[geeks] Hello?

[Mike Meredith]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:30:03 -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:03:13 +0000
> wa2egp at att.net wrote:
> 
> > I agree.  I have't been impressed with high definition TV, a lot of
> > the digital audio and digital cell phones.  Maybe I've got lousy
> > vision and worse hearing but I don't see (and hear) that much
> > better to justify the cost. Maybe it's from all those years of ham
> > radio where I had to learn to mentally cut (or ignore) the noise.  
> 
> ...or maybe your hearing is very good.
> 
> My digital cell phone has never sounded as good as my older analog
> one, and the artifacts that seem to be ever present in digital audio
> and video broadcasts can quickly ruin a movie or song.

The European cellphone market is considerably different to the US
market so what little I know may not apply 'over there', but I don't
believe the switch from analog to digital mobile phones was made to
improve quality but to improve security and capacity ... I'm doubtful
that analog cellphones could cope with the market size that exists now.

Incidentally I recall from ages ago that some European mobile phone
operators deliberately turn down the audio quality by default with an
incantation available from the phone to turn it back up again. Not that
I bothered trying it or remembering anything about it.

As for broadcast digital media, one thing that that is obvious on the
UK's DTTV service (Freeview) is that some broadcasters would rather
reduce quality to get more channels ... the quality of the main
channels including the BBC is *far* higher than the junk channels.


-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
  Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ``I know, I'll use
  regular expressions.'' Now they have two problems.  -- Jamie Zawinski