There's a really interesting discussion thread going on over at the AVS Forum. Member "bfdtv" posted a very detailed, side-by-side analysis of some sample HD broadcasts from Comcast and Verizon FiOS.

The experiment was done in response to the recent news that Comcast had "decided to sacrifice some quality to improve quantity," and would be compressing their HD broadcasts. Said bfdtv:

" But what does that mean? How much difference is there, really?

To find out, I decided to compare the quality of the same programs on Comcast and Verizon FiOS. I recorded the same program from the same channel, at the same time, on both Comcast and Verizon FiOS in N. VA. I compared the size and bitrate of each MPEG-2 recording, as well as the subjective quality with video."

bfdtv's quantitative analyses of bitrates may fly over the heads of some less tech-savvy readers, but as usual, a picture is worth 1,000 words -- especially ones like these:

MHD on FiOS

MHD on Comcast

(Click for full-size versions. Photos: bfdtv, hosted on photobucket.com)

The differences in the screenshots are even more striking when viewed at full size (and, one would assume, even more so on a 52" plasma or LCD TV.) For more photos, video samples and a detailed analysis, go to:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008271

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: AVS Forum, compare, reviews, FiOS, HD, TV, photos