A plea to Dish to do the right thing with Mpeg4 HD

[tsduke]

no it's not

all these providers and channels could be putting out broadcast quality 16:9 720x480 images at 10Mbps Mpeg2, Dish passing it thru untouched and it would look as good, no one could tell the difference and I would bet on it

the point is that everyone is wasting their time, programmers and broadcasters send out these images that should be wow everytime you view them

for example the Vooms, I can see the quality is there, they are really high-end in their broadcasting, it's truly a shame we can't get these channels in their form they are meant to be seen, they would be amazing

what we see from Dish is NOT what is meant to be seen and is not what HDTV was invented or instated for, what we are getting is anamorphic DVD quality images

anyone ever seen untouched NTSC Analog feeds from CBand? like NBC, CBS etc., they look better than this trash Dish is passing as HD

take a look at Discovery HD on CBand, oh dear it is so good, take a look at Blu-Ray or HD-DVD as Sean mentioned

-Gary

I can't understand how you can say that SD looks better than the so-called HDLite. Especially on a large tv. No broadcasters are putting out a 16:9 720x480 image at 10Mbps Mpeg2 so your argument is baseless. Don't get me wrong, I'm an HD fanatic as myself. I'm just taking what I can get at this point. We're not going to get the quality we are looking for right out of the box.

Anyway, I'll enjoy what they give us for now while your watching the SD you claim to be better.

 

[cummingsje]

I think the HD / HD Lite education needs to start at the source (where people are purchasing their new HD sets). The picture quality (cables, etc.) that consumer shops use to "show off" their HDTV's is much less than desirable. When a consumer sees this and then gets it home and hooks it up to E*, D*, digtal cable, etc., sure the picture that they see now is going to be much better than what they saw in the showroom. Every large retailer I've been to shows very poor quality "HD". My $.02 worth!

 

[tsduke]

Every large retailer I've been to shows very poor quality "HD". My $.02 worth!

Large retailers couldn't even display good quality SD pictures on good 4:3 CRT's.

 

[kokomogator]

That's what I want too. Except I want it in high quality HD while you're satisfied with crap HD.

Agreed....to be honest....as picture quality has continued to degrade, with or without additional channels, I am seriously considering dropping HD programming. I have an HD DVD player and my over the air channels that are of GREAT resolution, and now that my HD programming is on par with SD.....I can't see why I should pay an additional $20.00 a month for the same channels I receive with not much better quality anymore. With the AEP+HD programming, receiver lease fees and exorbidant taxes on the service, it just gets hard to continue to justify the expense.

I have resigned myself to the fact that quality will probably never be back to the "Wow" that it was when I first added the HD programming. If you never experienced it before, you probably can't tell the difference but last night I was switching between the off air signal and Equator and it was enough to make you cry for what was.....just my two cents. BTW...Gary, so great to hear from you again...always a voice of rebellion in the wilderness of complacency.

 

[rad]

You know, all these same things have been said in the past, about the same time that D* and E* started to downrez SD programming in order to fit all the local into local channels onto their systems. Everyone was up in arms, look how bad they've degraded the picture, my VHS and Beta tapes look better then this. Lets all downgrade services, write letters, cancel service.

Did D* and E* listen and stop the practice. nope.

 

[Van]

I am not the smartest guy in the world,
-Gary

Ok we got that down already

Look, we dont know what you know or what you have in your home for your theater but what it comes down to is this. If you dont like Dish because the company is not outputting the HD in the quality that you expect them to then stick with the service you have. The majority of people are fine with Dish's hd service, even those here who are above average A/V enthusiast's may not like the hd much but they have decided to stick with Dish after seeing what the other providers are offering.

I wont put cable, DBS or even OTA into a comparison with dvd wether digital or HD, a dvd player has the shortest distance to send its processed signal to the display where as the others have considerably longer distances where the raw signal has to pass through all sorts of crap before it can even be processed ( ever see the pq of cable when your at the end of the network line or a dbs source when the signal is weak due to physical obstructions, dont forget ota when your at the edge of the coverage map or on the otherside of a mountain ).

Really you would have been better off starting a thread with the title of

I hate Dish for all these reasons wich is really what this thread is about but its mislabeled at this point. Stay away from Dish since its not up to your standards that I doubt any provider could meet except for a dvd player, myself Im going back to Dish because cable cant provide me with an acceptable digital SD service and its HD service is just as bad.

 

[kokomogator]

You know, all these same things have been said in the past, about the same time that D* and E* started to downrez SD programming in order to fit all the local into local channels onto their systems. Everyone was up in arms, look how bad they've degraded the picture, my VHS and Beta tapes look better then this. Lets all downgrade services, write letters, cancel service.

Did D* and E* listen and stop the practice. nope.

You are correct....so then it becomes a personal choice as to what you are willing to pay for and what makes sense to you. The shame of it becomes that people become apathetic and accept less than they are paying for. It would be different if HD was included, at no additional charge. but it is not. Thank God that we still have choices and competition from other providers. Maybe if enough people would refuse to accept less than they pay for, it would bring the issue to the forefront but it is not likely....I believe as someone else said earlier, that as a business, it won't matter until it hits them where it hurts.....the pocket..

 

[mike123abc]

HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs are not a valid comparison to anything broadcast. They have the advantage of taking weeks to encode, with difficult scenes' compression settings reworked by hand to give the best possible picture.

Old Cband gave a very good picture. The comparison of that standard definition to HD Lite is probably pretty valid. HD Lite still wins easily, but it is closer to the the SD than the HD it is supposed to be. We have just been conditioned to watching way over compressed standard definition and thinking that is what SD really is.

What we need is providers to work with DBS companies. It would be great for instance if HBO with their 26 HD feeds if they were to use MPEG-4 and provide Dish/DIRECTV with a feed that would allow them to do 5-6 channels/TP. HBO could do all the compression in advance since they have little live programming, and have time to do non real time compression. That way DBS cos would not have to recompress them introducing tons of flaws.

 

[Cyclone]

HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs are not a valid comparison to anything broadcast. They have the advantage of taking weeks to encode, with difficult scenes' compression settings reworked by hand to give the best possible picture.

Since you brought this up, I have a question. Couldn't Dish use this same technique on their VOD movies. Carefully compress them so that they get the best PQ and the smallest file. Then just file transfer the movie as a VOD to a DVR? That way we would get an outstanding PQ product, and dish would get a more efficient compression than they could get with the on the fly MPEG4 encoder.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Do you realize that just about every non-live program is already 1080p/24? Sure it might be nice to have some sports programming in 1080p/60, but 1080p/30 and 1080p/24 can and are embedded in a 1080i/60 container by using the appropriate pulldown cadence.

No I had no idea. That is cool information.

 

[Gary Murrell]

I can't understand how you can say that SD looks better than the so-called HDLite. Especially on a large tv. No broadcasters are putting out a 16:9 720x480 image at 10Mbps Mpeg2 so your argument is baseless. Don't get me wrong, I'm an HD fanatic as myself. I'm just taking what I can get at this point. We're not going to get the quality we are looking for right out of the box.

Anyway, I'll enjoy what they give us for now while your watching the SD you claim to be better.

I never said SD from Dish, I said SD from a SDI modified DVD player and a 3,000$ DVDO VP50 scaler setup

I think you missed my point, it was that if such a broadcast was on Dish (720x480 16:9 10Mbps Mpeg2) that majority of people couldn't tell a difference between that and the trash that Dish calls HD and charges for

the answer to "DishHD" is a 30 to 40 inch display MAX, not a CRT front projection system at 110", the later is where my arguement comes from

-Gary

 

[JimK2]

I never said SD from Dish, I said SD from a SDI modified DVD player and a 3,000$ DVDO VP50 scaler setup

I think you missed my point, it was that if such a broadcast was on Dish (720x480 16:9 10Mbps Mpeg2) that majority of people couldn't tell a difference between that and the trash that Dish calls HD and charges for

the answer to "DishHD" is a 30 to 40 inch display MAX, not a CRT front projection system at 110", the later is where my arguement comes from

-Gary

Full bandwidth HD would be great, I'd feel a lot better if HDNMV just got back to 14Mbps and 3 HD per TP, hope this is temporary. Starz is better example of the new mpeg4 2nd generation encoders than HGTV (don't know if the encorders are fully optimzed yet). TANDBERG Television and others claim full 1080x1920 HD resolution at 6Mbps with these new encorders. With VBR and statistical multiplexing they should be able to get the equivalent of 8Mbps which would be like 16Mbps in mpeg2. Even perfect HD will have flaws being compressed 56 to 1. Your 110" screen should have 15 feet viewing distance and if you have 20-15 vision maybe 20 feet viewing distance.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of HD PQ on Dish, that it will improve. Lets hope Dish goes quality over quantity.

 

[s8ist]

While they are at it, they should compress every channel to MPEG-4 so they can offer more programming in SD and HD.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

They ARE going to compress each channel in MPEG4. Charlie announced this at Dish Networks Team Summit in May and also talked about it on the last Charlie Chat.

 

[s8ist]

well, then i guess we're going to get a lot of channels!

 

[Poke]

I think it will be awhile before the number of channels out grow the new systems. By the time most National Networks have a HD Version of their channel up and running with more HD Content. We could be back to one format which would mean no more SD Channels all HD. But that is a long time away due to it's going to take awhile for the National Networks to 1st get a HD Version of their channel and 2nd get their channels running in true MPEG4. Dish and other's will have their end covered as far as MPEG4 but the Networks will need to get their stuff running on MPEG4 as well. A good example of this as far as the Network would be HBO.


HBO Move to MPEG-4 Opens Door to Big Changes in Cable > Screenplays Magazine > Flash Points

HBO CTO Robert Zitter let it be known that when his company begins a move to HDTV beginning the end of this year, it will use MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) compression to deliver the HDTV versions of all 26 HBO and Cinemax channels to cable and telco headends. Most operators had assumed the programmer would either stick with MPEG-2 or simulcast channels in both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats to accommodate the disparate delivery modes in cable and telco IPTV.

However, Zitter, speaking at a breakfast meeting prior to the opening of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Cable Tech Expo conference in Orlando in June, made clear the economies of operating in MPEG-4 mode were too compelling to ignore. The compression technology is definitely ready “for prime time,” he said. “We think we've reached the tipping point for high-def.”

This assessment defies the assertions widely voiced in cable circles that MPEG-4 AVC is still a work in progress that will not be ready for deployment by cable until many months hence. In comments typical of this view, a technology expert in cable, speaking on background, last month told ScreenPlays the telephone industry’s claims regarding use of MPEG-4 were largely hype owing to the limited amount of bandwidth savings that could be accomplished at quality levels that meet industry performance standards. “It’s not worth the cost if you can’t get more than three channels of HDTV into a 6 MHz channel using AVC,” he said.

But Zitter said HBO would be transmitting at 8 megabits-per-second, including an allotment of about 1 mbps for “overhead.” This puts the audio/video transmit payload for quality levels acceptable by HBO at around 7 mbps, which means that four and possibly even five HD channels would fit into a 6 MHz RF cable channel using 256 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) technology, which delivers 38 mbps per 6 MHz channel.

Given HBO’s clout, cable operators have no choice but to invest in the headend transcoding equipment that will be required to recode the HBO feeds to MPEG-2 for delivery to legacy set-tops in the field. As a result, other programmers are likely to feel they too can exploit the satellite transponder cost savings that go with greater bandwidth efficiency.

This, in turn, will open a direct MPEG-4 path for delivering HD content to advanced hybrid set-tops with MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding capabilities. This pass-through efficiency should serve to expedite deployment of such set-tops, opening a faster track to wider use of MPEG-4 in cable.


Read More About MPEG and MPEG4 Here. MPEG Industry Forum

 

[deno24]

size matters

ill have to agree with gweedo, i just got HD hooked up on my 32" LCD in my bedroom, and i must say the pic quality is noticeably better than on my 55" in the livingroom.

 

[dmz01]

I never said SD from Dish, I said SD from a SDI modified DVD player and a 3,000$ DVDO VP50 scaler setup

I think you missed my point, it was that if such a broadcast was on Dish (720x480 16:9 10Mbps Mpeg2) that majority of people couldn't tell a difference between that and the trash that Dish calls HD and charges for

the answer to "DishHD" is a 30 to 40 inch display MAX, not a CRT front projection system at 110", the later is where my arguement comes from

-Gary

I think people concentrate on resolution way too much. It's really mostly about bitrate. An MPEG2 DVD with a 10Mb/sec will look better in most cases than an HD MPEG2 with an 8Mb/sec bit rate. Resolution is not everything. My 6 megapixels Canon Rebel takes way better pictures than the 10 megapixels Sony point and shoot I also own.

 

[kb7oeb]

I had a chance to see cinemax HD in mpeg2 and mpeg4 side by side and. The biggest thing I noticed was the mpeg4 feed had removed almost all of the film grain noise. The mpeg2 feed looked better but I wonder how much of that was because the mpeg4 feed was a conversion. I'd be interested to see it again when the mpeg2 feed is a conversion from mpeg4.

mpeg2 was from local cable and mpeg4 was from dish