Broadcast TV sub channels quality question

Will sub channels such as 4.2, 4.3, you know what I mean, always been broadcast in such low quality? If there is no movement in the show it's okay but whenever there is fast action the whole screen is just a mess. In the future will this ever be improved upon or will it be like this for the next decade or so?

 

Honestly? No.

The whole channel has a bit rate of 19.2 megabits. The original Network feed is 35 megabits, and they're throwing away a lot of that quality to get down to 19.2. So when they steal from the main feed, they have to take away as little as they can in order to have an acceptable picture on the main money channel.

Honestly, most of the broadcasters are only airing the over-the-air subchannels in order to be able to force the cable companies to carry them. They deliver a better quality version via fiber to the cable headend.

Compression has improved since the digital transition, but not enough to do a decent job on four different channels in the space that it's adequate for one good quality one.

 

I don't have that problem with my sub-channels. Maybe you have a reception issue?

 

If you have a good picture on the main channel and a terrible picture on this sub-channels - the fault is entirely with the broadcaster. The main and sub channels are the same data stream.

What the OP described is inadequate bit rate.

 

I agree with @Chris DeVoe above: horrible, horrible, horrible compression in those channels. They gots no bandwidth. You're trying to squeeze 6MHz of information into maybe 500kHz. Massive data compression is bad.

If the channels are carried via satellite and you get the original feed, then it should look no worse than any channels up there. There are a handful there, but not that many. The over-the-air channels carry them because they don't cost much and it's an opportunity to make a little more money... but not much.

 

My mom watches these sub-channels shows all the time. I go in and sit for a few minutes but it is so bad I just leave and one channel has some weird color shifts as you're watching. She doesn't see it but the people's skin tone will change as your watching.

 

Are you watching via an antenna?

 

Yeah, the main channels are perfect.

The other day I did a new channel scan and an analog channel (25) came up. It's NBC. I thought all analog major networks were required to go digital? Weird.

 

Small market here, but we get some truly wacky sub-channels OTA. One shows the Roy Rogers TV show. One was showing the Stu Erwin Show (nobody but me will remember). The quality? Like looking through the bottom of a drinking glass.

 

I find that the PQ varies quite a bit. A Mr. Peepers kinescopes or 70s sitcom look awful, but shows with decent source material (Hogans Heroes) are pretty acceptable. I have more of a beef with 4:3 source being stretched for 16:9 screens, but most of our locals don't do that. I would not watch Lawrence of Arabia on a subchannel, but Car 54, sure, why not.

 

Chris has explained it very well. You can only shove so much into 19.2 meg.
I am now retired, but worked as an engineer at a PBS station in a small market. And the video quality was a compromise.
Main channel is HD..and was set for @12meg. Initially it was 1080i....but we had to change it when a fourth channel was added. So it ended up 720p and @10 meg.
The other 3 sub channels ranged between 2 and 3 meg. There was also some emergency data that had to be reserved, (but I forget now what it was called). I think it was 500k.

Initially a stat mux was used (fancy term for data bit stealing...where the main channel gets priority over bits for HD and another channel was chosen to steal from. But it caused problems with some viewers OTA and eventually was shut off.

A new flavor for OTA has been in the works...ATSC-3. Obviously more efficient, but I have not kept up with the advances as I'd rather listen to music. I saw enough tv at work.

Bern

 

It will be a while before ATSC-3 is implemented. My guess is it won't be. I think stations will switch to live streaming and forget broadcasting if they can.

Maybe the FCC won't allow that, I don't know.

 

Yes.

 

Low Power stations can still broadcast in analog but that allowance will be ending soon I think (within a few years?).

 

What I can rarely figure out is how to find the various sub-channels on our cable system. I seem to stumble on them from time to time, but I've yet to find a good guide that really covers all 800+ channels on our Comcast box.

Granted, TONS of those are duplicated programming, half in low-def, half in high def. And music channels, and TONS of channels we don't actually get, and pay-per-view, and subscription channels we don't pay for.

One of these days we probably ought to upgrade our Comcast equipment -- we're still using the same stuff from them that we got when we moved to DC in early 2011. There is an on-screen channel guide, but you can only see 5 channels at a time, and you have to scroll for days to see anything.

Anyway, my point is that there's no real way (that I can tell), to see where these broadcast sub-stations can be found on our cable box -- though I know some of them are there.

 

Cable box interfaces are all terrible.

Your best bet is to go to Comcast's website and look it up there or try a TV listings website like TitanTV.com where you can put in your zip code and cable provider and check there.

 

You should always upgrade your cable box unless you have a very specific reason that requires an old one - like a television without HDMI inputs and require an older one with a component output. Like everything else, equipment is constantly getting faster and faster, and the people who write the software for the cable boxes are always writing for the new stuff. As the cable systems are written in the incredibly flabby Java language, your older box is only going to get slower and slower.

I was dealing with a 10 year old cable box yesterday and it took 25 minutes from power-up to finally displaying the guide screen. Trust me, your cable company wants you to have a new box - they just don't want to pay somebody to come out and replace it for you.

 

In my location, the sub channels mostly come out fine. Channels like Buzzr, LAFF, Cozi, MeTV, Movies, Heroes, Grit all look pretty good, but my antenna reception in my area is pretty clear. There is a company that has taken channel 1 and put 15 sub-channels on it, all of those look pretty bad, but they are all mostly channels I have no interest in.

 

Weird colors indeed. The Joey Bishop show is the greenest I've ever seen, and I don't mean environmentally. Kinda of like its shown through an irradiated avacado filter.

 

Screw the set-top boxes altogether, you'll get more out of a DVR, which replaces the need for the cable box. The cable company hates it (Verizon used to throw up all kinds of "please hold"/"I'll transfer you now" BS my way until I laid down the law on them), but all you need from them is their multi-card for the recorder, and you pay 5 bucks a month for it, as opposed to $20 for their wonky little cable box. For me, having a MOXI (which I miss dearly, although I'm fine with my two TiVo's) is worth not having On Demand fuction.

And it's so much easier to graze once you take the religimous and home shopping channels out of your scanning. Even on Expanded Basic, I'm getting my money's worth if I only use a DVR for 35 channels (actually, I only use about 20 of 'em anyway).

 

The CableCard was a legal requirement, but they made it almost impossible to get. Cord cutters are their punishment, richly earned.

 

I am really grateful for the day I started out googling, "Watch _____ online free".
Now I do.