Dish Network HD Locals quality?

Toggle sidebar
ChetK

ChetK

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
May 14, 2004
981
8
Round Rock, TX
Yo!

If you live in New York City, LA, Chicago, Nashville or Denver, and subscribe to the HD locals via Dish Network, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind comparing the picture quality of the Dish feed vs. the OTA feed.

I'm curious how Dish Network receives the feed from each local station? Would the local stations be feeding E* with a higher bandwidth signal than they do OTA? Does E*'s re-encoding of the feed make it better or worse than the OTA broadcast?

I'd really like to know if I'm going to get a better quality picture getting it from Dish than I am OTA with OTA multicasting being an issue.

Thanks!
 
To me I cant tell a diffrence.. on most of the channels.. they look very good. sometimes they look a tad bit softer than ota. The only real problems that I have seen is every friday WLS (abc chicago) the encoder from dish seems to get a nut job and messes up the picture to sub vcr quality. I will put it to you this way.. The sd pic looks better than the HD pic.. and of chorse dish doesnt seem to fix it untill mondays. :)
 
ChetK said:
Yo!

If you live in New York City, LA, Chicago, Nashville or Denver, and subscribe to the HD locals via Dish Network, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind comparing the picture quality of the Dish feed vs. the OTA feed.

I'm curious how Dish Network receives the feed from each local station? Would the local stations be feeding E* with a higher bandwidth signal than they do OTA? Does E*'s re-encoding of the feed make it better or worse than the OTA broadcast?

I'd really like to know if I'm going to get a better quality picture getting it from Dish than I am OTA with OTA multicasting being an issue.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Yes a very good question i would also like to know.
 
The Atlanta HD locals look just as good to my eyes on the Mpeg4 Dish versions as the OTA do. Flawless so far. The biggest issue for me is that they are on 129 and with even a light rain I lose all signal on 129 (on clear day I get 55-65 as signal strength on a peaked dish)
 
I live in chicago and im really disappointed with the pic quality of the HD Local chanels. Dish is lucky that Comcast doesnt televise what i watch at a normail hour, otherwise id switch.
 
Yeah singal strenght will vary for everyone on the 129 so again that will all depend on where you live so on. Overall from what I have been hearing from folks the HD Locals look really good. Im sure over time since this is all new for Dish this year. Things will get tweak over time to improve things even better.
 
The New York channels look pretty good.

Not as good as CBS HD USED to look before they started compressing things, but still pretty good.

If you CAN get a decent OTA signal it may make more sense for you. There may be some more instability issues with some receivers though as OTA channels sometimes cause more problems than their satellite delivered brethren....
 
Channel 13 (PBS) in NYC is suddenly available in HD from my OTA

I was forced recently to swap my 811 for 211. The first box was defective and I was mailed a replacement box. The HD locals are pretty much the same quality as the OTA HD signal (I'm getting an 84 or higher signal on the "big three" via my OTA)

Recently I was amazed to be able to lock in to a nice HD broadcast on ch 13 (PBS) in NYC. I live in Queens and have a clear view of Empire State Bldg, but I understand that PBS signal originates in NJ and has been inaccessible to users in Queens and most of NYC. The signal strength I get is only 60 - but the signal locks in (most of the time) and the picture looks great. I also am getting 2 extra PBS channels - 13-02 and 13-03 in addition to 13-01 HD channel.

Was wondering if there is any way to amplify the signal without moving the antenna (I may gain on channel 13, but probably will lose CBS). Would an external amplifier help? A different antenna from the one I have? (a small HD elliptical antenna on top of the dish that came with Voom).

Martin in RegoPark, Queens
 
HD locals quality.

I'm in Chicago area, have local HD channels coming in from comcast (cable) and dish network at the same time (at least for a few weeks).
Comcast looks much better - that's probably because dish is compressing their channels from 1920x1080 to 1280x1080 or 1440x1080 resolution (read that somewhere on this site). And comcast (and other cable companies) have to transmit a normal "true" HD signal - I believe there is a standard out there telling them how they have to do it.

So it looks like I'll take off the locals from dish ($5/month savings), and just pay comcast $14/month
(I'm in an area where I can't get the channels with an off the air antenna...).
Just letting you know, I don't work for comcast, I don't even like them (too exapansive), but unfortunately I'm picky when it comes to quality,
so I have to give them a credit.
But the other HD channels (from VOOM pack and HD PAK) look great.

By the way, I did the comparison using the new Vip622 receiver and I'm comparing the picture on a 42 inch sony LCD projection screen (720p display).
I bet you if I had a $4000 plasma with a true 1080p resolution, the HD locals from dish would probably look even worse.
 
Actually,
I think my Dish HD locals (Philly) look BETTER than Comcast - this is on both a 50" and 32" television.

Call me crazy - but 24 last night looked incredible on DISH.
 
Isn't Fox 720p? I don't think Dish is messing with the 720p source.

There's another issue with the downrezzing besides the resolution.

Assuming E* is starting with the mpeg2 feed... Uncompressing from a lossy source, and then recompressing with another lossy source just isn't pretty.

You're gonna get digital artifacts from both compression passes.
 
Guys, I'm not in one of the current DMAs that are receiving HD locals, but I do have some info about how the satellite companies get their local feeds.

According to the engineering supervisor at one of our local stations, who is also a member of the AVSForum, they provide their feeds to the satellite companies via fiber - so Dish should be getting a perfect signal from them.
 
reply to jrfuda post

jrfuda said: "Dish is getting locals from local station via fiber"
The question is what is in that fiber? Probably mpeg2 video,
I doubt that it is uncompressed video... but maybe it is? It would have to be
over a gigabit per second...
 
stck4evr said:
jrfuda said: "Dish is getting locals from local station via fiber"
The question is what is in that fiber? Probably mpeg2 video,
I doubt that it is uncompressed video... but maybe it is? It would have to be
over a gigabit per second...
Click to expand...
I think what he meant is that they are getting there feed via fiber which would be the exact same quality that the station is sending out to people's OTA antenna. Meaning that if the station doesn't have any sub channels then dish would be getting a "perfect" 19.3mbps stream which is the max that a station can send out over a 8vsb broadcast. What dish does with it after they receive it is the question. I'm sure they compress the size from say 19.3 to say 12mbps for example but do they downrezz the resolution from say 1920x1080i to 1280 or 1440x1080i. Thats what people are wondering.
 
H

Remote Codes

  • hemway
  • Replies: 4
Greg Mueller

LNB power? 129 project

  • Greg Mueller
  • Replies: 1

Similar threads

P
Dish Network signal finding advice
Replies
1
Views
376
Jim5506
Jim5506
B
Locals
Replies
5
Views
708
janetvandolah
J
ccal
Locals with Dish Perks
Replies
2
Views
676
Tampa8
Tampa8
J
Picture Quality on Game Day
Replies
3
Views
589
tjboston5676
tjboston5676
Scott Greczkowski
    • Like
From DISH about Locals
Replies
39
Views
8K
dishrich
D

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 0, Members: 0, Guests: 0)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)

Share this page

Share this page
Top
Back