Hi,

i was wandering if there is a difference in satellite picture quality based on the type/brand of set top box, and would like you opinions.. Theres Humax, Nokia, etc...do any of these handle the macroblocks any better? do any of these perform smoothing of any kind in their circuitry of sorts?

I was so excited to finally get satellite TV, now im let down cause the picture quality is crap VCD on a good day...and i have perfect signal strength...100% most days. I cant beleive it, and the guy who installed it said he couldnt see the difference and couldnt understand what im going on about. It looks like the bitrate drops to something like 1000 at times !! which we all know from conversions looks okay for still frames, and crappy-blokky for anything moving. Its causing a nervous twitch to appear on my face during fast scenes which i dont remember having there before...

Im thinking there might be an improvement in a hardware change, after all the difference between a $100 DVD player and a $500 dvd player is pretty obvious to me on screen...you can tell the chips arent clipping out during the faster scenes and causing blocking. Im wandering if its the same for set-top boxes...anyone?

Many many thanks for your comments,

Blackout