"Jan Panteltje" wrote in message
...
On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:35:53 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in
:

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog output
sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB,
creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a car
battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part of
that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV
set,
with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed digital
signal, hands down, every time.

Well, maybe you do not have digital yet.
And for sure you have not seen the HDTV tests on satellite like those from
France.
I am not denying mpeg2 compression has artefacts, but those very much
depend on
bandwidth (bitrate), and bitrate is a bit less then 4000 kbps on digital
here.
(non HD).
Although that is less then DVD max, it is absolutely enough for a stunning
_noise free_, _moire free_ (PAL & NTSC composite), _easy to record_ (as
.ts),
_no loss editing_ (digital), _space saving_ (both on disk and in the
ether),
allowing as many sub-channels as you like (more languages, more subtitles,
teletext, other services, timecode, all in the same stream).

It seems to me you do not _HAVE_ digital yet.
I have had digital sat now for about 7 years, and terrestrial for about a
year.
As to range an signal to noise, I can get stations that I could only get
with a lot of noise and some reflections too in analog, now as clear as
glass.
Really, only an inexperienced person would claim that composite PAL
in _whatever way_ was better.
And I know composite PAL better then many of you here, as I worked many
years
at the source,
Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of
artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Of COURSE I have digital, foolish person. That is how I am able to comment
on this. I have had analogue satellite since it was first available as DBS,
and I changed over to digital as soon as that became available. I also still
take analogue from the terrestrial transmissions, and carry out repairs to
digital terrestrial STBs as part of my living, so I am able to compare all
standards at all times. I feed signals around my house at UHF, and have
perfectly clean signals at every TV - and there are a lot of them. As far
as HDTV signals go, they just about manage to get back up to the standard of
a *good* analogue transmission. As far as your opinion of my being
inexperienced goes, I have been directly involved with this stuff from the
service angle for 37 years. If that makes me 'inexperienced' in your eyes,
sobeit.

As for beat interference atrifacts from tweed jackets and loud ties, this
has not been much of a problem for years, since people in studios were
dressed properly for the job. Even so, I would still rather see a 'busy' tie
on a newsreader, than motion artifacts - both edge pixelation and motion
blur - any day of the week.

It's all very well saying that compression artifacts are a product of
available bandwidth, but that bandwidth is much limited with terrestrial
digital, if you want to pack in the number of channels that they seem to
want to. This allows for a perfectly satisfactory picture so long as it is
standing still, but does not if the bitrate needs to go up high enough to
prevent motion artifacts. For the most part, however, I would agree with you
that this is not an issue with the satellite transmissions, where the
limiting factor becomes how good a transponder, bit rate-wise, the station
can afford to lease.

Make no mistake, I am not trying here to compare a good digital signal - say
Sky Movies Premiere - with a poor noisy anlogue signal. What I am saying is
that the general public is being 'sold a pup' with the digital terrestrial
channels, where even the best quality transmissions, struggle to produce a
picture subjectively as good as that produced on a *good* analogue TV with a
*good* analogue PAL signal going in.

Arfa