Let me preface by saying that almost ALL the HD channels in Boston now look awful. My guess is that Comcast switched Boston from MPEG2 to MPEG4 and destroyed the bitrate (there's a whole thread on this). If the other thread is accurate, all MPEG4 channels are encoded at around 3meg/sec "HD" which is almost 50% below Netflix bitrate! Even when there isn't rapid motion, there is no sharpness--the colors look bland. Why the hell would I continue to pay $7/month 'Broadcast fee' when this how a broadcast network looks on Comcast (not even a 2nd tier channel)? To make it even more insane, NBC Boston (the channel) and NBC (the network) are both owned by Comcast!
I simply can't understand why Comcast would ruin their HD offering when MPEG4 allows them to upgrade quality & still save frequency! Comcast is absolutely pushing me to streaming & OTA, since they are significantly worsening their HD quality (HBO HD channels also look awful now)...and forget about 4K!
All pictures shown above were paused images of a Dateline special on NBC last night. The second image is a zoomed-in version, where you'll notice the macroblocking of faces & balloons is literally off-the-charts. Yes, there is motion in this scene (background graphics changing, along with balloons dropping) but this is totally nuts. Even the third image looks almost like 16:9 SD to me as there is no sharpness to the image and the colors look extremely dull.
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