So This is High Def?

By Fred Manteghian • Posted: Oct 7, 2007

Well, DirecTv's new high definition channels are here and, er, what the heck were they thinking? On TNTHD, a station that existed as channel 75 before the hoopla and is now also shown on 245, "Save the Last Dance" is being shown in 4x3 stretch mode. Sci-Fi's high def incarnation is showing Merlin, a movie that was only shot in 4x3 (but at least they're not stretching it). USA is showing "Law & Order: CI" on their high def station properly, but in a weird-aspect challenged pillow box (black bars on all four sides) on their regular definition channel. A&E's has some high def shows that they're cropping and then stretching to 16x9 judging by the look of it. Only TBS's high def baseball game looks good enough that it gives me nothing to complain about – except that fact that the Yankees are losing.

Comments

Submitted by Tyler on October 8, 2007 - 8:25am.

Fred, while it is true that a few of the new channels are improperly handling SD material, D*TVs picture quality on these new MPEG-4 channels is outstanding. The HD material on all of the new stations is very clearly hi-def without the bit-starving artifacts present on the MPEG-2 HD channels. D*TV has done an outstanding job. I highly recommend everyone to email the channels that are distorting the image and complain. I have. :)

Submitted by Fred on October 8, 2007 - 10:31am.

Tyler, Looks like the TNT on 245 is the same as the one down on 75, i.e., mpeg2. I haven't spent enough time looking at video quality of the newer mpeg4 channels yet, but I never thought HD-Net looked anything other than great and that was MPEG2. So what's your favorite (Pic Quality wise) of the new stations MPeg4 stations??? Here's a good link at AVS with the latest channel updates on the first page (if only ALL AVS pages were like that . . . sigh) http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=914047&highlight=TNT-HD+... Fred

Submitted by Tyler on October 9, 2007 - 3:15pm.

Fred, Yeah, TNT, ESPN, and ESPN 2 have been mirrored, so they are still the MPEG-2 channels. Of the new channels, some of the material on the Smithsonian and History channels is just stunning. Baseball on the TBS channel also looked stunning. The SD shows on Sci-Fi and USA I briefly watched were properly formatted 4:3 and looked great (for upscaled SD) and far better than the heavily compressed SD versions of these stations. So, my take is that things aren't perfect yet, but the picture quality is there. We just have to convince a few stations that should know better to show all material in its OAR.

Submitted by Shane on October 9, 2007 - 5:06pm.

As an aside, a standard-def feed of TBS' baseball playoff broadcasts on Comcast looks like ass. I wish I could go back to DirecTV but my neighbors won't let me dynamite their trees.

Submitted by Tyler on October 11, 2007 - 1:29pm.

Sorry you have to be saddled with Comcast Shane. D*TV is really coming through now. Perhaps your neighbor's trees could meet an untimely fate through an "act of God".... In all seriousness, is it a situation where you couldn't build a higher platform for the dish to clear the trees?

Submitted by Shane on October 11, 2007 - 2:38pm.

Tyler- It would have to be a pole at least 25 feet high according to the Senior Tech who came out. And that part of the property is more or less swamp. I actually have no complaints with Comcast so far, in quality or customer service, other than the new channels DirecTV has they don't and that the $50 PPV boxing matches are lousy standard def down-conversions. I do miss the HDNet channels too, but not so much as I would if there weren't Blu-ray and HD DVD. And BTW, I loved DirecTV and was happy with them for over ten years(!). We even had the special bat phone card for preferred customers. But they stopped being friendly the second we left even though I would have avoided doing so by any means short of building a radio tower in my yard. They did not grant me an exception on a leased box and made me pay a chunk o' change for early termination even though the only reason I left is that I could not get service in my new house. They didn't care that I had a signed statement from