Comcast published the results of a study earlier this month claiming that viewers preferred Comcast HD signals to HD transmissions from Dish Network and DirecTV. The study was conducted by Frank M. Magid Associates with oversight by Accenture and the law firm Loeb & Loeb.
Now DirecTV is suing Comcast for claiming better quality HDTV in its advertising. According to the complaint, the study does not sufficiently substantiate its claims.
You can head on over to NewTeeVee for a discussion of why DirecTV is pursuing this lawsuit. In the meantime, I have to wonder how relevant a HD test like this is to actual viewers. So much of HD quality comes down to the original source material, and the quality of video recorded for broadcast varies widely today. There’s also the issue of how good your HDTV display is, and how the video has been compressed during the encoding process.
In short, you can’t get the best HDTV by simply picking one television service over another. It just ain’t that easy.