Macroblocking issues with new HD stations

[Mces97]

Verizon totes itself as offering the best hd picture among the competition, but something I have noticed is a little disconcerting. Many of the movie channels have gone full fledged HD, like HBO, and Cinemax. Heres the problem. Verizon says they do not compress the signal anymore then what is sent to them from the service providers themselves, yet HBO and Cinemax are broadcasting their new stations in Mpeg-4. Most of the HD boxes Verizon still uses can not decode Mpeg-4 and Verizon is transcoding the video to Mpeg-2. I have noticed compared the original Hbo-HD channel, which is still broadcasting in Mpeg-2 directly that the other channels have considerably more macroblocking and pixelation. It appears that Verizon is not transcoding very well or using a lower bitrate than should be used for faster moving images. Has anyone else noticed this, and if so, do you think Verizon will actually try to improve their methods to fix the problem.