DVR Chatter

The days of Comcast passing through full quality HD signals are apparently over.  According to a report (with screen shots), Comcast has begun compressing some HD bit rates by as much as 39%.  And, as one would expect, the reduction in quality is visually noticeable.  Is 9.8 Mbps really HD?  According to Comcast, it's good enough for premium channel Starz HD. According to the report, "By early April, most Comcast systems will recompress and degrade their HD, much like DirecTV and Dish Network do on their MPEG-2 channels."  This is ostensibly being done to make room for more High Definition content.

The user who posted the report says the figures below were gathered by recording "the same program from the same channel, at the same time, on both Comcast and Verizon FiOS in N. VA." and then comparing "the size and bitrate of each MPEG-2 recording, as well as the subjective quality with video."

Quoted from the original report:

Code:

                            FiOS          Comcast           Difference
AETV HD                  18.66 Mbps      14.48 Mbps           -28.9%
Discovery HD             14.16 Mbps      10.43 Mbps           -35.8%
Discovery HD Theater     17.45 Mbps      12.60 Mbps           -38.5%
Food Network HD          14.32 Mbps      13.73 Mbps            -4.3%
National Geographic HD   11.39 Mbps      10.32 Mbps           -10.3%
Universal HD             12.72 Mbps      11.01 Mbps           -15.5%
Starz HD                 11.93 Mbps       9.76 Mbps           -22.2%

Comcast has recently come under fire for spying on their users' data packets and using the information to throttle internet service speeds.