Video Asylum

Posted by ICI on July 29, 2003 at 00:11:16

In Reply to: digital cable picture has a weird black color, why? posted by oreilley on June 23, 2003 at 07:25:28:

That block pixelation in black areas is normal. There is nothing wrong with your setup. It is most likely due to the heavy compression used on the digital channels. The "digital" aspect of digital cable is used for quantity not quality. They can fit several digital channels in the same space one analog channel takes up. The picture in general is better due to the digital carrier. But the digital transmission is not good with handling blacks or fades. You will see the same heavy pixelation when a scene fades out, or if there is a gray mist.

And by the way, don't be concerned about the length of the cable. You will only see degradation of picture quality on analog channels. With digital, it's there or it isn't. If there isn't enough signal, you just won't get a picture. If it's borderline, you'll see constant tiling. With too much signal the picture will look over-saturated.