Disappointing Satellite Quality

[Capmaster]

My wife and I really enjoyed the Planet Earth series published by the BBC. The photography is stunning, and it's recorded using HD cameras.

We have the SD DVDs and they're superb, even being upscaled by our HDTV. They're 1.77:1 and look great!

We also have DirecTV HD and last night I noticed they were showing the Planet Earth Deep Oceans segment on Discovery HD channel, so I turned it on to compare it with our DVD picture quality. And it was horrible!! The resolution was there (1080i), but probably to save bandwidth, the color palette was reduced

I knew what they did because in an underwater shot with subtle shades of blue, there was glaring color banding all over the place. It looked like they were running the show using an 8-bit color palette. Inexcusable!!

Needless to say, the satellite broadcast was ruined. Judging by what I've seen on just the SD DVDs we have, the problem is not in the original material, but in the satellite company. Can't these people see how they're ruining an otherwise perfect presentation? Or do they only care about bandwidth? Morons!

Has anyone else noticed something similar with your satellite company?

So when we get started with Blu-ray, we'll be ordering the entire set. I have no doubts it'll knock our socks off