Quote Originally Posted by WormGod
Anyone with Directv a subscriber to the HDNet package?

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/imagine/HDTV_package.jsp

Monday, May 29th, they are doing a special on the Baja in full, hi-def wonder, and the ads for it look brilliant. I have been planning for weeks now to just plant my arse on the couch and watch this.
Last I checked, neither Directv nor Dish did "full hi-def" - they do "HD-lite" where either they reduce the resolution (I think Directv takes 1920x1080 and downsamples it to 1280x1080) or they keep the resolution and just starve the bitrate so you get tons of macroblocking in any high-motion scene.

Also, for some reason, a lot of the down-sampled 1280x1080 ends up with a lot of macroblocking and softness.

All part of their annoying focus on more and more channels with less and less picture quality.