Allo People .. can anyone tell us ... why it is that my BBC 1 and 2 are great, ITV fair .. CH4 P*** Poor and 5 well total cr*p. A couple of years ago it wa CH4 great and BBc naff. And it chages on almost a weekly basis ... also whats best to do about it ... new mast .. get sky,.. own sat system ...?? Having lashed out on a big RPTV (HD) want to make the most of it .. within reason .. Situated near East of England showground, A1 thanks to anyone with the patience AL
what are you watching these through? Freeview? Terrestrial? cable? other? I watch through Sky, BBC & Ch4 are fine, Channel 5 is better than ANY other channel, ITV is disgustingly poor, so much so that I refuse to watch it
It is helpful to know both the platform (satellite, cable or DTT/Freeview) and the region you are watching in. ITV is marginally better on Freeview than it is on DSat for example (it is higher resolution on Freeview horizontally), and BBC One is not statmuxed on Freeview in England. Five used to have very high broadcast standards on satellite (Sky provide their uplink I believe, unlike BBC/ITV/C4 who are independent of Sky) and Freeview. I think since they upgraded their Freeview system - and ditched AFDs in favour of MPEG header switching - they changed their MPEG encoders for Long GOP devices (as used in the US) and a very low data rate, and thus a very processed look on 50i material. (Seems to cope better with 25p stuff)
I find c5 very variable with Sky. In fact I watched a nature documentary last week on c5 about Mia Cats (spelling?) and it looked fantastic, even via s-video. Other times it can look total pants
One thing that can make a difference is whether the source is progressive (film, flickered or progressively shot video) or interlaced (sports, news etc.) In simple terms, in standard def, interlaced material has fluid motion, and progressive stuff has more jerky motion (like movies). The latter compresses more easily, so can look higher quality.