it's just Networks, PBS and all are available OTA they weren't charged. If that were fact I'd consider maybe the BASIC because Cable-Cards are still available, stream maybe my other needs and use maybe the later Cloud DVR. The Cloud DVR situation should certainly improve.

Cable - TiVo is damn convenient but can't be said to be worth the price.

I've no contract and no freebies - after reading this thread I might have to test the waters for some of the $1 specials and maybe do a contract. I own my modem and surprisingly that's not been an issue yet, I've got the TM822G and it's ID'd on my devices as "RETAIL" but they certainly told me it wasn't possible. It only had ??? for a long while but after I guess a couple Comcast updates it finally picked up the "RETAIL" TAG.


----------



## keenanSR

chiguy50 said:


> I agree if you are talking strictly about the full retail price on Comcast's published rate chart. However, you can frequently obtain very attractive discount pricing for add-on premium channels (not to mention bundling offers) if you know how to go about it. Right now I am paying $l.00 p.m. each for SHO and Cinemax (with a 24-month commitment) and am getting HBO for free (for nine months). Previously I had that same $1.00 p.m. 24-month contract for HBO and STARZ until it expired a couple of weeks ago. Granted, the PQ isn't always the best (although it's usually at least acceptable), but the pricing is unbeatable and makes the signal degradation a lot less painful.


I usually got great deals too, like free HBO for a year, Showtime at $5 per mo for 6 mos and so on, but when Comcast decided to crap all over the PQ I wouldn't care if they gave it to me for free. Any show I watch on those networks I want to see it in the very best quality available, and that certainly is not via Comcast's cable TV. I may pay a bit more now(than the deals I would get, I never paid full price), but it's more than worth it to me.

Also, many people are paying at or near full price when they have bundles that include those channels, they just don't realize it as it's not broken out line by line.


----------



## laria

WVZR1 said:


> Someone here local mentioned that with their BASIC or LIMITED BASIC they didn't have that HD FEE but I haven't seen them since the new billing presentation. They mentioned that since it's just Networks, PBS and all are available OTA they weren't charged.


I was not the OP, but can confirm that I am still not being charged any HD fees for Digital Starter. It's not just networks/PBS/OTA. We get lots of non-OTA channels. I don't know if it's a glitch or intentional.


----------



## morac

laria said:


> I was not the OP, but can confirm that I am still not being charged any HD fees for Digital Starter. It's not just networks/PBS/OTA. We get lots of non-OTA channels. I don't know if it's a glitch or intentional.


If you don't rent a box you shouldn't be being charged HD fees. Comcast has to provide HD to all cablecard users.


----------



## laria

morac said:


> If you don't rent a box you shouldn't be being charged HD fees. Comcast has to provide HD to all cablecard users.


Ah ok, I was worried that it was just some fee that they forgot to charge me because I didn't have a box, not that I shouldn't be charged it.


----------



## morac

laria said:


> Ah ok, I was worried that it was just some fee that they forgot to charge me because I didn't have a box, not that I shouldn't be charged it.


Don't get me wrong, they'll try to charge you the first chance they get, but legally they need to provide HD channels whether you pay it or not. It took me several years to get the charge removed off my bill.


----------



## WVZR1

laria said:


> I was not the OP, but can confirm that I am still not being charged any HD fees for Digital Starter. It's not just networks/PBS/OTA. We get lots of non-OTA channels. I don't know if it's a glitch or intentional.


When I mentioned "here" I meant "local" to me. I need to maybe recall who and ask again. The new billing/account #'s haven't maybe been through "the wash" yet so who knows. If you ask questions of Comcast it can usually result in an increase of some sort.


----------



## kbmb

WVZR1 said:


> When I mentioned "here" I meant "local" to me. I need to maybe recall who and ask again. The new billing/account #'s haven't maybe been through "the wash" yet so who knows. If you ask questions of Comcast it can usually result in an increase of some sort.


Yup last year I got put into a new bundle to save money...turns out I wasn't being charged some broadcast fee at the time so they gladly added it to my account ;-)


----------



## HerronScott

Comcast has started to move our HD channels to MPEG4 as I reported above. Interestingly I couldn't find any references now to the "HD Enhanced" program on their website and it looks like they are calling it an Equipment Update program now. The original post in their support forum that was titled "HD Enhanced Program" even got changed to "HD Equipment Swap Program (MPEG 4)"



Code:


http://forums.xfinity.com/t5/XfinityTV-and-Equipment/HD-Enhanced-Program/td-p/2577643

HD Equipment Swap Program (MPEG 4) - Xfinity Help and Support Forums

I guess it was pretty hard to claim it's "enhanced" HD...

Scott


----------



## Bigg

HerronScott said:


> I guess it was pretty hard to claim it's "enhanced" HD...


It's enhanced to allow Comcast cram as many channels as possible, and allow people to hoard as many shows as possible on their tiny 500GB DVRs.


----------



## morac

I noticed today that all my channels converted over on August 2.

I'm also getting audio dropouts on Discovery Family HD (1714) now. The audio drops out at least once every few seconds, many times more. I'm only seeing that on one channel, but is this a possible side effect of the switchover to 720p H.264? I wouldn't think it would be since the audio is still AC3, but the timing is suspect. Of course Comcast is saying it's a signal problem and want to schedule a tech.


----------



## HerronScott

morac said:


> I noticed today that all my channels converted over on August 2.
> 
> I'm also getting audio dropouts on Discovery Family HD (1714) now. The audio drops out at least once every few seconds, many times more. I'm only seeing that on one channel, but is this a possible side effect of the switchover to 720p H.264? I wouldn't think it would be since the audio is still AC3, but the timing is suspect. Of course Comcast is saying it's a signal problem and want to schedule a tech.


How did you know the date?

I'm not seeing this on this channel here in VA with audio feed to Onkyo receiver via Toslink.

Scott


----------



## morac

HerronScott said:


> How did you know the date?
> 
> I'm not seeing this on this channel here in VA with audio feed to Onkyo receiver via Toslink.
> 
> Scott


I checked my suggestions folder and saw that recordings on Aug 1 were 1080i and after that they were 720p.


----------



## HerronScott

morac said:


> I checked my suggestions folder and saw that recordings on Aug 1 were 1080i and after that they were 720p.


Ah, they did a few channels around 7/16 here as HBO was moved (Game of Thrones) but based on Suggestions it looks like the rest moved on 7/24 (checking size and bitrate reported in kmttg).

Scott


----------



## randian

I would dump Comcast if I could find a reasonable method of replacing all the channels I watch, and more importantly enabling watching at my leisure. I never ever watch live, so services like Sling are useless. Having to subscribe to a different service and use a different app for every network (one for ABC, one for CBS, etc, the same for the cable channels) is a pain too. Comcast PQ is awful but it's one stop shopping. Bandwidth caps would like become a problem too if I streamed all my TV content.


----------



## timstack8969

Noticed recently with Sony Bravia LCD HDTV I see a "White Line" on certain channels at the top left hand portion of the screen. Comcast is using MPEG-4 on my NJ system. I am using Automatic detection from Tivo Bolt (1080p). Just wondering if this White Line is being caused by Comcast??? Should I be using 720P? Also using Full Pixel doesn't go away when changing TV settings to Normal, or -1 or -2.


----------



## keenanSR

randian said:


> I would dump Comcast if I could find a reasonable method of replacing all the channels I watch, and more importantly enabling watching at my leisure. I never ever watch live, so services like Sling are useless. Having to subscribe to a different service and use a different app for every network (one for ABC, one for CBS, etc, the same for the cable channels) is a pain too. Comcast PQ is awful but it's one stop shopping. Bandwidth caps would like become a problem too if I streamed all my TV content.


Depending on where you live one of the streaming services might have what you need. The below-linked site is a pretty good tool to compare the available services.

Suppose... you could design your perfect TV service


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

randian said:


> I would dump Comcast if I could find a reasonable method of replacing all the channels I watch, and more importantly enabling watching at my leisure. I never ever watch live, so services like Sling are useless. Having to subscribe to a different service and use a different app for every network (one for ABC, one for CBS, etc, the same for the cable channels) is a pain too. Comcast PQ is awful but it's one stop shopping. Bandwidth caps would like become a problem too if I streamed all my TV content.


I am in the same boat as you but am saying heck with it, ordered an antenna today and will be hooking it up to my TV tomorrow to see what kind of reception I get. If its good Comcast will get kicked to the curb, I'll just watch less TV including sports and cable news.


----------



## randian

keenanSR said:


> Depending on where you live one of the streaming services might have what you need. The below-linked site is a pretty good tool to compare the available services.
> 
> Suppose... you could design your perfect TV service


I'll check it out. Lack of commercial skipping/avoidance seems to be a problem with the streaming services. I'll bet streaming costs significantly more than Comcast too, unfortunately, since the price of ala-carte Internet service from Comcast is an ever-increasing percentage of the price of an Internet/TV bundle (presumably to forestall cord-cutting). I don't watch a huge number of channels, but I regularly watch the Big 3, Syfy, FX, AMC, TNT, USA Network, BBCA, Freeform, NBCSN (Formula 1), and the Olympic Channel (Track and Field, Pro Volleyball). I'd watch BeIN Sports for MotoGP if it wasn't available only in SD on Comcast.

On further review, it looks like the solutions recommended by supppose.tv that include the above channels would be 75-130% more expensive than my current Comcast Internet/TV bundle. Actually, since the only packages that matched on support.tv were from Dish/DirectTV I'm not sure they're streaming at all. Since I live in South Florida I'm not sure how suitable satellite dish services are given the frequent heavy rainclouds.


----------



## Bigg

Lots of people in South Florida have satellite, but it is significantly more expensive than Comcast if you don't have another option available for broadband. The quality is excellent, and they have more HD content, but the price is very steep, especially compared to owning your own TiVos on cable.


----------



## morac

After watching last night's GoT on HBO Go, today I figured I'd check out how it looks on Comcast and well I'll let this comparison photo speak for itself. I wanted to do an apple to apple comparison by taking screen shots on my iPad with the TiVo and HBO Go app, but the HBO Go app somehow prevents that. Instead I held up my iPad playing GoT paused at the same spot as the TV. The iPad Air 2 is about 2.5 feet away and the 40" 1080p Sony TV is about 8 feet. Some of the blurriness is a result of taking a photo of a bright object in a dark room, but it should apply equally to both images.

Sorry for the large size, but I didn't want to ruin it by shrinking.


----------



## danm628

morac said:


> After watching last night's GoT on HBO Go, today I figured I'd check out how it looks on Comcast and well I'll let this comparison photo speak for itself. I wanted to do an apple to apple comparison by taking screen shots on my iPad with the TiVo and HBO Go app, but the HBO Go app somehow prevents that. Instead I help up my iPad playing GoT paused at the same spot as the TV. The iPad is about arms length away and the 40" TV is about 8 feet. Some of the blurriness is a result of taking a photo of a bright object in a dark room, but it should apply equally to both images.
> 
> Sorry for the large size, but I didn't want to ruin it by shrinking.


Comcast thinks most people won't notice.


----------



## morac

danm628 said:


> Comcast thinks most people won't notice.


Not sure how considering no one has any facial features on Comcast's version.

The only benefit of Comcast is I can now watch TV without my glasses as it doesn't make a difference.

Edit:

I posted the same image to Twitter and @ComcastCare reached out to me saying he saw the difference and that there must be something wrong with my service. I'm guessing they don't train their support on this kind of stuff.

Does anyone know if the channels through X1 are also degraded?


----------



## danm628

morac said:


> Not sure how considering no one has any facial features on Comcast's version.
> 
> The only benefit of Comcast is I can now watch TV without my glasses as it doesn't make a difference.
> 
> Edit:
> 
> I posted the same image to Twitter and @ComcastCare reached out to me saying he saw the difference and that there must be something wrong with my service. I'm guessing they don't train their support on this kind of stuff.
> 
> Does anyone know if the channels through X1 are also degraded?


All channels are degraded including X1.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> Not sure how considering no one has any facial features on Comcast's version.
> 
> The only benefit of Comcast is I can now watch TV without my glasses as it doesn't make a difference.
> 
> Edit:
> 
> I posted the same image to Twitter and @ComcastCare reached out to me saying he saw the difference and that there must be something wrong with my service. I'm guessing they don't train their support on this kind of stuff.
> 
> Does anyone know if the channels through X1 are also degraded?


That's pretty crazy that people who work for Comcast can't see this on their own, must have an office full of Mr. Magoos.


----------



## danm628

PSU_Sudzi said:


> That's pretty crazy that people who work for Comcast can't see this on their own, must have an office full of Mr. Magoos.


Scripts. They read a script.

Or they only have SS TVs.


----------



## BillyClyde

danm628 said:


> Scripts. They read a script.
> 
> *Or they only have SS TVs.*


They only have Nazi TVs?!?!


----------



## NorthAlabama

PSU_Sudzi said:


> That's pretty crazy that people who work for Comcast can't see this on their own, must have an office full of Mr. Magoos.


this statement assumes comcast employees actually care about the quality of service, at any level, and you know what they say about assumptions...


----------



## morac

For anyone interested I decided to do a "side-by-side" comparison video of Comcast and HBO Go (Roku). It's not ideal since I had to film it with my iPhone as HBO Go has no good way of outputting video, but it should be good enough to prove a point.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> For anyone interested I decided to do a "side-by-side" comparison video of Comcast and HBO Go (Roku). It's not ideal since I had to film it with my iPhone as HBO Go has no good way of outputting video, but it should be good enough to prove a point.


I think the distinction is hard to make in the video probably due to iPhone limitations but my eyes have seen the inglory of the coming of H264 firsthand.


----------



## Bigg

It's pretty sad that Comcast took H.264, which works a LOT better than MPEG-2, and managed to go so far compressing it as to not just wipe out the advantages of H.264, but actually make it look far worse than their MPEG-2 programming. If they had stat muxed 6 or 7 per QAM, we'd all be excited that channels look better AND take up less than half the space on our TiVos.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

Ordered the Mayweather McGregor fight tonight and just checked out the channel and it's broadcast in 1080i so I guess they still haven't converted those PPV channels yet along with locals.


----------



## randian

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Ordered the Mayweather McGregor fight tonight and just checked out the channel and it's broadcast in 1080i so I guess they still haven't converted those PPV channels yet along with locals.


The Track and Field World Championships were allegedly in 1080i according to my TiVo but the smearing on the faces of the runners makes it look like cheap DVD quality at best. Formula 1 qualifying at Spa yesterday also in 1080i, but the edges of sign lettering and other objects looks jagged and nothing looks crisp and clear.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

randian said:


> The Track and Field World Championships were allegedly in 1080i according to my TiVo but the smearing on the faces of the runners makes it look like cheap DVD quality at best. Formula 1 qualifying at Spa yesterday also in 1080i, but the edges of sign lettering and other objects looks jagged and nothing looks crisp and clear.


The 1080i on this channel was crystal clear as it used to be before the transition.


----------



## WVZR1

I've seen terrible Comcast as well as Dish and D* on friends 4K newer equipment. Friends with older equipment don't seem to have the issues. I have a 64" 1080P Plasma and my Comcast looks better than most every ones 4K equipment with anything. I don't use any of the premiums but I have streamed some NBC Sports in an attempt to compare and I'm fine with what I've got. I actually cancelled an already paid for OLED 4K since most viewing is cable or easily streamed in appropriate resolutions.

randian - mentioned F1 Spa qualifying and I believe there were transmission issues from the feed. I didn't watch the T&FWC.

If you spend your time looking for issues I doubt you enjoy the content!

Is there different "head-end" delivery policies throughout the country or is everyone supposedly getting the "lesser quality"?


----------



## lessd

WVZR1 said:


> I've seen terrible Comcast as well as Dish and D* on friends 4K newer equipment. Friends with older equipment don't seem to have the issues. I have a 64" 1080P Plasma and my Comcast looks better than most every ones 4K equipment with anything. I don't use any of the premiums but I have streamed some NBC Sports in an attempt to compare and I'm fine with what I've got. I actually cancelled an already paid for OLED 4K since most viewing is cable or easily streamed in appropriate resolutions.
> 
> randian - mentioned F1 Spa qualifying and I believe there were transmission issues from the feed. I didn't watch the T&FWC.
> 
> If you spend your time looking for issues I doubt you enjoy the content!
> 
> Is there different "head-end" delivery policies throughout the country or is everyone supposedly getting the "lesser quality"?


Without this Forum (and looking at my TVs resolution) I would not have known that my Comcast picture has gone to 720P on most channels (ABC FOX and ESPN have always been on 720P) and I have a 1080P 80" HDTV and sit 10' from that TV. I guess your own eyesight may play a roll in your ability to notice 1080i or 720P or how much compression is being done. My BD player sends out a 1080P/24 at 30Mb/s, my DVD gives a picture at about 1.8Mb/s. I get about 12Mbps on CBS and 14.6 Mbps on ABC, but the way I can tell that is from *Kmttg* as I don't notice that difference myself. Some less watched Comcast channels are down to 4 Mbps IE. *The Americans*, on FXHD.


----------



## morac

lessd said:


> Without this Forum (and looking at my TVs resolution) I would not have known that my Comcast picture has gone to 720P on most channels (ABC FOX and ESPN have always been on 720P) and I have a 1080P 80" HDTV and sit 10' from that TV. I guess your own eyesight may play a roll in your ability to notice 1080i or 720P or how much compression is being done. My BD player sends out a 1080P/24 at 30Mb/s, my DVD gives a picture at about 1.8Mb/s. I get about 12Mbps on CBS and 14.6 Mbps on ABC, but the way I can tell that is from *Kmttg* as I don't notice that difference myself. Some less watched Comcast channels are down to 4 Mbps IE. *The Americans*, on FXHD.


It really depends on what you watch. If you watch mostly talking heads with very little motion, the drop in quality is barely noticeable. It's a lot more noticeable on scenes with a lot of action. Unlike previously though were the picture would pixelate horribly, the new compression scheme applies some kind of blur filter prior to compression so you end up with a picture lacking details. This is very easy to see when watching something with a fast pan left or right. You get people missing faces.


----------



## randian

morac said:


> Unlike previously though were the picture would pixelate horribly, the new compression scheme applies some kind of blur filter prior to compression so you end up with a picture lacking details. This is very easy to see when watching something with a fast pan left or right. You get people missing faces.


That explains the smeared faces I'm seeing.


----------



## lessd

morac said:


> It really depends on what you watch. If you watch mostly talking heads with very little motion, the drop in quality is barely noticeable. It's a lot more noticeable on scenes with a lot of action. Unlike previously though were the picture would pixelate horribly, the new compression scheme applies some kind of blur filter prior to compression so you end up with a picture lacking details. This is very easy to see when watching something with a fast pan left or right. You get people missing faces.


Good point, I will watch for that.


----------



## kbmb

lessd said:


> Without this Forum (and looking at my TVs resolution) I would not have known that my Comcast picture has gone to 720P on most channels (ABC FOX and ESPN have always been on 720P) and I have a 1080P 80" HDTV and sit 10' from that TV. I guess your own eyesight may play a roll in your ability to notice 1080i or 720P or how much compression is being done. My BD player sends out a 1080P/24 at 30Mb/s, my DVD gives a picture at about 1.8Mb/s. I get about 12Mbps on CBS and 14.6 Mbps on ABC, but the way I can tell that is from *Kmttg* as I don't notice that difference myself. Some less watched Comcast channels are down to 4 Mbps IE. *The Americans*, on FXHD.


For those of us with a 4K set, it can look pretty bad, since the TV has to upscale the signal to native 4K....when that signal is overcompressed garbage, the 4K set makes it look even worse. Problem is it doesn't have to look like this. A crisp 1080p stream from Hulu or HBO Go will display fine.

For me, even the local channels that are still 1080i are compresssed to the point that a Hulu stream looks 10x better on my set.


----------



## chiguy50

kbmb said:


> For those of us with a 4K set, it can look pretty bad, since the TV has to upscale the signal to native 4K....when that signal is overcompressed garbage, the 4K set makes it look even worse. Problem is it doesn't have to look like this. A crisp 1080p stream from Hulu or HBO Go will display fine.
> 
> For me, even the local channels that are still 1080i are compresssed to the point that a Hulu stream looks 10x better on my set.


I have the same experience. The identical Comcast video that almost looks like SD on my 65" 4K set is sharply detailed on my 55" HD set w/Darbee processing.


----------



## randian

kbmb said:


> For those of us with a 4K set, it can look pretty bad, since the TV has to upscale the signal to native 4K....when that signal is overcompressed garbage, the 4K set makes it look even worse. Problem is it doesn't have to look like this. A crisp 1080p stream from Hulu or HBO Go will display fine.


I'm watching on an LG 65C7 OLED. I've been streaming Hunted (this show's failure to get a second season was criminal) using the built-in Amazon app and it looks way better than anything my TiVo has been recording. Amazon 4k streaming content (I recommend Racing Is Everything) looks great too.


----------



## kbmb

randian said:


> I'm watching on an LG 65C7 OLED. I've been streaming Hunted (this show's failure to get a second season was criminal) using the built-in Amazon app and it looks way better than anything my TiVo has been recording. Amazon 4k streaming content (I recommend Racing Is Everything) looks great too.


Even though we have Comcast, we subscribe to Hulu with no commercials just to get as many shows as possible in a decent quality. No doubt 4K content is going to look great, but with the crap signal we get from Comcast we've tried to move as much as possible to streaming.


----------



## TostitoBandito

Just checking in to say that my Comcast in the Seattle/Western Washington area still looks terrible. The quality of these super-compressed 720p channels is on par with an SD 480p DVD as it appears on my 1080p TV, if not worse. Sad that in 2017 my HD cable image quality is markedly worse than it was in 2006. All the 1080p content from streaming services looks markedly better than anything on Comcast (it was once the opposite).

Is there an endgame to this? Are they at some point going to either switch to IPTV, or use this regained bandwidth to increase quality? I'm guessing no since probably 90% of their customers don't care or notice.


----------



## Gold51

When I first put up antennas for OTA, I immediately noticed how much better the TV shows looked than they did on Comcast.


----------



## chiguy50

TostitoBandito said:


> Just checking in to say that my Comcast in the Seattle/Western Washington area still looks terrible. The quality of these super-compressed 720p channels is on par with an SD 480p DVD as it appears on my 1080p TV, if not worse. Sad that in 2017 my HD cable image quality is markedly worse than it was in 2006. All the 1080p content from streaming services looks markedly better than anything on Comcast (it was once the opposite).
> 
> Is there an endgame to this? *Are they at some point going to either switch to IPTV, or use this regained bandwidth to increase quality?* I'm guessing no since probably 90% of their customers don't care or notice.


There is almost no chance whatsoever that Comcast will do the latter, but they are definitely transitioning their video programming to IPTV. The only real question IMHO is the timing and how they will handle the legacy equipment (impacting on us TiVo users). The one thing you can be sure of is that they will do whatever they believe will best feed their bottom line--and catering to videophiles is unlikely to enter into that picture (double entendre intended).


----------



## TostitoBandito

Well IPTV would be great. RF is the dark ages at this point. In theory authentication becomes just as easy as with any streaming service (assuming they don't deliberately lock it out of third party hardware), and quality will automatically be better than the crap they broadcast.


----------



## davidmin

I switched back to D* after several years with Comcast due to the poor PQ. The motion blur was unacceptable, and even closeups were a horror show. I would say that the locals are still slightly better on Comcast (they hadn't been ultracompressed yet, last I checked), but the other channels are much better on D*. Streaming looks best of all, but on demand streaming through either Comcast or D* is just OK. I would switch back if I could get a good IPTV product, but if Comcast is going to force a cloud DVR I doubt that it would be equivalent to Tivo (ff commercials, no expiration dates).


----------



## moyekj

TostitoBandito said:


> Well IPTV would be great. RF is the dark ages at this point. In theory authentication becomes just as easy as with any streaming service (assuming they don't deliberately lock it out of third party hardware), and quality will automatically be better than the crap they broadcast.


And trick play (jump forwards/backwards, FF, REW, etc) will be laggy as heck just like it is with other streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.


----------



## morac

TostitoBandito said:


> Well IPTV would be great. RF is the dark ages at this point. In theory authentication becomes just as easy as with any streaming service (assuming they don't deliberately lock it out of third party hardware), and quality will automatically be better than the crap they broadcast.


There's no guarantee that quality will be better, since the picture quality of On Demand and Roku streaming looks just as bad as it does over RF broadcast.

At some point though Comcast will have to increase the quality as currently streaming services like YouTube TV, Hulu, etc look much better than Comcast.


----------



## Bigg

davidmin said:


> I switched back to D* after several years with Comcast due to the poor PQ. The motion blur was unacceptable, and even closeups were a horror show. I would say that the locals are still slightly better on Comcast (they hadn't been ultracompressed yet, last I checked), but the other channels are much better on D*. Streaming looks best of all, but on demand streaming through either Comcast or D* is just OK. I would switch back if I could get a good IPTV product, but if Comcast is going to force a cloud DVR I doubt that it would be equivalent to Tivo (ff commercials, no expiration dates).


Comcast does not re-compress locals, DirecTV does in order to get them into MPEG-4. So locals generally won't be as good on DirecTV, although they can be if DirecTV gets a direct fiber feed that bypasses the MPEG-2 OTA encoding. Comcast's cable channel quality is utterly pathetic, however, as they lack enough bandwidth, stat muxing, and variable field encoding (not sure if that's the right term, but encoding based on what part of the picture on the screen is being encoded).



morac said:


> There's no guarantee that quality will be better, since the picture quality of On Demand and Roku streaming looks just as bad as it does over RF broadcast.
> 
> At some point though Comcast will have to increase the quality as currently streaming services like YouTube TV, Hulu, etc look much better than Comcast.


Or maybe they'd rather just be an ISP and not pay for TV content, and then run a mafia-style racket like they did with Netflix to the streaming providers so that instead of paying in one way and out another, they get paid in both ways.


----------



## kbmb

Bigg said:


> Comcast does not re-compress locals


Just curious then as to why my locals look so bad compared to something like Hulu? I have a 4K set and even though the Comcast locals have the higher bitrate and are still 1080i, they don't look anywhere as good as Hulu. They are soft.

Cable channels are just garbage. Every time i view hbo I laugh a little at how bad the picture is.


----------



## morac

Bigg said:


> Or maybe they'd rather just be an ISP and not pay for TV content, and then run a mafia-style racket like they did with Netflix to the streaming providers so that instead of paying in one way and out another, they get paid in both ways.


Comcast wants to be everything. They already one NBC Universal and news came out yesterday that they are negotiating to buy 20th Century Fox. At the rate things are going Comcast will be able to just degrade the channel quality at the source so it looks the same everywhere.


----------



## Heinrich

It's also very noticeable on very dark shows - something like Twin Peaks Season 3. With the dark backgrounds, night scenes, the compression was so obvious and ugly that it completely ruined scenes.


----------



## slowbiscuit

moyekj said:


> And trick play (jump forwards/backwards, FF, REW, etc) will be laggy as heck just like it is with other streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.


Yep with no comskip etc. IPTV is going to suck, massively, and Tivo folks are going to wish that we had full control back. Just a matter of time now until we lose it all.


----------



## murgatroyd

Late to the party, but does anyone get The Olympic Channel? Here we are in the run-up to the Olympics, and I'm getting tons of motion blur/smearing. I hate Comcast and NBC so much right now.

Where can you find out the native resolution of the different channels? What can I look for, numbers-wise, as a sign that they're downconverting the signal?


----------



## JoeKustra

murgatroyd said:


> Late to the party, but does anyone get The Olympic Channel? Here we are in the run-up to the Olympics, and I'm getting tons of motion blur/smearing. I hate Comcast and NBC so much right now.
> Where can you find out the native resolution of the different channels? What can I look for, numbers-wise, as a sign that they're downconverting the signal?


The resolution of the incoming channel is displayed with the Info button. It's on the right. System Information for a channel displays MPEG-2 or H.264. Audio of AC3 is Dolby (2.0 or 5.1 or DD EX).


----------



## murgatroyd

Thanks, Joe! The trouble with all this stuff -- I learn it, I understand it, and then I forget it because I don't use the info all the time.

For example -- somehow it got stuck in my head that my TV only does 720p. I wasn't following this thread because I thought it didn't matter to me. Now I'm trying to figure out where I saw that.

Specs - LED TV UN22F5000AF | Samsung TVs
Samsung UNF5000 Specs

Anyway, checking with the info button, the Roamio says The Olympic channel is 720p. Wikipedia says it's supposed to be 1080i.

Olympic Channel - Wikipedia

Just checked to see what the Roamio was sending to the TV and it's set to adjust automatically.


----------



## JoeKustra

murgatroyd said:


> Thanks, Joe! The trouble with all this stuff -- I learn it, I understand it, and then I forget it because I don't use the info all the time. Just checked to see what the Roamio was sending to the TV and it's set to adjust automatically.


 The new (to Roamio) Choose Video Resolutions menu is funny. The first entry of "Auto" also has a panel to the right showing you what "Auto" means. Mine says 1080i and probably most 1080p TVs say that. Notice there is a (preferred) after 1080i (or 720p for some smaller sets). My TV supports 1080p, but I set my TiVo to output 1080i and 1080p 24/25fps for (pass-through), which is streaming only.

I don't get the Olympic Channel on my feed. I also see it's not offered on my Roku 3, but I can get NBC Sports.

I bought an LG 24LF4820 for my kitchen/Mini since it supports 1080p. No DD 5.1 though.


----------



## Bigg

kbmb said:


> Just curious then as to why my locals look so bad compared to something like Hulu? I have a 4K set and even though the Comcast locals have the higher bitrate and are still 1080i, they don't look anywhere as good as Hulu. They are soft.
> 
> Cable channels are just garbage. Every time i view hbo I laugh a little at how bad the picture is.


Hulu is offline encoded for streaming, so you can't compare to that. Compare to your local OTA affiliate, it's usually exactly the same, although an affiliate could send a different mux to Comcast via fiber than they use OTA if they really wanted to. It also depends on the market and how many subchannels they have, so they likely look lousy via OTA in your market as well.

I don't know about Portland, but if you are in Boston, then you've got some weird stuff going on, as there are a couple of channels that have two HD channels on one transmitter, plus some subchannels, I believe NBC Boston is still sharing with Telemundo because they had to find somewhere to put it. The Boston market is very strange. That all has nothing to do with Comcast, they just pass the garbage on without further re-processing. WMUR-DT is also broadcasting in 1080i, which is even weirder, not sure about the ABC in Boston proper?



morac said:


> Comcast wants to be everything. They already one NBC Universal and news came out yesterday that they are negotiating to buy 20th Century Fox. At the rate things are going Comcast will be able to just degrade the channel quality at the source so it looks the same everywhere.


It's going to get weird when Tokyo comes around, and NBC is sending DirecTV a 2160p feed at a very high bitrate via satellite that is downrezzed from the master 4320p Super Hi-Vision feed, and Comcast is limited to 720p with ridiculous compression.



murgatroyd said:


> Where can you find out the native resolution of the different channels? What can I look for, numbers-wise, as a sign that they're downconverting the signal?


ABC and FOX owned channels, plus History Channel are 720p.
CBS, NBC, Viacom, Scripps, and Discovery owned channels are 1080i

That should cover about 90% of the major channels out there. PBS is usually 1080i AFAIK.


----------



## kbmb

Bigg said:


> Hulu is offline encoded for streaming, so you can't compare to that. Compare to your local OTA affiliate, it's usually exactly the same, although an affiliate could send a different mux to Comcast via fiber than they use OTA if they really wanted to. It also depends on the market and how many subchannels they have, so they likely look lousy via OTA in your market as well.
> 
> I don't know about Portland, but if you are in Boston, then you've got some weird stuff going on, as there are a couple of channels that have two HD channels on one transmitter, plus some subchannels, I believe NBC Boston is still sharing with Telemundo because they had to find somewhere to put it. The Boston market is very strange. That all has nothing to do with Comcast, they just pass the garbage on without further re-processing. WMUR-DT is also broadcasting in 1080i, which is even weirder, not sure about the ABC in Boston proper?


Thanks for the info. Well whatever Hulu is doing....they are doing it right  We watch all our ABC and FOX from Hulu just so we get a nice clear picture. I'd love to get CBS On Demand via Hulu, but it seems you have to subscribe to their TV package to get it. We almost NEVER watch anything live....except Game of Thrones 

NBC Boston is kind of a mess still. Audio is STILL being sent incorrectly - all center dialogue goes through my front speakers. Thankfully, we don't really watch any NBC shows right now. WCVB is the ABC affiliate out of Boston, they are 1080i as well. We get the benefit of both WCVB and WMUR here in NH.


----------



## murgatroyd

JoeKustra said:


> The new (to Roamio) Choose Video Resolutions menu is funny. The first entry of "Auto" also has a panel to the right showing you what "Auto" means. Mine says 1080i and probably most 1080p TVs say that. Notice there is a (preferred) after 1080i (or 720p for some smaller sets). My TV supports 1080p, but I set my TiVo to output 1080i and 1080p 24/25fps for (pass-through), which is streaming only.
> 
> I don't get the Olympic Channel on my feed. I also see it's not offered on my Roku 3, but I can get NBC Sports.
> 
> I bought an LG 24LF4820 for my kitchen/Mini since it supports 1080p. No DD 5.1 though.


In the right panel, it says:

"Auto for your TV includes 1080i"

I'm seeing 720p for all the sports channels -- the local NBCSports channels and for ESPN/ESPN2, SEC channel, the works.

I can play with the different settings, but I don't want to do it now because I'm in the middle of recording something.

Thanks again for your help.


----------



## laria

kbmb said:


> NBC Boston is kind of a mess still. Audio is STILL being sent incorrectly - all center dialogue goes through my front speakers.




I am watching an NBC Boston show right now and the audio seems fine. The dialogue is coming through our center channel.


----------



## kbmb

laria said:


> I am watching an NBC Boston show right now and the audio seems fine. The dialogue is coming through our center channel.


Wonder if it's on the newscasts mostly. Seems that's the only time I end up on NBC.


----------



## NorthAlabama

kbmb said:


> Wonder if it's on the newscasts mostly. Seems that's the only time I end up on NBC.


i happens with certain live broadcasts, too, i've noticed. when it happens, i adjust my audio settings to pcm, as it's annoying.


----------



## laria

Ah, I don't watch the news, too depressing


----------



## JoeKustra

laria said:


> Ah, I don't watch the news, too depressing


Be like most of the country, get your news from The Daily Show.


----------



## Bigg

kbmb said:


> Thanks for the info. Well whatever Hulu is doing....they are doing it right


Yeah, they have a huge advantage in being able to encode off-line to get a really good picture.



> NBC Boston is kind of a mess still. Audio is STILL being sent incorrectly - all center dialogue goes through my front speakers. Thankfully, we don't really watch any NBC shows right now. WCVB is the ABC affiliate out of Boston, they are 1080i as well. We get the benefit of both WCVB and WMUR here in NH.


And both weirdly are in 1080i, unlike almost every other ABC affiliate in the country, while NBC Boston is a bit-starved mess. You guys really have some weirdness up there. Love the Lakes Region though.


----------



## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> Yeah, they have a huge advantage in being able to encode off-line to get a really good picture.
> And both weirdly are in 1080i, unlike almost every other ABC affiliate in the country, while NBC Boston is a bit-starved mess. You guys really have some weirdness up there. Love the Lakes Region though.


FYI:
WCVB is one of a handful of ABC-affiliated stations and one of several Hearst-owned ABC affiliates that broadcast their high-definition signals in 1080i rather than the 720p format of most other ABC stations. This includes WCVB's ABC-affiliated sister stations WMUR-TV in nearby Manchester, New Hampshire, WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh, KMBC-TV in Kansas City, and KETV in Omaha, as well as stations not owned by Hearst in eight other markets.

From Wiki.


----------



## leswar

Also broadcasting in 1080i is WPBF 25 in West Palm Beach, FL.


----------



## JoeKustra

leswar said:


> Also broadcasting in 1080i is WPBF 25 in West Palm Beach, FL.


While it is a Hearst station, Wiki disagrees with you on the 1080i -> WPBF - Wikipedia Maybe you can fix it.


----------



## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> Hulu is offline encoded for streaming, so you can't compare to that. Compare to your local OTA affiliate, it's usually exactly the same, although an affiliate could send a different mux to Comcast via fiber than they use OTA if they really wanted to. It also depends on the market and how many subchannels they have, so they likely look lousy via OTA in your market as well.


I read somewhere (not on a message board, but in a real article intended for the broadcast industry) that most cable companies get their local affiliate feeds via fiber now, not OTA. I'd bet that's true, at least with Comcast.



Bigg said:


> It's going to get weird when Tokyo comes around, and NBC is sending DirecTV a 2160p feed at a very high bitrate via satellite that is downrezzed from the master 4320p Super Hi-Vision feed, and Comcast is limited to 720p with ridiculous compression.


I'll be shocked if, by 2020, Comcast isn't offering a 2160p HDR linear feed of the Tokyo Olympics via IPTV. They've already begun deploying STBs that can handle such. Given that Comcast owns NBC, I really don't think they're going to let AT&T outshine them when it comes to the Olympics.



JoeKustra said:


> FYI:
> WCVB is one of a handful of ABC-affiliated stations and one of several Hearst-owned ABC affiliates that broadcast their high-definition signals in 1080i rather than the 720p format of most other ABC stations. This includes WCVB's ABC-affiliated sister stations WMUR-TV in nearby Manchester, New Hampshire, WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh, KMBC-TV in Kansas City, and KETV in Omaha, as well as stations not owned by Hearst in eight other markets.


What's the advantage of broadcasting ABC in 1080i? Is ABC providing those few affiliates with a 1080i feed? If not (and I really doubt they are), then the affiliates and just upscaling and interlacing 720p to 1080i.


----------



## alexb

Heinrich said:


> It's also very noticeable on very dark shows - something like Twin Peaks Season 3. With the dark backgrounds, night scenes, the compression was so obvious and ugly that it completely ruined scenes.


Yeah and is same for HBO in 98033, including the Comcast VOD which is identically compressed compared to the broadcast, annoying as heck.

I would happily take better compression that uses 4:2:2 instead of 4:2:0 than 1080 content.


----------



## avaddict

Seriously, I was feeling this as an issue too. 
Due to fact I moved since the last basketball season and I have new network and neighborhood I was giving the benefit of the doubt. But after several weeks I am seeing, in particular, Comcast produced basketball games of worse quality than last season. Talking GS Warriors ball, here. 

Maybe what I am experiencing is this ridiculous amount of information loss due to Comcrap cheating their customers with compression. Fooking Comcrap. They suck!

Can we complain to Comcast about this somehow? Can we demand refunds for this? Is there advice in this thread about how to respond to Comcast for this! If so I will go back and look for it. 

thx!


----------



## NashGuy

alexb said:


> Yeah and is same for HBO in 98033, including the Comcast VOD which is identically compressed compared to the broadcast, annoying as heck.
> 
> I would happily take better compression that uses 4:2:2 instead of 4:2:0 than 1080 content.


Try using the Showtime Anytime and HBO Go apps. Their PQ isn't as good as Netflix but I'm sure they're better than Comcast.


----------



## morac

NashGuy said:


> Try using the Showtime Anytime and HBO Go apps. Their PQ isn't as good as Netflix but I'm sure they're better than Comcast.


I can confirm that the picture quality for HBO Go is exponentially better than Comcast.


----------



## TostitoBandito

morac said:


> I can confirm that the picture quality for HBO Go is exponentially better than Comcast.


Absolutely is. Every non-Comcast streaming service looks infinitely better, like HD vs. SD since Comcast's non-OTA broadcast quality is currently on par with upconverted SD. Streaming on Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/HBO/etc... is what Comcast used to look like before they cranked up the compression during the MPEG4 migration last year.

The 720p vs. 1080i argument is mostly irrelevant. The issue here has nothing to do with which of those two resolutions is being used, but how much bandwidth they're allowing for the signal and how much compression they need to use as a result.


----------



## leswar

NashGuy said:


> What's the advantage of broadcasting ABC in 1080i? Is ABC providing those few affiliates with a 1080i feed? If not (and I really doubt they are), then the affiliates and just upscaling and interlacing 720p to 1080i.


WPBF 25 in West Palm Beach, FL. (1080i) is one of the few ota stations I can get at my location. When I can compare it to another ota ABC affiliate from Orlando which broadcasts 720p I do notice a difference in PQ with WPBF (1080i) being the sharper, preferred channel to watch. On Comcast the station is picture degraded/softer (but that is via a Roamio + which might be due to the plus' softer hdmi output).

It's a dilemma for me as which way to point my antenna(s). With a big enough fringe antenna most stations would come in northwesterly (Orlando) but my true locals
and the 1080i ABC station is in a southerly direction. No good cord-cutting solution.

p.s. Joe, I would never know how to correct wikileaks about that.


----------



## JoeKustra

leswar said:


> WPBF 25 in West Palm Beach, FL. (1080i) is one of the few ota stations I can get at my location. When I can compare it to another ota ABC affiliate from Orlando which broadcasts 720p I do notice a difference in PQ with WPBF (1080i) being the sharper, preferred channel to watch. On Comcast the station is picture degraded/softer (but that is via a Roamio + which might be due to the plus' softer hdmi output).
> p.s. Joe, I would never know how to correct wikileaks about that.


You would need to create an account then choose to edit the page. I'm a contributor, but not an account holder. But somebody has to fix errors.


----------



## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> FYI:
> WCVB is one of a handful of ABC-affiliated stations and one of several Hearst-owned ABC affiliates that broadcast their high-definition signals in 1080i rather than the 720p format of most other ABC stations.


Yeah, that's it. What is the master ABC feed in?



NashGuy said:


> I read somewhere (not on a message board, but in a real article intended for the broadcast industry) that most cable companies get their local affiliate feeds via fiber now, not OTA. I'd bet that's true, at least with Comcast.


A couple of data points. My local cable company that I used to have has been switching to fiber over the past couple of years for some OTA channels, particularly the weaker ones. At some point in the last few years, an OTA transmitter in the Boston area broke. IIRC, it took Charter, RCN, DISH, DirecTV, and others offline, with only Verizon and Comcast having direct fiber feeds. Oops.



> I'll be shocked if, by 2020, Comcast isn't offering a 2160p HDR linear feed of the Tokyo Olympics via IPTV. They've already begun deploying STBs that can handle such. Given that Comcast owns NBC, I really don't think they're going to let AT&T outshine them when it comes to the Olympics.


I doubt it. Comcast doesn't care about VQ at all, hence this thread. Most of the customers who pay any attention to anything left for DirecTV or cut the cord a long time ago, TiVo enthusiasts are the only weird niche left. Comcast doesn't really seem to care that much about their TV business, other than milking the sinking ship while consuming the least amount of bandwidth that they can possibly get away with.


----------



## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> Yeah, that's it. What is the master ABC feed in?


From wiki:
ABC's network feeds are transmitted in 720p high definition, the native resolution format for The Walt Disney Company's U.S. television properties. However, most of Hearst Television's 16 ABC-affiliated stations transmit the network's programming in 1080i HD, while 11 other affiliates owned by various companies carry the network feed in 480i standard definition[192] either due to technical considerations for affiliates of other major networks that carry ABC programming on a digital subchannel or because a primary feed ABC affiliate has not yet upgraded their transmission equipment to allow content to be presented in HD.

American Broadcasting Company - Wikipedia


----------



## atmuscarella

JoeKustra said:


> From wiki:
> ABC's network feeds are transmitted in 720p high definition, the native resolution format for The Walt Disney Company's U.S. television properties. However, most of Hearst Television's 16 ABC-affiliated stations transmit the network's programming in 1080i HD, while 11 other affiliates owned by various companies carry the network feed in 480i standard definition[192] either due to technical considerations for affiliates of other major networks that carry ABC programming on a digital subchannel or because a primary feed ABC affiliate has not yet upgraded their transmission equipment to allow content to be presented in HD.
> 
> American Broadcasting Company - Wikipedia


What you provided indicates what the local stations are broadcasting. Bigg was asking what does ABC provide to the local stations. I am feeling lazy so I am not going to find the post but Dan203 said he had a friend with access (Via a BUD) to the actually network feeds and that they were all very high quality from memory I think he said they were 35Mbs MPEG-4 1080p feeds which is near Blu-ray quality. Maybe I miss-understood the post but I believe the local stations adjust down from there.


----------



## JoeKustra

atmuscarella said:


> What you provided indicates what the local stations are broadcasting. Bigg was asking what does ABC provide to the local stations. I am feeling lazy so I am not going to find the post but Dan203 said he had a friend with access (Via a BUD) to the actually network feeds and that they were all very high quality from memory I think he said they were 35Mbs MPEG-4 1080p feeds which is near Blu-ray quality. Maybe I miss-understood the post but I believe the local stations adjust down from there.


The first sentence seems to imply that the native ABC (Walt Disney Company) resolution is 720p.


----------



## atmuscarella

JoeKustra said:


> The first sentence seems to imply that the native ABC (Walt Disney Company) resolution is 720p.


I agree perhaps I miss understood Dan's post.


----------



## slowbiscuit

Bigg said:


> I doubt it. Comcast doesn't care about VQ at all, hence this thread. Most of the customers who pay any attention to anything left for DirecTV or cut the cord a long time ago, TiVo enthusiasts are the only weird niche left. Comcast doesn't really seem to care that much about their TV business, other than milking the sinking ship while consuming the least amount of bandwidth that they can possibly get away with.


I don't think it's 'weird' to save a lot of money every month with a Comcast double play vs. getting their HSI and D* separately. Yeah the PQ isn't the greatest but in return we also get a much better DVR experience.


----------



## Puppy76

Is this low bitrate universal with Comcast? And what bitrates are we talking about? (And what codecs?)

My local channels have gotten worse as 3 of the 6 main networks are all using the same station now, leaving one that was over 7GB/hour at 3.3ish, another at 2.2ish, another at 1.6ish. The latter too especially it's very noticeable.

I've toyed with the idea of getting basic cable partially to eliminate any occasional artifacting, and partially so I can use a 6 tuner/3TB tivo lol


----------



## NorthAlabama

JoeKustra said:


> The first sentence seems to imply that the native ABC (Walt Disney Company) resolution is 720p.


this has been true of abc properties as long as i've watched tv with comcast, including espn.


----------



## Jed1

JoeKustra said:


> The first sentence seems to imply that the native ABC (Walt Disney Company) resolution is 720p.


Things are about to get worse for us with WNEP and WVIA next month. They are going to share a signal because of the recent broadcast spectrum auction. I don't know how they are going to fit all those channel on to one 6Mhz frequency.
WVIA: WVIA-TV enters into channel sharing agreement with WNEP (2017-02-10)


----------



## Dan203

atmuscarella said:


> I agree perhaps I miss understood Dan's post.


I'm not clear on exactly which channels broadcast 720p and which use 1080p. But these feeds are the ones the affiliates get, before they insert local commercials and convert everything to a consumer friendly format. IIRC they're also 4:2:2 color mode.


----------



## TostitoBandito

In my case I believe every single non-network channel is low bitrate 720p now. The only channels which look decent are the networks and perhaps ESPN, because I don't think they messed with those during the conversion to MPEG4. Prior to the migration basically all cable channels were 1080i MPEG2.

Others have done fairly accurate bitrate comparisons before/after which prove that the MPEG4 720p bitrates are much lower than the previous MPEG2 720p/1080i bitrates. This whole thing was a global reduction in quality by reducing the amount of data in the stream via additional lossy compression.


----------



## NashGuy

Dan203 said:


> I'm not clear on exactly which channels broadcast 720p and which use 1080p. But these feeds are the ones the affiliates get, before they insert local commercials and convert everything to a consumer friendly format. IIRC they're also 4:2:2 color mode.


I've never heard of any network distributing their master feed in 1080p, although I've been wrong before. ;-) All the networks owned by Disney (ABC, ESPN, etc.) and Fox (Fox, FS1, FX, etc.) are 720p. Almost everything else is 1080i. That's why I think that any ABC affiliate that broadcasts in 1080i is taking a 720p feed from ABC and then upscaling it.

I believe most cable networks distribute their master satellite feed in MPEG-4. HBO switched to from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 (both in 1080i) for delivery back in 2008. However, given that ATSC 1.0 OTA stations exclusively use MPEG-2, I would think all the broadcast nets distribute their feeds in that codec.


----------



## NashGuy

Jed1 said:


> Things are about to get worse for us with WNEP and WVIA next month. They are going to share a signal because of the recent broadcast spectrum auction. I don't know how they are going to fit all those channel on to one 6Mhz frequency.
> WVIA: WVIA-TV enters into channel sharing agreement with WNEP (2017-02-10)


Hopefully they'll use some of the money they got for selling their spectrum to buy a new better quality encoder. The latest generation of MPEG-2 encoders can squeeze two 1080i and four 480i channels into 6 MHz with decent picture quality.

MPEG-2 Still Kicking, Ready For Last Big Push | TVNewsCheck.com


----------



## JoeKustra

NashGuy said:


> Hopefully they'll use some of the money they got for selling their spectrum to buy a new better quality encoder. The latest generation of MPEG-2 encoders can squeeze two 1080i and four 480i channels into 6 MHz with decent picture quality.


I guess "decent" is in the eye of the beholder.  I just checked that ABC station and it's running at 7.7Mbps. On my (our) cable feed, ABC shares the channel with CBS (only 12.8Mbps) and one 480i channel. I only hope it doesn't get worse. I doubt it will get better.


----------



## morac

My old Sony Bravia XBR4 40" 1080P LCD TV died recently so I upgraded to a Sony Bravia X930E 55" 4K HDR LED TV. I have to say that Comcast looks better on the new TV than it did on the old one, which is surprising. The new one has Sony's X1 Extreme video processor which is supposed to make up-scaled video look better. The fact that it manages to make Comcast watchable is a testament to what video processing can do. 

That said Comcast still looks worse than streaming video.


----------



## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> From wiki:


Good to know. That's bizarre that they are converting 720p to 1080i. When Comcast MPEG-4-izes the locals, they will convert it back to 720p. Oy vey! Sucks for the markets that get 480i, that's pathetic in this day and age.



atmuscarella said:


> I am feeling lazy so I am not going to find the post but Dan203 said he had a friend with access (Via a BUD) to the actually network feeds and that they were all very high quality from memory I think he said they were 35Mbs MPEG-4 1080p feeds which is near Blu-ray quality.


Hmmm, interesting. I would think the whole pipeline would be 720p, like ESPN.



slowbiscuit said:


> I don't think it's 'weird' to save a lot of money every month with a Comcast double play vs. getting their HSI and D* separately. Yeah the PQ isn't the greatest but in return we also get a much better DVR experience.


I think the people who care about VQ and channel selection have jumped ship and are willing to pony up the cash for DirecTV. Yes, the few of us with TiVo do. But at this point, if I get pay TV, I have to get DirecTV, as I just can't deal with the bad VQ. The problem is, I can't really justify pay TV, when I wouldn't watch it very often, considering how much content is on OTA, HBO, and streaming. I'd still get to use my TiVo for OTA content.



Puppy76 said:


> Is this low bitrate universal with Comcast? And what bitrates are we talking about? (And what codecs?)


Locals are passed through without re-compression, so if they're bad OTA they're bad on cable, if they're good OTA, they're good on cable.



TostitoBandito said:


> The only channels which look decent are the networks and perhaps ESPN, because I don't think they messed with those during the conversion to MPEG4.


Some markets have ESPN in MPEG-4, others apparently don't. Not sure if it's the earlier markets to get converted to MPEG-4 don't, or if it's by ESPN's region.



JoeKustra said:


> I guess "decent" is in the eye of the beholder.  I just checked that ABC station and it's running at 7.7Mbps. On my (our) cable feed, ABC shares the channel with CBS (only 12.8Mbps) and one 480i channel. I only hope it doesn't get worse. I doubt it will get better.


Ummmm, yeah. 9mbps can look OKish, but for truly good VQ, the requirement has gone down from 19.3mbps to about 12mbps today due to advances in encoder technology.


----------



## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> Ummmm, yeah. 9mbps can look OKish, but for truly good VQ, the requirement has gone down from 19.3mbps to about 12mbps today due to advances in encoder technology.


For a long time my NBC and CBS channels were about 17Mbps. Then both added two sub-channels each. Like you said, the end result is only as good as the beginning. I could see the difference also.


----------



## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> For a long time my NBC and CBS channels were about 17Mbps. Then both added two sub-channels each. Like you said, the end result is only as good as the beginning. I could see the difference also.


Depending on how they allocate bandwidth and how good their encoders are, they can still get 12-13mbps for the main HD channel with 2 or 3 subchannels, and get really good quality out of it. My PBS fixed their messed up encoding, and they have a stunning picture at around 12.5mbps 1080i in a stat mux.


----------



## Sgt Howl

JoeKustra said:


> I guess "decent" is in the eye of the beholder.  I just checked that ABC station and it's running at 7.7Mbps. On my (our) cable feed, ABC shares the channel with CBS (only 12.8Mbps) and one 480i channel. I only hope it doesn't get worse. I doubt it will get better.


I'm afraid that I agree with you ... it won't get better. Comcast is clearly targeting mobile device users and casual users, not videophiles. I wonder how many buyers of 4K TVs don't even realize the crap that they are watching...


----------



## Jed1

NashGuy said:


> Hopefully they'll use some of the money they got for selling their spectrum to buy a new better quality encoder. The latest generation of MPEG-2 encoders can squeeze two 1080i and four 480i channels into 6 MHz with decent picture quality.
> 
> MPEG-2 Still Kicking, Ready For Last Big Push | TVNewsCheck.com


WVIA had a announcement on last night that this is scheduled for December 4th at 8:00AM so we will see how this will work out. WNEP (ABC) is stat muxing 3 channels and WVIA is stat muxing 4 channels. WVIA HD is running around 9mbps right now so this will be interesting to see what it drops to when their share their signal.


----------



## atmuscarella

NashGuy said:


> Hopefully they'll use some of the money they got for selling their spectrum to buy a new better quality encoder. The latest generation of MPEG-2 encoders can squeeze two 1080i and four 480i channels into 6 MHz with decent picture quality.
> 
> MPEG-2 Still Kicking, Ready For Last Big Push | TVNewsCheck.com


What I find interesting in that article is they claim ATSC 3.0 only need 2.5 Mbps for 1080p content where the quality is in line with an ATSC 1.0 1080i content at 16.5 Mbps. It will be interesting to see how each market breaks up the number of frequencies being used for ATSC 1.0 versus the number being used for ATSC 3.0 during the transition, and if it changes over time. Right now in my market (Rochester NY) there are only 5 full power frequencies being used while I don't see why they could not use another 1 or 2 frequencies if they wanted to build more towers assuming they don't I would guess 3 would need to stay ATSC 1.0 and 2 go to ATSC 3.0


----------



## Bigg

atmuscarella said:


> What I find interesting in that article is they claim ATSC 3.0 only need 2.5 Mbps for 1080p content where the quality is in line with an ATSC 1.0 1080i content at 16.5 Mbps. It will be interesting to see how each market breaks up the number of frequencies being used for ATSC 1.0 versus the number being used for ATSC 3.0 during the transition, and if it changes over time. Right now in my market (Rochester NY) there are only 5 full power frequencies being used while I don't see why they could not use another 1 or 2 frequencies if they wanted to build more towers assuming they don't I would guess 3 would need to stay ATSC 1.0 and 2 go to ATSC 3.0


If they can OK-ish MPEG-2 at 9mbps, OK-ish MPEG-4 would be 4.5mbps, and OK-ish HEVC would be 2.25mbps, so that sounds very reasonable. There is also a lot of efficiency to be gained with stat muxing when you've got a whole bunch of channels of content on the same frequency. The 1080i>p conversion isn't double the bandwidth, since the deltas are half as big, so you end up with some additional bandwidth required, but nowhere near double. If they're realistically getting even 30-40mbps on an ATSC transmitter, then it's pretty easy to forsee putting an entire market on a single transmitter. Whether that will happen due to business reasons remains to be seen, but it's quite likely in smaller markets that will start to happen. If it works out that way, then there is no real reason to shut ATSC 1.0 down until very few people are watching it, and it's not worth the power and maintenance to keep it running.


----------



## Sgt Howl

Gregg Loewen, THX instructor and well-known calibrator, visited to calibrate my JVC projector. As we tested various sources on my system, when we switched to Comcast - several channels - his comment: "That doesn't look like HD to me." I couldn't agree more. Garbage picture.


----------



## tomhorsley

On the topic of comcast 720p transcoding: Does anyone have a useful ffmpeg script to convert this 720p 59.94 fps comcast nonsense into a lower frame rate video that doesn't give low speed media players fits?


----------



## HerronScott

tomhorsley said:


> On the topic of comcast 720p transcoding: Does anyone have a useful ffmpeg script to convert this 720p 59.94 fps comcast nonsense into a lower frame rate video that doesn't give low speed media players fits?


What are you having issues with? Doesn't seem like the frame rate would be an issue since Fox and ABC both broadcast 720p 59.94 fps, I don't think the problem would be what you are asking but rather an issue with MPEG4 versus MPEG2 encoding.

Scott


----------



## tomhorsley

HerronScott said:


> What are you having issues with? Doesn't seem like the frame rate would be an issue since Fox and ABC both broadcast 720p 59.94 fps, I don't think the problem would be what you are asking but rather an issue with MPEG4 versus MPEG2 encoding.
> 
> Scott


mplayer (as one example) give a big warning "Your system is too SLOW to play this!" and the audio and video get fantastically out of sync (possibly it wouldn't have that problem if I installed the nvidia drivers instead of the linux nouveau drivers, but I always give nouveau a chance in a new fedora install). Anyway, I did discover this ffmpeg transcode provides me with a video that isn't so resource intensive:

ffmpeg -i infile.ts -r 30000/1001 outfile.mp4

(though that probably just throws away half the frames, it still looks OK to me, and the audio stays in sync).


----------



## man cave

720P is higher resolution than 1080i.


----------



## leswar

I use handbrake to convert 59.x to 29.x or 23.x frame rates. otherwise vlc will play the 59. fr but hesitate on any attempt to sllde around the video with my mouse.
Also experiencing a weird situation where an off loaded program via kmttg or pytivo will not play in vlc if I have created an .srt file of same using cc-extractor. Just get a blank screen.
Removing or renaming the .srt will then allow the ts 59.9 fr file to play... or converting it w/ HB to an .mkv or .mp4 and new fr will allow it toplay w/ .srt file.

oh, the originals are comcasted 720p 59.9 fr x264 files kept as .ts files.

My pc is an I-7 3770k w/ built-in Intel HD graphics and 32GB memory. Not slow.


----------



## morac

man cave said:


> 720P is higher resolution than 1080i.


No, no it's not. There's no possible measurement where 720p has a higher resolution than 1080i since by definition 1080i has more pixels than 720p.


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## TostitoBandito

One of the fun artifacts of the low bitrate MPEG-4 720p Comcast is sending me now is super obvious in any dark scenes or backgrounds. There's big black/grey chunks/blocks of pixels, usually in some sort of circular or arcing pattern around the better-lit subject. Whatever they do to it removes the ability to smoothly blend from light into shadows. It's not my TV, because it doesn't happen when I stream or watch a blu-ray of the same content.

I'll probably dump Comcast for good after the Olympics, since I have no confidence things will ever improve.


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## PSU_Sudzi

TostitoBandito said:


> One of the fun artifacts of the low bitrate MPEG-4 720p Comcast is sending me now is super obvious in any dark scenes or backgrounds. There's big black/grey chunks/blocks of pixels, usually in some sort of circular or arcing pattern around the better-lit subject. Whatever they do to it removes the ability to smoothly blend from light into shadows. It's not my TV, because it doesn't happen when I stream or watch a blu-ray of the same content.
> 
> I'll probably dump Comcast for good after the Olympics, since I have no confidence things will ever improve.


I see the same things, worse in movies.


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## Bigg

TostitoBandito said:


> One of the fun artifacts of the low bitrate MPEG-4 720p Comcast is sending me now is super obvious in any dark scenes or backgrounds. There's big black/grey chunks/blocks of pixels, usually in some sort of circular or arcing pattern around the better-lit subject. Whatever they do to it removes the ability to smoothly blend from light into shadows. It's not my TV, because it doesn't happen when I stream or watch a blu-ray of the same content.
> 
> I'll probably dump Comcast for good after the Olympics, since I have no confidence things will ever improve.


That's color banding. It's nothing too weird, it's just an artifact of the absurd level of over-compression that they use. Unfortunately, with our local NBC station now channel sharing with Telemundo, for a total of 2 1080i and 2 480i, they also have some nasty color banding on the Olympics, although most of it looks OKish since it's 1080i with really powerful encoders and it's in a stat mux. The other big issue with Comcast MPEG-4 is that they're lazy and don't encode muxes for each system or market, so everything is done as a CBR encode in Denver, and then "slotted" locally. The result is that it looks pretty good during scenes with very little motion and not a whole lot of detail, and then looks absolutely horrible is detail, motion, or both are introduced into the screen.

If you want to pay for pay TV and get good VQ, get DirecTV. If you don't want to pay the big buckaroos, cut the cord. Either way, you'll have much better VQ.


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## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> If you want to pay for pay TV and get good VQ, get DirecTV. If you don't want to pay the big buckaroos, cut the cord. Either way, you'll have much better VQ.


I currently have DirecTV Now, which I got just for the free Apple TV 4K. I watch through their beta app for Apple TV and I have to say, the HD picture quality is, for the most part, surprisingly good. I'd say it rivals DTV satellite, which is generally regarded as the best-looking major pay TV service. (I'd have to watch both side-by-side, on multiple shows and channels, to say for sure if one is better than the other.)

I understand folks on this forum love their TiVos. They're great DVRs. What I don't understand is paying good money for cable TV (from Comcast, etc.) that offers crappy picture quality just so that you can use a TiVo. To me, picture quality is a bigger deal than the DVR UI. If I wanted full-blown linear pay TV (and I don't -- I'll cancel DTV Now after my pre-paid 4 month term is up), I'd go with DTV (either satellite or streaming) or (if available) Google Fiber TV and enjoy great PQ with a DVR that may just be good rather than great. Just my opinion, obviously...


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## slowbiscuit

You don't understand that paying $125/mo. incl. taxes and junk fees for 100mb HSI and all cable channels + HBO for 4 TVs is not a good deal? I'm willing to take the lesser PQ (which I don't notice as much as some here) in exchange for the savings and much better whole-home DVR experience with Tivo, thanks. I also don't have to dick around with all the limitations that come with streaming today (lack of comskip, limited viewing windows, and poor transport controls, mostly). Sports in particular are basically unwatchable with streaming because I don't watch much live - with Tivo I can chase-watch multiple events at the same time.

As a side benefit, I also get a lot more effective storage since Comcast uses mpeg4 for most of the channels now. I never bothered to upgrade the stock 1TB drive on my latest Roamio Plus since shows take up half the space (or less) than they did with mpeg2.

Do I think their overcompression sucks? Sure. But it's not as bad as all the folks here claim when you consider all the tradeoffs.


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## NashGuy

slowbiscuit said:


> You don't understand that paying $125/mo. incl. taxes and junk fees for 100mb HSI and all cable channels + HBO for 4 TVs is not a good deal? I'm willing to take the lesser PQ (which I don't notice as much as some here) in exchange for the savings and much better whole-home DVR experience with Tivo, thanks. I also don't have to dick around with all the limitations that come with streaming today (lack of comskip, limited viewing windows, and poor transport controls, mostly). Sports in particular are basically unwatchable with streaming because I don't watch much live - with Tivo I can chase-watch multiple events at the same time.
> 
> As a side benefit, I also get a lot more effective storage since Comcast uses mpeg4 for most of the channels now. I never bothered to upgrade the stock 1TB drive on my latest Roamio Plus since shows take up half the space (or less) than they did with mpeg2.
> 
> Do I think their overcompression sucks? Sure. But it's not as bad as all the folks here claim when you consider all the tradeoffs.


Sounds like it comes down to cost in your case and yes, that's a good price for what you're getting. You must have negotiated some kind of special deal with Comcast (or you're on a new customer promo). I have a local Comcast price list from 2014 and back then they were charging $140 + junk fees (so about $155/mo) for your package, but with slower Performance tier internet (now 60 Mbps). I'd think the regular pricing would be even higher now. (That's not including the cost of any STBs/DVRs or HD fees, none of which I assume you pay.) Of course, we're also not including the cost of TiVo hardware and service, either, so it's not a fair comparison without including those costs.

Looks like a similar set-up around here with AT&T internet + DirecTV satellite with DVR (all cable channels plus HBO) on 4 TVs would run about what you're paying to Comcast for the first year but then jump to over $200/mo thereafter. Yikes. (As an aside, I can't imagine wanting to pay for cable TV on 4 TVs unless I were running a boarding house or B&B, but to each his own.)


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## Bigg

NashGuy said:


> I currently have DirecTV Now, which I got just for the free Apple TV 4K. I watch through their beta app for Apple TV and I have to say, the HD picture quality is, for the most part, surprisingly good. I'd say it rivals DTV satellite, which is generally regarded as the best-looking major pay TV service. (I'd have to watch both side-by-side, on multiple shows and channels, to say for sure if one is better than the other.)


Subjectively, that sounds good, keep in mind that for 1080i channels, most (all?) of the VMVPDs downrez to 720p. It still may look far better than Comcast's, as they are likely using better compression/bitrates/codecs/VBR etc.



> I understand folks on this forum love their TiVos. They're great DVRs. What I don't understand is paying good money for cable TV (from Comcast, etc.) that offers crappy picture quality just so that you can use a TiVo.


Agreed. Aside from FiOS, where you can have TiVo and great VQ, if I had the money, I would probably get DirecTV for cable channels, and keep my TiVo for OTA. Most things I'd watch on cable channels are sports anyway, so rudimentary DVR functionality would be fine.


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## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> Subjectively, that sounds good, keep in mind that for 1080i channels, most (all?) of the VMVPDs downrez to 720p. It still may look far better than Comcast's, as they are likely using better compression/bitrates/codecs/VBR etc.


True, although DTV Now is streaming 1080p for some channels, at least in their beta app on Apple TV.


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## Jimbo713

morac said:


> My old Sony Bravia XBR4 40" 1080P LCD TV died recently so I upgraded to a Sony Bravia X930E 55" 4K HDR LED TV. I have to say that Comcast looks better on the new TV than it did on the old one, which is surprising. The new one has Sony's X1 Extreme video processor which is supposed to make up-scaled video look better. The fact that it manages to make Comcast watchable is a testament to what video processing can do.
> 
> That said Comcast still looks worse than streaming video.


That SONY model is their 2017 top of the line (just beneath the A1E OLED). And, you're right! The X-1 Extreme processor is the flat out best upscaler in the business.


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## chiguy50

Jimbo713 said:


> *That SONY model is their 2017 top of the line* (just beneath the A1E OLED). And, you're right! The X-1 Extreme processor is the flat out best upscaler in the business.


Not quite. The X930E falls under the higher-ranked model X940E (FALD but only available in a 75" screen), which in turn falls under the true flagship Z9D. The latter, which was actually introduced in late 2016, remains Sony's flagship LCD TV for 2018 pending announcement of a potential follow-on model later this year.


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## PSU_Sudzi

So I’ve noticed at some point in the past month or two the picture quality has improved on channels though the bit rate on 720p channels still is around 3-4 Mbps. Has anyone else noticed this? Action movies on HBO and Epix (new channel to Comcast this week) look good and I’ve been hard pressed to see differences between what I recorded on my TiVo and pull up on my Apple TV.


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## webminster

I haven't noticed any improvement on HBO etc. personally, looks about the same post-migration. Can't speak to EPIX, am not subscribed to that.


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## morac

PSU_Sudzi said:


> So I've noticed at some point in the past month or two the picture quality has improved on channels though the bit rate on 720p channels still is around 3-4 Mbps. Has anyone else noticed this? Action movies on HBO and Epix (new channel to Comcast this week) look good and I've been hard pressed to see differences between what I recorded on my TiVo and pull up on my Apple TV.


Maybe you've gotten used to it? In my area Comcast is somehow compressing the local CW station and I can definitely see a difference between Comcast's 720p version and the OTA 1080i version.


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## xander777

PSU_Sudzi said:


> So I've noticed at some point in the past month or two the picture quality has improved on channels though the bit rate on 720p channels still is around 3-4 Mbps. Has anyone else noticed this? Action movies on HBO and Epix (new channel to Comcast this week) look good and I've been hard pressed to see differences between what I recorded on my TiVo and pull up on my Apple TV.


I have noticed it also.
It's not as bad as it was but dark scenes like in Game of Thrones are still hard to watch.


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## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> Maybe you've gotten used to it? In my area Comcast is somehow compressing the local CW station and I can definitely see a difference between Comcast's 720p version and the OTA 1080i version.


That was my initial thought, my eyes are used to crap (just had them recently checked) so that's why I decided to pull up a couple of movies and compare them from my Apple TV apps. Kingsman: Golden Circle and 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi both looked really good on HBO and Epix recorded on my TiVo and I did a scene comparison of both in action sequences from my Apple TV and it was hard to tell the difference.


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## PSU_Sudzi

xander777 said:


> I have noticed it also.
> It's not as bad as it was but dark scenes like in Game of Thrones are still hard to watch.


This will definitely be one of the tests as soon as another marathon begins. Last season during some of the battle scenes you could tell a huge difference in the muddying of the picture.


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## PSU_Sudzi

Bigg said:


> I just can't imagine watching The Revenant like that! It is an *incredible* movie, and should be watched on UHD-BD with HDR and DTS-HD MA to truly enjoy. It is a feast for the senses, meanwhile a brutal movie to watch. Even relatively good 1080i on cable would look terrible compared to high bitrate HEVC encoded 2160p with HDR.


So my eyes have told me that Comcast has improved their video quality since the initial switchover to 720p. The Revenant was one of the first movies where I could really tell they did a poor job. In the opening scene the water was so muddled and muted it was a disaster. It's on again tonight on a non-premium channel (FXX) and in looking at the water in the opening scene it's much better and not nearly as muddled as before.

Also did a comparison with the new Kingsman movie on the 1080p Apple TV HBO stream and my 720p HBO TiVo recording and during the car chase fight scene I couldn't make any difference at all between the feeds.

So whatever they've done to fix it, it's improved. Just wanted to lay that out there for folks.


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## danm628

PSU_Sudzi said:


> So my eyes have told me that Comcast has improved their video quality since the initial switchover to 720p. The Revenant was one of the first movies where I could really tell they did a poor job. In the opening scene the water was so muddled and muted it was a disaster. It's on again tonight on a non-premium channel (FXX) and in looking at the water in the opening scene it's much better and not muddled at all.
> 
> Also did a comparison with the new Kingsman movie on the 1080p Apple TV HBO stream and my 720p HBO TiVo recording and during the car chase fight scene I couldn't make any difference at all between the feeds.
> 
> So whatever they've done to fix it, it's worked. Just wanted to lay that out there for folks.


I've noticed that some of the 480i channels I get break up under rapid action. Explosions, fast cuts, other sudden changes. The 720p channels have the same problems. (Various channels that run older shows not recorded in HD.)

The old shows on 480i used to look better. They dropped the bit rate in the last few months.

So at least where I am I'm not seeing an improvement. It's worse than before.

Of course Comcast doesn't do things the same way in every market. Not sure why though.


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## morac

PSU_Sudzi said:


> So my eyes have told me that Comcast has improved their video quality since the initial switchover to 720p. The Revenant was one of the first movies where I could really tell they did a poor job. In the opening scene the water was so muddled and muted it was a disaster. It's on again tonight on a non-premium channel (FXX) and in looking at the water in the opening scene it's much better and not nearly as muddled as before.
> 
> Also did a comparison with the new Kingsman movie on the 1080p Apple TV HBO stream and my 720p HBO TiVo recording and during the car chase fight scene I couldn't make any difference at all between the feeds.
> 
> So whatever they've done to fix it, it's improved. Just wanted to lay that out there for folks.


I thought maybe they had gotten better, but it turned out I had just gotten used to the poorer picture quality. I went back and watched some recordings that were made back when the channels were 1080i and the picture was a lot sharper. The current picture quality still lacks details.

In my area things have actually gotten worse as there have been picture breakups off and on since May.


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## danm628

morac said:


> I thought maybe they had gotten better, but it turned out I had just gotten used to the poorer picture quality. I went back and watched some recordings that were made back when the channels were 1080i and the picture was a lot sharper. The current picture quality still lacks details.
> 
> In my area things have actually gotten worse as there have been picture breakups off and on since May.


The shows I care about I buy off iTunes. Watch enough off TiVo to decide I'm interested and then buy it so I get good video. Only a few make the cut. Most just get ignored. Until they are the deal of the day.


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## hybucket

There's probably a thread devoted solely to this, but.. the quality of watching Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu through the TiVO Roamio vs. through my Samsung Smart TV is far inferior. I know little about the 1080/720 thing..just that the quality of the pic on the TiVO itself is not as sharp as through the Samsung. The same holds true using a Comcast box and watching Netflix- quality is better with Smart TV or even an Amazon Fire Stick.


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## PSU_Sudzi

hybucket said:


> There's probably a thread devoted solely to this, but.. the quality of watching Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu through the TiVO Roamio vs. through my Samsung Smart TV is far inferior. I know little about the 1080/720 thing..just that the quality of the pic on the TiVO itself is not as sharp as through the Samsung. The same holds true using a Comcast box and watching Netflix- quality is better with Smart TV or even an Amazon Fire Stick.


I can't "prove" it either but it seems like I get a better pic on


morac said:


> Maybe you've gotten used to it? In my area Comcast is somehow compressing the local CW station and I can definitely see a difference between Comcast's 720p version and the OTA 1080i version.


That was my thought, that my eyes have adapted to poor quality, but my locals are not yet compressed here in the Philly suburbs. So when I flip from ABC to FX, I'd expect to see a notable drop in quality but I don't. Obviously, depending on the type of program there could be a difference in sports vs. news. or movies, etc. But I've been watching a lot of hockey and basketball and they look great. And the movies I have recorded from my premium channels are comparable to the same movies from apps on my Apple TV which I believe are all 1080p. I guess maybe its possible not all Comcast branches are using the same compression? @Bigg or @NashGuy seem to understand how that works from location to location more than I do.


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## PSU_Sudzi

xander777 said:


> I have noticed it also.
> It's not as bad as it was but dark scenes like in Game of Thrones are still hard to watch.


I saw there are some episodes coming up on HBO2 so will have to record a few and then check them against the HBO app on Apple TV (1080p). Last year it was still very noticeably poorer especially during the battle scenes with the dragon and Jamie, I think someone even posted a few screen shots of that here.


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## Gold51

I have watched Revenant 3x in the past few months using the Jetbox app on my Firestick -- if there difference between the 720 and 1080 , it isn't noticeable to me.
added: I've been to the Xfinity store 3x getting phones switched over to their cheaper cellular service and I noticed the CSR were always going back and grabbing the same stuff from the cabinet- it's the setup box for the streaming service that Comcast is pushing- I guess that is what people want now.


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## Bigg

PSU_Sudzi said:


> So my eyes have told me that Comcast has improved their video quality since the initial switchover to 720p. The Revenant was one of the first movies where I could really tell they did a poor job. In the opening scene the water was so muddled and muted it was a disaster. It's on again tonight on a non-premium channel (FXX) and in looking at the water in the opening scene it's much better and not nearly as muddled as before.


They have improved their encoding somewhat, but there is only so much that more encoder horsepower can do when they are severely bit starving the channels. DirecTV does a stat mux of 5-7 channels in the same bandwidth that Comcast puts 9-10 CBR encoded channels. The combination of bit starvation with CBR encoding does not product good results.

The Revenant deserves UHD-BD and whatever crazy high bitrate it gets there, not over-compressed 720p with full quality DTS-HD MA.



> Also did a comparison with the new Kingsman movie on the 1080p Apple TV HBO stream and my 720p HBO TiVo recording and during the car chase fight scene I couldn't make any difference at all between the feeds.


HBO gives more bitrate, but they do a lousy job encoding. The overall result is pretty good just based on bitrate, but you can see nasty color banding in the opening HBO logo on basically every show. Amazon does a good job encoding AND throws a lot of bitrate at their content, Netflix doesn't give a lot of bitrate, but they are so good at offline encoding and they use narrow AI to determine what bitrates to use for a given type of content that their stuff looks outstanding. I'd compare Comcast's mess to something better, like Amazon, or, better yet, the UHD-BD. Vudu and Amazon have the technical ability to match the perceptible video quality of BD with their 1080p movies, and can probably do the same with UHD-BD, but I sort of gave up on those services for movies that I wanted a really good HT experience with, as the encode qualtiy is all over the place. Some are stunning, some not so much, at least on Vudu. I'll watch less critical viewing on those services.



> So whatever they've done to fix it, it's improved. Just wanted to lay that out there for folks.


It's gotten a bit less bad, but they're still bit-starving everything the cutting the resolution of many channels more than in half.



PSU_Sudzi said:


> That was my thought, that my eyes have adapted to poor quality, but my locals are not yet compressed here in the Philly suburbs. So when I flip from ABC to FX, I'd expect to see a notable drop in quality but I don't. Obviously, depending on the type of program there could be a difference in sports vs. news. or movies, etc. But I've been watching a lot of hockey and basketball and they look great. And the movies I have recorded from my premium channels are comparable to the same movies from apps on my Apple TV which I believe are all 1080p. I guess maybe its possible not all Comcast branches are using the same compression? @Bigg or @NashGuy seem to understand how that works from location to location more than I do.


I've heard Philly does compress locals in MPEG-4 now. I can't really figure out the logic behind this, as the muxes in many markets are already pretty tightly packed, and unpacking and re-compressing all the subchannels just isn't going to result in much savings. Maybe they are only doing it in markets where there isn't much channel sharing going on, as then there would be a significant bandwidth savings. When you already have 2 HD/2+ SD on a single 6mhz 8VSB transmitter, and Comcast can modulate two of those into a single 6mhz QAM without re-compressing, I don't see much point in re-compressing.

The cable channels are downlinked from C-Band in Denver, and compressed there for the entire country using CBR encoding, so that individual channels can be "slotted" into different QAMs in different local markets depending on what channels are available in that market (RSNs, regional ESPN muxes, regional news channels, etc). They are basically too lazy to do different stat muxes for every local market/system in order to get higher video quality out of the same bandwidth, and they believe that they can throw enough encoder horsepower at the problem to make it not as terrible, and that most people are too oblivious and stupid to notice the difference between 1080i and 720p, and the excessive levels of compression. Of course here they are competing against Frontier, who apparently has absolutely no clue how to compress anything, as it is *significantly worse than Comcast*. I was at a friend's place, and we had the news on from Frontier's Vantage TV IPTV service (ex AT&T U-Verse, but different encoding, as U-Verse looked decent), and Robert Mueller was on the screen. He looked like he was 120 years old and had crawled out of the grave, as he face had all these weird lines on it from the video compression.

The problem with their MPEG-4 encoding is that because it's CBR, it looks pretty good when there is little to no motion, like Baseball, but when there is a lot of motion, like Baseketball, it looks like total garbage on those wide court shots where a lot is going on. That's in addition to the raw loss of sharpness going from 1080i to 720p.


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## PSU_Sudzi

Bigg said:


> They have improved their encoding somewhat, but there is only so much that more encoder horsepower can do when they are severely bit starving the channels. DirecTV does a stat mux of 5-7 channels in the same bandwidth that Comcast puts 9-10 CBR encoded channels. The combination of bit starvation with CBR encoding does not product good results.
> 
> The Revenant deserves UHD-BD and whatever crazy high bitrate it gets there, not over-compressed 720p with full quality DTS-HD MA.
> 
> HBO gives more bitrate, but they do a lousy job encoding. The overall result is pretty good just based on bitrate, but you can see nasty color banding in the opening HBO logo on basically every show. Amazon does a good job encoding AND throws a lot of bitrate at their content, Netflix doesn't give a lot of bitrate, but they are so good at offline encoding and they use narrow AI to determine what bitrates to use for a given type of content that their stuff looks outstanding. I'd compare Comcast's mess to something better, like Amazon, or, better yet, the UHD-BD. Vudu and Amazon have the technical ability to match the perceptible video quality of BD with their 1080p movies, and can probably do the same with UHD-BD, but I sort of gave up on those services for movies that I wanted a really good HT experience with, as the encode qualtiy is all over the place. Some are stunning, some not so much, at least on Vudu. I'll watch less critical viewing on those services.
> 
> It's gotten a bit less bad, but they're still bit-starving everything the cutting the resolution of many channels more than in half.
> 
> I've heard Philly does compress locals in MPEG-4 now. I can't really figure out the logic behind this, as the muxes in many markets are already pretty tightly packed, and unpacking and re-compressing all the subchannels just isn't going to result in much savings. Maybe they are only doing it in markets where there isn't much channel sharing going on, as then there would be a significant bandwidth savings. When you already have 2 HD/2+ SD on a single 6mhz 8VSB transmitter, and Comcast can modulate two of those into a single 6mhz QAM without re-compressing, I don't see much point in re-compressing.
> 
> The cable channels are downlinked from C-Band in Denver, and compressed there for the entire country using CBR encoding, so that individual channels can be "slotted" into different QAMs in different local markets depending on what channels are available in that market (RSNs, regional ESPN muxes, regional news channels, etc). They are basically too lazy to do different stat muxes for every local market/system in order to get higher video quality out of the same bandwidth, and they believe that they can throw enough encoder horsepower at the problem to make it not as terrible, and that most people are too oblivious and stupid to notice the difference between 1080i and 720p, and the excessive levels of compression. Of course here they are competing against Frontier, who apparently has absolutely no clue how to compress anything, as it is *significantly worse than Comcast*. I was at a friend's place, and we had the news on from Frontier's Vantage TV IPTV service (ex AT&T U-Verse, but different encoding, as U-Verse looked decent), and Robert Mueller was on the screen. He looked like he was 120 years old and had crawled out of the grave, as he face had all these weird lines on it from the video compression.
> 
> The problem with their MPEG-4 encoding is that because it's CBR, it looks pretty good when there is little to no motion, like Baseball, but when there is a lot of motion, like Baseketball, it looks like total garbage on those wide court shots where a lot is going on. That's in addition to the raw loss of sharpness going from 1080i to 720p.


They may be doing the compression of locals in Philadelphia proper but out in my suburb I still get NBC and CBS in 1080i (Fox and ABC have always been 720p, for sports according to the networks).


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## Bigg

PSU_Sudzi said:


> They may be doing the compression of locals in Philadelphia proper but out in my suburb I still get NBC and CBS in 1080i (Fox and ABC have always been 720p, for sports according to the networks).


That's quite possible if you're on a different system (which you most surely are, as Philly Metro area is large). If that's the case, however, you will probably be converted, i.e. "upgraded" soon.


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## PSU_Sudzi

Bigg said:


> That's quite possible if you're on a different system (which you most surely are, as Philly Metro area is large). If that's the case, however, you will probably be converted, i.e. "upgraded" soon.


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## morac

Bigg said:


> That's quite possible if you're on a different system (which you most surely are, as Philly Metro area is large). If that's the case, however, you will probably be converted, i.e. "upgraded" soon.


I get the Philly stations in NJ and the only one I've found that's converted is CW (WPSG).

I'm not sure how that's being converted as I can't see each local office encoding nor can I see the feed being sent to their nationwide center. The only thing I can think of is that Comcast is compressing the feed at their Philly HQ and sending it out locally somehow.

That also doesn't explain why only the CW and not others like CBS (which owns the CW station).


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## NorthAlabama

i'll add this comment about tivo vs. x1, and converted markets:

several techs (a dozen or so, over a year+) have visited my home while troubleshooting issues both before and after the comcast fiber upgrade in our area. it appears they've been working through these issues in my neighborhood for a while, and it's no surprise, we've had comcast here at least since the 80's.

of course, the trouble's never with my wiring, and most every tech has commented positively on how excellent (their words) my home wiring is, but what shocks them the most? the picture quality with tivo - they literally stop, stare, and remark on the high quality of the picture - it's almost as if they rarely experience such a phenomenon.


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## mschnebly

NorthAlabama said:


> i'll add this comment about tivo vs. x1, and converted markets:
> 
> several techs (a dozen or so, over a year+) have visited my home while troubleshooting issues both before and after the comcast fiber upgrade in our area. it appears they've been working through these issues in my neighborhood for a while, and it's no surprise, we've had comcast here at least since the 80's.
> 
> of course, the trouble's never with my wiring, and most every tech has commented positively on how excellent (their words) my home wiring is, but what shocks them the most? the picture quality with tivo - they literally stop, stare, and remark on the high quality of the picture - it's almost as if they rarely experience such a phenomenon.


You must have hit the jackpot on that TiVo. Mine sure isn't like that. My X1 had a better picture although not that much better but it was noticeable.


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## Bigg

morac said:


> I get the Philly stations in NJ and the only one I've found that's converted is CW (WPSG).
> 
> I'm not sure how that's being converted as I can't see each local office encoding nor can I see the feed being sent to their nationwide center. The only thing I can think of is that Comcast is compressing the feed at their Philly HQ and sending it out locally somehow.
> 
> That also doesn't explain why only the CW and not others like CBS (which owns the CW station).


It would be converted regionally wherever the fiber feed goes today for ingestion, and for now, they must be sending out both the original MPEG-2 mux as well as the MPEG-4 re-encoded stream on their IP fiber network to the various headends that use one or the other. At the regional level, they have virtually unlimited bandwidth, the bandwidth constraints are in the HFC plant.

What explains one being MPEG-4 and one not is that Comcast takes forever to do anything, as they are a whole bunch of different little feudal kingdoms that don't always go in the same direction at the same time.


----------



## kupe

And the hits from Comcast just keep on coming! Here in City of Atlanta, Xfinity finally killed its remaining 1080i broadcast of local channels. Last week on September 10, 2019 NBC (ch 806) and CBS (ch 809) switched from 1080i to 720p. I have a few weeks of recorded shows on both channels and was able to confirm that date.


----------



## kokishin

What next Comcrap... 480p?


----------



## NashGuy

kupe said:


> And the hits from Comcast just keep on coming! Here in City of Atlanta, Xfinity finally killed its remaining 1080i broadcast of local channels. Last week on September 10, 2019 NBC (ch 806) and CBS (ch 809) switched from 1080i to 720p. I have a few weeks of recorded shows on both channels and was able to confirm that date.


Yup. This happened in August in Chicago. I read the report of it happening over on DSL Reports. As I've posted elsewhere, Chicago seems to be the "canary in the Comcast coal mine." They like to introduce new changes there first, then spread them throughout the Central Division (including Nashville, Atlanta, etc.) before taking them nationwide. (That's how DOCSIS 3.1 was rolled out and it also appears to be the pattern with Comcast's new set of TV packages and their push toward 100% IPTV service by default for new customers.)


----------



## mattyro7878

kokishin said:


> What next Comcrap... 480p?


Ya gotta admit when the first DVD players came along with PROGRESSIVE SCAN (480P) we were very excited!!


----------



## morac

NashGuy said:


> Yup. This happened in August in Chicago. I read the report of it happening over on DSL Reports. As I've posted elsewhere, Chicago seems to be the "canary in the Comcast coal mine." They like to introduce new changes there first, then spread them throughout the Central Division (including Nashville, Atlanta, etc.) before taking them nationwide. (That's how DOCSIS 3.1 was rolled out and it also appears to be the pattern with Comcast's new set of TV packages and their push toward 100% IPTV service by default for new customers.)


CW in Philly was changed to 720p a few years ago. I have a separate box that recording OTA and the OTA recordings are still 1080i, while Comcast's is 720p. I'll admit though for the few shows I record I don't really notice a difference. Probably because the CW OTA has several subchannels in use so it already looks cruddy to begin with.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

All the locals in Philly still look sharp at their native resolutions so will be curious to see how they look after being converted. I was really outraged after the initial transition but it has improved to where it’s hard to tell any difference between the 720p channels and streaming 1080p.


----------



## NashGuy

morac said:


> CW in Philly was changed to 720p a few years ago. I have a separate box that recording OTA and the OTA recordings are still 1080i, while Comcast's is 720p. I'll admit though for the few shows I record I don't really notice a difference. Probably because the CW OTA has several subchannels in use so it already looks cruddy to begin with.


Yeah, they did some sporadic 1080i-to-720p conversion of a few HD locals around the nation in the past. But I think they're now serious about doing that with all of them everywhere in the coming weeks/months.


----------



## NorthAlabama

no changes here (yet), we usually follow the comcast atlanta market - as usual, abc & fox are at 720p, cw, pbs, cbs, and nbc are still 1080i.


----------



## tommiet

Get an antenna... Local channels look better than most cable.


----------



## WVZR1

tommiet said:


> Get an antenna... Local channels look better than most cable.


Ain't a solution for 'MANY'!!!!!


----------



## JoeKustra

WVZR1 said:


> Ain't a solution for 'MANY'!!!!!


I agree. I used to get a great picture on my NBC and CBS channels. They had no sub-channels. Now each has four and they both suck.


----------



## Bigg

mattyro7878 said:


> Ya gotta admit when the first DVD players came along with PROGRESSIVE SCAN (480P) we were very excited!!


Those DVDs look better than Comcast's over-compressed "720p" mess.


----------



## aaronwt

tommiet said:


> Get an antenna... Local channels look better than most cable.


Unless the OTA channels also look like crap. Like here in the DC area. Many are frequency sharing which makes things even worse. 
And the same thing that is broadcast from OTA stations is also broadcast on FiOS here.


----------



## leiff

My OTA reception is fringe at best in trying to get San Francisco from North Bay Marin. Anyone in my area (Mt.sutro SF) able to comment on local OTA quality VS Comcast?
Indoor antenna won't work for me. Can someone advise one I can attach to my roof? The house across the street from me someone has an antenna on the top of a very long pole sticking off the roof. Makes me think I will have to do something similar. I wish there were install companies that could install one on the roof of my house for me. If I could get locals with antenna I would cancel Comcast in a hot minute


----------



## Mikeguy

leiff said:


> My OTA reception is fringe at best in trying to get San Francisco from North Bay Marin. Anyone in my area (Mt.sutro SF) able to comment on local OTA quality VS Comcast?
> Indoor antenna won't work for me. Can someone advise one I can attach to my roof? The house across the street from me someone has an antenna on the top of a very long pole sticking off the roof. Makes me think I will have to do something similar. I wish there were install companies that could install one on the roof of my house for me. If I could get locals with antenna I would cancel Comcast in a hot minute


I haven't used them, but for outdoor antenna installation, how about checking out:

HomeAdvisor.com | Get Matched to Top-Rated Remodelers, Plumbers and More

Antenna Installation And Repair Services | Antenna Pros


----------



## NashGuy

leiff said:


> My OTA reception is fringe at best in trying to get San Francisco from North Bay Marin. Anyone in my area (Mt.sutro SF) able to comment on local OTA quality VS Comcast?
> Indoor antenna won't work for me. Can someone advise one I can attach to my roof? The house across the street from me someone has an antenna on the top of a very long pole sticking off the roof. Makes me think I will have to do something similar. I wish there were install companies that could install one on the roof of my house for me. If I could get locals with antenna I would cancel Comcast in a hot minute


DISH (the satellite TV provider) is now in the business of selling OTA rooftop antenna installations. You do NOT at all need to take their satellite TV service. See here:

Need an Antenna Installed? DISH Will Do It for You - Cord Cutters News


----------



## tommiet

WVZR1 said:


> Ain't a solution for 'MANY'!!!!!


Understand.... I have one in my attic and it gets about 40 channels. IF I could talk my wife into dumping cable, I would and sell off my TiVo stuff and just use my Recast and Netflix.


----------



## NorthAlabama

i've always wondered why those using or pondering ota seem to mention the number of channels they can receive - sure, my antenna picks up a number of channels, but only a handful are worth watching on a good day - it's quality, not quantity.


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## mattyro7878

Sad but true. Of course having the physical DVD assures a nice warm , error free picture. Much more enjoyable than a 720p picture from a source miles away.


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## mattyro7878

Also...any contractor or roofer would gladly throw an antenna up for you. Drop coax wire down , run it through your window and seal it up with duct tape! Seriously a contractor would put up your antenna. Getting that signal to your tv or Tivo is not a big deal. I wish I did not live in a valley. I moved into a second floor and thought it's was gonna be a real option but it is not.


----------



## slowbiscuit

kupe said:


> And the hits from Comcast just keep on coming! Here in City of Atlanta, Xfinity finally killed its remaining 1080i broadcast of local channels. Last week on September 10, 2019 NBC (ch 806) and CBS (ch 809) switched from 1080i to 720p. I have a few weeks of recorded shows on both channels and was able to confirm that date.


Checked every HD channel in my package (which is pretty much all of them, sans premiums and Spanish) using Tivo's diagnostics and every one has been converted to H.264 720p except for Weather Channel, which is still mpeg2 1080i. My guess is that this is due to local weather insertions so they can't transcode from a central site. And yep this includes all the local channels which used to be passed through as-is.


----------



## NashGuy

slowbiscuit said:


> Checked every HD channel in my package (which is pretty much all of them, sans premiums and Spanish) using Tivo's diagnostics and every one has been converted to H.264 720p except for Weather Channel, which is still mpeg2 1080i. My guess is that this is due to local weather insertions so they can't transcode from a central site. And yep this includes all the local channels which used to be passed through as-is.


After NBCU sold off The Weather Channel, I'm mildly surprised to see that it made it into their new Extra and Preferred channel packages. It would've been simple enough for NBCU to create their own low-cost "NBC Weather" channel featuring Al Roker and using the existing resources of NBC News. Maybe the deal to sell The Weather Channel to Byron Allen stipulated that Comcast had to continue to carry the channel, and not directly compete with it, for a certain amount of time...


----------



## Bigg

slowbiscuit said:


> Checked every HD channel in my package (which is pretty much all of them, sans premiums and Spanish) using Tivo's diagnostics and every one has been converted to H.264 720p except for Weather Channel, which is still mpeg2 1080i. My guess is that this is due to local weather insertions so they can't transcode from a central site. And yep this includes all the local channels which used to be passed through as-is.


From what I've heard, the equipment TWC uses is kind of outdated. I believe some areas have moved TWC over to MPEG-4, but it would require encoding at each headend, or moving each system's TWC box to the regional datacenter and encoding each one separately to MPEG-4.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

slowbiscuit said:


> Checked every HD channel in my package (which is pretty much all of them, sans premiums and Spanish) using Tivo's diagnostics and every one has been converted to H.264 720p except for Weather Channel, which is still mpeg2 1080i. My guess is that this is due to local weather insertions so they can't transcode from a central site. And yep this includes all the local channels which used to be passed through as-is.


How do the locals look? I'm in the Philly suburbs and think the locals offer a "pop" in color and clarity over the converted channels and would hate to lose that.


----------



## leswar

Yup, we lost 1080i on our locals. I noticed it yesterday while watching football. Was getting that Comcast h264 freeze while trying to ff thru
the game onto the next play. 30 sec skip use to get the job done but not w/ Brady or any other fast offense. TWC is still 1080i and
FOX local (720p native) doesn't exhibit that CHF as now all the other locals.


----------



## tommage1

NashGuy said:


> Yup. This happened in August in Chicago. I read the report of it happening over on DSL Reports. As I've posted elsewhere, Chicago seems to be the "canary in the Comcast coal mine." They like to introduce new changes there first, then spread them throughout the Central Division (including Nashville, Atlanta, etc.) before taking them nationwide. (That's how DOCSIS 3.1 was rolled out and it also appears to be the pattern with Comcast's new set of TV packages and their push toward 100% IPTV service by default for new customers.)


Yup, I remember NBC, went from 8-9GB per hour MPEG2 to less than 2GB per hour MPEG4. I checked here at the time, no one else saw it. I am around Chicago. Last I had checked there were a couple 1080i MPEG2 left, CBS was one. I checked now, CBS now 720P and MPEG4. So that's it I guess, no 1080i left in Chicago, Comcast. Guess I should rush out and buy an 8K OLED TV and the new Edge. To watch 720P compressed TV, with pre-roll ads


----------



## tommage1

tommage1 said:


> Yup, I remember NBC, went from 8-9GB per hour MPEG2 to less than 2GB per hour MPEG4. I checked here at the time, no one else saw it. I am around Chicago. Last I had checked there were a couple 1080i MPEG2 left, CBS was one. I checked now, CBS now 720P and MPEG4. So that's it I guess, no 1080i left in Chicago, Comcast. Guess I should rush out and buy an 8K OLED TV and the new Edge. To watch 720P compressed TV, with pre-roll ads


Oh, as someone mentioned the WEATHER CHANNEL is still MPEG2 1080i. I did a couple one hour "test recordings", weather channel is 5.12GB, the "new" 720P compressed CBS is 1.8GB. As has been said here before I guess the one plus is you can have 3-5x as many "HD recordings" on your drive, a bit under 2GB per hour as compared to what it used to be, 5-10GB per hour. An hour of an HD recording is not much more than an hour of SD recording in many cases, space wise.


----------



## tommage1

I did one more test, recorded 1/2 hour of CBS, 720p HD and 480i SD. At the same time, same show. For 1/2 hour the HD recording is .9GB, the SD recording .63GB. Before compression the HD CBS would have been 3-4GB for 1/2 hour. While nothing can be done about cable cos and compression I still find it interesting to test these things


----------



## leiff

Does Comcast plan to down res locals for the rest of us too I wonder? Do we know?


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

leiff said:


> Does Comcast plan to down res locals for the rest of us too I wonder? Do we know?


I don't know if it's been "reported" in a news outlet but it's definitely been posted on here that is Comcast's plan. And facts seem to bear that out as it's been a similar pattern with the original downgrade to 720p, i.e. one territory after another.


----------



## Davelnlr_

Any idea if they are doing the same to the Xfinity Stream app on Roku?
I do not see any picture improvement using it.


----------



## Bigg

Davelnlr_ said:


> Any idea if they are doing the same to the Xfinity Stream app on Roku?
> I do not see any picture improvement using it.


It has most likely been using the 720p stream all along since it has to be MPEG-4 and 30/60p to work on a streaming device.


----------



## chiguy50

Davelnlr_ said:


> Any idea if they are doing the same to the Xfinity Stream app on Roku?
> I do not see any picture improvement using it.


I have the impression that the video is somewhat better when streaming on the app than it is over QAM cable. But bear in mind that the Roku app is still in Beta development so some improvements are likely before it is launched in final form.

The biggest detractor for me is the audio. I have been told by a Comcast tech that they limited it to PCM 2.0 because they had experienced performance/syncing problems with other codecs, the presumption being that they are working on resolving those issues. But nothing has been promised.


----------



## Mark814

I love it, while America upgrades to 4K and 8K TV's, Comcast downgrades and has the nerve to ask, "Why does America vote us the crappiest business here?!?" LOL


----------



## kupe

Well it's been about three weeks now since Comcast switched our NBC and CBS to 720p here in City of Atlanta. I thought "oh I guess I'll get used to it". 

But NO NO NO it is horrible! Prior to the switchover on September 10 those channels positively "popped" on our Samsung 4K UHD 55 inch set. Now it is dull and muddy. Oh and the audio is muffled!

I'm reduced now to watching reruns on my Roamio Pro from before September 10 to just get a "fix" of the old picture. 

Tivo we need a DVR that can do both OTA as well as Cable!


----------



## kupe

Mark814 said:


> I love it, while America upgrades to 4K and 8K TV's, Comcast downgrades and has the nerve to ask, "Why does America vote us the crappiest business here?!?" LOL


Absolutely fantastic point!!


----------



## shwru980r

kupe said:


> Well it's been about three weeks now since Comcast switched our NBC and CBS to 720p here in City of Atlanta. I thought "oh I guess I'll get used to it".
> 
> But NO NO NO it is horrible! Prior to the switchover on September 10 those channels positively "popped" on our Samsung 4K UHD 55 inch set. Now it is dull and muddy. Oh and the audio is muffled!
> 
> I'm reduced now to watching reruns on my Roamio Pro from before September 10 to just get a "fix" of the old picture.
> 
> Tivo we need a DVR that can do both OTA as well as Cable!


You could get an OTA Tivo and a mini vox to put in front of both Tivos to unify the experience. Uncheck the OTA channels on the Roamio pro and move the OTA one passses to the OTA Tivo.


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## tarheelblue32

shwru980r said:


> You could get an OTA Tivo and a mini vox to put in front of both Tivos to unify the experience. Uncheck the OTA channels on the Roamio pro and move the OTA one passses to the OTA Tivo.


Seems like a waste of money unless you really need the Mini for another TV. Switching inputs is less effort than switching the host DVR on the Mini.


----------



## kupe

shwru980r said:


> You could get an OTA Tivo and a mini vox to put in front of both Tivos to unify the experience. Uncheck the OTA channels on the Roamio pro and move the OTA one passses to the OTA Tivo.


Sure, I get that. But I think there is an opportunity here for Tivo for a combo OTA and Cable device. Comcast is handing it to them!

Actually we have one such device in our family already- my mother-in-law's ancient 2-tuner Tivo Premiere! Come on Tivo we need a combo OTA and Cable box!


----------



## Bigg

kupe said:


> Tivo we need a DVR that can do both OTA as well as Cable!


If you can live with 2 tuners and no Minis, the 2-tuner Premiere series can do both on one box. Or you could dump Comcast and go OTA with a streaming service.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

kupe said:


> Sure, I get that. But I think there is an opportunity here for Tivo for a combo OTA and Cable device. Comcast is handing it to them!
> 
> Actually we have one such device in our family already- my mother-in-law's ancient 2-tuner Tivo Premiere! Come on Tivo we need a combo OTA and Cable box!


Agreed. My dream TiVo would have 6 tuners and be an OTA cable combo.


----------



## tarheelblue32

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Agreed. My dream TiVo would have 6 tuners and be an OTA cable combo.


If they ever were going to make another box that would do both at the same time, they might as well make it with 6 cable tuners and 4 OTA tuners, so 10 tuners total.


----------



## MassMan

Bigg said:


> If you can live with 2 tuners and no Minis, the 2-tuner Premiere series can do both on one box. Or you could dump Comcast and go OTA with a streaming service.


Which is way I keep my Premiere running.


----------



## chiguy50

kupe said:


> Absolutely fantastic point!!


I love it! Honestly, I laughed out loud at this. Thanks for passing along that sadly hilarious spoof video.

To be fair, though, as a long-time Comcast residential customer and also the point man for our community's bulk-services agreement with them, I have seen a sea change in corporate customer service policy and structure going back to the tenure of Rick Germano and continuing under the helm of Tom Karinshak as EVP for Customer Service. IMHO they are now better organized to be responsive and are mostly better trained. Obviously, they still have a long way to go before anyone will accuse them of stellar performance across the board, and there will almost always be weak links and anecdotal horror stories no matter how much emphasis any such sprawling for-profit enterprise places on putting the customer first. (Full Disclosure: I myself have been dealing with an absolutely horrendous such episode on the bulk-services side for the past several months. But I have recently gone through back channels to have the situation addressed and am confident that swift action will follow.)

I feel we should also put performance into perspective. I judge Comcast's CS in relation to their peers in the industry as well as other broad customer-facing fields such as the airlines. Grading on a scale, Comcast does not measure up to the best but also ranks above many others IMHO.

It's easy to carp (and I acknowledge that I am a VERY demanding customer), but I also feel compelled to recognize when a corporate behemoth makes systemic efforts to improve, regardless of whether the motivation is genuine concern for the customer or some more mercantile impetus. As consumers, we also have to take ownership when we do not advocate sufficiently for ourselves. You can not rightly expect a service provider to care more about correcting your problem than you do yourself. I have almost always arrived at a highly satisfactory result with Comcast CS when I persist (politely and patiently but firmly) past an initial response that does not meet my expectations.


----------



## Bigg

Comcast is an incompetent mess, but Cox is a whole new level of hell to deal with.


----------



## slowbiscuit

The problem with Comcast has always been useless first tier CS, I've had good response skipping them for direct backend support. I stopped calling 800-COMCAST for non-transient issues years ago.

But to be fair we are a niche and know a lot more about the systems than they do.


----------



## bellbm

I live in Chicago. Thankful I can get RCN. they keep broadcast as original signal. Most other cable channels are mpeg4, but either 1080i or 720p. Picture looks great. It RCN ever went away, I’d probably put up and antenna and look at a streaming service. I would never go with Comcast.


----------



## chiguy50

chiguy50 said:


> (Full Disclosure: I myself have been dealing with an absolutely horrendous such episode on the bulk-services side for the past several months. But I have recently gone through back channels to have the situation addressed and am confident that swift action will follow.)


Just to provide an update, my back-channel communication this week had immediate positive results, proving that Comcast's corporate oversight is sensitive to failure points in their hierarchy. (The only reason I resorted to back channels in this instance is that there were sensitive personnel issues involved across departments. And I would have acted sooner but my BOD wanted to allow the parties and their immediate supervisors additional time to rectify the issue.)

There are equivalent front-channel avenues at Comcast for routine CS problems. If a particularly thorny, intractable problem can not be satisfactorily dealt with via on-line help, phone convo, in-store reps, Tweet, et al, or by posting at the Xfinity Community Forum, I have found an email to Tom Karinshak to be very effective.

My point is that, despite the anecdotal horror stories (and I have had my own share over the years), Comcast customer support is much improved and better than one might expect from a corporate behemoth in our _caveat emptor_ culture.


----------



## philco782

Comcast's support is at least better than Tivo's...


----------



## NorthAlabama

philco782 said:


> Comcast's support is at least better than Tivo's...


that's like saying a tornado is better than a hurricane...


----------



## kupe

chiguy50 said:


> I love it! Honestly, I laughed out loud at this. Thanks for passing along that sadly hilarious spoof video.
> 
> To be fair, though, as a long-time Comcast residential customer and also the point man for our community's bulk-services agreement with them, I have seen a sea change in corporate customer service policy and structure going back to the tenure of Rick Germano and continuing under the helm of Tom Karinshak as EVP for Customer Service. IMHO they are now better organized to be responsive and are mostly better trained...


That may be true, but ultimately this isn't about Customer Service. This is a technical specifications issue. I mean 720p?? Really??? As Mark814 said "while America upgrades to 4K and 8K TV's, Comcast downgrades."


----------



## KingsFan6

Does anyone have insight into whether Comcast will ever get around to improving their picture. Even if they stick with the 3.8 to 4.2 Mbps per channel, can't they at least improve the compression and get a better picture out of it? Here in the Bay Area, I'm at least grateful that they haven't down-converted the locals yet.


----------



## Rey

Disappointed they began down-converting my 1080i locals a few weeks ago. Not only are then now 720p they are also being compressed. Looking like sh*t.


----------



## Bigg

KingsFan6 said:


> Does anyone have insight into whether Comcast will ever get around to improving their picture. Even if they stick with the 3.8 to 4.2 Mbps per channel, can't they at least improve the compression and get a better picture out of it? Here in the Bay Area, I'm at least grateful that they haven't down-converted the locals yet.


They've already tweaked and pushed MPEG-4 beyond what anyone thought they could from a bitrate/performance perspective, the problem is that they are just absurdly bitstarved, and no amount of CPU power is going to fix that. They'd have to completely change their system to use more regional/local encodes with a stat mux in order to have any chance at making it work.

I doubt we'll see any improvement until they move to IPTV, although currently they still have IPTV-capable boxes out there that can't handle HEVC, so who knows what they'll end up doing.



Rey said:


> Disappointed they began down-converting my 1080i locals a few weeks ago. Not only are then now 720p they are also being compressed. Looking like sh*t.


Cut the cord and get an OTA TiVo!


----------



## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> I doubt we'll see any improvement until they move to IPTV, although currently they still have IPTV-capable boxes out there that can't handle HEVC, so who knows what they'll end up doing.


At least for their unicast IPTV streams (live/cloud DVR/on-demand), there's no reason why Comcast couldn't do a second higher-quality HEVC encode for whatever devices could access it. Obviously, it would cost them some money but then Netflix and others do umpteen encodes for their content to ensure a balance between picture quality and lack of buffering. So if Comcast cared about picture quality and thought it would make their TV service more competitive, they might do that too. We'll see. It'll be interesting to see what practices they implement for Peacock and whether/how that differs from their cable IPTV service.


----------



## Bigg

NashGuy said:


> At least for their unicast IPTV streams (live/cloud DVR/on-demand), there's no reason why Comcast couldn't do a second higher-quality HEVC encode for whatever devices could access it. Obviously, it would cost them some money but then Netflix and others do umpteen encodes for their content to ensure a balance between picture quality and lack of buffering. So if Comcast cared about picture quality and thought it would make their TV service more competitive, they might do that too. We'll see. It'll be interesting to see what practices they implement for Peacock and whether/how that differs from their cable IPTV service.


That's true for VOD or live unicast content, not so much for Cloud DVR, as that's encoded before it's recorded, so it's already lost quality.


----------



## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> That's true for VOD or live unicast content, not so much for Cloud DVR, as that's encoded before it's recorded, so it's already lost quality.


Why couldn't they just do cloud DVR recordings from the HEVC-encoded live streams? I assume that, in a given area, Comcast just records every single show on every channel (and keeps however many backup copies) in order to create their area-wide cloud DVR library for use by all local customers. So they could do one cloud DVR library in MPEG-4 and one in HEVC.


----------



## danm628

NashGuy said:


> Why couldn't they just do cloud DVR recordings from the HEVC-encoded live streams? I assume that, in a given area, Comcast just records every single show on every channel (and keeps however many backup copies) in order to create their area-wide cloud DVR library for use by all local customers. So they could do one cloud DVR library in MPEG-4 and one in HEVC.


You are assuming that Comcast cares about the quality of video their customers receive.

Based on behavior I am fairly sure they don't care.


----------



## Bigg

NashGuy said:


> Why couldn't they just do cloud DVR recordings from the HEVC-encoded live streams? I assume that, in a given area, Comcast just records every single show on every channel (and keeps however many backup copies) in order to create their area-wide cloud DVR library for use by all local customers. So they could do one cloud DVR library in MPEG-4 and one in HEVC.


They'd have to transcode them back to MPEG-4 for hardware that doesn't support HEVC. I believe it's one recording per user due to absurd copyright regulations.



danm628 said:


> You are assuming that Comcast cares about the quality of video their customers receive.
> 
> Based on behavior I am fairly sure they don't care.


Also this. They have determined that the majority of their customers are morons and can't tell the difference between over-compressed 720p and actual HD, and sadly, that's largely true. Most people are oblivious to what's around them, and often have way too small of a screen for their room.


----------



## NashGuy

danm628 said:


> You are assuming that Comcast cares about the quality of video their customers receive.
> 
> Based on behavior I am fairly sure they don't care.





NashGuy said:


> Obviously, it would cost them some money but then Netflix and others do umpteen encodes for their content to ensure a balance between picture quality and lack of buffering. So if Comcast cared about picture quality and thought it would make their TV service more competitive, they might do that too.


----------



## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> They'd have to transcode them back to MPEG-4 for hardware that doesn't support HEVC. I believe it's one recording per user due to absurd copyright regulations.


Maybe, although I'm doubtful that's how it actually works when you're the largest MVPD in the nation and also a major content owner. As Comcast shifts to cloud DVR, I'd bet that they negotiate with the channel/content owners to allow them to treat cloud DVR recordings in the same way that they do those sources' on-demand titles, in that they do not need to store an individual recording on their servers for each Comcast customer who sets up a recording. It's a useless waste of hard drive space and it doesn't gain the channel owners anything.


----------



## Bigg

NashGuy said:


> Maybe, although I'm doubtful that's how it actually works when you're the largest MVPD in the nation and also a major content owner. As Comcast shifts to cloud DVR, I'd bet that they negotiate with the channel/content owners to allow them to treat cloud DVR recordings in the same way that they do those sources' on-demand titles, in that they do not need to store an individual recording on their servers for each Comcast customer who sets up a recording. It's a useless waste of hard drive space and it doesn't gain the channel owners anything.


Possible, although that's not what content owners have allowed in the past. It may also be a hybrid, where NBCU/Comcast and cooperating content providers are more like on demand, and non-cooperating ones aren't or something. It probably has come up in the last round of negotiations on carriage costs though.


----------



## PSU_Sudzi

NashGuy said:


> Why couldn't they just do cloud DVR recordings from the HEVC-encoded live streams? I assume that, in a given area, Comcast just records every single show on every channel (and keeps however many backup copies) in order to create their area-wide cloud DVR library for use by all local customers. So they could do one cloud DVR library in MPEG-4 and one in HEVC.


I'm pretty sure when X1 was first rolled out, part of their marketing was pointing this very thing out, i.e. we record the top 20 shows on TV so you don't have to, or something along those lines. I remember both reading this somewhere and a friend explaining it to me when he was showing it to me at his house before I kicked my Moxi to the curb for a TiVo.


----------



## NashGuy

It's going to be odd if/when Comcast streams new original content on Peacock in high picture quality (maybe even 4K to match the practices of Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Apple TV+) yet still serves up their core Xfinity cable TV service in overly compressed 720p. Doing that would almost be a tacit admission by them that they see streaming as a superior/favored way of watching TV, which surely can't be helpful if they're trying to preserve their core MVPD business.


----------



## Bigg

NashGuy said:


> It's going to be odd if/when Comcast streams new original content on Peacock in high picture quality (maybe even 4K to match the practices of Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Apple TV+) yet still serves up their core Xfinity cable TV service in overly compressed 720p. Doing that would almost be a tacit admission by them that they see streaming as a superior/favored way of watching TV, which surely can't be helpful if they're trying to preserve their core MVPD business.


They're just milking their MVPD business for a few more years before it implodes. They are a broadband provider first and foremost.


----------



## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> They're just milking their MVPD business for a few more years before it implodes. They are a broadband provider first and foremost.


It will still be interesting to watch how Comcast tries to manage the transition from traditional cable TV to OTT direct-to-consumer streaming. I'm not sure that there will a sudden, dramatic implosion of traditional cable TV unless the major powers-that-be purposely undermine it and guide consumers over to their OTT DTC platforms. Similarly, will be interesting to watch what AT&T does with regard to AT&T TV/DirecTV/Uverse TV vs. HBO Max.


----------



## chiguy50

Bigg said:


> They're just milking their MVPD business for a few more years before it implodes. They are a broadband provider first and foremost.





NashGuy said:


> It will still be interesting to watch how Comcast tries to manage the transition from traditional cable TV to OTT direct-to-consumer streaming. I'm not sure that there will a sudden, dramatic implosion of traditional cable TV unless the major powers-that-be purposely undermine it and guide consumers over to their OTT DTC platforms. Similarly, will be interesting to watch what AT&T does with regard to AT&T TV/DirecTV/Uverse TV vs. HBO Max.


Given that Comcast is still pitching 10-year bulk-services agreements that include CTV, what is your guess regarding how they would handle any "implosion" of the latter service? My assumption is that they intend to continue offering both (multi-channel or OTT) video programming and data for the long term and will propose to transition legacy BSA subscribers as necessary if delivery methodology changes so dictate.


----------



## Rey

Bigg said:


> They've already tweaked and pushed MPEG-4 beyond what anyone thought they could from a bitrate/performance perspective, the problem is that they are just absurdly bitstarved, and no amount of CPU power is going to fix that. They'd have to completely change their system to use more regional/local encodes with a stat mux in order to have any chance at making it work.
> 
> I doubt we'll see any improvement until they move to IPTV, although currently they still have IPTV-capable boxes out there that can't handle HEVC, so who knows what they'll end up doing.
> 
> Cut the cord and get an OTA TiVo!


 For the moment I am using a HD Homerun Quatro with channels DVR. Locals look glorious. This year decisions we'll have to be made but my problem is I want to have ESPN and the NFL network with the redzone channel. Comcasts data caps would be a problem getting this content if possible via streaming. I've been looking at AT&T fiber that is another option in my area. Combining their broadband without data caps with a streaming service can be an option. Have to see if cost wise it's at least what I pay now.
I will say that using TV EVERYWHERE (beta) with channels dvr using the xfinity login really shows how much comcast compresses things.

Edit: AT&T is also offering me TV with something called AT&T TV ( not what replaced Directv Now ) that comes with a box to access these channels (IPTV). Has to look way better than comcast linear channels.


----------



## NashGuy

chiguy50 said:


> Given that Comcast is still pitching 10-year bulk-services agreements that include CTV, what is your guess regarding how they would handle any "implosion" of the latter service? My assumption is that they intend to continue offering both (multi-channel or OTT) video programming and data for the long term and will propose to transition legacy BSA subscribers as necessary if delivery methodology changes so dictate.


Yeah, they'll definitely continue to offer traditional cable channel packages along with their new Peacock service for as long as there's any meaningful number of cable channels and subscribers (which is the foreseeable future, IMO). By launching Peacock (just as AT&T is launching HBO Max), they're hedging their bets/covering their bases, so even as more and more consumers switch from traditional cable to OTT streaming services, they'll have a fighting chance to own a piece of the new video landscape as the old one withers away. I don't think they ultimately care if cable TV dies, as long as they make plenty of money on broadband and continue to make money on video (ad+subscription) via Peacock.

My guess is that they'll so intertwine Peacock (and, to a lesser extent, other streaming services) with traditional cable TV in the X1 UI that the lines sort of blur for the user. I think that's the goal with X1: to be a unified, blended UI (which Comcast controls) for lots of different video sources, which allows Comcast to gracefully manage the evolution of customers' video diets from primarily traditional cable TV to primarily OTT streaming.


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## NashGuy

Rey said:


> Edit: AT&T is also offering me TV with something called AT&T TV ( not what replaced Directv Now ) that comes with a box to access these channels (IPTV). Has to look way better than comcast linear channels.


AT&T TV is their new flagship, streaming-based cable TV service. It uses the same back-end technology that they developed for DirecTV Now. I haven't personally laid eyes on AT&T TV but I can tell you that back when I had DirecTV Now, it had the best-looking live HD channels that I'd ever seen from any cable service, even slightly better than DirecTV satellite. I've seen several others who have had both services say the same thing.

Right now, AT&T TV is only available in certain pilot markets but they've said it will finally go nationwide in Feb. My parents are considering switching to AT&T Fiber + TV then. But I first want to see how reliable/buggy the service will be before setting them up on it. We'll see...


----------



## Bigg

NashGuy said:


> It will still be interesting to watch how Comcast tries to manage the transition from traditional cable TV to OTT direct-to-consumer streaming. I'm not sure that there will a sudden, dramatic implosion of traditional cable TV unless the major powers-that-be purposely undermine it and guide consumers over to their OTT DTC platforms. Similarly, will be interesting to watch what AT&T does with regard to AT&T TV/DirecTV/Uverse TV vs. HBO Max.


At some point, there will be an implosion of cable TV if the channels keep asking for carriage cost increases well in excess of inflation, and more and more people will cancel as the prices go up, or cable providers will cut a lot of channels out of packages.

If the industry can somehow save itself from an implosion, it sure hasn't shown any willingness to do so, with things currently moving faster and faster towards collapse.



chiguy50 said:


> Given that Comcast is still pitching 10-year bulk-services agreements that include CTV, what is your guess regarding how they would handle any "implosion" of the latter service? My assumption is that they intend to continue offering both (multi-channel or OTT) video programming and data for the long term and will propose to transition legacy BSA subscribers as necessary if delivery methodology changes so dictate.


That's an interesting question. First and foremost, that is a relatively small part of Comcast's subscriber base. I don't know how those contracts are written, but Comcast will have to move channels up to higher tier packages that aren't included in the bulk deals if content providers continue to demand price increases far in excess of the increases written into the bulk deals. I believe a couple of channels have already met this fate.

It is a salient point, however, to point out that long term contracts both for bulk service, but more importantly for the content, will make this whole thing go in slow motion, and we may well see lots of zombie channels that just show old re-runs of garbage or low-quality syndicated content for some period of years or decades if their revenue continues to plummet from cord cutting to the point where they can't afford to produce new content. We already almost have some zombie channels in the cable lineup, that may be where more of them go.



NashGuy said:


> I don't think they ultimately care if cable TV dies, as long as they make plenty of money on broadband and continue to make money on video (ad+subscription) via Peacock.


Looking at their pricing and margin on broadband versus TV, they are definitely looking towards broadband as their core business. I'm surprised that they haven't tried to bundle phone with broadband, it is currently absurdly expensive to do so, but maybe they've found that people who want traditional phone service also want traditional TV service.



> I think that's the goal with X1: to be a unified, blended UI (which Comcast controls) for lots of different video sources, which allows Comcast to gracefully manage the evolution of customers' video diets from primarily traditional cable TV to primarily OTT streaming.


That might be the goal now, but they started working on X1 before these changes were taking place. I think they wanted to move to a more cable Video On Demand world, which ended up setting them up well for a streaming world, since the paradigm in similar.


----------



## NashGuy

Bigg said:


> At some point, there will be an implosion of cable TV if the channels keep asking for carriage cost increases well in excess of inflation, and more and more people will cancel as the prices go up, or cable providers will cut a lot of channels out of packages.
> 
> If the industry can somehow save itself from an implosion, it sure hasn't shown any willingness to do so, with things currently moving faster and faster towards collapse.


Not saying that there won't be a point of implosion/collapse, just that, IMO, that isn't the only plausible scenario. Maybe this just comes down to semantics, i.e. what constitutes an implosion? Perhaps we just see the number of cable TV subscribers decrease by about 10% each year for the next decade, with the whole system gradually melting away.

On the other hand, maybe the losses will suddenly accelerate in, say, 2021, with the industry losing a quarter of its subs that year in the wake of all these major new direct-to-consumer streaming services. _That_ would be an implosion, IMO.

Another plausible scenario: after the cable subscriber base shrinks to a certain level, it holds steady for years to come because all that are left are the folks who *really* value cable TV because of its live sports, news or other content that they can't get elsewhere, and they're willing and able to pay for it. (And perhaps by that point, the MVPDs and cable networks will have negotiated their way to a somewhat smaller, less expensive group of the most popular channels which becomes the industry standard.) This scenario isn't the one I find most likely but I still think it's plausible.


----------



## Bigg

NashGuy said:


> Not saying that there won't be a point of implosion/collapse, just that, IMO, that isn't the only plausible scenario. Maybe this just comes down to semantics, i.e. what constitutes an implosion? Perhaps we just see the number of cable TV subscribers decrease by about 10% each year for the next decade, with the whole system gradually melting away.


An implosion would be either a rapid decline in subscribers that causes the channels to start going out of business or pulling their linear channels offline such that there are few or no channels left to broadcast over linear TV, or some radical re-shifting of channel content where most of the content disappears in order to reduce rates and hang on to some level of subscribers.



> Another plausible scenario: after the cable subscriber base shrinks to a certain level, it holds steady for years to come because all that are left are the folks who *really* value cable TV because of its live sports, news or other content that they can't get elsewhere, and they're willing and able to pay for it. (And perhaps by that point, the MVPDs and cable networks will have negotiated their way to a somewhat smaller, less expensive group of the most popular channels which becomes the industry standard.) This scenario isn't the one I find most likely but I still think it's plausible.


That could happen if programmers hold rate increases at inflation, but they have been several times inflation for over a decade. That cannot continue indefinitely, as it would eventually become the entire economy, which is impossible. If they continue to increase at a rate higher than inflation, they will rapidly lose customers and start to implode as they can't pay for programming to put on the channels.

It's quite possible that we could see a large number of channels disappear and that revenue goes towards the surviving channels, making them that much stronger, but even then, the total cost of the package can't continue to increase faster than inflation indefinitely, and likely would have to decrease in order to get people to continue to subscribe to something with less perceived value in terms of channel tonnage.


----------



## leiff

Both PBS and The CW in my locals lineup is now down converted to 720P since early November and im only realizing it just now by viewing my past recordings record dates. I'm in SF bay area north bay.
This leaves me with only x3 1080i channels remaining from Comcast. CBS, NBC and The Weather Channel. This upsets me greatly because I always enjoyed high quality PB S nature programs in high def. That and the ability to fast play allowed me both high quality and fast play combination. Without me getting a roof antenna to point at San Francisco, is there a way for me to view high quality 1080 I PBS? app for my firestick?


----------



## morac

I’ll mention CW in my market was converted a few years back. I record it from an antenna in 1080i and from Comcast in 720p and I have to say they look pretty similar. Not because Comcast looks good, but because the CW antenna channel is already so over compressed that it already looks bad.


----------



## Bigg

leiff said:


> Both PBS and The CW in my locals lineup is now down converted to 720P since early November and im only realizing it just now by viewing my past recordings record dates. I'm in SF bay area north bay.
> This leaves me with only x3 1080i channels remaining from Comcast. CBS, NBC and The Weather Channel. This upsets me greatly because I always enjoyed high quality PB S nature programs in high def. That and the ability to fast play allowed me both high quality and fast play combination. Without me getting a roof antenna to point at San Francisco, is there a way for me to view high quality 1080 I PBS? app for my firestick?


You could switch to YouTube TV or another streaming provider. They re-compress, but they do a lot better job at it. Or you could get a giant antenna and get rid of Comcast.


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## KingsFan6

It’s official. Looks like all of my locals (Bay Area) have been converted. However, the Fox and NBC stations are coming in around 6 Mbps, while CBS and ABC are around 4 Mbps.


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## PSU_Sudzi

KingsFan6 said:


> It's official. Looks like all of my locals (Bay Area) have been converted. However, the Fox and NBC stations are coming in around 6 Mbps, while CBS and ABC are around 4 Mbps.


How is the quality? I'm out in the Philly suburbs and they still haven't switched the locals for us yet.


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## Willy92

720p is just as good, if not better than 1080i IMHO.


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## morac

PSU_Sudzi said:


> How is the quality? I'm out in the Philly suburbs and they still haven't switched the locals for us yet.


They did switch CW in Philly a few years back, but they haven't switched NBC or CBS. As far as I can tell comparing OTA and Comcast, there isn't much difference since the quality is already poor to begin with.


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## davidscarter

PSU_Sudzi said:


> How is the quality? I'm out in the Philly suburbs and they still haven't switched the locals for us yet.


Our locals were switched back in November. (Only thing remaining 1080/MPEG2 now is Weather Channel...) Most of the time I don't notice much of a difference. Exceptions are for live sports (which can get jerky) and anything with pyrotechnics. The super bowl halftime show was darn near unwatchable for all the pixelating!


----------



## slowbiscuit

Willy92 said:


> 720p is just as good, if not better than 1080i IMHO.


Uh, no. Not for sports. And certainly not at the crappy rate that Comcast is using.

CBS in particular was way better at 1080i for football, golf etc. than it is now.


----------



## Bigg

Willy92 said:


> 720p is just as good, if not better than 1080i IMHO.


You've been watching really bad 1080i then. 1080i has the capability, if done correctly, to transmit significantly more detail than 720p.

Also, in Comcast's case the ridiculous over-compression loses significantly more detail than 720p has to just based on resolution alone.


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## ej42137

Willy92 said:


> 720p is just as good, if not better than 1080i IMHO.


First, schedule an appointment with an ophthalmologist. After you get your eyes fixed, get a better TV with streaming capabilities and cancel Comcast.


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## PSU_Sudzi

ej42137 said:


> First, schedule an appointment with an ophthalmologist. After you get your eyes fixed, get a better TV with streaming capabilities and cancel Comcast.


The Comcast picture is markedly improved over what it was a couple of years ago during the beginning of the transition to 720p, I routinely compare it to the streaming apps and its only slightly worse (and I have 20/20 vision and brand new 4K HDR LED rtc. TV).


----------



## danm628

PSU_Sudzi said:


> The Comcast picture is markedly improved over what it was a couple of years ago during the beginning of the transition to 720p, I routinely compare it to the streaming apps and its only slightly worse (and I have 20/20 vision and brand new 4K HDR LED rtc. TV).


What really matters is bit rate. High bit rate lower resolution looks better than low bit rate higher resolution. But low bit rate lower resolution is the worst.

A lot of OTA stations are dropping their bit rate to additional channels. Add that on top of Comcast lowering rates and you may not notice. You're going from bad to slightly worse.

Comcast has done this in stages. Stay at 1080i and lower bit rate. Switch to 720p at same bit rate. Then lower the bit rate again. Train people slowly to expect bad video. Only those who stream or have old TiVo recordings notice.

I notice the most when I watch a show on Comcast and then switch to an iTunes recording of the show. From low bit rate 720p to high bit rate 1080p and sometimes high bit rate 4K.


----------



## morac

PSU_Sudzi said:


> The Comcast picture is markedly improved over what it was a couple of years ago during the beginning of the transition to 720p, I routinely compare it to the streaming apps and its only slightly worse (and I have 20/20 vision and brand new 4K HDR LED rtc. TV).


It depends on what you are calling "markedly improved".

Yes, the picture no longer frequently breaks into a pixelated mess (though something like a ticker-tape parade or confetti will still do that), but that's only because Comcast added a softness pre-compression filter. That lets Comcast compress the video more without breaking up, but it also makes it look like someone smeared Vaseline on the TV screen. Actors must love it as it hides blemishes.

Most broadcast and some cable channels (BBC America) look bad to begin with though, so Comcast can't make them look much worse. Comparing better looking channels like HBO on Comcast to HBO Go is like night and day.


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## mattyro7878

Does the FTC have no standards which m just be upheld? HD is usually used as something that is a leap in picture quality. It usually comes with a fee. You would think a required set of numbers would have to be met to advertise and charge for HD.


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## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> It depends on what you are calling "markedly improved".
> 
> Yes, the picture no longer frequently breaks into a pixelated mess (though something like a ticker-tape parade or confetti will still do that), but that's only because Comcast added a softness pre-compression filter. That lets Comcast compress the video more without breaking up, but it also makes it look like someone smeared Vaseline on the TV screen. Actors must love it as it hides blemishes.
> 
> Most broadcast and some cable channels (BBC America) look bad to begin with though, so Comcast can't make them look much worse. Comparing better looking channels like HBO on Comcast to HBO Go is like night and day.


I definitely agree BBC America is bad, maybe the worse of all the channels I watch with any frequency. The Doctor Who episodes look so soft it could be a Barbara Walters special.


----------



## Bigg

PSU_Sudzi said:


> The Comcast picture is markedly improved over what it was a couple of years ago during the beginning of the transition to 720p, I routinely compare it to the streaming apps and its only slightly worse (and I have 20/20 vision and brand new 4K HDR LED rtc. TV).


Translation: slightly less horrendous but still horrendous. I tried watching basketball the other day on Comcast 720p, it was unwatchable, as the players were too blurry to make out during fast motion scenes.



danm628 said:


> Comcast has done this in stages. Stay at 1080i and lower bit rate. Switch to 720p at same bit rate. Then lower the bit rate again. Train people slowly to expect bad video. Only those who stream or have old TiVo recordings notice.


You'd think more people would notice because of Netflix and other streaming services though. Netflix's encoding is incredible, and they have an incredibly sharp picture with zero visible artifacts due to the their industry-leading encoding technology. I doubt it's realistic to get live TV to that point, but Comcast certainly could make it a lot better if it they gave it just a little bit more bitrate.



morac said:


> Yes, the picture no longer frequently breaks into a pixelated mess (though something like a ticker-tape parade or confetti will still do that), but that's only because Comcast added a softness pre-compression filter. That lets Comcast compress the video more without breaking up, but it also makes it look like someone smeared Vaseline on the TV screen. Actors must love it as it hides blemishes.


They also combine H.264 with a TON of encoding horsepower, so that they don't have pixelation issues, but meanwhile, everything is blurry and has lost detail, as there is only so much you can cram into ~4mbps with H.264. OTA pixelates more, since they are using MPEG-2.


----------



## danm628

Bigg said:


> You'd think more people would notice because of Netflix and other streaming services though. Netflix's encoding is incredible, and they have an incredibly sharp picture with zero visible artifacts due to the their industry-leading encoding technology. I doubt it's realistic to get live TV to that point, but Comcast certainly could make it a lot better if it they gave it just a little bit more bitrate.


The people who notice complain to Comcast. Comcast employees won't talk about bit rate but they will explain how 720p is better than 1080i (reading a script they have).

So you either take the terrible picture or you cut the cord.

I've reduced my channels since there are a few things I enjoy that I can't easily stream. At some point I'll decide those aren't worth the effort and just cancel.


----------



## Willy92

Bigg said:


> You've been watching really bad 1080i then. 1080i has the capability, if done correctly, to transmit significantly more detail than 720p.
> 
> Also, in Comcast's case the ridiculous over-compression loses significantly more detail than 720p has to just based on resolution alone.


Maybe so, and I do were corrective lenses, when I bought an HD TV for the first time, back in 2005, that TV was only capable of top rez of 720/1080i. I spent a lot of time comparing them and decided that 720 was hardly any bit less than 1080i. 1080p was the big jump on my next TV purcashed in 2008. Maybe they've changed since then. Current TV is a 4k HDR and it's all over the place depending on the souce. Spectrum doesn't go any higher than 1080p and is mostly 1080i and 720p, so, you git what you git.


----------



## Bigg

danm628 said:


> The people who notice complain to Comcast. Comcast employees won't talk about bit rate but they will explain how 720p is better than 1080i (reading a script they have).
> 
> So you either take the terrible picture or you cut the cord.
> 
> I've reduced my channels since there are a few things I enjoy that I can't easily stream. At some point I'll decide those aren't worth the effort and just cancel.


I guess the bottom line is that they figure most of their customers are too stupid/oblivious to notice and they don't really care if people cut the cord anyway since they are a broadband monopoly in most places. It's pretty offensive when they believe that their customers are so stupid that they will believe an outright lie like saying that 720p is better than 1080i.

YouTube TV does the live stuff cheaper and with better VQ.



Willy92 said:


> Maybe so, and I do were corrective lenses, when I bought an HD TV for the first time, back in 2005, that TV was only capable of top rez of 720/1080i. I spent a lot of time comparing them and decided that 720 was hardly any bit less than 1080i. 1080p was the big jump on my next TV purcashed in 2008. Maybe they've changed since then. Current TV is a 4k HDR and it's all over the place depending on the souce. Spectrum doesn't go any higher than 1080p and is mostly 1080i and 720p, so, you git what you git.


What was the native resolution of that TV? If it was 720p, everything was getting converted anyway. If it was a 1080p set, then 1080i would look better.

The bottom line is that a good quality 1080i signal will look much sharper than a good quality 720p signal. Of course poor quality 1080i can be beaten by really good 720p, but that's not a fair comparison.


----------



## morac

Bigg said:


> I guess the bottom line is that they figure most of their customers are too stupid/oblivious to notice and they don't really care if people cut the cord anyway since they are a broadband monopoly in most places. It's pretty offensive when they believe that their customers are so stupid that they will believe an outright lie like saying that 720p is better than 1080i.


I truly believe at this point Comcast is simply milking whatever TV customers they have left until the cow dries up at which point they'll simply drop their QAM TV service and switch to all streaming. They'll likely do that even before then since they are heavily pushing their X1 and Flex platforms. The former can do streaming and the later does only streaming.

At that point, Comcast can theoretically increase the picture quality since they then won't have to carry every TV channel at once for every subscriber. They might not switch TV channels back to 1080, but they could at least increase the bit-rate of the encodings. Whether they do so or not remains to be seen, but I know they have some 4K channels that are available (streaming only) and also their new Peacock service will have 4K streaming.


----------



## Bigg

morac said:


> I truly believe at this point Comcast is simply milking whatever TV customers they have left until the cow dries up at which point they'll simply drop their QAM TV service and switch to all streaming. They'll likely do that even before then since they are heavily pushing their X1 and Flex platforms. The former can do streaming and the later does only streaming.


I think you mean managed IPTV, but yes, X1 can do managed IPTV.



> At that point, Comcast can theoretically increase the picture quality since they then won't have to carry every TV channel at once for every subscriber. They might not switch TV channels back to 1080, but they could at least increase the bit-rate of the encodings. Whether they do so or not remains to be seen, but I know they have some 4K channels that are available (streaming only) and also their new Peacock service will have 4K streaming.


Theoretically. I think Comcast's long term business model is controlling the broadband pipe, and setting up deals like the one they have with Netflix where Netflix has to pay Comcast protection money so that their bits don't have accidents. Getting paid by the content provider again to provide the internet service they are already providing anyway is a much better business than TV where they have to pay the content provider and then allocate bandwidth to that service.


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## chrishicks

Does anyone record Smackdown on Fox or American Ninja Warrior on NBC? If so could you check your current recordings for the file size? I noticed a recent change on my recordings and was curious if it's the Tivo reporting things wrong or something else. My recordings are now showing file sizes of around 5.7GB for these two shows. ANW for both of the current episodes and Smackdown for the last six or so that I checked from recently deleted. The shows are still in 720p so that hasn't changed. I only record one other network show airing right now and that one is still showing at the 1.8GB average since the 30 minute recording is 0.9GB. I'm curious if they upped the bandwidth for sports related programming on the locals because the locals maybe fired back at Comcast for the crappy bitrate forcing them to make adjustments. Or if the whole thing is a fluke and my Tivo is wrong. I'm in the Detroit market.

imgur.com


----------



## astrohip

chrishicks said:


> American Ninja Warrior


Monday's ANW, a two-hour recording, is 5.77GB.

NBC, Comcast.


----------



## davidscarter

I just looked at some Late Night with Seth Meyers that are in my suggestions folder.

The ones that were recorded since 9/10 are all around 2.8 GB; the ones recorded prior to that are around 1.8 GB.

I'm also seeing similar with the late night talk shows on CBS, though there the change seems to have occurred earlier, sometime in late August.

Maybe Comcast isn't compressing the locals as much as they were? (Comcast, Detroit stations)


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## PSU_Sudzi

I haven’t checked the size of recordings but the Comcast pic quality has increased over the past year and now seems to be much better than even a month ago.


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## mattyro7878

I have to agree . I was watching the Yankees on YES network and it was indistinguishable from the Xfinity stream picture.


----------



## morac

PSU_Sudzi said:


> I haven't checked the size of recordings but the Comcast pic quality has increased over the past year and now seems to be much better than even a month ago.


So for fun I went and checked a 30 minute show I record and up till April of this year it was 0.86 GB. Now it's 0.91 GB.

In general 30 minute recordings appear to be about 500 to 900 MB larger. A small improvement.


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## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> So for fun I went and checked a 30 minute show I record and up till April of this year it was 0.86 GB. Now it's 0.91 GB.
> 
> In general 30 minute recordings appear to be about 500 to 900 MB larger. A small improvement.


Is there a way to check file size on TE4?


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## morac

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Is there a way to check file size on TE4?


Not that I can tell. The info screen doesn't list size.


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## PSU_Sudzi

morac said:


> Not that I can tell. The info screen doesn't list size.


Ok thanks that's what it seemed like to me.


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## JoeKustra

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Ok thanks that's what it seemed like to me.


I never could find it either, but if I access the TE4 drive from my TE3 box I can see the file size.


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## PSU_Sudzi

JoeKustra said:


> I never could find it either, but if I access the TE4 drive from my TE3 box I can see the file size.


Interesting.


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## JoeKustra

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Interesting.


More interesting. At the end of programs there is the Recently Deleted Folder, like TE3. But with viewing the TE4 from TE3 there is also a Deleted Programs folder. It contains the same contents as the other folder but without names. Plus, deletions don't work. But killing from the normal folder also kills the entry in the other. Before you ask, you can not copy those files, but you can't watch them.


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## PSU_Sudzi

JoeKustra said:


> More interesting. At the end of programs there is the Recently Deleted Folder, like TE3. But with viewing the TE4 from TE3 there is also a Deleted Programs folder. It contains the same contents as the other folder but without names. Plus, deletions don't work. But killing from the normal folder also kills the entry in the other. Before you ask, you can not copy those files, but you can't watch them.


Strange things afoot in the deleted items folder it seems.


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## mattyro7878

I have a Premiere.4 tuner. Is that technically TE3? Anyway, how would I find the file size on this Premiere?


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## JoeKustra

mattyro7878 said:


> I have a Premiere.4 tuner. Is that technically TE3? Anyway, how would I find the file size on this Premiere?


It is TE3. You can look at System Information for drive capacity in hours and use that to find drive size:

https://support.tivo.com/articles/FAQ/TiVo-Service-Number-and-Model-Number-Table#TiVo Premiere Series

Usually the model number is enough, but that assumes that it has the original drive.


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## TKnight206

davidscarter said:


> I just looked at some Late Night with Seth Meyers that are in my suggestions folder.
> 
> The ones that were recorded since 9/10 are all around 2.8 GB; the ones recorded prior to that are around 1.8 GB.
> 
> I'm also seeing similar with the late night talk shows on CBS, though there the change seems to have occurred earlier, sometime in late August.
> 
> Maybe Comcast isn't compressing the locals as much as they were? (Comcast, Detroit stations)


Earlier this year, I noticed my local channel recordings were smaller in size. They varied, sometimes smaller then later, they got bigger, but still smaller than a year before. I never got an answer from Comcast, but I suspect they're doing locals in MPEG-4 now. 720p, yes, but thankfully not the fixed-bandwidth size all the non-locals are getting. (You know, the 0.83GB/30mins thing.)

So yes, you're not the only one who noticed that. Going from 6GB/hour to 1.8GB then to 2.8GB or similar. But not necessarily in your market. Or that show. I think I noticed it on Colbert.


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## Bigg

TKnight206 said:


> Earlier this year, I noticed my local channel recordings were smaller in size. They varied, sometimes smaller then later, they got bigger, but still smaller than a year before. I never got an answer from Comcast, but I suspect they're doing locals in MPEG-4 now. 720p, yes, but thankfully not the fixed-bandwidth size all the non-locals are getting. (You know, the 0.83GB/30mins thing.)


Interesting. Sounds like they're doing VBR MPEG-4 encoding with local channels now. I wonder how they're packaging them in order to save much of any bandwidth?


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## morac

I think some channels may have gotten more bandwidth while others did not. Some of my recordings are now slightly larger, while others are the same.


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## leswar

I noticed that The Weather Channel is no longer 1080i but now also 720p like all the rest except NBCSN which retains its 1080i resolution
most likely because of the NHL hockey games.


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## CommunityMember

davidscarter said:


> The ones that were recorded since 9/10 are all around 2.8 GB; the ones recorded prior to that are around 1.8 GB.


Was not that about the time that Seth (and some of the other late night shows) returned production to their main locations (if not the actual studio)? It is likely that the production capabilities are just a tad better in the office than being quarantined at home with mainly family (and pets) being the production crew.


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## chrishicks

I have been recording LA's Finest on Fox and those hit 3GB for the hour. Sunday night Fox cartoons were all 2.1-2.2GB with a 15 minute padding. I went back a few months in my deleted folder and noticed 911 Lone Star was 2.8GB for an episode in July. Every episode of Stargirl on CW was the same 1.8GB and that ran into August. Same for In the Dark. The Titan Games was also still at the 1.8GB size. I'll check more later on.


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## Bigg

leswar said:


> I noticed that The Weather Channel is no longer 1080i but now also 720p like all the rest except NBCSN which retains its 1080i resolution
> most likely because of the NHL hockey games.


It's not about one particular type of content, it has something to do with the method that they implement blackouts and regionalize the channel.


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## leswar

Bigg said:


> It's not about one particular type of content, it has something to do with the method that they implement blackouts and regionalize the channel.


Not understanding what you wrote.. I do know hockey is almost unwatchable if not in 1080.. But really could care less since the Whalers moved.


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## DigitalDawn

Actually, theoretically 720p should be even better for sports due to its progressive line structure. That's why certain networks (I think Fox and ABC) went with that system instead of 1080i.


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## jlb

leswar said:


> Not understanding what you wrote.. I do know hockey is almost unwatchable if not in 1080.. But really could care less since the Whalers moved.


Oh my gosh...Long live the Whale!

I grew up in West Hartford. Dad had tickets. 111, Row L, Seats 7 and 8.

I miss going to games!


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## Bigg

leswar said:


> Not understanding what you wrote.. I do know hockey is almost unwatchable if not in 1080.. But really could care less since the Whalers moved.


Comcast doesn't care if it's watchable or not, they've proven that over and over again. It has to do with the regionalization and blackouts. They can't create a single national feed, they have to regionalize it probably in every state or even parts of states, so they aren't re-compressing it into MPEG-4 720p in Denver like they do for national channels. Therefore, some areas may be re-compressing it into MPEG-4 720p on a regional or local basis, while others are not. It's very similar to why ESPN was one of the last channels to move to MPEG-4, and sort of similar to why the Weather Channel with the local weather on the 8's boxes was also one of the last to move to MPEG-4.



DigitalDawn said:


> Actually, theoretically 720p should be even better for sports due to its progressive line structure. That's why certain networks (I think Fox and ABC) went with that system instead of 1080i.


720p is only "better" because a lot of people have crappy video processors/de-interlacers, and because providers over-compress, and 1080i is more prone to showing compressing artifacts sooner. With a decent amount of bandwidth and a decent de-interlacer, 1080i will look a lot sharper with very minimal motion artifacts. Good 720p can look really good, but it will never be as sharp as good 1080i. As of the last time anybody took stock, HD channels were about 40% 720p, with the other 60% being 1080i. 1080i is the technically superior format, but more can go wrong in terms of getting a good picture on the other end.


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## leswar

jlb said:


> Oh my gosh...Long live the Whale!
> 
> I grew up in West Hartford. Dad had tickets. 111, Row L, Seats 7 and 8.
> 
> I miss going to games!


I was an usher at the old Civic Center back in the day when they were called the New England Whalers and the WHA... before the roof collapse. Many great games.


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## leswar

Bigg said:


> Comcast doesn't care if it's watchable or not, they've proven that over and over again. It has to do with the regionalization and blackouts. They can't create a single national feed, they have to regionalize it probably in every state or even parts of states, so they aren't re-compressing it into MPEG-4 720p in Denver like they do for national channels. Therefore, some areas may be re-compressing it into MPEG-4 720p on a regional or local basis, while others are not. It's very similar to why ESPN was one of the last channels to move to MPEG-4, and sort of similar to why the Weather Channel with the local weather on the 8's boxes was also one of the last to move to MPEG-4.
> 
> 720p is only "better" because a lot of people have crappy video processors/de-interlacers, and because providers over-compress, and 1080i is more prone to showing compressing artifacts sooner. With a decent amount of bandwidth and a decent de-interlacer, 1080i will look a lot sharper with very minimal motion artifacts. Good 720p can look really good, but it will never be as sharp as good 1080i. As of the last time anybody took stock, HD channels were about 40% 720p, with the other 60% being 1080i. 1080i is the technically superior format, but more can go wrong in terms of getting a good picture on the other end.


Thank you for the technical explanation. I knew that my 1080i was better than my crappy 720p in most cases. Our local ABC station converted from 720p to 1080i 
and when comparing that signal to a Orlando ABC 720p station I could see the improved difference.

Years ago I participated on a hockey game sharing forum. IIRC they almost always demanded that games be encoded in 1080p format for distribution unless a game was
only available in a lesser resolution... but that was many years ago and my memories are fading.


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## Bigg

leswar said:


> Thank you for the technical explanation. I knew that my 1080i was better than my crappy 720p in most cases. Our local ABC station converted from 720p to 1080i
> and when comparing that signal to a Orlando ABC 720p station I could see the improved difference.


So network stations are an odd duckling. I believe the national feeds for network content on ABC are in 720p, so an ABC station broadcasting 1080i is converting 720p to 1080i, which sucks. They may be producing their local news in 1080i, or have other syndicated content in 1080i, but network content, AFAIK, is in 720p. That being said, even with an extra conversion, if they are giving it more bandwidth than the other station, or have better encoders, it could still look better than it would in it's original format more heavily compressed, as there are a LOT of variables at work here.



> Years ago I participated on a hockey game sharing forum. IIRC they almost always demanded that games be encoded in 1080p format for distribution unless a game was
> only available in a lesser resolution... but that was many years ago and my memories are fading.


They were probably broadcast at 1080i and they didn't want to lose resolution to 720p. If they were originally broadcast in 720p though, that's what they were broadcast at. Most sports end up in both formats at one point or another, depending on who has rights to what games.


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## morac

I’ve been seeing more evidence of bit starved channels with pixelation at times. At first I thought maybe I was having uncorrected errors, but the count has been steady at 0. It must be Comcast.


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## JoeKustra

morac said:


> I've been seeing more evidence of bit starved channels with pixelation at times. At first I thought maybe I was having uncorrected errors, but the count has been steady at 0. It must be Comcast.


I guess you know that a 4-tuner Roamio and Bolt always display 0 for RS Corrected.


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## slowbiscuit

leswar said:


> I noticed that The Weather Channel is no longer 1080i but now also 720p like all the rest except NBCSN which retains its 1080i resolution
> most likely because of the NHL hockey games.


Interesting, everything is 720p here including NBCSN. TWC was the last holdout but it's been 720p for a couple years now I think.


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## krkaufman

mattyro7878 said:


> I have a Premiere.4 tuner. Is that technically TE3? Anyway, how would I find the file size on this Premiere?


Your Premiere would have to be on the TE3 software, since it isn't eligible for the TE4 upgrade.

As for checking file sizes, you can use KMTTG to list all your file sizes (including bitrates); or, to just see a single recording's file size, you can hit the Info button when viewing the recording's details page.


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## morac

JoeKustra said:


> I guess you know that a 4-tuner Roamio and Bolt always display 0 for RS Corrected.


I have a Roamio Pro and it definitely will count errors if there are any. I've seen it shoot up dramatically when I've had line issues.


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## TKnight206

chrishicks said:


> I have been recording LA's Finest on Fox and those hit 3GB for the hour. Sunday night Fox cartoons were all 2.1-2.2GB with a 15 minute padding. I went back a few months in my deleted folder and noticed 911 Lone Star was 2.8GB for an episode in July. Every episode of Stargirl on CW was the same 1.8GB and that ran into August. Same for In the Dark. The Titan Games was also still at the 1.8GB size. I'll check more later on.


I haven't watched any Stargirl myself yet.
1 hour Pilot episode from May 19th is 1.71 GB.
61 minute recording from August 11th is 1.74 GB.

I still haven't watched the last two episodes of Arrow, but I believe those are on Netflix, so deleted them for space. I think those were about 4 GB for me for the 61 minutes. MPEG-2, of course.

Granted, The CW affiliate where I am is natively 1080i. Not too happy that it isn't in the broadcast's resolution.

So, assuming it's a 50% savings, but going down in resolution saves a tiny bit more perhaps.


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## Bigg

TKnight206 said:


> So, assuming it's a 50% savings, but going down in resolution saves a tiny bit more perhaps.


720p is a lot easier to compress. Even though 720p is 88.8% of the data of 1080i when uncompressed, it's a much bigger difference than that due to the frame deltas being a lot smaller. Resolution isn't free in terms of bandwidth, even when using an interlaced format.

MPEG-4 is in theory twice as efficient as MPEG-2, but various encoder technologies different in efficiency by a factor of at least 1.5, maybe closer to 2 if you look at early-2000's MPEG-2 compared to the best available today. It's also hard to compare CBR to VBR encoding, as VBR is a lot more efficient, and generally when channels are paired into a mux well, you can squeeze it quite a bit more before losing quality.


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## WVZR1

I haven't used my TiVo much through the summer but checked a couple this evening that were recent Xfinity 25414
L.A.'s Finest S1-E3 10/05 5.59GB, S1-E2 9/28 5.59, S1-E1 5.59 These are 63 minute recordings
Manhunt S1-E1 9/21 5.13, S1-E2 5.01, S1-E3 5.24 Thhese are 63 minute recordings allso
FBI Declassified S1-E1 10/06 5.08
FARGO S4-E1 2.36GB, 86 minutes, S4-E2 2.33, S4-E3 2.44
Transplant S1-E5 3.29, S1-E4 3.2

I went back to May and CBS seemed consistent 5.0GB+ for 60 minute shows.


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## tivoro

Have Comcast in South Florida and only channel in 1080i is TWC. Do Youtube Sling ect provide network channels in 1080i?


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## slowbiscuit

That's weird, they converted TWC to 720p a long time ago here. Must be some older local forecast equipment they don't want to replace down there.


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## Bigg

Most/all areas have ESPN and RSNs converted to 720p, TWC is another weird localized straggler that can vary by system. As usual at Comcast, they don't do anything uniformly, they half-ass it, make some huge push and then give up before finishing. Not that 720p is good, it sucks, but they can't even be consistent at sucking.


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## BillyClyde

Bigg said:


> Most/all areas have ESPN and RSNs converted to 720p, TWC is another weird localized straggler that can vary by system. As usual at Comcast, they don't do anything uniformly, they half-ass it, make some huge push and then give up before finishing. Not that 720p is good, it sucks, but they can't even be consistent at sucking.


ESPN, as well as Fox and ABC, are already native 720p so they don't have to be converted.


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## aaronwt

BillyClyde said:


> ESPN, as well as Fox and ABC, are already native 720p so they don't have to be converted.


But are they? To lower the bandwidth further? I know those stations look bad on FiOS. But they look even worse on Comcast. So it seems like they are doing something to the signal.


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## danm628

aaronwt said:


> But are they? To lower the bandwidth further? I know those stations look bad on FiOS. But they look even worse on Comcast.


ESPN went with 720p to avoid tearing issues when showing sports. In an interlaced broadcast the player can move between the two half-frames giving them an odd appearance. A progressive transmission (720p or 1080p) solves that.

I don't know what Fox or ABC are doing.


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## aaronwt

danm628 said:


> ESPN went with 720p to avoid tearing issues when showing sports. In an interlaced broadcast the player can move between the two half-frames giving them an odd appearance. A progressive transmission (720p or 1080p) solves that.
> 
> I don't know what Fox or ABC are doing.


Sports have always looked best to me on CBS and NBC when I've watched them in HD. Since those are 1080i.


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## leswar

Comcast here in cold Florida (45dF this morning brrr) also transmits NBCSN in native 1080i I figured because of hockey(?) I'm guessing as well as TWC.
Picture quality can sometimes be a wash when I compare OTA locals 1080i to Comcast locals 720p because of source materials.. It seems content producers IMHO are using so many filters on their HD productions it just washes out any details in PQ.

My big problem is the stalling I get when fast forwarding at double or triple speeds and then reversing (backing up), trying to get past commercials and finding an entry point to continue the program; and it just sits there frozen for what is getting worst with a 4,5,6 second delay. Ugh!

One way I found not to wait those seconds is to hit pause when it freezes and hit << once, then hit play. It has always worked. The cure though may take as long as the wait.. it's kinda like getting off a backed up highway to travel local roads--it may be slower and longer but at least you are going somewhere albeit the same time.. it's your perception makes it feel you are at least doing something. I think the problem is that when ff and/or reverses, the tivo loses its anchor--
reference frames ( i.e. where to start the video from and that causes the pausing (freezing) while it hunts for them. One rarely gets that pause in old MPEG video but it does happen but it's horrible in Comcast's HVEC or is it H264 encodings. Does anyone know what I'm trying to convey?

I agree with Aaronwt: >>Sports have always looked best to me on CBS and NBC when I've watched them in HD. Since those are 1080i.

I think maybe years ago there was an issue but with time and newer tvs it not.


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## NashGuy

tivoro said:


> Have Comcast in South Florida and only channel in 1080i is TWC. Do Youtube Sling ect provide network channels in 1080i?


None of the streaming cable TV services like YouTube TV or Sling carry any channels in 1080i. They carry the 720p channels (like ABC, Fox, etc.) in 720p and most of them carry the 1080i channels (NBC, CBS, etc.) in 1080p. This is because some streaming devices (including some phones) can't de-interlace video very well. So all streaming video is sent out over the internet as progressive-scan.

Now, one thing to consider when looking at the streaming cable TV services is whether they stream channels at 30 frames per second or the full 60 frames per second. TVision, for instance, does everything at only 30 fps, which causes sports and other fast-motion content to look choppy and kinda weird. Some services do a mix, with some channels at 30 fps and others at 60 fps.

If you want the very best possible picture quality for cable TV, I'd suggest AT&T TV. All 1080i channels are streamed at 1080p with very good de-interlacing. All channels are streamed at 60fps. And they don't over-compress, so you get a sharper, more colorful picture than you'll find on any other cable TV service, whether it's delivered via traditional cable (e.g. Comcast, Charter), satellite (DirecTV, DISH), or streaming (YouTube TV, Sling). Aside from that, many (maybe all) channels on AT&T TV offer Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. I don't think that's true of any of the other streaming cable TV services.


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## BillyClyde

aaronwt said:


> But are they? To lower the bandwidth further? I know those stations look bad on FiOS. But they look even worse on Comcast. So it seems like they are doing something to the signal.


Yes. I think what you are talking about is the compression being used, not the actual pixel resolution. The cable companies are apparently compressing the heck out of their signals to squeeze more and more channels in. They went from mpeg2 to mpeg4 and maybe mpeg5 now. At least that is the gist I got from trying to catch up on this giant thread.



danm628 said:


> ESPN went with 720p to avoid tearing issues when showing sports. In an interlaced broadcast the player can move between the two half-frames giving them an odd appearance. A progressive transmission (720p or 1080p) solves that.
> 
> I don't know what Fox or ABC are doing.





aaronwt said:


> Sports have always looked best to me on CBS and NBC when I've watched them in HD. Since those are 1080i.


This was back when HD first became a thing and the hardware and software didn't do as well with deinterlacing 480i and 1080i. Now the technology is so good you can't see the combing artifacts you used to, so the added resolution makes the overall image better.


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## Bigg

BillyClyde said:


> ESPN, as well as Fox and ABC, are already native 720p so they don't have to be converted.


Hah, you got me. I meant MPEG-4 CBR (which is always 720p on Comcast) as opposed to their previous MPEG-2 VBR encoding.



aaronwt said:


> Sports have always looked best to me on CBS and NBC when I've watched them in HD. Since those are 1080i.


The issue is that a lot of people's TVs, at least at one point in time, had or have crappy deinterlacers. You probably have a good one, so 1080i will look better due to having more detail.


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## aaronwt

Bigg said:


> Hah, you got me. I meant MPEG-4 CBR (which is always 720p on Comcast) as opposed to their previous MPEG-2 VBR encoding.
> 
> The issue is that a lot of people's TVs, at least at one point in time, had or have crappy deinterlacers. You probably have a good one, so 1080i will look better due to having more detail.


I used to use external scalers/deinterlacers. But now most TVs don't have issues de-interlacing.


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## Bigg

aaronwt said:


> I used to use external scalers/deinterlacers. But now most TVs don't have issues de-interlacing.


I used to use a DVDO EDGE. It was really nice for watching basketball in 1080i when it was MPEG-2. I no longer have cable, and the improved OTA encoding combined with my AVR's video processing is darn close, if not as good as the DVDO EDGE.


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## ITGrouch

Here in the Nashville market, all channels on Comcast are now 720p, as they are going through rolling maintenance upgrades throughout the month of April and the moving of more and more channels to IPTV and the downgrade of all channels to 720p seems to be part of it. What we have to remember that we are part of a niche market and the vast majority of cable customers would never notice the changes.


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## NashGuy

ITGrouch said:


> Here in the Nashville market, all channels on Comcast are now 720p, as they are going through rolling maintenance upgrades throughout the month of April and the moving of more and more channels to IPTV and the downgrade of all channels to 720p seems to be part of it.


The downgrade of all channels to 720p happened here in Nashville a long while ago (few years, I think). Have you noticed specific channels move this month from QAM to IPTV and become inaccessible on your TiVo?


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