The World seems numbed to compressed video quality

Fiddle Faddle

Member
Aug 7, 2015
548
2
16
Australia
I love digital technology and I also hate it. When it comes to audio, I love it because I have total control over my sample rates, bit rates and a whole host of other settings that effect audio quality. But when it comes to video, I have no choice but to put up with whatever I am fed. This might be perfectly fine for Blu-ray video, where a nicely produced disk generally provides a satisfying experience - at least on a decent quality monitor that isn't large.

But so far as TV broadcasts are concerned, I reckon the world has gone completely backwards since digital broadcasting (cable / satellite / internet streaming / whatever) became ubiquitous. Because it gave broadcasters the ability to constantly feed us with the video equivalent of low bitrate audio MP3. Something they could not do when transmissions were totally analogue and the only real compression technique they had was interlacing.

And what is worse it that viewers as a whole seem not to really care that much. I think they have been dumbed down by the declining standards and what is worse is that younger viewers these days probably never really knew what analogue was really capable of. I can sit down with another family member (all of us well and truly born many years before colour analogue TV even became available), show them a compressed versus (relatively) uncompressed video, point out the obvious differences and they don't even see them. They can't see that horrible "plasticine" look (as I like to call it) that is a dead giveaway, for example, on highly compressed H.264 video. Even if I then show them the blu-ray right next to it. They can't see that someone's face remains reasonably detailed in a blu-ray video yet at typical broadcast bitrates, it just turns to plastic. Same with lighting and shadows. These things fall apart at typical broadcast bitrates. Even a good standard resolution DVD will blow away ANY broadcast I have ever watched on our Foxtel Pay TV provider by way of their "high definition" service when it comes to detail, lighting and shadows. Infact the only difference is the actual technical resolution of the material and that is it. And any sort of detail and quality retention in darker scenes? Forget it! It's just a muddled mess that broadcasters feed us these days.

I've purchased a series of mere DVDS over the last few years that are old motorsport broadcasts sourced directly from the original 2 inch analogue video tapes. They completely blow away ANY high resolution digital broadcast I have ever seen except of course in actual resolution. But on these DVDs sourced from the analogue tapes, there is far more actual detail within the pixels that are actually there, faces have more detail and above all else, any scene has a vivid, "real life" ambience to it that makes me feel like I am back there watching it live at the track (and I was back in the 80s). If I watch that same motorsport on digital today, yes, OK, the outlines of things are sharper because the resolution is higher. I can read small wording on the cars that I might not have been able to read in the old analogue days. But I am not kidding when I say that it just looks like a video game. There is little in these scenes that really pulls me in as a viewer. It's like there is never any sun, never any subtle lighting effects, textures are glossed over and it is just complete and utter ****.

I've done my own experiments and for my own eyes, bitrates need to be extremely high to retain any sense of quality - way higher than anything that is broadcast and even blu-rays sometimes fall apart where analogue wouldn't even flinch in some low-light scenes with a lot of high speed movement.

Anyway, that is my rant for today. I can't believe I pay $100 per month to watch moving plasticine. But if I don't pay my $100 it is ten time worse again. Maybe some space junk can knock the old satellites out of orbit and they can put new ones up with some decent bandwidth!!
 

Joe Whip

Well-Known Member
Feb 8, 2014
1,735
557
405
Wayne, PA
I was able to spend an afternoon at the Comcast Sportsnet studio in Philadelphia years ago and was able to watch the live uncompressed fiber feed from Citizens Bank Park. The image quality was beyond belief. Better than any blu-ray I have seen. It is amazing how much is lost when you have to squeeze that signal down that pipe into your home.
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
In the world of analog broadcast TV there were exceptionally high standards of production and delivery. The latter was even regulated by FCC in US. Once we switched to compressed digital transmission as you note, all of that was thrown out the window. H.264 (led by Dr. Sullivan on my team at Microsoft :) ) like all modern compression algorithms implements a loop filter. The filter softens the edges of the compression blocks making them much less objectionable. But there is no free lunch and what comes out is over filtered, soft video. Because of that, its performance doesn't drop as rapidly as MPEG-2 does in US broadcast. I don't know people in US watch basketball. It drives me nuts with ever camera pan and sea of macroblocks.

If you are using satellite TV with statistical multiplexing, then the operator will assign priority to channels they make the most money from, taking it out of the rest of the low-budget channels. Quality dynamically varies from moment to moment and channel to channel.

Ultimately this is a hard problem. Even in Blu-ray the storage we have for the movie represents less than 5% of its original size! Hand encoding and optimization coupled with high peak rate helps a lot there but still, you can't get blood out of stone. In real-time streaming/broadcast you can't do that so you lose quality coming and going.
 

Fiddle Faddle

Member
Aug 7, 2015
548
2
16
Australia
The H.264 compression is actually pretty decent at high bitrates, though with my own video editing I pretty much have to max it out (well, the maximum permitted with Sony Movie Studio which is only around blu-ray standard) in order to not be incredibly disappointed with the final result. I am probably alone here, but I actually think the older DVD compression used at the maximum possible bitrate is actually better than H.264, but only when both are absolutely maxed out. Once they are dropped down to typical broadcast rates, then obviously H.264 has it all over the DVD type of compression.

Here in Australia our HD broadcast bitrates seem to be dropping...and dropping. Some pay per view sports channels are still reasonable good on a smallish monitor. They run around the high 9 Mbps at 1080/50i. But on other channels, they go as low as 3 Mbps or even worse. By then it is really becoming obviously offensive. Yet people don't seem to complain. Probably because they will switch to fee-to-air and get something even more abysmal.

Amir,

Do you share my observation that H.264 is relatively poor at lighting, shadows in general and in dark scenes? It is good at avoiding obviously offensive artefacts that plague older compression techniques so long as the bitrate is reasonable but whenever I watch anything that is H.264 compressed - at any bitrate - I lose a sense of lighting dynamic range and overall vividness. It is as if the sunlight is filtered so it is only ever a bright (at best) yet cloudy day. There is just no vitality or life to the picture. Analogue was so much better at this stuff there isn't even any comparison, other than they both exist on the same planet!

I am currently watching Vinyl on Foxtel and the HD picture just looks lifeless, grainy - exactly the video equivalent of a 128 mbps audio mp3! Really sad when I know what the original cameras they use to film this stuff are capable of. I've seen a live feed from a Red Dragon. It is just sad when I compare that to the final product. Really sad. And we complain about the losses in our beloved audio purchases compared to real life. They've got nothing when it comes to video coming out of the original 6K camera and what we get on our TV sets!!
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
Problems in dark areas is very challenging for video *encoders*. Objectively they think that a few blocking artifacts would be but subjectively the eye is very good at seeing those artifacts. Softening those with the loop filter can also be very visible. This is where hand encoding as in Blu-ray helps where the operator can catch these problems and up the bit rates for those frames.
 

YashN

New Member
Jun 28, 2015
951
5
0
Canada
But when it comes to video, I have no choice but to put up with whatever I am fed. This might be perfectly fine for Blu-ray video, where a nicely produced disk generally provides a satisfying experience - at least on a decent quality monitor that isn't large.

But so far as TV broadcasts are concerned, I reckon the world has gone completely backwards since digital broadcasting (cable / satellite / internet streaming / whatever) became ubiquitous. Because it gave broadcasters the ability to constantly feed us with the video equivalent of low bitrate audio MP3.

It is true that most people do not pay attention to video as much as we audiophiles pay attention to our audio!

However, it is not true that all TV broadcasters are out there pushing out crappy compressed video: try using a Mohu Leaf antenna with a simple coaxial cable to your TV and get the digital transmissions for free and with very high quality, rivaling Blu-ray. I sometimes think the digital transmissions are even better - maybe they use less compression than on a BD, I'm not sure, haven't checked.

For the videophiles though, these are a must:

1. Clean Power
2. Vibration isolation
3. Calibrating your gear. I spent an hour or so doing this on my girlfriend's TV over two years ago, a Sony Bravia. We are often still amazed at the quality of the picture, especially the colours.
4. UHD 4K OLED TV with HDR and Wide Colour Gamut
5. UHD 4K Blu-Ray Player
6. For older material, choose an up-converting path by comparing the various options.

Some TV broadcasters are already experimenting with 8K.

As for me, in 1997, I worked as an intern for my final year of Systems Engineering at the research branch of France Telecom in Brittany, it was called the CCETT at the time.

What I did was implement in software a hardware solution which was presented at SIGGRAPH, doing over-compression of MPEG2 streams. Now, you would think 'MPEG2' is already compressed, so why would you even envision re-compressing it? The reason to do this was to be able to have one single file, over-compressed on-the-fly to be able to simultaneously support different bandwidths.

Now, all this to say that I worked so deeply with the software codecs that I can't unsee blocks of MPEG compressed video when watching lower bitrate material since then. It's a bit disheartening (déformation professionnelle).

If you take care of the video side of your equipment, you will find many hours of enjoyment from it, as much as the audio one.
 

YashN

New Member
Jun 28, 2015
951
5
0
Canada
Another couple of related things I have noticed:

- the too often used colour filter in some movies, I believe ever since Se7en, where now each segment of the film is monochrome, this is supposedly arty or edgy. It's just monochrome, and gloomy to me, and it's as if all the advances in video technology and colour and contrast reproduction are made moot by these. I boycott these movies.

- a couple of good friends of ours have installed a projector in their living room. They're not too keen on higher resolution stuff. When I asked them why, they said it's because it reminds them of going to the movies when they were younger. Hence, there's sometimes an aspect of nostalgia in the choice of video and equipment. Same thing with Instagram (old 70's or 80's style filters for photos when we can easily make much better-looking pictures with modern-day equipment, even the cheapest smartphones).
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
However, it is not true that all TV broadcasters are out there pushing out crappy compressed video: try using a Mohu Leaf antenna with a simple coaxial cable to your TV and get the digital transmissions for free and with very high quality, rivaling Blu-ray.
This is not remotely so in US. Peak data rate in ATSC standard is 19 mbit/sec. Broadcasters chop that up into multiple channels so typically you have 12-14 mbit/sec for the primary channel in HD. Compare this to 40 mbit/sec for Blu-ray. In addition, US ATSC standard uses MPEG-2 which is far less efficient than VC-1/H.264 used in Blu-ray. Finally as I mentioned, Blu-ray is hand encoded whereas broadcast is not. The fidelity difference on anything moving or changing is worlds better on Blu-ray than broadcast.
 

YashN

New Member
Jun 28, 2015
951
5
0
Canada
UHD BD > BD > OTA HD > cable TV so far, but the OTA HD is very good indeed.
 

YashN

New Member
Jun 28, 2015
951
5
0
Canada
Japan starts testing 8K broadcasts this year.

Japanese broadcaster NHK has confirmed it wants to push for 8K broadcasting as soon as possible and will begin testing a service by 2016.
 

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