Broadcast HD Vs. BD HD

[unkie fester]

now i know movies that are broadcast in HD dont look nearly as good as there BD counterpart. so hears my question, does a show filmed in HD such as game of thrones look better on BD beacuse its not braodcast or will it look the same as it did when it aired on HBO?

[My_Two_Cents]

Broadcast HD is always compressed, and with that comes artifacts and degraded picture quality. BD will ALWAYS look better.

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by unkie fester

now i know movies that are broadcast in HD dont look nearly as good as there BD counterpart. so hears my question, does a show filmed in HD such as game of thrones look better on BD beacuse its not braodcast or will it look the same as it did when it aired on HBO?

I'll keep it simple:

HD broadcasts - highly compressed 1080i
BD - much less compressed 1080p

I could get into a lot of technical details, but that's the jest of it.

[YodasFootPowder]

Theoretically, any BD should look better than any broadcast. The bandwidth limitations on a cable or satellite signal pale in comparison to what a Blu-ray disc is capable of. Video quality is subjective, so I guess, no one can really say which will look better to you, but a Blu-ray should look better, assuming the company that produced it made an effort to do it well. I'd assume that Game of Thrones would look far nicer on an actual Blu-ray disc VS any cable or satellite signal.

[PenguinMaster]

You do realize this site has reviews right?
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Game-.../25599/#Review

Originally Posted by Kenneth Brown

Game of Thrones already looked good when it was broadcast in HD, but the Blu-ray edition takes the murder, betrayal and plotting to a whole new level.

[AgentOrange]

Blu-ray uses compression in it's video, but uncompressed audio. Broadcast uses 1080i and even more compression in it's video and in it's audio.

The blu-ray would no doubt be better, but I doubt it would be a massive revelation if you've already seen the HD broadcast. It would be like going from a 6 to an 8 on a scale of 1-10 (assuming 10 means 4k with no compression or anything even on close examination, with blu-ray you can still see digital noise on even the BEST discs if you look closely enough).

[timcat4843]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

Broadcast HD is always compressed, and with that comes artifacts and degraded picture quality.

BINGO!!!

[Hucksta G]

Game of Thrones looks a lot better than what it did on HD TV.

[hsox05]

I never realized JUST how big of a difference there was until I watched Transformers on blu-ray a couple weeks ago, and when I hit stop and flipped it over to the cable box they were playing Transformers on cable. I was blown away by how much better the disc looked.

[retablo]

Originally Posted by unkie fester

now i know movies that are broadcast in HD dont look nearly as good as there BD counterpart. so hears my question, does a show filmed in HD such as game of thrones look better on BD beacuse its not braodcast or will it look the same as it did when it aired on HBO?

That has nothing to do with the image quality anyway.

[overdrive79]

I watched Season's 1-3 of the Fringe on Bluray and now that I am watching Season 4 on TV I miss the PQ and Lossless sound of the Bluray, even with a 1080i TV. Compression really hinders the video quality of broadcast.

[retablo]

I guess the difference might be, say, Apple TV, since it can stream full 1080p content from iTunes. It's still not as good of quality as a BD, but it's better than broadcast.

Interesting article about it here...
http://9to5mac.com/2012/03/14/apples...ch-difference/

[CIBartowski]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

I'll keep it simple:

HD broadcasts - highly compressed 1080i
BD - much less compressed 1080p

I could get into a lot of technical details, but that's the jest of it.

I was always under the assumption that Broadcast limit was 720i..

Guess I was mis-informed

[AgentOrange]

Originally Posted by CIBartowski

I was always under the assumption that Broadcast limit was 720i..

Guess I was mis-informed

Is there such a thing as 720i?

Everything I see is 720p or 1080i, and actually it seems way more 1080i in my area. 1080i is not 1080p and actually is closer to 720p in terms of bandwidth anyway (so probably quality wise it's about the same between 720p and 1080i), somehow 1080p is beyond the threshold of current broadcasts and is a leap up from 1080i. Someone that is technical will probably explain why.

[aequalszero]

Originally Posted by AgentOrange

Is there such a thing as 720i?

Everything I see is 720p or 1080i, and actually it seems way more 1080i in my area. 1080i is not 1080p and actually is closer to 720p in terms of bandwidth anyway (so probably quality wise it's about the same between 720p and 1080i), somehow 1080p is beyond the threshold of current broadcasts and is a leap up from 1080i. Someone that is technical will probably explain why.

I guess 720i video could exist - but there's no standard that provides or supports it and no reason to ever use it.

As touched on already, it's not really about picture resolution - even when broadcasters manage to transmit 1080p signals, it'll still be at a much lower bitrate (image compression level) than the current blu-ray releases. Same with 1080p Netflix streaming or Itunes movies.

Now the real test is whether their compression process is good enough to be noticeable. Like most compression, the chances are it'll be quite good at retaining fine detail, but might introduce banding or problems of that nature.

[Lincoln6Echo]

The difference between broadcast HD and BD is that broadcasts are limited to transmission bandwidth, which usually means NO visible film grain in your films. The thing that gives BD the superior PQ is not only the full 1080p video, but the high bitrates that allow for that fine film grain that enhances detail. And that's really the difference. In fact, that was the biggest hinderence to DVD, in that you just couldn't get accurate film grain from ~5 Mbps as opposed to ~30 Mbps that you get from BD.

[stobbart]

Audio is also clearly a huge difference. I watched King Kong probably a year ago on BD and then a few days later it was on TV. And it was terrible. Broadcast audio has to fall within a certain range of Db. That is why commercials are often a lot louder then movies and shows because all the tracks of audio have to be compressed down to almost nothing.

[CHASLS2]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

I'll keep it simple:

HD broadcasts - highly compressed 1080i
BD - much less compressed 1080p

I could get into a lot of technical details, but that's the jest of it.

Dead on!

[DarknessBDJM]

The quality of broadcast hd also depends a lot upon your provider (Fios and I think U-Verse don't re-compress their streams), and the bit rate and encoding compression of the channel provider (Rainbow properties like AMC and IFC are badly encoded and horribly compressed; Epix channels and the HDNet channels and formerly Discovery HD Theater use the max available broadcast bandwidth of just over 18 mbps and end up looking a lot better than other channels). Some cable providers and channel providers have future plans for using MPEG-4 compression and some cable providers have future plans to switch to IPTV providing higher bandwidth for whatever channel or on demand program you are viewing at the moment since nearly all your bandwidth is focused only on what you are viewing at the moment (unless you are using up a bunch via the internet and online gaming).

Blu-ray now just has much better compression, a greater variety of compression methods and containers, bit-rates and data transfer rates, and far better audio (broadcast is limited to 384 kbps I think).

[scorpiontail60]

Originally Posted by DarknessBDJM

The quality of broadcast hd also depends a lot upon your provider (Fios and I think U-Verse don't re-compress their streams), and the bit rate and encoding compression of the channel provider (Rainbow properties like AMC and IFC are badly encoded and horribly compressed; Epix channels and the HDNet channels and formerly Discovery HD Theater use the max available broadcast bandwidth of just over 18 mbps and end up looking a lot better than other channels). Some cable providers and channel providers have future plans for using MPEG-4 compression and some cable providers have future plans to switch to IPTV providing higher bandwidth for whatever channel or on demand program you are viewing at the moment since nearly all your bandwidth is focused only on what you are viewing at the moment (unless you are using up a bunch via the internet and online gaming).

Blu-ray now just has much better compression, a greater variety of compression methods and containers, bit-rates and data transfer rates, and far better audio (broadcast is limited to 384 kbps I think).

You are incorrect. AT&T U-verse has the worst picture quality of any provider. Cable, satellite, telcotv, you name it. It's worse. Netflix looks better. YouTube looks better. iTunes looks better.

EVERY provider "re-compresses" the streams as they all use only MPEG-2 or H.264 and channels are sent to them as both. It depends on the network what the master source feed's codec is. Therefore DirecTV must re-encode all MPEG-2 channels (as they are a H.264 only provider) and Verizon FiOS must re-encode all H.264 channels (as they are MPEG-2 only provider).

No, there's nothing special about Velocity. All Discovery Communications networks are distributed natively as H.264 and all providers (except DirecTV) re-encode to 10-13 Mbps MPEG-2. They all look quite bad.

EPIX is another native MPEG-4 network that Verizon re-encodes to MPEG-2 but they give it a higher bitrate of 18 Mbps so there's not a ton of quality loss there. HDNet and HDNet Movies are natively MPEG-2 @ 18 Mbps. Some FiOS VHOs stupidly re-encode/rateshape the HDNet feed to close to its native bitrate for some reason. This results in pointless quality loss with no bandwidth reduction. It's a stupid behavior, but good luck ever getting Verizon to fix it.

The "Verizon never compresses" argument is flat out wrong. Most FiOS channels are MPEG-2 @ 12 Mbps; similar to all cable providers. At least 75% of all the networks are now distributing their feeds natively as MPEG-4 meaning Verizon must re-encode the bulk of the feeds as many of their boxes only support the ancient MPEG-2 codec.

Some of the native MPEG-4 distributed HD networks (which all cable providers including Verizon FiOS MUST re-encode/compress further) include:

-All Comcast (not Universal) networks (Style, G4, E!)
-All Viacom networks (MTV, Palladia, Comedy Central, CMT, etc)
-All Discovery Communications networks (look them up. There's a lot of 'em)
-All Disney networks (Disney, ESPN, ABC, ABC Family, etc)
-All A&E Networks (A&E, History, Lifetime, etc)
-All Scripps Networks (Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, etc)
-All HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc. "premium channels"

Only the HDNets, some of the NBCUniversal networks (like MSNBC), the News Corporation networks, Rainbow Media (AMC, IFC, WeTV, etc) and a handful of independents are still MPEG-2 and Verizon (and many other cable providers) do not re-encode them.