At last an HD alternative
 

Just downgraded from xl package to sod all (they won't take V+ box back) and now just £25 a month and soon I'll have BBC HD, itv1 HD and ch4 HD free courtesy of freeview HD in London. Although they started earlier this month boxes won't be out till Feb but free HD for olympics in feb, world cup woo hoo.
Pity can't downgrade net too - supposed to have 10 meg but my monitoring usually has
me at 2.5 to 3. Have complained but they say capping in force! Strange as just been away 5 weeks....

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

Personally I do not care about HD. catch up, I player yes HD no . 10 meg never been capped.

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

The limited bandwidth available for Freeview HD will make the service a weaker proposition than that on cable or satellite. If your TV is 37in or bigger you may not be that happy

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

Not compared to BBC HD at 9.7mb... ;)

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

Yes always thought the BBC HD pic on virgin was not as exciting as when I could get it via sky years back. Of course it's gone a bit downhill since mid last year - but that is another thread.

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

really? The pic is superb on my Sony Bravia... My sister has Sky HD and BBC HD looks the same on that too... she also has a Sony Bravia, so a good comparison :)

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

It still looks good on mine too, however there's a perceivable difference in picture quality since August when they replaced the encoders and changed the bitrate to 9.7Mbps instead of 16Mbps.

Their argument is that the new encoders are of such good quality that even when they cranked them up to 16Mbps there was "no difference to the image".

As extensive as their testing metrics may seem, I feel there is an obvious decrease in the picture quality, more compression artefacts in dark areas, blockiness in fast motion scenes and a softer image in general.

Without changing codec I just don't see, however good the equipment, how you can keep the quality the same yet almost halve the bitrate of the video, even after reading the ins and outs of PSNR in the second link below...

More info here and here.

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

Audio at less than half the bitrate, 720p rather than 1080i, and four channels being crammed onto one 30mbps multiplex? Oh, and make that five channels in 2012. Somehow I think it's going to be worse than BBC HD at 9.7mb/s.

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

BBC HD looks bad enough on Virgin now, and barely better than SD most of the time, so I really can't see the point of FreeView 'HD'. What we need is higher bit-rates, bring them up to closer to blu-ray levels, say 40-45mbits, and add proper lossless audio too. HD is supposed to be about superlative quality, but what is being broadcast now is mediocre at best.

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

Well Top Gear looks pretty dam good at this very moment.

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

It looked like good SD to me. The long shots of the jungles had virtually no detail whatsoever, all was lost in the great BBC HD blur filter to aid low bit-rate compression.

Fun show though of course, but I would have prefered it to have looked like HD, and had 5.1 audio.

Re: At last an HD alternative
 

According to this story the BBC are saying Virgin hasn't had the same cut in bitrate that satellite has.