This is a screen shot of terrestrial digital television, off a set of rabbit ears! In comparison with my digital television provider (Bell Aliant Fibreop) this off air image literally blew the image from Bell out of the water! The reason, data compression. In order to provide so many channels and services even through a delivery system as sophisticated as fiber optics the service provider has to digitally compress the image in order to get it all into the delivery pipe. When this squished signal gets to the TV it is uncompressed, but not without some unfortunate digital artifacts (mpeg noise, mosquito noise etc.). The same things happen to a digital audio signal that is compressed in order to be transmitted digitally over the home network. It still sounds good, but it pales in comparison with a direct connection to the speakers.
