Comment Re:What about snowstorms (Score 2, Interesting) 231
Speaking as one who has the UK's analogue, Freeview (digitial terestial) and Sky (digital satalite) here's my experiences of the different options.
As a caveat, my analogue signal is perfect, as far as I can tell. I never have a problem with ghosting, snowy picture or anything else no matter the conditions.
With Freeview, certain blocks of channels dissapear if it's foggy, raining, too warm or too windy - depending on the conditions I might loose all the bbc channels, or all the itv channels (no real loss there) or any other 'block' ( i believe the spectrum is devided up into about 5 or six blocks in which the channels are broadcast).
With Satalite, it's usualy rain that gets it, if it's pissing it down outside our sky reception just fails: blue-screen and no sound. That's with a dish that is just pointed at sky, no trees or anything similar in between it and the satalite.
I'd say that with all said and done I'd rather have the Analogue signal over either digital option. I prefer gradual degredation to the working / not digital approach.
Quality-wise, even when both digital options are working to their best extent, simply watch a football match and just see the pixelation and artifacts appear. Even a snowy/ghosting analogue picture beats the crap out of ITV or Five showing a football match, especially if the weather is a bit odd (see above)
Even the interactive elements (reading news stories etc) seem very slow and poor in comparison with simple teletext. I realise it's probably the rotating number giving me an impression that it's at least /doing/ something, but at least teletext doesn't seem to crash out, returning out to the program with at least 20 keypresses (press your RED button now!) to get back to the same place.
But we're getting more choice! That's what we're told. More choice is better for us. Despite the choise on freeview being the same 5 channles you get on analogue + a load of shopping channels, or on sky it being 400 channels of absolute shite (see shopping channels, music etc). Quality seems to go out the window when 'choice' is increased.
Er, I'm not a digitial-tv luddite at all really, I just wish they'd concentrate on quality image, sound and content over offering more and more increasingly banal channels.
As a caveat, my analogue signal is perfect, as far as I can tell. I never have a problem with ghosting, snowy picture or anything else no matter the conditions.
With Freeview, certain blocks of channels dissapear if it's foggy, raining, too warm or too windy - depending on the conditions I might loose all the bbc channels, or all the itv channels (no real loss there) or any other 'block' ( i believe the spectrum is devided up into about 5 or six blocks in which the channels are broadcast).
With Satalite, it's usualy rain that gets it, if it's pissing it down outside our sky reception just fails: blue-screen and no sound. That's with a dish that is just pointed at sky, no trees or anything similar in between it and the satalite.
I'd say that with all said and done I'd rather have the Analogue signal over either digital option. I prefer gradual degredation to the working / not digital approach.
Quality-wise, even when both digital options are working to their best extent, simply watch a football match and just see the pixelation and artifacts appear. Even a snowy/ghosting analogue picture beats the crap out of ITV or Five showing a football match, especially if the weather is a bit odd (see above)
Even the interactive elements (reading news stories etc) seem very slow and poor in comparison with simple teletext. I realise it's probably the rotating number giving me an impression that it's at least
But we're getting more choice! That's what we're told. More choice is better for us. Despite the choise on freeview being the same 5 channles you get on analogue + a load of shopping channels, or on sky it being 400 channels of absolute shite (see shopping channels, music etc). Quality seems to go out the window when 'choice' is increased.
Er, I'm not a digitial-tv luddite at all really, I just wish they'd concentrate on quality image, sound and content over offering more and more increasingly banal channels.
