OTA image quality better than DirectTV

jdub

New Member
Original poster
Oct 1, 2004
3
0
I just installed a Channel Master Crossfire 3020 HDTV antenna (w/Channel Master 0065 DSB pre-amp) connected to an LG LST3510A OTA/QAM tuner and the picture is fantastic. I ran the antenna signal through the existing DirectTV SAT1 line from the roof with a diplexor and it worked great (I learned the hard way that a DC "block" filter is required between the tuner and the 12v SAT1 DC signal). The quality of a digital OTA image is clearly superior to my DirectTV. It appears that the key to this set up, though, is the ability to rotate/adjust the antenna remotely so that all local OTA channels can be tuned in easily. I used a Channel Master 9521A with handheld remote.
 
This directly relates to the bandwidth thread on here..... If your OTA providers start running sub feeds on the same channel, it will also degrade.
 
Both satellite and OTA compress the signal but the OTA guys would be less likely than SAT providers to compress the signals into mush. The SAT providers want to maximize profits by offering as many channels as possible over their bandwidth. The locals don't want their signal to look ugly because they only have one broadcast to provide.

That is until they decide to start multicasting. Now the local channel thinks they can turn up profits by offering multiple channels on their 20Mbps of bandwidth. So HDTV gets chopped down to 11Mbps and... wait a second... what is all this blockiness whenever something moves fast. Why does the flowing river look like it is a bunch of ice cubes.

Or don't worry about that, we are providing two other SDTV channels that you can watch over our 6MHz of bandwidth. Never mind that you spent a load of money so you can watch HDTV. We have replaced low resolution with high resolution containing massive digital compression artifacts.

I'm hoping that when cable transitions to all-digital, they will have enough bandwidth to send HDTV with enough bits per second that we will not have to stare at a bunch of compression artifacts.

Either that or we'll have to wait for Blu-ray Disc.