Thursday, March 13, 2008

Low-Grade HDTV: Why The Hell Am I Paying For This!?


Marketnews' Christine Persaud has a great screed on her blog about CRTC rules forcing Canadian feeds to override US feeds, and how the audio on the Canadian HD feeds is often far, far inferior.




I understand that we need to air the Canadian commercials in Canada, and that's fine. And I get the Canadian content rules imposed by the CRTC. But why should I be forced to watch a worse-quality feed when I pay for these extra channels? Instead of enjoying the full surround sound experience, I'm stuck with hollow sound and an annoying echo or, as my partner described it, "processed...almost to the point of being over-compressed". It has gotten to the point where we've opted for the standard-def feed just because the audio quality is unbearable (especially when we know what it should be like!)


Exactly! She's right about the audio, but in addition, my pet peeve is SD ported over to the HD feed (TSN being the biggest offender in this regard), and badly processed HD video full of artifacts and dropouts. I'm paying all this goddamn money for HDTV, I expect to get the best possible quality! Shortcuts and indifferent audio and video annoys me.

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