I love digital technology and I also hate it. When it comes to audio, I love it because I have total control over my sample rates, bit rates and a whole host of other settings that effect audio quality. But when it comes to video, I have no choice but to put up with whatever I am fed. This might be perfectly fine for Blu-ray video, where a nicely produced disk generally provides a satisfying experience - at least on a decent quality monitor that isn't large.
But so far as TV broadcasts are concerned, I reckon the world has gone completely backwards since digital broadcasting (cable / satellite / internet streaming / whatever) became ubiquitous. Because it gave broadcasters the ability to constantly feed us with the video equivalent of low bitrate audio MP3. Something they could not do when transmissions were totally analogue and the only real compression technique they had was interlacing.
And what is worse it that viewers as a whole seem not to really care that much. I think they have been dumbed down by the declining standards and what is worse is that younger viewers these days probably never really knew what analogue was really capable of. I can sit down with another family member (all of us well and truly born many years before colour analogue TV even became available), show them a compressed versus (relatively) uncompressed video, point out the obvious differences and they don't even see them. They can't see that horrible "plasticine" look (as I like to call it) that is a dead giveaway, for example, on highly compressed H.264 video. Even if I then show them the blu-ray right next to it. They can't see that someone's face remains reasonably detailed in a blu-ray video yet at typical broadcast bitrates, it just turns to plastic. Same with lighting and shadows. These things fall apart at typical broadcast bitrates. Even a good standard resolution DVD will blow away ANY broadcast I have ever watched on our Foxtel Pay TV provider by way of their "high definition" service when it comes to detail, lighting and shadows. Infact the only difference is the actual technical resolution of the material and that is it. And any sort of detail and quality retention in darker scenes? Forget it! It's just a muddled mess that broadcasters feed us these days.
I've purchased a series of mere DVDS over the last few years that are old motorsport broadcasts sourced directly from the original 2 inch analogue video tapes. They completely blow away ANY high resolution digital broadcast I have ever seen except of course in actual resolution. But on these DVDs sourced from the analogue tapes, there is far more actual detail within the pixels that are actually there, faces have more detail and above all else, any scene has a vivid, "real life" ambience to it that makes me feel like I am back there watching it live at the track (and I was back in the 80s). If I watch that same motorsport on digital today, yes, OK, the outlines of things are sharper because the resolution is higher. I can read small wording on the cars that I might not have been able to read in the old analogue days. But I am not kidding when I say that it just looks like a video game. There is little in these scenes that really pulls me in as a viewer. It's like there is never any sun, never any subtle lighting effects, textures are glossed over and it is just complete and utter ****.
I've done my own experiments and for my own eyes, bitrates need to be extremely high to retain any sense of quality - way higher than anything that is broadcast and even blu-rays sometimes fall apart where analogue wouldn't even flinch in some low-light scenes with a lot of high speed movement.
Anyway, that is my rant for today. I can't believe I pay $100 per month to watch moving plasticine. But if I don't pay my $100 it is ten time worse again. Maybe some space junk can knock the old satellites out of orbit and they can put new ones up with some decent bandwidth!!
But so far as TV broadcasts are concerned, I reckon the world has gone completely backwards since digital broadcasting (cable / satellite / internet streaming / whatever) became ubiquitous. Because it gave broadcasters the ability to constantly feed us with the video equivalent of low bitrate audio MP3. Something they could not do when transmissions were totally analogue and the only real compression technique they had was interlacing.
And what is worse it that viewers as a whole seem not to really care that much. I think they have been dumbed down by the declining standards and what is worse is that younger viewers these days probably never really knew what analogue was really capable of. I can sit down with another family member (all of us well and truly born many years before colour analogue TV even became available), show them a compressed versus (relatively) uncompressed video, point out the obvious differences and they don't even see them. They can't see that horrible "plasticine" look (as I like to call it) that is a dead giveaway, for example, on highly compressed H.264 video. Even if I then show them the blu-ray right next to it. They can't see that someone's face remains reasonably detailed in a blu-ray video yet at typical broadcast bitrates, it just turns to plastic. Same with lighting and shadows. These things fall apart at typical broadcast bitrates. Even a good standard resolution DVD will blow away ANY broadcast I have ever watched on our Foxtel Pay TV provider by way of their "high definition" service when it comes to detail, lighting and shadows. Infact the only difference is the actual technical resolution of the material and that is it. And any sort of detail and quality retention in darker scenes? Forget it! It's just a muddled mess that broadcasters feed us these days.
I've purchased a series of mere DVDS over the last few years that are old motorsport broadcasts sourced directly from the original 2 inch analogue video tapes. They completely blow away ANY high resolution digital broadcast I have ever seen except of course in actual resolution. But on these DVDs sourced from the analogue tapes, there is far more actual detail within the pixels that are actually there, faces have more detail and above all else, any scene has a vivid, "real life" ambience to it that makes me feel like I am back there watching it live at the track (and I was back in the 80s). If I watch that same motorsport on digital today, yes, OK, the outlines of things are sharper because the resolution is higher. I can read small wording on the cars that I might not have been able to read in the old analogue days. But I am not kidding when I say that it just looks like a video game. There is little in these scenes that really pulls me in as a viewer. It's like there is never any sun, never any subtle lighting effects, textures are glossed over and it is just complete and utter ****.
I've done my own experiments and for my own eyes, bitrates need to be extremely high to retain any sense of quality - way higher than anything that is broadcast and even blu-rays sometimes fall apart where analogue wouldn't even flinch in some low-light scenes with a lot of high speed movement.
Anyway, that is my rant for today. I can't believe I pay $100 per month to watch moving plasticine. But if I don't pay my $100 it is ten time worse again. Maybe some space junk can knock the old satellites out of orbit and they can put new ones up with some decent bandwidth!!
) like all modern compression algorithms implements a loop filter. The filter softens the edges of the compression blocks making them much less objectionable. But there is no free lunch and what comes out is over filtered, soft video. Because of that, its performance doesn't drop as rapidly as MPEG-2 does in US broadcast. I don't know people in US watch basketball. It drives me nuts with ever camera pan and sea of macroblocks.
