Rogers HD - Sports look****tier recently?

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-- Rogers HD - Sports look****tier recently?

Posted by Man_Devil on Nov-10-2009 01:45:

Rogers HD - Sports look****tier recently?

Yeah I know this is off topic.

Does anyone else who has Rogers HD notice that sports in general seem to be a shittier quality than they were like 6 months ago?? or have I just accidentally switched up some setting?

Like for instance, this Raptors game on now looks really sub-par. The World Series also looked terrible IMO.

Is anyone else noticing this or am I just going crazy?

BTW I find its more like the score, TSN, and Sportnet, but the big American stations still seem to work pretty well. Are the Canadian stations reducing the quality to save money?

Posted by rulzz on Nov-10-2009 01:59:

i heard rogers compresses HD signal to squeeze more channels without upgrading their equipment

solution: cancel rogers and live happily ever after

Posted by Man_Devil on Nov-10-2009 02:04:

quote:
Originally posted by rulzz
i heard rogers compresses HD signal to squeeze more channels without upgrading their equipment

solution: cancel rogers and live happily ever after

yeah they do compress their HD signal but I think they started doing that a while ago... I dont know maybe I am just sitting too close to the TV now or something.

I would cancel Rogers if there was another reasonably priced way to get HD sports...

Posted by VERTiG0 on Nov-10-2009 02:29:

Football looked way shittier yesterday, I was pissed. I may as well have been watching Youtube.

I absolutely despise the fact that you need to spend like $80/mo to get all that good stuff. All I want is HD sports, Discovery HD, and National Geographic HD. I don't want any other channels.

Posted by bcope on Nov-10-2009 03:01:

what you are seeing isnt so much a rogers issue as it is an issue with the stations rogers is carrying. fox, for example, looks fucking horrific when they cover NFL games. the world series was also a complete shitshow as well. the MNF game playing right now looks like absolute balls, but the CBS new england-miami game yesterday looked immaculate, as did the NBC eagles/cowboys game last night

this is due to many reasons, but mainly comes down to scaling. ESPN and fox broadcast their signals in 720p. TSN and the sportsnet channels broadcast in 1080i. when tsn picks up a game that originates on ESPN like tonights MNF game, for example, a device called a scaler takes the incoming 720p signal and scales to to 1080i, adding an extra 360 lines of vertical resolution. this is , at the best of times, shady and never seems to work out to any acceptable level

the *sometime* workaround for this is to make sure your rogers HD box is set to pass the signal through unaltered, rather than scaling everything to 1080i automatically. this option is in the settings under seticture format and you want to set it to auto dvi/hdmi. this is assuming you ran the setup wizard properly and your box knows that your TV can handle all the various formats.

once you have your box setup to pass the 720p signal, always check fox itself rather than, say, TSN rebroadcasting fox. that way if the true fox feed is coming through you will see it in its native 720p rather than horrendously scaled up to1080i. this was super noticeable during the world series when the sportsnet re-broadcast of fox's feed looked like absolute balls compared to fox itself. flipping back and forth between the two was like getting kicked in the junk

if you are asking why tsn is degrading your sports programming that you pay good money for, look no further than the CRTC and their sim-sub policy. they have absolutely no enforceable rules in place to stop broadcasters from this shit.

Posted by bcope on Nov-10-2009 03:02:

i should add that rogers does in fact compress their channels, but they do it the least out of any canadian provider. if you think rogers is bad you should see bell..:\

rogers is by FAR the best of the worst

Posted by Abercrombie on Nov-10-2009 03:02:

Both Rogers and Bell have been compressing HD for years, hoping you won't notice so they can provide more channels.

My roof antenna gets various ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, MyTV, CW and all Canadian channels 100% uncompressed with original commercials and free. Less channels, yes, but it's free and pure quality that's impossible for any cable/satellite TV provider to make better.

Posted by c-mal on Nov-10-2009 03:08:

Re: Rogers HD - Sports look****tier recently?

quote:
Originally posted by Man_Devil
Like for instance, this Raptors game on now looks really sub-par. The World Series also looked terrible IMO.

Yeah I watched a bit of game 6 and it looked atrocious.
It was like watching a 320x240 video with Bubbles' glasses on

Posted by I_Am_Vince on Nov-10-2009 03:36:

Hmm I thought it was just me, but yeah the image does seem crappier. I thought upgrading to the new Scientific Atlanta 4250HD would be better but nope.

Posted by Dior Homme on Nov-10-2009 05:16:

I just had another box installed in my house.... I find the feeds themselves from some of the supposed HD channels don't look any better.

Some of the games look good but not HD good. I would check your box, the Rogers guy just swapped out one of my boxes cause some 'dbm' or some meter was faulty. was at '-16' or whatever that means.

Anyway, call Rogers... I love my HD PVR anyway! Way better than Bell Express Vu I find.

Posted by bcope on Nov-10-2009 05:36:

again, its very unlikely that your rogers hardware is causing these issues. its more likely a)your expectations are too high given the current state of HD in canada and b)your equipment is calibrated incorrectly.

make sure your box has been set up properly and make sure its passing channels through in their native resolution. it amazes me that 9 out of 10 times the rogers troubleshooters wont even suggest this when people call reporting bad picture quality..i bet it would easily solve 5 out of 10 perceived picture quality issues

Posted by Endgame on Nov-10-2009 05:44:

I'm with Abercrombie.

I love Saturday nights because I've got a cheapy HD antenna and rock CBC-HD for free.