Motorola: HD Cable STB Performance

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HD Library
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Motorola: HD Cable STB Performance

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Richard,

The cable provider that I work for is launching HD using Motorola
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Post by Richard »

Marion,

This was very apparent for me as I have quality delivery of analog cable and have used either a VCR and external scaler or DVD recorder with or without scaler. When I dropped the Motorola 5100 and 6200 in the system the loss in detail is obvious. Naturally this makes me suspicious of the HD quality as well.
reasons why but NTSC video looks much better
That is a loaded gun that requires a firm understanding of what a quality image is or you will shoot yourself in terms of accuracy. An artifact is anything that has been removed or added to the original signal. In this case you are not looking for what appears better as much as you are looking for what is true to the source, artifact free.
no hint of video noise in the background
That is an artifact as there IS video noise in the background from the cable system. Film has grain. The removal of either is an artifact. How much noise should you have? Depends on the head end. The only way I can show you is to, well, physically show you. I have never used a signal meter to quantify what an acceptable level of noise is but there are home theater installers who have them and fought long hard battles to get this noise removed from the plant or repeaters along the way to the clients home leading many to ditch cable for satellite as the response is consistent regardless of location. The only SD I have seen that was noise free was from an outside antenna, properly installed with NTSC OTA rivaling DTV performance. The only artifact comes from the NTSC format itself due to the process of stripping the color signal from the b/w signal. Of course this in reference to video camera source content. An SD film transfer should still show the film grain.
The strange thing is the only input that improves the video is the RF input
You are basing your decision on what you think is a correct image and it appears the removal of noise is what you are looking for.

The fact is you can
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