NOTE: This is a work in progress.

NOTE: All local channels are passed through, without being re-encoded, as required by the FCC. So any crappy picture on NBC is NBC’s fault, NOT Comcast’s.

Terminology:

• Macro-blocking - When the picture looks “blocky”. Most common with cut-scenes.
• Bit loss - Loss of video data, caused by insufficient bandwidth, or possibly overloaded/crappy hardware. Example here. There’s been reports that Imaging Communication hardware may be responsible for this.

Universal HD - Decent picture. Quality suffers on sports content, due to being re-encoded from a source that’s low-bitrate to begin with.

MHD - Decent picture. Quality varies based on content. With lots of lighting effects, there’s significant macro-blocking.

TNT - Great picture. Haven’t seen any problems at all.

Discovery HD Theater - Usually bad picture, though some content looks significantly better than others.

MOJO - Great picture, usually minimal to no macro-blocking.

Versus Golf - TODO

Animal Planet - Decent picture. Not great, but not bad.

Discovery - Decent to terrible picture. Near constant macro-blocking and bit loss on content with a lot of action/movement.

TLC - Good picture, sometimes great.

A&E - Good picture to great picture. Some dark scenes suffer from being re-encoded (MPEG2 has a hard time handling dark scenes to begin with).

History - Quality varies based on content. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

USA - Terrible picture, by far the worst (pictures here). Severe macro-blocking and bit loss. Note, that the quality seems somewhat better than what it was before.

HGTV - TODO

Food - Great picture. Probably has a lot to do with the source, and the type of content.

SciFi - Decent to bad picture, sometimes bad enough give USA a run for it’s money. Note, picture hasn’t been nearly as bad lately.

Disney - Great picture from what I’ve seen so far.

ABC Family - TODO

ESPN - Great picture.

ESPN2 - Great picture.