DirecTV to Offer Live 4K in Early 2016

[goaliebob99]

Actually for HD Lite formats like 1440 x 1080i used by Dish HD, the aspect ratio is still 16:9. As the pixel samples per horizontal line are less, but spaced further apart to cover the same active video line length, thereby creating the digital equivalent of the "rectangular pixels" of the analog video era transmissions. Longer horizontally than vertically.

When decoded by the receiver it is then up to the TV set to upscale the 1440 horiz. line pixels to the native resolution of the display like 1920 for a standard 1080P HDTV though interpolation.

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Not in its native format. Yes the receiver on the other end or TV will up sample the missing information on the horizontal pole but the actual resolution of 1440 X 1080 is not a native 16:9 format. While it is using interpolation, to fill in the missing info, expanding into a 16:9 format, that info still can be wrong as it's only guessing at what was there and it has to fill in the info to make it appear what it natively isn't. This is why its call HD lite is because it's not a direct 1:1 pixel representation. When presented with a full resolution full hd 1920 X 1080 all of the data points are there 1:1 pixel ratio and you are missing none of the info. This is why DirecTV's picture is much sharper than Dish's, because DirecTV provides a 1:1 sample and there is no guess work through interpolation.

This is actually a really good discussion.

 

[ejb1980]

Speaking of other aspects and resolutions... What will it look like when people start putting their SD receiver on a 4k/UHD set? I can't see that looking good but you know it's going to happen... I assume there will be a 4k fee.

 

[HoTat2]

Not in its native format. Yes the receiver on the other end or TV will up sample the missing information on the horizontal pole but the actual resolution of 1440 X 1080 is not a native 16:9 format. While it is using interpolation, to fill in the missing info, expanding into a 16:9 format, that info still can be wrong as it's only guessing at what was there and it has to fill in the info to make it appear what it natively isn't. This is why its call HD lite is because it's not a direct 1:1 pixel representation. When presented with a full resolution full hd 1920 X 1080 all of the data points are there 1:1 pixel ratio and you are missing none of the info. This is why DirecTV's picture is much sharper than Dish's, because DirecTV provides a 1:1 sample and there is no guess work through interpolation.

This is actually a really good discussion.

Oh yes absolutely,

I never claimed there was no picture degradation by using 1440 x 1080 instead of 1920 x 1080 as Dish does. Though I'm sure they'll argue that the loss is imperceptible to the average human eye which is just not that sharp enough notice such a small loss of detail.

But whatever the case, I was simply pointing out that resolution and aspect ratio are really independent of one another. You can have a 16:9 AR with square pixels for 1920 x 1080 resolution as DIRECTV uses. Or 16:9 AR with 1440 x 1080 resolution and rectangular pixels as does Dish.

Before the era of MPEG-4 and the Ka band, DIRECTV once used an HD-lite format in MPEG-2 of 1280 x 1080 with an AR of 16:9 for very rectangular pixels to help save bandwidth on the narrower Ku band xpndrs.

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[robjlevin]

What are you comparing that to?

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I don't have to compare it to anything. But I have several HD sets and the 4k is noticeably superior.