diy network "HD" squish-o-vision

[Jhon69]

Guess there is a reason to DISH receiver default timer settings being 1 minute before and 3 minutes after?.

 

[Mr Tony]

which is a moot point when you have back to back shows as dish doesnt record the overlap unless you force it to use another tuner. Directv does record the overlap just fine (even if you set it for 15 minutes after) and doesnt tie up an extra tuner

 

[caam1]

The first couple of years of H on H was not made in HD. I saw one the other night from 2005 and it was in "strech-o-vision" . I perfer 4x3 with bars, but all of the Scripts channels strech 4x3.

 

[Corrado]

The HOH episodes on HGTV and Holmes Inspection are newer and look great. Too bad more contractors aren't like Mike and his crew.

I've noticed some channels sometimes have the black bars for SD programming or commercials with a light shaded channel name vertically in the bar reducing it to 4:3. I would rather see that than stretched myself. I was watching Star Trek TNG on SyFy that was made in SD and it still looked better on the HD channel as compared to the SD channel. Even the shows on Cartoon Network look better. I didn't think that would be much different, but it is.

 

[Jhon69]

which is a moot point when you have back to back shows as dish doesnt record the overlap unless you force it to use another tuner. Directv does record the overlap just fine (even if you set it for 15 minutes after) and doesnt tie up an extra tuner

Having the MT2(Dual Over The Air Tuners Module)which gives me 4 tuners(2SAT+2OTA) in my DISH receiver keeps my recording conflicts from becoming an issue.

 

[Mr Tony]

Having the MT2(Dual Over The Air Tuners Module)which gives me 4 tuners(2SAT+2OTA) in my DISH receiver keeps my recording conflicts from becoming an issue.

having 5 tuners on the HR34 does that for me too

But for the OP with a 211k the sat tuner limit of 1 does become an issue if there is back to back programs set to record which is what part of the topic is about

 

[Jhon69]

having 5 tuners on the HR34 does that for me too

But for the OP with a 211k the sat tuner limit of 1 does become an issue if there is back to back programs set to record which is what part of the topic is about

Correct the purpose of my posts is to try and show the OP a possible solution to their timer issues with DISH.If the 211k is not able to work correctly for them,then maybe a upgrade to the 722k/wMT2 will.

 

[whatchel1]

I dont have cable so I dont know. But when I had both D* and E* Direct was a second or two quicker. It depends on the station, compression rate, etc

cable wouldnt have the lag as they dont have to beam it back up a second time. Also adding to a lag is DVR's as they buffer a little bit first

The reup/down link would only account for 1/2 a sec even if there was some processing sets the max would be a 1sec. So the full minute or more is the on purpose slip that the net is doing to make it harder for you to tune off their channel. ABC does it a lot also.

 

[Dee_Ann]

I forgot to press the info button on the first shot, I was trying to operate the remote and the camera at the same time.

The first shot is of the NON HD diy channel. The video doesn't fill the screen at all, there is a substantial border around the video on all four sides.
But, the video isn't stretched out and distorted.

Second shot shows my guide so you can see that I do have both SD and HD channels available

Third shot is the HD channel, as you can see in the info banner. You can see that I have both HD and SD set to normal.
This is the video that is stretched to fill the entire screen. I believe it was originally SD 4:3 and they are forcing it to fill a 16:9 screen
People look short and squatty and when they are standing on the side of the screen it looks like they are being sucked into a black hole.











I guess there's nothing that can be done about it. I wish there was a "de-squish" button where you could force 16:9 into a 4:3 format.
There is an option that will display grey bars on the sides but WHY? It just hides the video behind grey bars, it doesn't squish it then put grey bars in the blank spots.

Anyway...


Timers.. Grrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!

I went through my DVR and checked and I had dozens and dozens of shows that were missing one and two minutes!
I deleted them all, I deleted all the timers then did a check switch to force a new guide download.
Then I went through and made new timers that record an extra three minutes past the scheduled show end.

This won't work for back to back shows but Iceberg explained that it will cause a schedule conflict but the tuner will resolve it on it's own by searching for the next airing of the 2nd show and recording that.
A lot of new episodes air in prime time then air again 3-4 hours later.

So it can record Storage Wars Episode 30 at 8:00pm to 8:33pm, skip episode 31 that would follow but then say at 1:00am it would record the re-airing of episode 31 from 1:00am to 1:33am

It will take longer for the tuner to find and record ALL of a series this way, such as Storage Hunters. I like that show too and I had the tuner gathering all episodes for me, but it truncated all of them..
Sooner or later it will get them all all over again, just this time with some padding on the end..

I would rather have a minute or two of junk on the end than it be missing the end!

So, erase everything and start over from scratch..

Last night I was watching Storage Wars, I think it was like 2am and the show ran 2 minutes and 15 seconds over!
So I think going with the three minutes extra should take care of it. I have never yet seen a show start early, they either start on time or start late due to earlier shows ending late but I have never seen one start before the hour or before the half hour.

Some of the local OTA channels DO start early though during the evening news. They will start at 6:29pm so if you tune in at 6:30pm you miss the first minute of the news! :rant:
This is the only thing I've ever seen start early. But I set timers to deal with that during the evening news and it works just fine.

I'm a real b:h about times being accurate and image/video quality..

 

[3HaloODST]

Yeah, I was checking out HoH earlier today on HGTV and it was also stretch-o-vision... Sometimes I would rather just watch the SD feed than their "HD" stretch-o-vision.

 

[GaryPen]

Is there any reason why they are squishing the video? It looks HORRIBLE. It looks like they are taking a 480i and squishing it down to fit an HD screen.

I dabble in photography, I have a very expensive professional level camera (Canon 5D Mark II) and a large bag of very expensive lenses so I'm very, very attuned to image quality.

Then, one would think you would know the term for what you are describing is "stretching" the image, not "squishing".

BTW, if nobody else is having this issue, and it appears to be the case, the problem is on your end. You are either watching the non-HD DIY channel and your TV is stretching it, or you are watching the HD channel and have an aspect ratio/format setting misconfigured somewhere in your signal chain.

 

[GaryPen]

which is a moot point when you have back to back shows as dish doesnt record the overlap unless you force it to use another tuner. Directv does record the overlap just fine (even if you set it for 15 minutes after) and doesnt tie up an extra tuner

MY 722k records the overlaps all the time. It automatically uses the other tuner, if one tuner is busy recording.

 

[TheKrell]

Yes, I think Dee Ann should have called it stretch-o-vision. I think I've seen her "black hole" effect on HGTV as well. The stretch is nonlinear, so people in the center look reasonably OK. But when they get off to one side, it's like they're made of rubber or something.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Stretch, squish, whatever.. It's just wrong..

HD TV? Make it right!

BTW, I'm watching Holmes Inspection right now on diy HD and it looks pretty darn good. It looks like it was originally shot in HD, I see very little distortion going on.
This episode was recorded or at least originally aired in November of 2006.

I wish they would convert all the shows to 16:9 HD, that is if they were ever shot that way to begin with.

If they would offer these shows on Blue Ray I would buy them and a BR player. But there's no way I'll ever buy plain old DVD's ever again. Haven't bought one in probably 10 years anyway. I don't even own a DVD player anymore.

 

[dare2be]

In Dee's image of her TV screen, under the Dish banner, it shows "HD: Normal" and "SD: Normal"...mine only says "Normal", whether I'm on the HD or the SD channel. To anyone: is that receiver specific or is it a setting within my 722? I'm not talking about changing from "Normal" to "Stretch", etc, but the fact that both the HD and the SD settings are displayed on the screen at once.

 

[Tampa8]

My 612 does display both at once.

HD Normal
SD Normal

Just like that in a box.

 

[n0qcu]

In Dee's image of her TV screen, under the Dish banner, it shows "HD: Normal" and "SD: Normal"...mine only says "Normal", whether I'm on the HD or the SD channel. To anyone: is that receiver specific or is it a setting within my 722? I'm not talking about changing from "Normal" to "Stretch", etc, but the fact that both the HD and the SD settings are displayed on the screen at once.

it's receiver specific to solo HD receivers. You can set the SD outputs separately from the HD outputs so "both" are settings are displayed.

 

[GaryPen]

Yes, I think Dee Ann should have called it stretch-o-vision. I think I've seen her "black hole" effect on HGTV as well. The stretch is nonlinear, so people in the center look reasonably OK. But when they get off to one side, it's like they're made of rubber or something.

Many TV's have a setting that does that. Depending on brand, I've seen it called Justify, Wide Zoom, Zoom2, etc.

Stretch, squish, whatever.. It's just wrong..

Hear hear!

 

[Dee_Ann]

Many TV's have a setting that does that. Depending on brand, I've seen it called Justify, Wide Zoom, Zoom2, etc.

Hear hear!

On the Vizio TV in my bedroom it has an option to adjust the screen as you mention above. But it won't compensate for this nonsense.
9 times out of 10 when I try to access those different modes it tells me "feature not available in this mode" and I can do nothing at all.
Actually, the ONLY time I can play with those settings is when there is an SD video present on the TV. If it's an HD video, it locks adjustments out and I have to watch it as it was transmitted.

There is a local OTA channel that transmits an SD signal BUT, they stretch the video anyway. Why, I do not know but it looks really, really bad. Actually I think they are sending a signal to cause my TV to switch into stretch-o-vision mode. When I tune THAT channel, I can override it and force it back to a normal looking 4:3 picture but it only holds that until I change channels. Then next time I go back, I have to do it all over again. Very annoying!

But the screen on my desk, the one in my photos, is not a TV at all, it's a PC computer screen that simply has an HDMI input on it. I use it as a screen for my PC, that's what I bought it for because my primary system has been for several years an FTA Home Theater PC. It was just a few weeks ago I caved in and went over to the Dark Side and got my first subscription system. So I have an HDMI switch to select different sources. But this PC screen, has no remote control, no built in speakers and I can't change anything about the screen as far as streching, squishing, zooming, or whatever. Just brightness, contrast, etc. It has stupid modes like "Gaming", "Night," "Splendid", "Theater" and "Normal" which when you put it in gaming mode the brightness goes way up and it gets a little grainy. I can select VGA, HDMI, DVI and one other I think. The only way to control it is through little black buttons that you have to press and can't see them unless you turn on a 3,000,000 watt light bulb! So a TV it is not. Far from it.

But it's an LED-LCD 24" screen and when there's some high quality, true HD, it looks sooooooooooo good!!

 

[Mr Tony]

The first shot is of the NON HD diy channel. The video doesn't fill the screen at all, there is a substantial border around the video on all four sides.
But, the video isn't stretched out and distorted.

If you have the format set to "normal" all SD channels will look like that (box in a box). If you change to stretch or partial zoom then it fills the screen

I went through my DVR and checked and I had dozens and dozens of shows that were missing one and two minutes!
I deleted them all, I deleted all the timers then did a check switch to force a new guide download.
Then I went through and made new timers that record an extra three minutes past the scheduled show end.

This won't work for back to back shows but Iceberg explained that it will cause a schedule conflict but the tuner will resolve it on it's own by searching for the next airing of the 2nd show and recording that.
A lot of new episodes air in prime time then air again 3-4 hours later.

if you do 3 minutes after thats still part of the "default" and still will drop the padding if back to back. 5 minutes after or 2 minutes before fixes that

The news always starts early...thats just a given