I would think maybe someone needs to check Shaw's compression levels again... methinks they might have upped the compression!

I was hoping the "free channels testing" would deal with the macroblocking issue and improve the picture quality.

I'm watching CBCHD hockey right now - it hasn't improved at all. In fact, I'm noticing macroblocking with EVERY HD channel now... awful.

This is proof to me that Bell had superior picture quality to Shaw. No contest!

I thought the Canuck-Falmes game was better than usual last night.

*shrug*

just discovered this forum. i have yet to call shaw to see what the heck is wrong with our picture quality/etc. we had to drop bev in feb when we moved... lousey condo.... anyways i am going on and on here... i agree 100% that shaw has some serious issues. every night same thing, audio dropouts, pixelation, etc. My personal favorite is when watching a recorded hd program (abc) is 10 min into the program mass pixelation, freezing up of the fast fwd/etc and half the show gone. they need to get there you know what together. I would really like it if shaw was honest and just tell the world that they just cannot provide the capacity for decent programming.

stevepet, Welcome to DHC! Your issue sounds like its a box problem or signal strength problem instead of macroblocking.

agree with nanuuk, it looks like a box issue, I had the same thing (50/50 that any recording I did would end up with a blank screen and a freeze halfway), switched the box and no problems since.

OTOH the audio dropouts and general macroblocking seem to be an issue with Shaw in general, sometimes channels are amazing (like some hockey games, or hdnet up until a few weeks ago) but sometimes things are quite horrible in macroblocking terms, not to mention the annoying sound dropouts every now and then.

Just watching a fight in the Montreal-Florida game on TSN, and EVERY CAMERA FLASH causes macroblocking, not to mention the logo sweeps, camera pans, close-ups on the bench... oh wait, EVERYTHING that goes on in an NHL game.

What a joke. For all their faults, at least Bell knew how to deliver a real HD quality signal.

I don't own a shaw HD box, but I was in Futureshop today and played around with one (viewed on a large LCD HDTV), and was quickly reminded why this thread exists... I was absolutly appalled at the level of macroblocking and artifacting consistantly visible on not just one HD channel in particular, no, all of them.

I said to myself, why would anyone want to pay for this garbage? I wouldn't even think of investing in a HD box until I saw proof that the HD programming was at a level I felt had value for money.

Like Mozza said, "it's a joke" to call it HD. To dupe customers into thinking it's the pinnicle of television quality, it's almost fraudulent, and they're getting away with it.

When I had Bell ExpressVu, I could call that "HD" and actually mean it. There was little to no macroblocking on the HD channels, especially HDNet, which I know is always broadcasting in HD.

But Shaw? I was watching 10 minutes or so of "Reckless Abandon" last night (some mixed martial arts thing), and the macroblocking was ALWAYS present - even when the fighter was just bouncing around waiting for his name to be announced.

I'm wondering if Shaw doesn't suffer in their HD and digital television like they do in their internet speeds - at prime time, there's just less bandwidth to go around, so you see major slowdowns (or in this case seriously crappy PQ)...

I agree Mozza, I think its coming down to a question of lack of bandwidth for the channels, if I'm watching HD shows late at night like past 11pm, I'd always tell to myself, am I crazy or does the picture look alot better???

Better picture late at night is a placebo unfortunately. Shaw's system (like most every cable system still) is broadcasting all the channels, all the time (at full bandwidth). Telus TV works a bit different, where as only the channel you are watching is being 'downloaded' to your TV. I would think this is the future but I have no idea how huge of a task it is for Shaw to undergo that transformation.

SDV is under consideration by many cable service providers. Unfortunately, it's not cheap.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=51559&highlight=switched+digital+video

Yep I heard thats how Telus works, only the channels people watch are being sent which allows alot more headroom for bandwidth..
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Cable_Switched_video_Network_Diagram.png
Curtosey of Wikipedia.

Telus doesn't have a choice really. A single HD stream per subscriber is all they can handle at a time. No such thing as a dual tuner (watching one HD "channel" while recording another), unless they're going to house our recordings at their end. Good luck watching two HD programs on different TVs as well.

I'd have to think SOD impacts the speed of changing channels. As an example, the playback controls (play/pause/etc) for Video on Demand certainly don't react as quickly as the playback controls for any other programming on the PVR. Wouldn't the same happen for channel changes?

Watching the big NFL game right now. Flicked between networks, and absolutely HORRIBLE picture quality. Macroblocking galore, even when just watching the talking heads before the game. This is NOT HD.

watching the NFL game too. Is every channel gone to craptown? I know it isn't going to help, but I sent an email to Shaw the other day... I don't expect a reply til at least after New Year's.

Telus doesn't have a choice really. A single HD stream per subscriber is all they can handle at a time. No such thing as a dual tuner (watching one HD "channel" while recording another), unless they're going to house our recordings at their end. Good luck watching two HD programs on different TVs as well.

I'd have to think SOD impacts the speed of changing channels. As an example, the playback controls (play/pause/etc) for Video on Demand certainly don't react as quickly as the playback controls for any other programming on the PVR. Wouldn't the same happen for channel changes?
I went to Visions on 34th ave,, seems to be the only one with TelusTV and the HD box, and I tried switching channels, to be quiet honest, its no slower then on Bell, but yes Shaw is faster then Bell or Telus. The guy was trying to convince me that all I needed to do is hook up a external HDD to the TTV box and I'd have a PVR and he swore he was able to watch one channel, record another.. sounds like he wanted a sale.

Better picture late at night is a placebo unfortunately.

are you sure that would be the case all the time? The bandwidth for the nfl games and the nhl center ice must be coming from somewhere, not to mention when there is an hd ppv event going on.

I'm not an expert and I'm sure someone can correct me if I'm wrong .. the cable channels come to your box in a frequency band - this is where you hear how some plants are only built out to "such and such" mhz. Channels are organized and delivered on a set frequency, I believe this is the QAM64/256 you hear and the more channels you pack into a particular QAM the less video bandwidth its available to each channel (in Mbps). This is likely what we are seeing with Shaw HD, 3 channels in one QAM versus 2 ...

Because of this, even though the NFL/NHL packages aren't broadcasting all the time, you aren't shifting channels around to different QAMs .. you are still stuck with the original provisioning of channels to frequency/QAM.

I know I've greatly simplified this and while I may not be 100% accurate I think it does answer the question.

I am not sure why shaw wouldn't be able to shift channels to different QAMs based on overall available bandwidth: they control the digi box so they could have different channel maps depending on when HD VOD is on, or nhl network is on, or nfl games are on.

If nothing is on, say, hdnet & other hd channels are 2xQAM, if something else comes up they get put 3xQAM and the additional space is used for the other channels.

I would think that on-the-fly provisioning should be available to shaw: anybody that knows more about the back-end side of things wants to chime in?