I can only comment on dbs. Dish and Directv. I have dish but follow both at www.dbsforums.com.

A few months ago, the PQ (picture quality) began detoriating on dish and directv. This was related to he fact that by jan 1st 2002 by law the satellite companies were compelled to carry all local channels in a given market as defined by the rules.

This was a problem for the dbs providers because the more channels they carry, the more they have to compress them to fit them into their fixed bandwidth.

Dish had fought this in oourt and lost. directv prepared for it by launching spot beams. spot beams essentially allowed them to use the same satellite to beam different channel to differnt parts of the country. some sort multiplexing i imagine.

the over compression causes a bad picture and at the extreme pixelating on any programming that carries a lot of action like sports. dish lately has become better at using their bandwidth and has reached a better balance. most of the channels looks better than my local cable company. the super bowl looked really good with no pixelating what so ever.

some of these facts may not be 100 percent as i am going by memory and interpretation of what i read in the forums.