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Old 09-27-2006, 07:25 AM   #16
ken0042
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Join Date: Apr 2004
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Quote:
Originally Posted by trew View Post
I did a lot of research into both Shaw and Bell, and ended up going with Shaw. Here's why:

- Analog is actually a reason to go with Shaw, the digital channels are compressed and this makes sports, particularly hockey, look pretty bad. Hockey doesn't compress well, the cameras move around constantly and the image quality has to be compromized in order to compress the signal. A big screen TV makes the problem worse, because you can really notice the blocky artifacts from the digital compression process. (Actually resembles crappy video on the internet). Analog cannot be compressed in the same way and this tends to provide a much better image for watching standard definition sports programming. Shaw offers both CBC and Sportsnet on their analog tiers, so as a Flames fan, this means that most of the hockey broadcasts offered will be offered in analog on Shaw.
While you are currently 100% correct, I'm not sure if you will be by this time next month. Bell is almost done doing it's satellite shuffle- they bought one from DirecTV and have been in the process of juggling them around for the past few months. Because of the nature of their orbits they can only move at a relative speed of a few km/h so it takes months to move them a few thousand kilometres.

The end result will be 2 satellites in each of Bell's orbital slots. Although these birds will be a couple of kilometres apart; for us on Earth looking at 2 objects 25,000 km away that are 2 km apart; they appear to be right on top of each other. Which means Bell can start to relax their aggressive compression.

Currently with 3 of the satellites in their correct places I've already noticed a lot fewer compression artifacts; and that is also since getting a true HDTV.
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