Cable Picture Quality vs. Dish Network Quality

[Bassmaster]

I currently have digital HD Cable through Adelphia and the SD cable channels stink on my ED Plasma TV, but the HD TV stations are very good, but I only get 3 of them. I do watch mostly the other common cable stations and was just wondering about picture quality of SD cable compared to what I can expect from the Dish Network. Do you this the pictures should be better or worse?

I made another post about the HD OTA and people mentioned if I can get my local HD's through a OTA the picture quality should be better than the pictures on the Dish. Does the picture quality leave somethig to be desired?

 

[WeeJavaDude]

PQ is subjected and depends on a lot of factors. Might want to give the search engine a spin. I am sure there are a number of posts on this. I believe I replied to your one on HD OTA PQ.

 

[DucTape]

Probably be better especially if your analog channels on cable looked anything like mine did.

 

[kluken]

I currently have digital HD Cable through Adelphia and the SD cable channels stink on my ED Plasma TV, but the HD TV stations are very good, but I only get 3 of them. I do watch mostly the other common cable stations and was just wondering about picture quality of SD cable compared to what I can expect from the Dish Network. Do you this the pictures should be better or worse?

I made another post about the HD OTA and people mentioned if I can get my local HD's through a OTA the picture quality should be better than the pictures on the Dish. Does the picture quality leave somethig to be desired?

Are your SD Cables channels Digital or Analog? The big problem they take 4x3 MPEG2 content at marginal bit-rates and when you stretch them you see all the macro-blocking and stuff. Dish Network has been really over compressing many channels especially the locals they carry. Both D* and E* are faced with bandwidth issues and thus juggle compression ratios on all their channels. The sad thing is I think they all assume we are all still watching 4x3 sets.

 

[sprintcarcrazy]

I just tested cable last week, a whole 6 hours before I took off their box and took it back to them. Be advised, I am sure cable companies differ in their equipment, etc.

My Experience. 1-100 were analog and contained alot of the stations we watch most, picture was terrible, this was on a Sharp 37in Lcd. All snowy.

SD stations above 100 were as good or better than dish, I could even strech them to fill the screen and they were not too bad at all. HD stations, had 7 of them, but didn't include CBS or NBC HD which I was getting OTA. They were being pushed at 720P and looked good, but soft compared to DISH.

As well, the guide sucked, very slow, hard to read, etc.

Dish looks really good on most all stations on my 61in Sony non HD projection TV, and tolerable but not great on my 26 and 37 in LCD's. Cable looked worse... OTA digital looks very good on both sets, especially the HD.

There is no perfect solution and I dumped my cable trial as it was the worst of two non greats.

 

[wmhjr]

What Adelphia area?

I'm in the Pgh area. I had Dish, with HD. A basic synopsis is:

1) HD: Adelphia had better HD PQ, but not by much. OTOH, in my area they've got almost twice as much content.

2) SD: Absolutely not a bit of difference. Actually in some cases Adelphia seems to be very slightly better.

3) Analog: This is the surprising one. On my regular CRTs, the stuff that's Analog on Adelphia (mostly locals) doesn't look as good as the SD on Dish. Mostly. But, on my 46" DLP HD set, the analog stuff looks BETTER than the corresponding SD channels via Dish.

The comparisons were made using the exact same cables, connectors, etc. So, component against component, SV against SV, etc.

In my area Adelphia uses the SA8300HD for a DVR. In general, it's a better unit than what Dish has to offer - with some exceptions.

1) The user interface isn't quite as clean.
2) It has dual tuners (awesome!)
3) I have three, and they've NEVER had a problem yet. My 5xx series had minor issues every once in a while, but my 921 was HORRIBLE!!!!!
4) I find the SA8300HD to be actually faster - and not slower - than Dish equipment.
5) I really wish the Adelphia remote was UHF.
6) The SA8300HD is a little peculiar in how it does some things. Nothing that's "broken", but just features that I wish were slightly different. Of course, that's also partially because I've used Dish stuff so long that I'm accustomed to how they implemented some features.
7) The SA8300HD actually has NBR - today - and it really works. Imagine that.

 

[mike123abc]

The main variances of cable in large cities are:

1. How far are you from the neighborhood box that converts the digital fiber feed back into analog. If you are close to the box your picture will be far, far better than if you are a distance away.

2. The cable wiring in your house. If you have all new RG6 cable you will get a lot better than if you have some old cable from the 70s with splitters every 10 feet.

These two reasons make it almost impossible to compare cable vs DBS quality. If you are the first house off the fiber feed and have updated cabling in your house you can blow away DBS in quality of signal. Fixing up the wiring in your house (in an area with fiber feed) you can probably get close to DBS quality even if you are far from the neighborhood box.

In my personal case the cable box is in my back yard. I get an incredible picture on even analog cable. Side by side comparison of Dish vs. TWC I can see all sorts of picture details that have just been compressed away on Dish. It does make people look older since you can see all the wrinkles on their faces. I went with Dish because of price and channel selection. I will probably go back to cable soon since it tipped back to cable.

 

[sprintcarcrazy]

Not sure I agree with that, I am 586Ft from the fiber and the first house on the tap, and had nothing to brag about. I think it has to do with cabling and what they are using on the head end as well as what they are using to receive and compress the signals.

 

[wmhjr]

Yes, there are more factors.

It does indeed also depend on the quality of the equipment at your head end. Things like how old the lasers are, etc. Lots of factors. The only way to really know is to take a look.

The one thing for sure, however, is that the quality of the cable in your home has a huge effect. All new RG6 on a well designed cable plant in your home really makes a giant improvement.

 

[mike123abc]

Not sure I agree with that, I am 586Ft from the fiber and the first house on the tap, and had nothing to brag about. I think it has to do with cabling and what they are using on the head end as well as what they are using to receive and compress the signals.

This is true, some cable plants are very old.

Only way to tell how your plant/fiber/wiring does is to test it out in your home.

 

[dishrich]

In my experience, one reason why many people's cable looks like crap is due to poor connections (poor quality connectors, splitters, coax cable, splices, etc. that the "home handyman" tried to install/fix) as well as trying to run two dozen TV outlets with NO amplification! Others put cheap $10 Wal-mart amps on the cable that actually makes things WORSE instead of better - you need to use a high-quality amp such as from Channel Plus or ChannelVision for best results. People also don't understand that even though they may ONLY have 4 actual TV's connected, those extra outlets/splitters pull the signal down. Even 1 poor connector or splice can cause picture problems on ALL TV's in a home, due to outside signal ingress backfeeding throughout all the coax.

I can't tell you how many homes I've gone into, done some very simple fixes (& some not so simple, such as a high-quality amp) & the end result was night & day, which they were improperly blaming on the cable system.

NOW, that's not to say this will always cure problems - Greene County cable, which serves several towns around us, pretty much looks like crap EVERYWHERE, even at a home with only 1 TV directly hooked to the incoming cable feed!

 

[Dogcliff]

A copy of email I sent just today to my installer and CEO@echostar.com...

Gentlemen,

I am a new Dish customer; install date 1/25/05. I made the jump from GCI cable based on the promises of more bang for the buck (better value) and the implied promise of excellent picture quality. If the three weeks of of your 'excellent' picture quality is what I can expect from here out, I have no other choice than to continue counting the down the forty-nine weeks remaining on my commitment to my Dish contract (and share my experience with all who care to know).

My problem has been characterized as 'weird' by *** (my Retailer), and acknowledged by ***, an installer who just finished a troubleshooting call at my residence. In a nutshell, despite my 1M dish upgrade and good signal strength, I continue to experience a lot of micro pixellation in scenes with motion, and a 'slow ghost' in some, but not all scenes. The slow ghost: most noticable with a full face shot of a person on the TV where the head will move, followed 1/4 ~1/2 second later by the eyes, nose, cheeks or eyebrows of the person. It was conjectured that the issue may have to do with my 50" DLP HDTV, but being the proud owner of a 510 receiver, I am able to replicate the problem on 13" - 19" CRT TV's using the DVR function (although the problem was not as noticable). Troubleshooting included plugging my other receiver (Dish 311) in to the big TV. Same symptoms. *** ran a direct 'jumper' from the where the satellite ties into the preexisting cabeling to the receiver; no improvement.

Although *** was most eager to fix the problem, consulted Dish tech support for a troubleshooting assist, and promised to 'ask around' the shop, I have a strong feeling that the answer to my problem is wait until my contract is up, and go back to cable.

The difference in picture quality between Dish Network and GCI digital cable is striking. Even SD programming on cable appeared to be 'near HD'. Dish SD programming is almost always plagued with the above mentioned problems.

I bought a 50" TV and matintain 'pay' TV in my home because I enjoy the experience of watching a good movie or TV series. When the picture quality is up to par, I am swept away. When it is poor, I am annoyed.

Dish is less expensive for me than cable was and offers a good channel selection. I love the 100 hr DVR. These advantages do not make up for the annoyance that comes with poor picture quality.

I do not know if there is a technical fix available. I wonder if an HD receiver (with DVI or component output) would help the problem. The Dish web site offers that upgrade option to me for only $549, but..no, I do not live in the contiguous US (Alaska)(and am not inclined to throw good money after bad).

If this problem is not fixable, I would like to request early termination of the contract (without penalty), and a refund of the 1m Dish upgrade. In fairness, I will offer to pay the labor on the (worthless to me) install.

Sincerely,

Dogcliff

 

[belawrence]

can't get any closer than this

The cable tap is actually in my front yard. From the tap to my demarc is about 15 feet in which quad-shield RG6 is ran inside PVC pipe underground. upon entrance to my house, it connects to the one and only 2-way splitter in the home. All cabling in the home is quad-shield RG6-I ran all new coax and cat5e cabling throughout home when I purchased it about 14 months ago. The only devices connected to cable from the splitter are a Sony WEGA 36" direct view and a cable modem. Results: Analog cable channels all have a "snowy" quality to them when compared to E* on the same channels. I don't have digital cable so I can't compare them, but what does bother me is the fact that some of my favorite channels are on the analog tier on cable. Locals look bad either way-either snowy on cable or over compressed on E*, but my current display handles compression better than snow. I watch locals via OTA digital anyway.

 

[kluken]

A copy of email I sent just today to my installer and CEO@echostar.com...

Gentlemen,

I am a new Dish customer; install date 1/25/05. I made the jump from GCI cable based on the promises of more bang for the buck (better value) and the implied promise of excellent picture quality. If the three weeks of of your 'excellent' picture quality is what I can expect from here out, I have no other choice than to continue counting the down the forty-nine weeks remaining on my commitment to my Dish contract (and share my experience with all who care to know).

My problem has been characterized as 'weird' by *** (my Retailer), and acknowledged by ***, an installer who just finished a troubleshooting call at my residence. In a nutshell, despite my 1M dish upgrade and good signal strength, I continue to experience a lot of micro pixellation in scenes with motion, and a 'slow ghost' in some, but not all scenes. The slow ghost: most noticable with a full face shot of a person on the TV where the head will move, followed 1/4 ~1/2 second later by the eyes, nose, cheeks or eyebrows of the person. It was conjectured that the issue may have to do with my 50" DLP HDTV, but being the proud owner of a 510 receiver, I am able to replicate the problem on 13" - 19" CRT TV's using the DVR function (although the problem was not as noticable). Troubleshooting included plugging my other receiver (Dish 311) in to the big TV. Same symptoms. *** ran a direct 'jumper' from the where the satellite ties into the preexisting cabeling to the receiver; no improvement.

Although *** was most eager to fix the problem, consulted Dish tech support for a troubleshooting assist, and promised to 'ask around' the shop, I have a strong feeling that the answer to my problem is wait until my contract is up, and go back to cable.

The difference in picture quality between Dish Network and GCI digital cable is striking. Even SD programming on cable appeared to be 'near HD'. Dish SD programming is almost always plagued with the above mentioned problems.

I bought a 50" TV and matintain 'pay' TV in my home because I enjoy the experience of watching a good movie or TV series. When the picture quality is up to par, I am swept away. When it is poor, I am annoyed.

Dish is less expensive for me than cable was and offers a good channel selection. I love the 100 hr DVR. These advantages do not make up for the annoyance that comes with poor picture quality.

I do not know if there is a technical fix available. I wonder if an HD receiver (with DVI or component output) would help the problem. The Dish web site offers that upgrade option to me for only $549, but..no, I do not live in the contiguous US (Alaska)(and am not inclined to throw good money after bad).

If this problem is not fixable, I would like to request early termination of the contract (without penalty), and a refund of the 1m Dish upgrade. In fairness, I will offer to pay the labor on the (worthless to me) install.

Sincerely,

Dogcliff

Good luck. I have sent 4 e-mails to them and 1 USPS letter, no response. I am counting the days until D* has my locals in HD and their MPEG4 DVR and I am done with E*. They are over compressing many channels, especially locals. I have seen the "ghost" you refere to too many times, often where one side of a face ina close up is moving in one direction then the other side catches up. E* customer service is pitifull! I enquired with Comcast locally several times and have gooten far better custoemr service than E*. I am close to maybe going Comcast as an interim solution as they wil give me $25 off a month for 16 months as a Dish customer. My fear with cable is the large number of analog channels still and when I had them 12 years ago the analog was so bad OTA was better! And they have not done major upgrades that woudl address that in my neigborhood.

 

[PILMAN]

I can't really say which is better on my plasma set as I have only used a satellite feed and dvd feed on there. When we didn't have any money though we had Digital Cable through COX Cable on just some crappy set and the picture didn't look all great. The TV in my room is some phillips flat screen and I had that at our old house with cable and the picture was not very good, it was extremely snowy, even though I was using coaxial cable the picture was just not good at all. When we bought DISH the picture was ok on my first plasma set which was a older DAEWOO model and the picture looked ok via svideo but stretched. In my room the picture looked pretty good, on my moms LCD the picture looked really good and on our living room TV which is a phillips 26" set it looked pretty good as well considering it was just using the coaxial cable from the set. I haven't seen COX's HDTV but when I bought the samsung plasma the picture sucked big time however the HDTV channels were beautiful and looked great, no complaints at all about HDTV except I wish there were more channels, but if DISH doesn't have the room I advise them not to add more.

I think the quality of satellite on a standard tv vs digital cable on a standard tv, hands down I would say satellite is better.

 

[Bruce]

I am a new Comcast customer, stopped E* yesterday.
The Cable "node" is in my next-door's neighbors back yard.

Now, yes Analog sucks but here in my area ( Metro Detroit) they started to put the analog channels in the digital spectrum, and it is supposed to be done by March 15.

SD E* vs SD C*-sorry, Comcast wins in my area, a lot sharper and the On Demand stuff is some of the best SD I have seen, which really shocked me, and it is really, really cool for how much free stuff they put on.

HD E* vs. HD C*-the same, not better, not worse, the main way I can tell is I have a OTA Samy-165 still hooked up to my other component input for the WB and UPN which C* does not have, flipping around during parts of Alias between the 165 and 6412 there was no difference.

Bottom line, it comes down to your area as far as cable goes, I never thought I would have dropped E* but the HD-DVR 6412 made my decision for me, it works great.