I ran across an article yesterday from Gizmodo, which in turn cited a ZDNet blog. For what it's worth, I feel that the Gizmodo piece is more informative and takes the time to extrapolate from the blog. Anyway, I just saw somebody mentioned something about HD compression in a thread and I thought this might spark some interesting discussion and/or inform some people.

http://gizmodo.com/5048025/giz-expla...-very-high-def

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=962

The chart is over-simplified, but the article does make some good points.

However, once again they sell HD short by using a picture that is just too small to demonstrate the difference between HD and SD.

Thanks for linking to this article. It is absolutely correct. The bitrate of these so-called "HD" downloads is abysmal... Wow, they're really forking it over to the masses. The whole "digital download" business has to improve by leaps and bounds in order to be viable as a replacement format. I actually started a thread on this topic sometime ago, and my points have been more than borne out by this atrocious unveling of "HD-DOWNLOADS!!!!" being touted like they're Nirvana from the gods.

2.2 Mbits/sec??? And at a price which is the same, OR MORE, than the physical product. Keep on dreaming, you corporate greedy persons.

Most of us on these forums are educated about such matters, but the danger lies in them setting the bar so low. The masses will "acquiese" as normal, and we will be stuck with these awful low-bitrate downloads in the future.

I refuse to buy into Digital Downloads until bitrates are comparable to the physical product (avg. 6 Mbits for 480p content, and avg 18-20 Mbits/sec for 1080i/p content).

So after reading that and having just bit the bullet and installed an OTA antenna (apartment complex dragging its feet with an HD cable service) why on earth would anyone pay for cable/satellite HD as it stands, right now? I guess most people don't know what they're missing but I can't imagine how. Whenever I'm at a sports bar, etc., and see a game on their bigscreen in HD, as soon as the action starts, the picture gets all pixelated. How can anyone think this is OK?

Wow, I hadn't realized how crappy Xbox Live and Itunes downloads were. It's certainly eye opening.

Sometimes it is not that bad, nor that expensive. For me to upgrade my Dish Network (America's top 200 plus locals) do include HD service, it would end up costing me ~$3 per month. I would end up getting a decent collection of channels in HD, including locals. It certainly won't look as good as my HD DVDs or Blu-rays, but it will still be much better than SD.

I agree though that HD service still feels very premature. These companies advertise that they have hundreds of HD channels, when in fact they are including pay per view/on demand channels, as well as regional sports channels that may not exist in your area. And even with the 30-50 channels you do end up with, many only broadcast in HD selectively, so you are stuck with upconverted stretched out SD part of the time.

Hopefully they will continue to increase channels, and increase bitrates as well, while keeping prices decent.

It's less headache for me to get my HD locals on Directv. Depending on the channel, some channels come in better than others when I use an indoor antenna. Sure, an outdoor antenna would be a better answer, but that's not happening anytime soon.

Problem with an OTA setup is that you only get 10 or so channels. Many of which are multiple PBS feeds.

While the cable options are compressed, they aren't that bad, especially for what you pay. The sports bar problem, I think, is more a factor of DTV and cheap setups. Also, cable companies are moving to a on-demand setup, where instead of sending you all of the channels, you only get the one you are asking for. Significantly increases the bandwidth from the PoP to the local node. There is a term for this, but it's escaping me at the moment.

I have 26 digital OTA channels in Dallas, and only one PBS feed. And that PBS feed, when broadcasting HD, looks NICEEEEEEEEE.