So....is Satellite compressed as much as cable? I see plenty of pixelization - even in some of the nature programs. The other night watching the Whales - certain scenes especially where the whales were breaching and there was lots of spray and splashing - most of those scened pixelated.
I don't know. I'd think it would depend on the cable company.
I do know that my local cable company sucks. From friends & colleagues, I know that their HD feeds *do* break up and suffer from pixelation and other digital artifacts. When we had cable, X years ago, they had problems with static and ghosting on just normal SD programming, and they'd blame it on the national feed. Yeah, right. This is the main reason that I (and many others in my town) go with Dish Network or DirecTV.
The only time I ever get any kind of pixelation, digital artifacts, or signal loss on the Dish is due to rain fade. Two or three times a year we'll get a big midwestern, hail-dropping, tornado-spewing, trailer-park eating supercell thunderstorm of sufficient magnitude to cause signal problems/loss for 5-10 minutes.