A plea to Dish to do the right thing with Mpeg4 HD
- Thread starter Gary Murrell
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Several of you keep talking about "quality over quantity", which is an abstract statement that doesn't apply to any real situation.
I am reminded of guys in the 1980's ("audiophiles") who would listen to completely talentless smooth jazz combos recorded in incredible fidelity on 200 gram vinyl on their $10,000 turntables and $20,000 Infinity speakers. I myself have heard those recordings on those systems. Incredibly boring music with unbelievable fidelity and audio quality.
And - so what ?
If I wanted to listen to Miles Davis or David Bowie or Trevor Pinnock playing Handel, I had to listen to whatever the big labels were providing, certainly not 200g audiophile pressings.
Same situation with video. No, I don't want to "gasp" at the picture quality - it can never be as good as Blu-Ray anyway. What I want is for the program I about to watch in SD to be available in HD.
I think that 99.9% of viewers want the same.
I am reminded of guys in the 1980's ("audiophiles") who would listen to completely talentless smooth jazz combos recorded in incredible fidelity on 200 gram vinyl on their $10,000 turntables and $20,000 Infinity speakers. I myself have heard those recordings on those systems. Incredibly boring music with unbelievable fidelity and audio quality.
And - so what ?
If I wanted to listen to Miles Davis or David Bowie or Trevor Pinnock playing Handel, I had to listen to whatever the big labels were providing, certainly not 200g audiophile pressings.
Same situation with video. No, I don't want to "gasp" at the picture quality - it can never be as good as Blu-Ray anyway. What I want is for the program I about to watch in SD to be available in HD.
I think that 99.9% of viewers want the same.
That's what I want too. Except I want it in high quality HD while you're satisfied with crap HD.
Lol, I really doubt it. If that was true how come the NBC engineers let their crappy HD PQ on golf/live events go so long? They've had YEARS to fix their crappy HD quality (Remember the olympics???) More likely they aren't given the resources/time to fix the problems and have other things to do.
Just so we keep the history of HD on Dish correct.. Back in the day it used to be the HDNets on their own transponder (each channel avging around 18Mbit), and the rest were grouped in 3s. Then came along voom, which for a time some of the channels were native res (1920x1080i) but still grouped 3 per TP. Then they lowered some vooms to 1280x1080i. Next the HDNet TP aquired a 3rd hd channel. Now we are down to 4 mpeg2 HD channels per TP, and 6 mpeg4 HD channels per TP. The only exception are local markets which have 4 mpeg4 channels (using older encoders).
There are still some rare gems on 148W, but I can't see them sticking around forever. My recording of "The Island" from the HDPPV channel from 148W kills the latest showing on starzhd. Its unbelievable the difference in PQ.
Scott, I hope you're right.. But I lost the faith a couple of CES' ago
Amen 148 at the moment still has the best PQ!:up
There is something that Gary mentioned earlier in the thread that it is quite important.
There are some here who have seen the difference between today's HD and what is was before us today- HD Lite. Even if you cannot see the difference today, you should really check out HD DVD or BR. I had the chance to watch BR and it was stunning PQ. The kind of PQ that make you go "WOW" (and you think you are inside the picture). The current state of HD is that nothing "WOWs" you anymore, even OTA (depending in your area).
Gary mentioned the current status of SD and regulard DVD. We as a body of customers never demanded the SD signal to even resemble the DVD PQ. Everyone knows and can see the difference between the regular SD picture of any provider and the DVD PQ. There is no comparison.
Given this, I am very skeptic that providers will try to match BR or HD DVD PQ. They probably will have the technology to do it but I think the politics of it will not let them do it. The current model of SD/DVD made the provider and the DVD industry rich. I think they will see the same opportunity with HD Lite and HD DVD/BR. There will always be those that will pay for both and will be happy on both realms. Well this is my own opinion only. I am very skeptic and do not think the PQ will be in par with HD DVD/BR. It may improve a little but you and I will probably have to buy HD DVD/BR in order to go "WOW" once again.
There are some here who have seen the difference between today's HD and what is was before us today- HD Lite. Even if you cannot see the difference today, you should really check out HD DVD or BR. I had the chance to watch BR and it was stunning PQ. The kind of PQ that make you go "WOW" (and you think you are inside the picture). The current state of HD is that nothing "WOWs" you anymore, even OTA (depending in your area).
Gary mentioned the current status of SD and regulard DVD. We as a body of customers never demanded the SD signal to even resemble the DVD PQ. Everyone knows and can see the difference between the regular SD picture of any provider and the DVD PQ. There is no comparison.
Given this, I am very skeptic that providers will try to match BR or HD DVD PQ. They probably will have the technology to do it but I think the politics of it will not let them do it. The current model of SD/DVD made the provider and the DVD industry rich. I think they will see the same opportunity with HD Lite and HD DVD/BR. There will always be those that will pay for both and will be happy on both realms. Well this is my own opinion only. I am very skeptic and do not think the PQ will be in par with HD DVD/BR. It may improve a little but you and I will probably have to buy HD DVD/BR in order to go "WOW" once again.
Sean, you are starting to sound like the big boys. You had best be careful! We aren't too popular, you know!
I think both sat companies will eventually try to go 1080p to get an advantage over cable. I know that I talked to one lady at DISH who called me about any questions I had about hd a year or two ago and she said DISH wanted to be the first to offer 1080p. I also see it talked about on my directv basic receiver under hd questions. NOW the question is when they will and if they will have enough room to do this and if we will have to upgrade AGAIN on our receivers or a simple software change would give us the 1080p resolution on our existing mpeg 4 receivers.
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.
People have an amazing ability to read a whole paragraph, and miss most of it.
But to answer your point, I prefer the channels I'm watching to be in 1440x1080 rather than 480i.
But I'm not satisfied with that, I'd only be satisfied with:
Ultra High Definition Video - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So, since you are satisfied with crap 1920x1080i, then it is you who are satisfied with "crap HD" !
I finally got to see some Mpeg4 HD from Dish, oh my lord 
I could have never imagined how bad it truly was, the sample I looked at was HGTV, it is 1440x1080i at...... 6.75 Mbps 
that is not a sick joke, this is less than DVD bitrates and picture quality that to be honest, is worse than DVD most of the time
guys I never could have imagined how bad Dish PQ truly has went since I was around 1.5 years ago, I wanted to get back into the game because of new happenings, but I can tell you already that if things stay the way they are right now, my newly purchased modified equipment will be long gone come fall
my favorite HDNets are hammered to total sh*t now, 1440x1080i at around 11.5Mbps, I mean TRASH
how anyone can watch and enjoy this stuff is beyond me
-Gary
I could have never imagined how bad it truly was, the sample I looked at was HGTV, it is 1440x1080i at...... 6.75 Mbps that is not a sick joke, this is less than DVD bitrates and picture quality that to be honest, is worse than DVD most of the timeguys I never could have imagined how bad Dish PQ truly has went since I was around 1.5 years ago, I wanted to get back into the game because of new happenings, but I can tell you already that if things stay the way they are right now, my newly purchased modified equipment will be long gone come fall
my favorite HDNets are hammered to total sh*t now, 1440x1080i at around 11.5Mbps, I mean TRASH
how anyone can watch and enjoy this stuff is beyond me
-Gary
I finally got to see some Mpeg4 HD from Dish, oh my lord
guys I never could have imagined how bad Dish PQ truly has went since I was around 1.5 years ago, I wanted to get back into the game because of new happenings, but I can tell you already that if things stay the way they are right now, my newly purchased modified equipment will be long gone come fall
my favorite HDNets are hammered to total sh*t now, 1440x1080i at around 11.5Mbps, I mean TRASH
how anyone can watch and enjoy this stuff is beyond me
-Gary
It's still better than SD crap on large HDTV's and a step in the right direction.
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
Your complete lack of technical expertise is showing Gary.
Look up "Color Space", for starters.
After that, look up the difference between MPEG2 and MPEG4. You keep using MPEG4 as synonymous with poor quality, whereas MPEG4 is a more advanced system, and produces better quality.
Gary, I'd recommend that you go back to your HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs and stop worrying about other distribution streams since they're never going to be the HD nurvana that you're looking for. As othere have mentioned, DBS and cable companies are all pushing how many channels their systems can/will carry, not what the resolution/bit rates of those channels are and no number of posts by you and others that want 1920x1080i at 19.2Mbps are going to change it.
But as Scott and some othere have said, the D* HD LIL MPEG4 channels look very good, Scott says to him they look as good as his OTA picture, so maybe D* will do the right thing with their new MPEG4 national HD channels.
But as Scott and some othere have said, the D* HD LIL MPEG4 channels look very good, Scott says to him they look as good as his OTA picture, so maybe D* will do the right thing with their new MPEG4 national HD channels.
From a visual perspective, an mpeg4 channel at 1920x1080i at 8-9mps should be a pretty good picture. I would be happy with that. Besides, if E* can produce a decent picture quality on 148, then that should be the benchmark for all HD channels instead of some substandard quality. Now is the perfect time for anyone to be proactive and contact E* with your concerns. It won't get changed if you aren't proactive and try to make it better. It would be nice to have a thousand channels in HD, but, not at the expense of a diminished quality.
At the same bitrate MPEG-4 produces a much better picture in most cases. The problem is when they take a 19.2mbit MPEG-2 and try to sqeeze it into a 6mbit MPEG-4. Eventually they may look the same, but the encoders are not quite there yet....
I am not the smartest guy in the world, but attacking me and my technical expertise is off base, shall you make me list my credentials and achievements, you want to take this down that road?
Color Space, where do I start, 1920x1080i has a chroma resolution of 960x540, DVD is 360x240, so there is a color difference of roughly 6 times between them, between 1440x1080i we have roughly a difference of 4.5 times, one reason to get pissed already
meaning closer to SD colors than True 1920x1080i HD gives us, add to that Dish Networks horrible decoding chips (Broadcom ?) that are full of Chroma Bug artifacts and again you can cut that in about half (Chroma resolution) due to the CUE flaw in every receiver Dish ever made, granted I haven't seen the latest gen HD's, but if Dish has a 100% track record for CUE plagued receivers in th epast, I know which way I will bet
Mpeg4 vs Mpeg2 means absolutely no difference at all with picture quality, this is a common misconception by newbies and those not in the know, I suggest some searches on the AVS forum, codecs are NOT about quality, they are about bitrate and the space used to encode, nothing more, have you ever seen D-Theater tapes? ever even heard of them? Mpeg2 at 24Mbps and the best looking HD you will ever see, 100% equal to Mpeg4 and = in real life comparisons, a example is comparing the U-571 D-Theater release to it's HD-DVD counterpart)
when it comes to people saying Mpeg4 looks better than Mpeg2, I want to laugh and then run because I already know where I will get and that is nowhere
:down-Gary
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