It appears that Comcast is compressing some of my favorite HD channels, thus lowering the quality of the picture. When I had the cable guy over last year to hook up the HD DVR box, I immediately noticed the picture looked pixelated (compression artifacts, "tiling" or big blocks as they are often referred to in troubleshooting guides). The orginal installer said it was because I had an RG-5 coaxial cable leading into my condo from the main building "smartbox." He said that the cable would need to be replaced with a RG-6 to get a perfect picture. Well, a couple of installers later, we installed an RG-6 just to test is out, and the picture still didn't look perfect. I was given a thousand excuses why the picture still wasn't perfect by multiple comcast installers:- "The signal is too strong"
- "The signal is too weak"
- "It's your TV"
- "It's the HD box"
It was a frustrating process going through all of this, but one by one I was able to troubleshoot all of these theories:
- "The signal is too strong": I added a load resistor.
- "The signal is too weak": I added a signal booster.
- "It's the HD Box": I had a new box swapped out.
- "It's your TV": This one is my favorite ... A $4k TV that doesn't know how to accurately decrypt and HD signal? Not likely. Since this is Sony's flagship LCD and received top ratings from multiple home theater publications, I knew this was bull snot.
This article finally explains what the true problem is. The only option I have is to go with Verizon Fios (Fibre Optic lines). I hear the picture is stellar from one of my friends who does high-end home theater installations. Unfortunately, I won't be able to take advantage of this solution until my Comcast contract runs out (I signed one of those two-year contracts with the intention of saving money over time ... harumph ...)
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