Cinemax and HBO have been added

[tvropro]

What these guys need to do is get rid of all the crap channels and free up the bandwidth. Then give us a quality picture. I was watching ABC Family and Disney's SD masters ITC on c band yesterday, they were open for about 4 hours. I compared the masters to Direct. The masters were sharp and clear and eye poping with no digital artifacts. Direct was soft, smeary and had artifacts. The bottom line is Direct don't have the bandwidth capacity now to handle what they currently rebroadcast. And people want more HD. I don't understand this thinking. What good is 200 so called HD channels with youtube video quality.

 

[Jimbo]

What these guys need to do is get rid of all the crap channels and free up the bandwidth. Then give us a quality picture. I was watching ABC Family and Disney's SD masters ITC on c band yesterday, they were open for about 4 hours. I compared the masters to Direct. The masters were sharp and clear and eye poping with no digital artifacts. Direct was soft, smeary and had artifacts. The bottom line is Direct don't have the bandwidth capacity now to handle what they currently rebroadcast. And people want more HD. I don't understand this thinking. What good is 200 so called HD channels with youtube video quality.

I and some others have been saying this for a long time.
Quality over Quantity ...
Unfortunately, we have a portion of the public that gets caught up in the So and So have MORE HD channels that you.
Or, So and So has THIS channel, why doesn't D*.

As far as getting rid of Crap channels, I'm all for it, however, you'll end up pissing off some subs as they WATCH that channel and don't think it's crap.

 

[JerseyMatt]

What these guys need to do is get rid of all the crap channels and free up the bandwidth. Then give us a quality picture. I was watching ABC Family and Disney's SD masters ITC on c band yesterday, they were open for about 4 hours. I compared the masters to Direct. The masters were sharp and clear and eye poping with no digital artifacts. Direct was soft, smeary and had artifacts. The bottom line is Direct don't have the bandwidth capacity now to handle what they currently rebroadcast. And people want more HD. I don't understand this thinking. What good is 200 so called HD channels with youtube video quality.

The "this channel is crap" vs "that channel is crap" has been done to death and will never be resolved. What's good for Tom is not going to satisfy Dick or Harry. You have to come to grips with the fact that if they didn't have enough viewers they wouldn't carry the channel. G4 is a perfect example of a crap channel that rightfully got the axe (and this coming from someone who was a huge fan of it back when it was ZDTV and The Screen Savers had Kate and Leo - it's gone to total hell since Comcast bought it). For its limited viewership, it was not worth what Comcast wanted for it. And in case you're wondering, yes they know how many people are watching. All providers now collect viewership data on their customers unless you opt out.

I said it before and I'll say it again - the solution to their bandwidth crunch is to completely eliminate their SD streams, namely the ones that duplicate the HD streams. Yes it's going to cost them up front to swap out all the equipment, but sometimes you just need to rip the bandaid off. Since the HD boxes are capable of downconverting the HD signal to feed an SDTV, there is no reason for them to waste gigabits worth of bandwidth on SD streams.

 

[tvropro]

They should use the SD bandwidth for SD replacement with HD but not to add new channels. Each time they add more and I don't care what new codec they use it butchers the signal more. You can only put so much crap in a bag before it explodes. Unfortunately greed over making more money by Direct or whoever will always come into play with quantity chosen over quality every time. They really don't care about us the end user except to line their pockets. Dumb down Joe six pack and force him to conform. Then rape him for all he has.

 

[JerseyMatt]

Are you paying attention at all?