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Brought to you by... Smart Calibration, LLC
ISF display calibration services in the DFW area.

This is a comparison of scenes from Time After Time and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen on DirecTV, before and after they moved HDNet Movies to 3 per transponder.

For information on the current bitrates allocated for various channels, see the DFW DirecTV Bitrate Monitor


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First a section of a frame immediately after a cut in Time After Time on HDNet Movies. This shows the additional artifacting when switching from one scene to another. This was the second frame after a cut. Clearly there are more motion artifacts at the new lower bitrate
Before (9-07)After (9-14)

This is from the middle of a still shot of this picture (again from Time After Time). I matched the exact frame by noting a dirt spot on the film transfer. As one would expect there is much less difference here, but if you look at the detail in the frame you can see that it has softened.
Before (9-07)After (9-14)

This is from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen on Showtime. This is part one of a scene where a cannon fires. This is one frame before the next sequence, to see what things look like before the motion hits.
BeforeAfter
This is part two of a scene where a cannon fires. The increase in artifacts in a quickly changing scene are obvious.
BeforeAfter
This is a scene from later on, just a part of the blank sky on a fairly motion free scene. Note the film grain evident in the earlier version which is complely "smoothed over" by a filtering or noise reduction process used to decrease the appearance of digital artificting with lower bitrate compression. White flecks on the lower left edge and bottom right corner are an example of a detail that is erased by this filtering.
BeforeAfter