And lo On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:35:04 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake thusly:

> scott wrote:
>>> I hadn't realised that this could very by channel. I assumed there was  
>>> just a standard that says "Digital TV = MPEG2 at X Mbit/sec". I'll  
>>> have to investigate. Hmm, I wonder what a DVD looks like?
>>  No, there is certainly scope for different bit-rates on different  
>> channels.
>
> Eeeps! So it's completely possible for the fancy new "digital channels"  
> to have far lower quality than the old analogue ones? o_O

Yup the big five seem to have a decent quality then it slides down the  
scale as you change muxes.

> Digital works better than analogue right up to the point where the  
> signal gets completely drowned in noise. After that it fails pretty  
> spectacularly.

Do you remember when they were first pushing it "You either get a signal  
or you don't"; heh. As Scott said though things will get better once they  
ditch analogue and turn the power up

> Hmm, I wonder... My gandparents live in an area where the analogue  
> reception is little more than coloured snow. You can kind of tell when  
> you see a person's head, because there's a large area of pinky snow. But  
> it's very hard to watch. And every time a bus goes past on the main  
> road, the picture vanishes for a second or two. I wonder if digital  
> would work any better? ;-)

Should look at Freesat I know Panasonic have a couple TVs with built-in  
Freesat tuners out now and Humax have a Freesat twin-tuner PVR if  
you've/they've already got an HDMI input TV.

> I wasn't aware that anybody actually broadcasts in HD at all yet. I was  
> under the impression that you need to buy a £2,000 BluRay player to get  
> any millage out of an HD TV. (Yet. I'm sure it'll change over time...)

As already mentioned a lot's been filmed just not necessarily broadcast.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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