What Are The Differences In Lines Of Resolution Between Broadcasted And Recorded Video Sources?

As to the quality of tv signals, it really isn`t just down to the number of lines in whichever tv system, as the `digital tv` revolution is basically quite a large con in regards to `superior video quality`. Depending on the tv station and channel, compression levels vary greatly, so for something like Animal Planet in the UK you can see the compression is often about as good as vhs. Sport and movie channels get the most bandwidth on the transponders.

I work in tv (digital transmission) and am constantly amazed/shocked by the some of the crap channels we put out because of the way they wanted it compressed (to save them money on the transmission).

Digital tv has been a great exercise in squeezing a load of channels on a transponder which previously would have only had a couple of analogue ones. Makes the tv companies a hell of alot more money.

 

StormFire

Interesting I suppose that there could be a strong argument for variations in how the signal is delivered regardless of individual format's innate advantages.

 

Speaking of high resolution, I just received a delivery from newegg, the ATI HDTV Wonder. I've read a lot of good press about it and also a couple of installation nightmares too. I'd convinced myself that I'd wait until the weekend to intall it but, oh well.

 

I've installed the ATI HDTV Wonder and the picture is great even with the supplied antenna.

 

Compression on digital channels is down to budget and content. The more money a channel has, the better quality the initial production and the more they can spend on transponder space.... that`s why the more local channels will be the worst quality (less money). We have one channel where the production values are SO low that they leave the auto-focus on their camera`s. Another channel sends us their material on mini-dv for ingestion to our servers (but at least their production values are good). These are both digitally transmitted channels broadcast via satellite in the UK.
Another channel we have is a premium channel (they encode at 10mbps, which is overkill), with excellent content taken from a number of commercial UK channels, but they record some of the programs onto vhs, which are transferred to digi-beta, to be encoded onto our servers at 10mbps. Digital tv is a freaky world. At least with analogue you knew you were getting the best quality video (imo audio is better on digital), and the picture degraded in bad weather (whereas in digital the screen goes blocky then green and freezes).
The great digital con continues, and HDTV won`t make any difference, except to the premium channels.
What`s really annoying me lately as a home viewer is all the damn anamorphic switching going into and out of the ad breaks. Grrrrr.

 

Off air HDTV seems to do quite well where I live. Of course I'm not paying for the content and it's not being transmitted across a cable with limited bandwidth. My premiere content is currently delivered by DVD and although still limited in its overall picture quality it is still better than most other delivery systems for such content.

 

jdobbs

I'm still waiting for that camera info.