Verizon is standing by its claim that it’s delivering uncompressed HDTV via FiOS in an attempt to cash in on the recent flap about Comcast compressing many of its HDTV feeds. What Verizon really meant was that it’s not compressing the HDTV any more than the original compression used for all HDTV, and that has everyone very confused.

The problem is that true uncompressed HDTV has several complicated aspects. The short version is that true uncompressed HDTV can consume more than a gigabit per second of bandwidth. Compression techniques and the number of bits of resolution, (4:4:4 or 4:2:2, etc.) bring that down to about 17 Mbps/sec over the air or about 30 Mbps from a Blu-ray disc. That’s already a factor of over 50 in compression.

What viewers are accustomed to and what looks good is then the remaining question. ATSC engineers didn’t have infinite bandwidth to work with, so while the 17 Mbps limit is arbitrary, it looks very good to the untrained eye. However, what can happen is that with yet further compression, such as that Comcast has been accused of using, visible artifacts start to appear even with the best quality HDTV.

That additional compression and its visible effects is what Verizon is trying to use to its compettive advantage because they’re using fiber optics and don’t need to apply any additional compression. Comcast, squeezed for bandwith over coaxial metal cables, apparently has had to.

Verizon is in sense off the hook because they’re claiming that they’re not applying any further compression than the original source. As a result, their HDTV feeds are what people would consider standard HDTV, about 17 Mbps. So while their claim that the video is uncompressed is a bit misleading to purists, it tries to tell their marketing story.

The general issue is related to how we define HDTV, and there is no fixed standard. 720p highly compressed HDTV can be sent over the Internet at as little as 2 Mbps. So when consumers hear the term "HDTV", it may be something very different than what they hoped to get.