I’m in the process of trying to work out what sort of TV service I want to obtain at my new place. The possibilities seem to be either Comcast cable or DirectTV.
DirectTV, apparently, offers only a few HD channels, and what HD channels there are are both highly compressed (with artifacts galore) and what’s worse, at only 1280×1080 resolution rather than the standard which is 1920×1080. So the pixels in the signal are actually rectangular, and then rescaled for display on the screen. All in all a pretty shitty way to do it, especially since they everywhere claim to support HD, when in reality they’re lying.
Comcast, however, seems to have just ended its promotional packages for digital cable, though they tell me any minute now they’ll get new ones. So for a little bit I think I’m just going to go sans TV until either Comcast or DirectTV gets their act together.
By the way, for those who weren’t aware, the way to get good prices on TV service is to sign up for the promotional packages that last for about 6 months with your cable company, and then call them every six months and threaten to switch to satellite. They will always offer to sign you up for another six months of promotional package yummy goodness, which is about half the price. Otherwise, it’s just too damned expensive.