Is your Comcast HD quality up to snuff?

[PaulGo]

Test Shows Comcast’s HD Squeeze In Virginia
A/V Enthusiast Finds Comcast HD Bit Rates As Much As 28% Lower Than Verizon’s
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 3/27/2008 3:12:00 PM

Comcast has said it can pack three high-definition signals into space typically used for two—without viewers noticing a drop in quality. But at least one viewer has.

A member of AVS Forum, a community site for audio/video enthusiasts, has posted the results of his comparison of the compression rates for 10 HD channels offered by Comcast and Verizon Communications’ FiOS TV in Northern Virginia.

The user, “bfdtv,” said his test showed Comcast is delivering certain MPEG-2 HD channels at bit rates as much as 28% lower than Verizon, resulting in lower-quality pictures.

For example, an A&E HD broadcast of an episode of The Sopranos had an average bit rate of 18.66 Megabits per second on FiOS TV, whereas Comcast’s version was 22.4% lower—at 14.48 Mbps. Verizon, like most cable companies, distributes linear TV programming in MPEG-2 format.

Multichannel News contacted “bfdtv,” whose real name is Ken Fowler, an audio/video buff who lives in Arlington, Va.

Fowler, reached by phone Wednesday, said he works in the financial services industry and has no stake in the success of Verizon or any other pay-TV provider.

Fowler said he conducted the test -- and posted screen captures showing the different picture quality between the two services -- to confirm his suspicion that some of Comcast’s HD channels were being more highly compressed than Verizon’s. “I did notice the difference, and I wanted to know that I wasn’t seeing things,” he said.

Comcast senior director of corporate communications Jenni Moyer said the company could not comment on Fowler’s test or his methodology.

“HD picture quality is extremely important to our customers and to us, and when we conduct picture quality tests, we use independent third-parties and industry-accepted testing methodologies with expert and consumer participants,” she said.

Comcast, along with the rest of the cable industry, is facing an HD balancing act.

Cable providers need to add high-definition programming, to fight the 90-plus HD lineup now offered by DirecTV. But they also need to ensure they don’t sacrifice quality for quantity—and risk disappointing the likes of AVS Forum’s habitués.

In his testing, Fowler recorded the same programs as delivered by FiOS TV and Comcast, using two TiVos with CableCards.

He then extracted the video files from the TiVo digital video recorders and calculated average bit rates for each program by dividing the length of the video in seconds (as displayed by MPEG-2 video software VideoReDo) with the overall file size.

Fowler found Comcast has not applied higher compression rates to every HD channel. High-definition signals from local broadcast stations aren’t recompressed, he said, and as of March 18, ESPN HD, ESPN2 HD and Comcast SportsNet also remained “at full quality.”

But on Comcast’s more highly compressed HD channels, Fowler said, the video exhibits noticeable blurring during high-motion sequences.

Fowler conceded that his standards for whether one provider’s HD looks better than another’s may be higher than the typical subscriber.

“I’m probably not the average viewer,” he said. “The average viewer probably isn’t going to go on AVS [Forum] to find out information like this.”

Now, why does he subscribe to both FiOS TV and Comcast in the first place?

Fowler said he switched from Comcast to Verizon FiOS last year because it offered faster Internet access and more HD channels for less money.

About a month ago, Comcast in Northern Virginia launched several new channels that FiOS did not yet offer, including CNN HD, Sci Fi Channel HD and USA Network HD. In addition, Comcast announced it would carry high-definition telecasts from Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which is “important to me as a Washington Nationals fan,” Fowler said.

After discovering FiOS would not have those new HD channels in his area before late July, he decided to switch.

Comcast also offered him a special deal—digital TV service with HBO and Starz at $39.99 per month for six months—which “certainly played a part in that decision,” said Fowler.

And because his FiOS TV service contract wasn’t up yet, he decided to do a head-to-head comparison.

“I’ve been around AVS [Forum] for a long time,” Fowler said, “and I’m one of the advocates for getting the best possible quality you can.”

Test Shows Comcast’s HD Squeeze In Virginia - 3/27/2008 3:12:00 PM - Multichannel News

[PaulGo]

Readers of this thread - do you have any comments on this thread? What do you think is the best course of action for Comcast?

I think they were pretty sloppy in implementing this technology and they got caught "with their pants down". In theory with the variable bit rate technology they should have only cut back on the resolution of the fast motion scenes where it would be hard for people to see the lower resolution. Instead they shot themselves in the foot and I think no matter what they do as it will be hard for them to get rid of the stigma of giving their customers an inferior product.

As the saying goes you only have one chance of getting it right and they blew it! Until they implement better technology and are able to demonstrate this to the the public that they can have a high quality HD picture they have a public relations disaster on their hands!

[PaulGo]

From the NY Times:
Comcast’s Blurry High Definition Picture

By Saul Hansell

Not only has Comcast been slowing down Internet users exchanging files with the BitTorrent protocol, it has been quietly reducing the quality of some high definition television networks it carries as well.

Most people will hardly notice the change, and the HD channels affected are still a lot better looking that standard definition signals. But Ken Fowler, a devoted high definition video aficionado did. He had Verizon’s FIOS video offering. But he also signed up for Comcast’s service in order to watch the Washington Nationals in high definition. On some networks carried by both operators, Mr. Fowler noticed that the picture quality on Comcast was inferior.

“I noticed that there was more blurring in the movement and less detail on the screen,” he said. Mr. Fowler, a financial analyst by profession, started to measure the difference between the Comcast and FIOS systems. He posted the results on AV Science Forum, a Web site for hardcore video buffs.

In images he posted, MTV and Discovery, among others, are distinctly more blurry or blotchy than those on FIOS. This occurred mainly in scenes with rapidly moving images. This makes sense as video compression systems eliminate redundant information from one image to the next, which is fine for talking heads and such, but too much compression distorts pictures of sports and other action scenes.

Mr. Fowler recorded some of these programs and found that for some channels, Comcast was transmitting 20 to 35 percent less information. Some networks, including ESPN and the major broadcast networks were not degraded, he found.

Jenni Moyer, a Comcast spokeswoman, confirmed that the company, like all cable and satellite systems, does compress its signals, but it tries hard to maintain the quality.

“Compression is a reality: We use it and other providers use it,” she said. “Our goal is not to have any kind of noticeable impact on picture quality.”

At issue here is how cable systems manage the increasing number of networks broadcasting in high definition, given the limited capacity of their networks. Cable systems are roughly divided into 6Mhz channels, each representing the amount of space one traditional analog signal would occupy. Digital cable can squeeze ten to twelve signals of standard-definition TV in one of these channels. Until recently, most cable systems put two high-definition stations in each channel.

Now Comcast is putting three signals into some of its channels. And that causes it to compress the signals more.

Comcast is not alone. Time Warner is also starting to put three high-definition networks on some of its channels.

This made me wonder whether we are going to lose some of those wonderful networks that the compression of digital cable have given us, Animal Planet, Tennis, D.I.Y., Soap and so on—because the move to HD will use all the bandwidth these networks are using.

Not so, cable experts say. The easy way to free up space on a cable system is to eliminate the remaining few dozen analog channels. This will require more people to get digital set top boxes, but some systems, including FIOS are doing this to make more space for HD channels. Also, there is technology called switched video that changes which networks are on what channels depending on what people in a given neighborhood are actually watching. Proponents say that this approach can handle an infinite number of networks, even in high definition.


Comcast’s Blurry High Definition Picture - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

[NewsBot]

No sooner had Comcast relented on its BitTorrent spoofing scandal than we see the cable company cutting corners elsewhere, now compressing HDTV shows so much that blocky noise is plainly visible on most of its HDTV channels. Trying to compete against


Link To Original Article

[PaulGo]

Study: Video Quality Monitoring Is Key

Symmetricom has released its 2007 Cable Operator Video Quality Study, an independent survey conducted by Multimedia Research Group, assessing cable operators' requirements for video quality test, measurement and monitoring solutions. The study indicates that video quality monitoring continues to be central.

Some results:

• 90.4 percent reported end-user video quality monitoring as either "critical," "very important," or "important" to their video initiatives.
• 61.9 percent said they learn of video quality problems via customer phone calls; only 31 percent said they use network monitoring tools to discover quality problems.
• 80 percent said service quality problems are the reasons for high support calls.
• 58.1 percent said that end-user quality of experience is "critical" and needs to be monitored.
• 68 percent said that cost is the biggest reason for customer churn, while service quality problems were next with 40 percent.

Study: Video Quality Monitoring Is Key :: Cable360

[cablewithaview]

NewsBot kicked up a story with pics comparing Verizon to Comcast, can you say "WTH?"

As you can see here:

[PaulGo]

From the Consumerist, maybe it should be filed under "Believe it or Not"


Comcast Spews BS When You Complain About HD Degradation

David wanted a straight answer from Comcast as to whether they were degrading his HD signal, but instead was fed a colossal trough of baloney. The executive customer service rep who replied to David's email said Comcast is using a "new system" for HD and while it "works well with clean 1080i signals, we're making some adjustments to improve how it handles other types of HD signals so we can bring you the best HD picture. We apologize this has not created the HD experience that we intended, but we will work towards getting it right. "Sure... check out this previous post, Comcast Degrades HD Quality To Make Room For More Channels, for the science and proof of how Comcast (and other cable operators) are degrading HD feeds to make more money.

Balance of article at:
Complaints: Comcast Spews BS When You Complain About HD Degradation

[cablewithaview]

Oh NO!!!
Digital Home Canada learn that Rogers Cable will be doing the same starting April 9th.
This is a very sad day in the cable industry. It was one thing if "The Pizza Pans" were doing it, but cable? I choose quality and I will also follow up on Rogers situation as well. Hopefully Shaw will continue to broadcast in full HD on both cable and their satellite service StarChoice.

[cablewithaview]

here is a link showing the bit rates when comparing FiOS to Comcast:

Home Entertainment: Comcast Compressing HDTV Signals to Fit Three Shows into Two Shows' Bandwidth

[PaulGo]

Even more compression?

Comcast first in US with 50Mbps cable Internet
Comcast today said it would be the first cable Internet provider in the US to offer Internet access based on the new DOCSIS 3.0 standard for cable Internet service. In its early form, the service will bond together multiple cable channels to offer download speeds of 50 megabits per second, or more than six times the 8Mbps ceiling previously set by the company's existing 8Mbps tier. This early implementation isn't set to have full support for the technology on uploads but will still offer 5Mbps upstream.

The extra speed is currently considered a luxury tier and will be available at first in a $150 monthly plan compared to the $53 for existing technology. Minneapolis and St. Paul are currently the only cities to have access, though Comcast has already said it will expand the network throughout 2008 and may also increase speeds up to 100Mbps by the end of the year.

The cable firm warns that its launch will require that a few analog stations be taken off-air and compression added to HD channels to make room for DOCSIS 3, whose channel bonding consumes much more bandwidth than earlier single-channel services. Comcast's launch also comes amid controversy over its network management techniques, which will no longer throttle BitTorrent later this year but may still impact some services.

DOCSIS 3.0 is considered essential for the cable industry to compete against Verizon's FiOS and other fiber optic services, which have already reached the 50Mbps mark. The extra speed is already being used for IP-based TV on Verizon's service and will be necessary for mainstream HD downloads, which will take as little as four minutes for a whole movie on a 100Mbps connection.

Electronista | Comcast first in US with 50Mbps cable Internet