8300HD vs 8000HD -- Better Analog Channels?

[armentage]

I have an SA-8000HD on the NYC TWC network. I've noticed that Sci-Fi, Comedy Central, IFC, and a bunch of other channels in the 2-100 range look like complete crap. Not all channels, but many. By Crap, I mean MPEG'd with a very very low bit-rate. Pause the image and you see extremely bad macro-blocking with horribly color and absolutely no detail.

At first I thought it was that these channels were sent to my box in Digital, and that TWC itself was simply devoting very little bandwith to these channels. Yet when I was at my Grandpa's last night for Easter, I noticed that these channels were perfectly clear (and actually pretty great looking) on his SD digital cable box.

So I thought about it some more, and figured out what's going on - those channels are sent to my house as analog, and it's my SA-8000HD that is MPEG encoding them, and it's the SA-8000HD that's using the very low bitrate.

So I have two questions:


1) Can I make the 8000HD encode analog content with a higher bitrate.

2) Does the 83000HD do a better job encoding analog content?


I already plan on upgrading to the 8300, but it's raining today... if it does a better job on the analog channels, I just might suffer the trip to the TWC offices in the torrential downpour!

[57U]

1. No.

2. No.

See the FAQ on "Poor SD PQ"

If you watch the programme live (without hitting pause live TV - record) you can actually see the difference the encoding makes when you press the record button.

In Toronto, with Rogers, we're lucky that all of the channels are now available digitally and the quality of the "formerly analogue" channels is usually better.

[armentage]

That's a real bummer. Sci-Fi is the one channel I record most often, especially that friday night block with Stargate x2 & BSG. I guess I will have to give up my social life (or the pretense) and watch these shows live...

They look SO horrible. Far worse than a Series 1 Tivo on the "low quality" setting doing it's own encoding.

[oman321]

Friday night Sci-fi is one of my favorite line ups. It does suck that it's only coming in analog. Sci-fi & comcast need to get on the ball and give us HD or at least a digital version. It was great when the BSG premier/miniseries was given on one of the major networks (cant remember which).

[armentage]

Friday night Sci-fi is one of my favorite line ups. It does suck that it's only coming in analog. Sci-fi & comcast need to get on the ball and give us HD or at least a digital version. It was great when the BSG premier/miniseries was given on one of the major networks (cant remember which).

I'd be OK with the analog broadcast if the SA-8xxxx didn't do such a ****ty job at the encoding. The encoding is SO HORRIBLE that I can barely stand to watch the shows. It's far, far worse than anything else I've ever seen.

It's like watching a 160x120 RealMedia file scaled up to 50" 1280x720.

[57U]

I wouldn't say it's quite that bad. Perhaps if you have a bad quality signal, the poor PQ gets worse in the encoding. While our channels were still analogue I would compare it to a good S-VHS deck, which is what I was using before, certainly better than normal VHS.

[armentage]

I wouldn't say it's quite that bad. Perhaps if you have a bad quality signal, the poor PQ gets worse in the encoding. While our channels were still analogue I would compare it to a good S-VHS deck, which is what I was using before, certainly better than normal VHS.

When I said a 160x120 RealMedia file, I meant it. When you pause playback on these channels, you can see huge 1" by 1" blurred blocks of MPEG encoded crap. It's really, really bad.

I'm wondering if the local cable company can adjust some setting that effects the encoding quality... Any cable techs out there reading this?