Nialli's unofficial blog on Virgin Media's UK cable TV services
April 25, 2009
Dexter season 3 in HD arrives
You have to hunt around for it and then sit through a (standard definition) trailer for the FX channel, but then you have it, and it's widescreen, ad and DOG free, too!
10 comments:
Anonymous
said...
As you said you have to hunt around for it... could you please tell us where it is to save us having to do the same!!
All I can say is that HD channels definitely ARE coming this year and the company has a sense of urgency about the matter now. There may be more definite news before the quarter's results are announced in May - but I'd been led to believe that last quarter and there was no HD news then.
Also listed with all the usual SD stuff in the usual categories, including Drama (55) and What's New (52), so no more hunting around for this than for anything else.
"So good to watch on demand without blocky artifacts."
And the artifacts aren't even gone necessarily because of it being HD... it's just because they show it in decent quality HD. SD doesn't need to look that blocky - broadcast channels and DVDs look pretty good with decent upscaling. I'm quite worried that any new HD offerings could start to look very blocky in the same way, if they want to save bandwidth and still fit in more content. Low quality HD can definitely look much worse than high quality SD.
I thought that VOD meant they could afford MORE bitrate per viewer, i.e. they don't have space to broadcast 30 more HD channels to everyone simultaneously but they can send the one thing you're watching to you from more than 30 choices? Seems strange to me that all of the SD VOD looks so blocky and starved of bitrate when they have the bandwidth for really good looking HD!
Or maybe the way to look at it, is SD customers clearly don't care about picture quality, so lets knock a bit more bitrate off every broadcast SD channel too. Room for more high quality HD channels without MPEG4.
I have a 32in TV and don't find VOD particularly blocky - on a par with Freeview. Some content's always challenging for SD digital TV - fog, rain, dark backgrounds. I watched Burn After Reading on Filmflex last night and the picture was excellent - not HD but bloody good. No artefacts there.
I've noticed iPlayer catchup looking significantly worse than V+ recorded BBC1 or BBC2, and from what I remember worse than freeview for those channels (don't have a box so this is just from memory on someone else's TV) but freeview certainly has some lower quality channels too. Although maybe I'm just remembering the scenes with fog etc. and not doing a objective comparison.
Filmflex I should certainly hope looks good even in SD when you're paying! My 1p HD films on there looked fantastic.
10 comments:
As you said you have to hunt around for it... could you please tell us where it is to save us having to do the same!!
TV Choice on Demand > 9. More > 1. High Definition
Thanks!
Watched the first episode. So good to watch on demand without blocky artifacts. Now I want more!
Of course, you can't release the info under embargo, but can you tell us WHEN we can expect your news to break?
All I can say is that HD channels definitely ARE coming this year and the company has a sense of urgency about the matter now.
There may be more definite news before the quarter's results are announced in May - but I'd been led to believe that last quarter and there was no HD news then.
Also listed with all the usual SD stuff in the usual categories, including Drama (55) and What's New (52), so no more hunting around for this than for anything else.
"So good to watch on demand without blocky artifacts."
And the artifacts aren't even gone necessarily because of it being HD... it's just because they show it in decent quality HD. SD doesn't need to look that blocky - broadcast channels and DVDs look pretty good with decent upscaling. I'm quite worried that any new HD offerings could start to look very blocky in the same way, if they want to save bandwidth and still fit in more content. Low quality HD can definitely look much worse than high quality SD.
I thought that VOD meant they could afford MORE bitrate per viewer, i.e. they don't have space to broadcast 30 more HD channels to everyone simultaneously but they can send the one thing you're watching to you from more than 30 choices? Seems strange to me that all of the SD VOD looks so blocky and starved of bitrate when they have the bandwidth for really good looking HD!
Or maybe the way to look at it, is SD customers clearly don't care about picture quality, so lets knock a bit more bitrate off every broadcast SD channel too. Room for more high quality HD channels without MPEG4.
I have a 32in TV and don't find VOD particularly blocky - on a par with Freeview. Some content's always challenging for SD digital TV - fog, rain, dark backgrounds.
I watched Burn After Reading on Filmflex last night and the picture was excellent - not HD but bloody good. No artefacts there.
I've noticed iPlayer catchup looking significantly worse than V+ recorded BBC1 or BBC2, and from what I remember worse than freeview for those channels (don't have a box so this is just from memory on someone else's TV) but freeview certainly has some lower quality channels too. Although maybe I'm just remembering the scenes with fog etc. and not doing a objective comparison.
Filmflex I should certainly hope looks good even in SD when you're paying! My 1p HD films on there looked fantastic.
Yes, my comment about compression artefacts was aimed at catch-up. The resolution may be the same as broadcast HD but the bitrate certainly is not.
Sorry, I meant SD, not HD.
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