Why You Should Subscribe To Verizon's Fios TV

Quite the stir started when Comcast announced that it would be squeezing 3 HD channels into the bandwidth they previously slotted for two, resulting in a degraded picture for those of us who subscribe to the cable provider. Customers are raging that the new system starting this month will result in pictures that sometimes border on worse than analog. Comcast has decided to go the route of added compression in response to competitive pressures from the likes of Verizon Fios TV, making more channels available without increasing the amount of space necessary to transfer them to your HDTV. So how much will this affect you?

An AVS Forum member decided to find out just how much picture quality would be affected with Comcast's new compression policy by recording two shows, on the same channel, at the same time delivered from both Comcast and Fios TV. The results were astounding. Average bit rates were calculated, and a huge difference was observed, with Fios TV performing at a much higher rate. Screen captures also illustrated the degraded picture quality coming from Comcast as you can see below:

Fios TV

Comcast TV
Take a look at the facial features and you'll immediately see the difference. You'll tend to see more problems with channels that are already highly compressed such as Discovery HD, while some channels hardly seem to be affected. Regardless of the channel though, you're guaranteed to see a decrease in contrast and a whole lot more banding and artifacts on your screen.

The US market won't be the only one affected by compressed HD signals either. Canada's Rogers Cable has announced that effective April 9, a bunch of channels delivered to its Personal TV customers will face added compression. Like Comcast, the cable provider defends its decision by saying that they'll be delivering more channels to its customers without using more bandwidth keeping bill about the same. It seems though that no one is listening. I mean, why would we want more HD channels that look worse than the analog pictures of 30 years ago?

It seems we'll be seeing a lot more HDTV buyer's dishing out thousands for a new flat panel absolutely refusing to pay an extra $10 to their cable provider for a high-def signal this year. Our recommendation: stick with Fios TV, they don't compress their signals.

April 8, 2008

Why You Should Subscribe To Verizon's Fios TV