My Analysis Of Mosquito Noise on Voom

DarrellP

I Think, therefore, I am.
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Supporting Founder
Nov 6, 2003
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Salem, OR
Let me start by saying this is a constructive post, I am not being negative or ragging on Voom, just my observations. ;)

Yesterday I spent a few hours analyzing every HD channel I can pull in from Voom (Basic Package) and here's what I found:

First off, it is my belief that they have a combination of factors coming into play here: 1) Too much compression & 2) Possible mastering issues.

Reason for 1) The skeeter noise only appears when there is a high degree of fine detail that must be displayed, such as leaves in a forest or gravel on a dirt road, etc.

Reason for 2) I do not see any skeeter noise in the Voom produced promotional material, so that leads me to believe they are getting some crappy masters from the source.

It used to be that ALL programs on EquatorHD were terrible beyond viewing. Lately they've had some shows that look very good, but, every show still has skeeter noise to a degree and it is attributable to one or both of the above issues. I watched a show about Vietnam and it was very clean until detail had to be displayed, then the skeeters started. Mischeivous Meerkats looked fantastic on closeups then turned to skeeterville on widefield shots. Same with Smart Travels, it looks fantastic on PBS & HDNET but suffers from mega skeeters on Voom.

Every single channel I looked at had the same issue with fine detail except MonstersHD and a couple other Cinema10 channels. One of the movies I checked out yesterday had compression set so high on it that the entire movie was warbling about like someone was shaking my screen and sending ripples through it.

Gallery had a show on China artifacts, awesome PQ on closeups and static images. As soon as they showed an old urn or pot with lots of details, the skeeters kicked in. When they showed a plain pot or background without a lot of detail, the picture was awesome.

This holds true to my previous posts where I said it varies from channel to channel and from show to show, I think it just depends on the amount of bandwidth the program requires. :(

That's my take on skeeters. If you don't see them, good for you, I wish I didn't. Yesterday I said I was leaving Voom, but just for kicks I am going to ride it out and see what happens. I hope they can kick in the new encoders soon.

BTW, channel 700 that supposedly has the new encoders online does have some skeeter noise, but not much. Last I heard they had not tweaked it yet. I would love to be a Beta tester for them, I don't think they will find a sharper, more critical eye than mine. :D
 
snaggerbob said:
what are skeeters?
Slang for "Mosquito Noise", it's the crawly, squiqqly noise you will see while watching EquatorHD. The best shows to catch it on are any of the "Over" series when they fly over towns and show rooftops, or Smart Travels when they are showing a stone building or the insides of an old cathedral, the skeeters are really buzzing then.

I have emailed Wilt personally about the noise and I don't think he believes me, at least he said it was not due to compression but did not ever reply back to me when I tried to explain to him exactly what I was seeing and where to go to see it. Maybe he's at his wit's end with all this and doesn't want another "thing" to worry about.
 
Since it is limited in scope to mainly one channel and 2 shows do you think it might be with the equipment used or original content for those shows.

And yes I have seen the noise since you fookers brought it to my attention!!! :mad:
 
Damn!!!!!!

Im stayin away from England and France then cause they full of them here skeeters!!!!!!!!!
 
Nice post, Darrll. As you know we see the "skeeter" but just tend to ignore them.

And, 1080iBeVuMin, Wilt works for Cablevision and has forever. He already posted he was staying with Cablevision and not going with Rainbow/VOOM but this was before the current situation.

Still watching HDTV under warm Seattle skies, Gill
 
Ronald_Jeremy said:
Since it is limited in scope to mainly one channel and 2 shows do you think it might be with the equipment used or original content for those shows.
I doubt it's the original content since Smart Travels is shown on 2 other providers and is one of the best shot HD shows on the air.

It does affect all HD channels that I receive, it is just more prevelant and easier to see on EquatorHD. I think it's an encoding issue on Voom's end. It's been reported that they choke the HD to 12 MBS bandwidth, that is not enough for a lot of content. That's why I'm hoping the new encoders get online soon and they can tweak them to give us pristine HD. :yes
 
skeeter noise is actually pixelation of the picture. this occurs when their is too much picture information for the encoder to process at one time. So, it essentially merges that part of the picture together. This can happen at every phase of production, from aquisition (shooting) to transmission to your set top box.

sorry to get all technical on ya.
 
Hey Darrell
Now that E* is buying Rainbow-1, what about if the source of the Mosquito Noise was on the satellite and E* decides to move HDNet there :eek: :shocked :no :D
 
Walter L. said:
Hey Darrell
Now that E* is buying Rainbow-1, what about if the source of the Mosquito Noise was on the satellite and E* decides to move HDNet there :eek: :shocked :no :D


It will get bit, then get West Nile noise from it.
 

VOOM ........ Revamp your marketing scheme.

Where is VOOM's future going to be?

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