DirecTV has filed a false advertising suit against
Cox Communications over claims made on the Cox website. It all goes back to a Comcast-commissioned market survey (also
under suit) which concluded that two thirds of satellite customers preferred the HD image quality of Comcast over DirecTV and
Dish Network. Cox ran with the story, and put the results under the headline "Cable Wins the HD Picture Challenge" on the company's website. We agree with DirecTV -- that's a huge logical misstep. DirecTV sums it up nicely in their complaint: "...the picture quality afforded by Comcast's HD service cannot be deemed equivalent to that of Cox's HD service." Check out the link for more "he said, she said" action. We understand that DirecTV has to defend itself, and that
lawsuits are part of big business, but we also think continuing to pump out
more HD channels will have a far larger impact in the marketplace.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Seth Amott @ Oct 19th 2007 3:46PM
YES!!!! Thank You! I am getting SICK of Cox's HD lies. They are running an ad now. But look at it, its all they have to go off. Cox has "The Best in HD" according to a recent Newspaper ad. All Cox does is lie about HD. I'm glad somebody is suing Cox, they deserve it. Maybe this will get Cox to wake up and spend money making their HD better, instead of just claiming it is.
DJBro @ Oct 19th 2007 4:13PM
I have a solution: DirecTV should just quit using HD-Lite and up their bitrate... Now that we supposedly have all this extra bandwidth for new channels because of DTV 10 and the subsequent launch of DTV 11 in 2008... Why are we still subject to the mpeg-2 compression artifacts and lower-than-HD resolution? I realize that older customers that dont have the new 5-LNB satellites wouldnt be able to access local HD channels if they were recompressed in MPEG-4 but this is sounding like a good idea to me now. Its not like it costs you money to upgrade your dish... come on folks, get with the times.
Xyzzy @ Oct 19th 2007 7:41PM
" have a solution: DirecTV should just quit using HD-Lite and up their bitrate... Now that we supposedly have all this extra bandwidth for new channels because of DTV 10 and the subsequent launch of DTV 11 in 2008... Why are we still subject to the mpeg-2 compression artifacts and lower-than-HD resolution? I realize that older customers that dont have the new 5-LNB satellites wouldnt be able to access local HD channels if they were recompressed in MPEG-4 but this is sounding like a good idea to me now. Its not like it costs you money to upgrade your dish... come on folks, get with the times."
Not only would people need to upgrade their dish, but also their receiver AND their multiswitch. And I'm NOT willing to give up my DirecTV/HD-TiVo unit yet. In fact, if I wanted to switch, I'd have to give up my OTA antenna because I only have 4 cables coming from the roof and I currently multiplex OTA onto one of those. With the new dish, I can't multiplex, so no CW or extra local channels for me. (I need to confirm that DirecTV doesn't offer CW in HD via sat, but I don't believe they do).
The new MPEG-4 channels aren't HD-Lite from what I've read, so you should be happy with that - there aren't many MPEG-2 HD channels out there.
KevO @ Oct 19th 2007 4:50PM
Great, we're already spending over $100 for services from COX. There goes free HD, if nothing else.
Larry @ Oct 19th 2007 5:21PM
As a Cox customer and former DishNetwork customer, I support the claim that cable < satellite. Granted, neither company actually competed in the HD challenge mentioned above but from my limited experience, satellite's picture < cable.
Now for Cox, they're too expensive and this suit will only add to that problem. There goes all of my entertainment budget.
Larry @ Oct 19th 2007 5:23PM
Sorry, I just noticed that I wrote an incorrect mathematical statement. Cable does show a better HD picture than satellite. I tried satellite for six months and it was terrible. Sorry about the confusion.
Cable > satellite............ And the scrutiny begins.......now!
Seth Amott @ Oct 19th 2007 8:48PM
To tell you the truth, at this point, I would give some quality for quantity. 15 Good looking channels, or 50 Not as good looking. I only have a 32 inch LCD, so I probably don't notice the things that people whith huge displays notice, but either way, it is still better than Standard Def.
Asterra @ Oct 20th 2007 3:29AM
Sorry. My parents use COX (specifically because the install folks DirecTV contracted to set their DTV system up failed miserably and ultimately refused to even try), and I use DTV. COX's image quality loses. But it's not as striking as the completely intolerable image quality on COX's non-HD channels. Imagine if everything you watched on TV had artifacts just as bad as the first DVD release of Highlander. Everything! DTV's image isn't great, but I feel sorry for my parents.