E4 in the Nottingham Area
 

i've noticed that for a long time now E4 has had a pretty dire picture quality compared to the other channels, seems theres some form of compression along the way leading to jagged edges and pixellation.
In my uni house in Stafford this wasnt the case the picture quality was good as with the other channels, any one have any idea why E4 has such a naff picture in this area??

welcome to nthellworld ;)

Have you contacted CS about this yet? It could be that Channel 4 are spending less on the transmission since BB is doing so bad :D

cheers :D no i havent contacted anyone about it yet, just wondered if anyone could shead any light....
it's been like this since sometimes last yr but i'd forgetten about it when i went to Stafford, it's really bugging me now though!

Hiya,
It will not do much good to call Faults as we have no choice in the bitrate used to transmit E4, This will be agreed by E4 and ntl at a set level and will be adheared to.
However if you do feel that this does require checking into then feel free to contact one of the mods/admin who can then forward your account details onto me and I'll look into it for you. Russ knows that I work for ntl, the others I cannot speak for , though I'm sure that they are aware I am Mark J (CLT) from the .com. :)

It's quite well known that for some reason, E4 choose to broadcast at 3/4s horizontal resolution. This makes it look pretty bad. I don't understand why E4 spends a lot of money buying popular american shows (Friends, West Wing, 6 Feet Under, ER etc) and then makes them look so bad.

Oh, there is also a fault in Langley regions which causes the STB to send a widescreen picture letterboxed rather than anamorphic, even if 16:9 is selected. This causes widescreen TVs to zoom in, reducing the vertical resolution aswell, resulting in an even more terrible picture...

thanks for the replies folks, i expect i'll just have to deal with it as i thought it would be something e4 and ntl would have decided upon for whatever reason.
why just this area tho? the nottingham system is crap enough as it is with virutally nothing on the interactive, is bandwidth really THAT tight?? and why e4 of all channels... why not bidup.tv?!

lol :D

Bandwidth is a lot less tight than is used to be, but the resolution E4 is broadcast at is their decision, not NTL's. If you want to complain, write in and tell E4 to stop being tight and start giving us decent pictures...