What is with the terrible compression on The Hits today? It's very noticeable on the "The Hits - sounds like this" trailer.
Has it suddenly become very compressed or am I being ignorant and not seeing a "stylish effect" on a trail? The sugababes video (a very dark one) looks worse than it did yesterday so I'm thinking the former.
Not sure, but I swear that all of the channels seem to be slightly more compressed now-a-days. This has only been noticable for around a week or so, but I'm sure it is the case. Looking at Parkinson on BBC One right now, it's quite 'lego-y', though the background he uses on his set doesn't help.
I agree, I think since about two weeks ago the compression is more noticable than ever. The colder weather perhaps, making our aerials shrink?
I know your probably not serious about your last comment, but it's nothing to do with reception. Bad reception does not cause these compression problems.
Incidentally, when my TV is in Dolby Surround mode the radio stations sound absolutely dreadful - like they're being played underwater, unless I set it to "Pseudo Surround" and they sound crystal clear. Any ideas?
Do you have a true 5.1/6.1/7.1 Dolby Surround set-up, or is it Virtual Dolby Surround?? Psuedo Surround uses a different matrix for producing it's effect than dolby, so there's always gonna be differences, Psuedo is a more natural effect processor.
Incidentally, when my TV is in Dolby Surround mode the radio stations sound absolutely dreadful - like they're being played underwater, unless I set it to "Pseudo Surround" and they sound crystal clear. Any ideas?
The non-BBC radio stations on Freeview are mainly broadcast in 128kbps "joint-stereo". This completely messes up the Left/Right phase relationship in the signal that would=otherwise contain the Left/Right phase differences in a Dolby ProLogic signal. Effectively this would completely corrupt any out-of-phase surround information.
However you shouldn't listen to any non-Pro Logic source (basically anything other than feature films and the odd Sky Footy match and Granada drama) in Pro Logic mode - as it will be a completely bogus surround effect. You should flip back to normal stereo...
On a Freeview related note; Tetris is coming to Freeview!
Yes, but at what cost? The alledged Free2Play games service has become distinctly unfree since they introduced their last game, for which you had to dial a premium rate phone number to give you a one time unlock code to play the game.
Remember that when Sky introduced Tetris, it marked the start of pretty much all of their games (I think it is now all except for Beehive Bedlam isn't it?) becoming chargeable. F2P could easily go down the same route.
True, but if so I can guarantee that the Digital Spy forums would give them hell, and would quickly be in contact with trading standards or whatever company it is.
Personally, I'm not particularly bothered - until they get some background music for the service, it's too boring to use.
In regards to surround sound, I do have the surround speakers and when set in Dolby Pro Logic there is sound coming through the back, for example, in Coronation Street the mumblers in the pub come through the rear speakers, and in Night and Day various weird noises would come through them... in Pseudo Surround, it just seems to me that the same mono sound comes out of all speakers?
I agree, I think since about two weeks ago the compression is more noticable than ever. The colder weather perhaps, making our aerials shrink?
I know your probably not serious about your last comment, but it's nothing to do with reception. Bad reception does not cause these compression problems.
Sorry fusionlad, I think you've been misinformed there.
Yes, reception problems CAN increase compression artefacts.
MPEG and other compressed systems (and even uncompressed ones like CD Audio) have a certain amount of 'error correction' tolerance built-in. This means that when the signal gets corrupted, the machine will work harder to uncorrupt the higher (more significant) bits of the digital word rather than even attempt to decode the lower (least significant) bits. On dirty CDs this manifests itself as a slight 'clicky' or 'bristly' edge to the sound, whereas on MPEG video this will manifest itself as appearing to have been compressed more - simply because the more significant parts of the image (i.e. the larger blocks) are being decoded (with trouble) and the receiver's processor doesn't have the time/stable enough signal to fill in the details.
