In other words, is HD the same regardless of provider?

My brother has HD programming from his local cable provider. I will have it next week from FiOS. Other friends have it from DirecTV. Are there any noticeable differences?

A guy on SportsTalk radio this morning commented that he had heard that FiOS had less compression in their HD signals (therefore better quality). Any truth to this? Would it be noticeable or just a talking-point?

Even uncompressed digital SDTV is still way too large to be transmitted through cable or satellite.

by the carrier.

<example>
NBC converts it to MPEG2 VBR w/ a top end of 19.2Mbps and ships the signal off to DirecTV. DirecTV then takes that MPEG2 stream and runs it through their hardware / software, strips resolution information and compresses it further which now stifles that VBR to say, a peak of 17.2Mbps.
</example>

So it is <i>technically</i> correct to ask which provider compresses their signal more regardless if the original stream is already in a compressed format.

However right now how the different sources handle SD is more of a factor. Cable still have a lot of their SD programing on analog

especially in my area-Cablevision has terrible quality.

And from what I'm reading, terrestrial over-the-air may be the best if I get reception.

But of course OTA is only your local affiliates.