After watching the street all via 3 different dreamboxes, (one tuned to TCL, one to Freeview and one to the Sky MUX) the picture for the street seems to be off centre as it is broadcast from TVNZ. So they all were off-centre. And all consistantly off-centre in the same place.
I tried to record all three streams but because the EPG data was the same for all channels and I was trying to record into the same directory the recording just didn't happen as the files are recorded by their EPG name. I did remember after "the street" had finished about taking screenshots which I have done, for comparison between the quality of the three different streams.
TCL seems to be about 2 seconds behind Freeview and Sky which are only a few nanoseconds apart (freeview being slightly ahead), which isn't a huge suprise really as it is taking the freeview stream and re-encoding it.
Below are some screenshots showing the difference in picture quality / contrast between the three different feeds... I tried to get the same picture for all, but that is really hard when you are tabbing between browser windows and clicking on a button ;)..
One thing I did notice is that th TCL feed is a "smidge" stretched out / wider than the Sky/Freeview feed... I have a screenshot of the placemakers icon showing you what I mean below. I think I have figured out why that is, the TCL feed is 704x576 for TV1 & 2, whereas the Sky/Freeview feed is 720x576. TV3 on TCL is 720x576
Not sure if sky transmit them this way but TCL re-encoded the channels into all sorts of other weird and wonderful non-widescreen res's such as 544x576 or 480x576 or even 352x576 on Nickelodeon (ewww!) but on the upside they did have Ren & Stimpy on, space madness, classic!....
Telstraclear "Worst Week of my life"
Freeview TV1 Feed:
Sky TV1 Feed:
You can really tell that Sky compress their image a lot :), plus the colours are slightly washed out on TCL, however they do look a whole lot worse on the ADB STB than they do on Dreambox. That's next weeks job to setup a media pc to do a screen capture between the two.
Just got TCL cable tv in yesterday and the technician mentioned free to air tv so 1-4 really still haven't been set up for the different aspect ratios and is a problem that telstra are currently looking at fixing, so they know some are wrong, just haven't fixed it yet.
Not sure if this helps any but thought it may be nice to mention
Just got TCL cable tv in yesterday and the technician mentioned free to air tv so 1-4 really still haven't been set up for the different aspect ratios and is a problem that telstra are currently looking at fixing, so they know some are wrong, just haven't fixed it yet.
Telstra are currently replacing their old analogue decoders (which from memory when I saw them were just glorified Sky Set Top Boxes, connected via Composite to a Cable Re-encoder).
From my deduction it seems that TV3 has already been switched over to the digital system which doesn't seem to decode the image at all, just decrypts the raw TS stream from the satellite, and re-encrypts it down the Cable. Not changing any of the image quality on the way through as it all seems to stay digital. Tv1 1 & 2 still seem to be on the old system, as to the bulk of the subscriber Sky Channels. Only seems to be TV3, the new channels (Vibe, DT&L, C&I etc) are on the new system... but this is all "supposed" to be swapped over on 15 December as per: http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/go/whatsnewtv but we will see...
This can't be said for the MPEG decoder quality in the TCL Supplied Set Top Boxes, which seem to do a very poor job of decoding the stream off the cable and displaying it on screen.
I have my PC Capture card working today, so will take "comparison" screenshots tonight, between the ADB and DM.
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