Well, I'm not thrilled by a couple of things in this — including the fact that people rushed out to correct me without, it seems, actually reading my post.
I was making the point that the complaints about resolution are irrelevant — in part because your displays can't show even the truncated resolution, but that the issue is compression.
Just to be clear on who I am (feel free to Google me), I'm an ISF certified tech, a THX Level II certified theater designer and the former executive editor of Home Theater magazine, as well former Editor in Chief of E-Gear magazine and someone who has been writing about D* for a decade — and HDTV for the same period. I have extensive experience in both critical viewing — as well as the technical know-how when it comes to MPEG-2 compression and the ATSC format table. I also critically evaluate HDTV broadcasts and have spent time talking to network chief engineers about output encoding, compression and multicasting.
I was pointing out the absolute declarations of HD Lite on the basis of the truncated resolution, are well, a bit presumptuous — unless viewed on a proper display to judge resolution. Basically, you can't see something you can't see.
Now compression, both in terms of D* and OTA, is a different matter. As it it is dynamic, the HD picture of D* varies — probably worst on Sunday afternoons when the most bandwidth is sucked up by Sunday Ticket HD. But my point that the compression also comes from the broadcasters — depending on market to market, how many extra channels are being spewed and so on, that it's impossible to always tell where the signal is being compressed and by how much. That's why some people say the D* signal looks as good — and sometimes, better — that OTA. In other cases, obviously, the opposite is true.
And frankly, if you're not looking at a properly calibrated display — well judging picture quality is like judging how fast you're driving your car by counting how many trees go by a minute.
I do not agree that E* HD is better looking. Because of the way their system is set up, I actually think it is harder them to reliably deliver as good a picture at the same compression rates — forcing them to either allow more bandwidth be used, or let PQ suffer, although they seem to allow the former more often than not. Largely, it's a toss up, in my eyes, with both systems delivering roughly the same quality, but your milage many vary, of course.
My point was, and remains, people should understand what they're talking about before they complain about it.