On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:31:48 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in :


"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

A very interesting posting.
Indeed.
Sure, we must see that the 'aim of the game' is to sell new stuff to the
customers.
In many case 'new' is not 'better', as we see for example with mp3 on
portable players and even being played via HiFi, but then Vinyl was
better then 44100 CD LOL hahahahahaha
Well according to some anyways.
In the same way MPEG2 (or H264) or whatever compression is not a lossless
compression and YES has artefacts, BUT these are (the system is designed
that way) not normally percieved as anying.

The truth for me is that movies I have seen in the past on VHS do not touch
me more then movies I see in HD, or normal digital.

So 37 years, that puts you back to 1970, I started in professional broadcasting
in 1968....
Almost a year after color started here.
I have seen it all, from iconoscope camera upwards...

So, anyways, stuff needs to be sold, the madness started with widescreen,
stretching people so they became really short and fat, and the consumer
bought it...
LOL

And even that still goes on.
In the early color days transmisisons were closely guarded by many specialized capable
engineers with years of experience and training.
Thse days anyone can but a digital camera and produce quality that is better.
Or quality that is worse.

I have my house wired with cat, RJ45 is the connector, no UHF cables here,
except form an antenne in the attick for long range digital terrestial.

I absolutely have to disagree about the quality of HD satellite versus
analog PAL, you must be joking right?

At a resolution of 1980x1080i there is NO WAY analog can compare.
I wanted to show you a screenshot, so I tuned to Astra HD promo,
shows National Geograhics Channel, I have to agree no HD material :-)
just flipper in the water etc....

The French had much better high detail demos.....

Of course if you watch 1920x1080 progressive downscaled via UHF on a PAL TV
in the other room it will not be better then than PAL TV's say 6MHz
bandwidth, but I am sure you know that, SAME for settop box on a SCART with
50MHz bandwidth video amps, you need 200MHz pixel clock at least.

I can only repeat: real HDTV you must see it to believe it, and the conclusion
is that perhaps you only ever watched BBC and astra flipper stuff without
any details.