Dish Cinema poor quality

[Hall]

How well is Dish Cinema streaming working for others ? Last night, we tried to watch Dark Knight Rises... Knowing that it streams, we ordered it and let it work for a short bit. Once it started, we paused it and if I was reading the 'bar' correctly, it had buffered well ahead of where we were (guessing 15-20 minutes). Nonetheless, it stuttered / skipped multiple times. In some cases, you generally only lost a couple of seconds while other times, the scenes completely changed so who knows how much we missed. Even my son suggested we stop and watch it tomorrow !

I contacted support and they said .... reboot the receiver Oh well, I did. Guess what ? Made no difference when we tried it again today. Surely 10+ hours should have let it build the buffer up just a bit ! My internet is only 6Mbs DSL. This time, my son suggested we go to the video store and get it but also asked if it's on PPV. It is, at 12:30pm, so I've already ordered it and have it set to record*.


* Side note: With the Hopper, if you order a PPV before it starts (there may be a time offset), it defaults to "Record this". I don't recall that with the 722k. You still ordered it and then told it to record it.

 

[Bobby]

I'd have gone to Redbox, a buck and a half for a bluray. It looks like you've got plenty of them in the Dayton area.... Simply load up Redbox on your 'puter, look for your movie then order it and it's ready for you when you go to the kiosk...

 

[Hall]

Yes, I'm very familiar with Redbox (I'd bet I was one of their first 20 customers in my area - I can still recall people looking at myself and others using Redbox kiosks with great confusion).

I presume I can take your answer as "Dish Cinema sucks and this is normal" ?

 

[Bobby]

I know that Dish Cinema is expensive, nuff said....

 

[Hall]

Interesting.... It works flawlessly on the Joey

 

[dennispap]

I used it last thurs and it worked fine. I watched the movie live and in real time and no problems. I also only have dsl 6.0

 

[lucky86]

When you are watching an IPVOD like this, it displays your streaming speed on the screen when you order the movie and after it processes the order. Do you know what was displayed on that screen? Maybe your actual speed to the box at that given time was sub par which could cause this?

 

[Hall]

Nope, don't remember. Doesn't it adjust continually as well? Doesn't it download and store it temporarily too?

12 hours later, on the Hopper, it played back consistently-it skipped in the same places each time. If I rewound it, I could see scenes that were skipped during playback. On the Joey, it played back fine though.

 

[DishSubLA]

Actually, DISH CINEMA is the VOD service that has movies already downloaded onto your HDD via satellite. Dish Cinema is available on channels 1 and 501, and these titles include a few in 1080p and 3D. Dish Cinema rentals should playback with excellent PQ and stability, as you are just playing back the movie as if you had recorded it on the HDD yourself with a DVR timer. Dish Cinema movies are downloaded to your HDD as a file download, not in real time stream and can only be played AFTER the file download is complete, not during the file download.

Perhaps you were referring to Dish ON DEMAND. That is the service via broadband internet (many titles are available only through the BlockBuster package, but BB works the same way). Dish on demand is NOT a live streaming only service like Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Amazon Prime, but a stream to HDD, meaning that the stream is laid down and saved on the HDD for the rental period for playback at any time for an experience just as if you recorded the content your self on the HDD using a DVR timer or a Dish Cinema type experience with the content all laid down on the HDD with no live streaming hiccups. However, one may choose to view the Dish On Demand or BB content while it is streaming to the HDD, as you had attempted.

I've downloaded several offerings via Dish On Demand and BB, and it has been a positive experience with HD looking very good, even while the content was still streaming. I have 30Mbps downstream so the downloads occur rather quickly, but I also used the same service quite a bit when I had 3Mbps downstream DSL, and the quality of PQ during stream or on playback was excellent, depending upon the quality of the source (print of film) and HD looked great. It was the time to download that took forever with 3Mbps downstream DSL, but all downloads were excellent. A download of an HD movie with no other traffic on your network would take several hours with a 3Mbs downstream and if you started to watch during the stream, you could catch up to the end of the stream before it finishes.

It could have been that particular movie you requested that seems to have a problem at the server. Now, that is something I have encountered more thn once on both Dish with its offerings and on TiVo when attempting to download an Amazon Instant Video (Amazon's rental or purchase ONLY service, not the Prime streaming), to be laid down on the TiVo's HDD but I found it was that one title, and all the others I accessed were fine.

It could be the quality of your internet connection or routers or switches in your chain. This is the common culprit, especially if there is other traffic on your network or others attempting to use the internet the same time as you want to download with such a narrow ISP bandwidth. Please don't tell us you are using a wireless connection from the Dish box to your internet . If so, you may need a more robust wireless connection or save yourself the trouble and just use Ethernet if you can. It is REALLY worth it. Most wireless connections are so unreliable. However, there are those on this board who can provide advice in getting the best possible wireless connection. Those routers and switches either wireless or wired are cheap things and they often are the culprit. You might try tweaking your router's QOS and see if that helps, and AFTER RMA to make things easier, you could invest in a router that automatically gives priority to Video content (those routers a bit more expensive), if you'd rather not mess with tweaking with several QOS settings.

However, if you have confidence in your connections to the internet and your home network, then if this continues with other titles, and you would like to take advantage of the Dish On Demand service, then you may have to RMA box. Perhaps the Hopper Net adapter is defective. You can transfer any recordings to an external HDD and you can backup your timers and other settings using the Wizard feature before you choose to RMA it.

Let us know what happens.

 

[Hall]

Hopper is hard-wired. My internet is 6mb DSL.

I've encountered streaming issues especially with a particular movie in the past with Blockbuster streaming, especially when they first introduced it. In this case, I played 15m on the Joey flawlessly. Stopped it, went to Hopper, and within 1-2 minutes played it there. It was un-watchable.

As for what delivery method I used, Dish doesn't help with their poor integration and mix. It wasn't from ch 1 or 501 (VOD - content pre-downloaded and available). It did give the "Watch now" and "Watch later" buttons.

 

[costanzas_wallet]

It's hit-and-miss for me.

I just VOD'd (Dish ON DEMAND) Christmas Vacation and it played flawlessly.. Cloverfield was painful a few months back.

 

[Hall]

Okay, made sure of where I found the problem version-it's "On Demand".

Still thinks it's silly how Dish has their on demand plus BB on-demand...

 

[DishSubLA]

Okay, made sure of where I found the problem version-it's "On Demand".

Still thinks it's silly how Dish has their on demand plus BB on-demand...

Yes, very confusing and very few FREE movies anymore, although I saw that the original Footloose was only 99 cents. I agree. It seems the variety of VOD, Dish On Demand, BlockBuster is a confusing morass.

It sounds like maybe it is only a few titles that are troubling you. I would alert Dish to this. As I've said, I've had the same problem even on TiVo but using Amazon Instant Video: a few episodes of Star Trek TOS would not play well or for long or even at all, but everything else was downloading and playing just fine. Perhaps it is corrupted on the server. However, one would think it would play well at the Hopper--assuming playback from the HDD--as it did on the Joey.

So, you are using Ethernet (wired connection) to your router. You should be doing well, as I used to do well with half your download. If your problem seems to be too common, than I would suspect the router and switches. I hope you don't need to RMA the Hopper, but that may be you last resort.

 

[lucky86]

I'm not sure if you are referring to free non blockbuster at home content but if you have Bb@home there are around 13k “free" titles.

 

[Hall]

Okay, made sure of where I found the problem version-it's "On Demand".

Just confusing this more..... I just tried to replay the movie (it's still showing but it's time is up by now) and there's a giant "Dish Cinema" logo at the beginning where it tells you the movie rating, etc, etc.