Freeview Picture Quality

This might just be me pointing my aerial in the wrong direction, but I've noticed that since More4 and ITV4 launched, the quality of my Freeview signal and picture have both gone down on most channels.

Is it right to assume that there are too many channels being crammed onto the service at the moment and would the introduction of extra bandwidth with the switchoff of Analogue TV in 20xx improve quality?

Or would it be right to assume that if extra space is freed up it will also be eventually crammed choc-a-block with copious extra channels and interactives and time shifted channels and so on?

There are two more channels on the mux now than at the beginning of the year - both in the C4 half - More4 and Quiz Call!

ITV4 is using the ITV News slot at night, but it's pictures probably required more space than ITV News, which I think itself had a black border around it to save space and squeeze it on the Mux. This stat muxing thing is supposed to distribute bandwidth where it's needed, with things like football needing it most!


And to answer your question, yes the problem should sort itself out at analogue signal, providing they don't decide to squeeze in more and more channels. I think alot of the interference is from the analogue signal, rather than digital signals!


P.S. After two years with Freeview just figured out that I can actually get a perfect picture on the ITV/C4 channels if I take one of my two feeding aerials out!

Nothing beats Sky in terms of picture quality. It's just a shame I'm not allowed to have a satellite dish on my apartment.

I got a very fuzzy and snowy ITV2 through my terrestrial TV today

Both the Freeview pictures I've seen and my own NTL cable pictures are significantly better than Sky. As far as I'm aware they slap a lot more compression on the channels than anyone else... and it shows.

The picture quality on NTL is really good whereas watching the same channels on SKY seem to be much poorer so much so that I can get better picture quality on Freeview than SKY!

I beg to differ. When watching Sky at a friends, even on the BBC/ITV channels, I noticed very clear signs of compression, similar to the ones found in JPEG files. It was very noticeable and quite irritating. Freeview picture quality in my area at least is extremely clear, although on some very dark images artefacts are visible.

I haven't got Freeview but isn't it correct that it uses the signal from the aerial so if it's a weak picture on terrestial then it will be a weak signal on Freeview?
Similarly won't it mean that those with TV Capture Cards will get a poor quality capture if the picture is weak?

Eh?! Freeview is terrestrial. Do you mean Freeview gets its signal from analogue terrestrial? In which case you have been misinformed; they are completely different feeds.

I'm glad it's not just me that thinks Sky has terrible picture quality.

You'd really have to compare them side by side on identical setups. From my experience, LCD, Plasma and 100Hz CRT screens make the artefacts much more visible, which is one reason (the other being cost) that I bought a 50Hz CRT.

Does anyone know what kind of bitrates can be expected on Freeview? I seem to remember 5mbit being quoted as an average-to-high bitrate on Sky, though obviously it varies from channel to channel.

I've got my suspicions about live versus pre-recorded stuff too. On one Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, I saw horrible compression artefacts on one of those whip pans past the audience. When I watched the repeat on ITV2, there was far less compression. Do they take the time to re-encode things at a higher quality (same bitrate) for later playout or is it just because the resolution and compression are worse on ITV1?

David

ITV1 is currently broadcasting at 15 Mbps with an audio bitrate of 192 Kbps on Freeview.

There is no way ITV1 is broadcasting 15Mbps. 15Mbps for the ITV channels combined is closer to the mark. No channel on Freeview is anywhere close to that. BBC ONE is generally 4-6Mbps (stat muxed where possible).

I don't know why, but some televisions show up digital artifacts more than others (leaving aside 100Hz etc). Philips TVs show them up quite badly.