macroblocking

Latest

  • Poll: Have you been affected by over-compressed HD feeds?

    by 
    Darren Murph
    Darren Murph
    04.05.2008

    Talk about an onslaught. Within the course of a few weeks we've seen Shaw, Rogers and Comcast all get flamed for purportedly compressing their signals to a point beyond acceptable, and as if that wasn't enough, a recent research report found that video quality issues (shocking, we know) were the primary reason for call-in complaints. All the while, Verizon is taking the chance to toot its own horn and boast about its ability to pass along HD signals sans additional tweakage. So, are you right in the middle of this firestorm? Or are you gleefully looking in from the outside with a gorgeous HD picture on your set? Give us your story below, won't you?[Image courtesy of Vidiot] %Poll-12224%

  • Shaw cable customers still facing quality issues?

    by 
    Darren Murph
    Darren Murph
    02.28.2008

    We had heard that some Shaw customers up north (that's Canada, to be precise) were having some serious quality issues with their HD programming towards the end of 2007, and according to a recent writeup by Digital Home, the problems haven't gone away -- entirely, at least. Apparently, the audio dropouts and macroblocking that seemed to be present on nearly every HD channel were finally brought to the attention of management, and while the bigwigs did proclaim that they were taking the complaints "very seriously," nothing had been done as of early January. After a six-week effort that consisted of gathering data from 38 volunteers experiencing the problems, users say that the audio issues have improved somewhat, yet visual quirks are persisting. Any problem that hangs around for months on end can't be good, but we're curious to see if Shaw's done anything since to improve matters. So, dear Canadians, has it?[Image courtesy of Vidiot]