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.
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Your point is true, it is a complex issue to evaluate an HD signal. However, there is definitely some truth to be had in Comcast's claims. I've had DirecTV HD in the past, and I know that due to bandwidth constraints they way overcompressed the MPEG-2 streams. This is why they're switching to MPEG-4 now, but most customers are still using the MPEG-2 boxes and can't access MPEG-4 streams without new equipment. DirecTV made a mistake in not getting enough satellites up and not having enough bandwidth to meet the demands of HDTV and Comcast is just trying to capitalize on their mistake. I can tell you from personal experience that the Comcast HD signal that I receive is unquestionably better than the one that DirecTV was sending me when I left them.
Comcast obviously didn't conduct the tests using TNT. ;)
Most folks won't choose a provider based on "HD quality" (assuming they realize/notice a differene), but rather price or lineup. DTV's NFL package drives a ton of business.
What's odd is that it's Comcast and DirecTV battling it out over HD-quality, where the real winners would be OTA HD reception and FiOS TV, neither of which compress their HD signals, unlike the first two providers.