E* no need to Wow us, please - bring back DishHD!

[rockymtnhigh]

I too would like to know what HD some people are watching? When they say i don't notice and difference. Heck even my seven year old See's macro blocking.

I wonder how much of this is due to the size of your screen? Yes, I ONLY have a 34" CRT HDTV, and thus the pixels on my screen are much smaller than those on a 50" behemoth. But seriously, I do not encounter that much of the frustrating PQ issues.

I used to complain all the time with the PQ on my older SD tv, that lacked digital comb filters, 3:2 pulldown, and all of the technological improvements of recent years.

BUT sadly, I am sure that on a larger set, I'd probably encounter much of the same frustration.

AND I did not get HD until March, so it is possible I don't know what I am missing.

 

[scooby2]

I wonder how much of this is due to the size of your screen? Yes, I ONLY have a 34" CRT HDTV, and thus the pixels on my screen are much smaller than those on a 50" behemoth. But seriously, I do not encounter that much of the frustrating PQ issues.

I used to complain all the time with the PQ on my older SD tv, that lacked digital comb filters, 3:2 pulldown, and all of the technological improvements of recent years.

BUT sadly, I am sure that on a larger set, I'd probably encounter much of the same frustration.

AND I did not get HD until March, so it is possible I don't know what I am missing.

Almost all of it has to do with screen size. Dish SD and HD looks wonderful on a 27" but when you hit 40"+ it is really noticeable. I only have a 55" Mits. I'm sure some have spent for the 65" and 75" models as well as those with projectors.

 

[MikeD-C05]

THis is a recent thing I've noticed on the hd channels in fast moving scenes. I watched the "Waterboy" and when ever the cheer leaders jumped up and down, or the ball was thrown and the players ran into each other, there were pixelation and macro blocking which really distracted me from the movie. I am watching on the 61.5 satellite so I don't know if that is why because of the recent international channels being pushed back on the wing satellites.

I just hope that this is temporary and they will correct it soon or the hd movies will not be worth it to me. If I wanted distracting artifacts, pixelation and macro blocking in the fast moving scenes , I would have gone with Directv instead.

 

[Jeff_R]

Forgive my ignorance but was either the Adam's Family or Twister originaly recorded in HD? The reason I ask is because I know that any film thats recorded in HD will always blow away any film that wasnt but has been upconverted to HD.

Any film-based material has a higher resolution than even HD sets can display. When a movie is "True HD", the master film has be run through the proper equipment and an HD master is created. This is versus a real upconvert that takes a 480p or other resolution print and scales it up to 1080i.

The overall quality of the "True HD" presentation will be completely dependent upon the condition of the film being scanned and fixed.

To use the Photoshop analogy you used (also relevant in my profession), it's true that there is only so much you can do with an existing digital photograph. However, if you take the ORIGINAL photograph and re-scan it at a higher resolution, you will have a much better digital copy.

 

[db2]

Verizon's FIOS is taking our area by storm - their only real negative is their sorry DVR. If they come up with something like the 622, they will be all but impossible to beat by anyone.

That and the fact that FIOS is not yet available in most areas.

 

[grb]

I still think the recent severe downgrade in HD quality is only temporary(hoping). Dish is shuffling alot of channels around and adding new ones, too. Don't even get me started on the M-PEG 4 debacle(so far). I'm not happy either, I just don't think this will be permanent.

Why should we be wondering why the PQ has deteriorated or hoping that it is temporary?

If Dish is experimenting in an effort to improve the PQ, why haven't they put out an announcement along with an apology and a thank you for our patience and loyalty?

As subscribers, we pay out a lot of money for HD service and deserve to know what they are doing. Did it ever dawn on them that they may actually lose subscribers because of this? To pretend that nothing is even happening is not the way to retain customers!

Right now, if a quality product became available (sadly, Voom comes to mind), I would not hesitate to pay a premium to switch...

 

[AdamGott]

Well, they had better do something quickly! Verizon's FIOS is taking our area by storm - their only real negative is their sorry DVR. If they come up with something like the 622, they will be all but impossible to beat by anyone.

---Doug

Damn, it must be sorry if you are wishing it was like the 622! I have used a TIVO Series 1 (the best), a couple ReplayTV's (better), Motorola cable box (the worst nothing more than a fancy VCR)and a few Dish network DVR's and the TIVO blew them all away.

I wish Dish would make their's better, hell they got sued by TIVO and lost anyway, might as well copy some of their better functionality.

 

[caam1]

I think the problem with Twister was the video transfer that HBO was using. My guess is that it was upconverted or it was an older transfer because it didn't have 5.1 sound either. I also watched The Rock and it looked very sharp. The Towering Inferno on HD Net Movies looked as good as anything I've seen in HD (considering the movie is over 30 years old). I think a lot of the fuzzy picture problems are the result of old or shoddy video transfers. I have seen bad video transfers on all of the HD networks.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I watched about 30 minutes of the U.S. Open and saw very little macro-blocking. The problem with it was that it wasn't very sharp - not even close to what I've seen on good HD tennis coverage.

I don't believe the macro-blocking problems are usually the result of a poor transfer. They are very predictable in that they will nearly always show up on fast motion or low lighting/contrast, particularly on reds and oranges. Classic over-compression that has been present on Dish's SD channels for years now.

 

[Van]

Why should we be wondering why the PQ has deteriorated or hoping that it is temporary?

If Dish is experimenting in an effort to improve the PQ, why haven't they put out an announcement along with an apology and a thank you for our patience and loyalty?

Easy Answer to that one, Dish Network is an Limited Liability Corporation and even that aside they wont apologize to you or any other customer for these issues unless the birds stop transmitting all HD content and people start cancelling in mass numbers. If you have been around the industry long enough you will remember that long ago in a far distant galaxy Charlie Ergen went the mile and then some to be the better company but those times are long gone now that Dick Network has become a corporation.

As subscribers, we pay out a lot of money for HD service and deserve to know what they are doing. Did it ever dawn on them that they may actually lose subscribers because of this? To pretend that nothing is even happening is not the way to retain customers!

Again another simple answer, you dont have a right to know everything that they are doing because some things are protected trade secrets, thats why you can only know the list of ingredients in the coke recipe but you cant know the quantity of each and the total process used in making the product. Each business also has a margin for churn so the loss of customers to a certain level is expected wether it be for legitmate reasons or for phantom or Bullsh!t. Pretending that nothing is happening is what all businesses do just like goverment does and they wont admit that something is going on until long after it has stopped and the possibility of them facing any legal ramifications has passed.

Right now, if a quality product became available (sadly, Voom comes to mind), I would not hesitate to pay a premium to switch...

You can thank the idiot that took over Voom for its demise though I would never consider it a quality product given that so much of the HD content on there was c grade saturday afternoon filler. Two things that I want to see with HD and television in general, (1) stop showing crap that no one watches, its such a pain in the ass to flip through channels only to find old show reruns that nobody watches except for alzhiemer patients, I am so damned tired of filler programming thats being put in. (2) Get rid of infomercials and for gods sake do not put them in HD because I dont want to pay for it when the time comes that I not only get an HD set but decide to pay for HD service. Lump in home shopping channels with infomercials as well, if these go HD then the world is going to hell, hopefully al acarte programming will go to channel by channel in the next 5 - 7 years.

 

[VinceT3]

I've been watching alot of HD today and did notice the sound issue and some pixelation.. nothing worse than adelphia, but it could be related to the weather.. normally I don't see any pixelation even on my 62" 1080p

 

[LASooner]

Forgive my ignorance but was either the Adam's Family or Twister originaly recorded in HD? The reason I ask is because I know that any film thats recorded in HD will always blow away any film that wasnt but has been upconverted to HD.

A film is not upconverted, it's resolution is actually reduced to be put on HD. Film resolution surpasses 720p or 1080i, but it's clarity and quality are dependent on how it was mastered to HD. In fact a lot of HD programming is being shot on 16mm film stock and converted to HD.

I think as Mpeg 4 is used more, it will give the channels more wiggle room to improve the quality of the channels, but they really need to switch all programming to it, not just HD.

 

[BlackHitachi]

I wonder how much of this is due to the size of your screen? Yes, I ONLY have a 34" CRT HDTV, and thus the pixels on my screen are much smaller than those on a 50" behemoth. But seriously, I do not encounter that much of the frustrating PQ issues.

I used to complain all the time with the PQ on my older SD tv, that lacked digital comb filters, 3:2 pulldown, and all of the technological improvements of recent years.

BUT sadly, I am sure that on a larger set, I'd probably encounter much of the same frustration.

AND I did not get HD until March, so it is possible I don't know what I am missing.

I do understand what you are saying but also notice it on my son's 32 inch LCD. Not as bad as on the other TVs but still there.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I do understand what you are saying but also notice it on my son's 32 inch LCD. Not as bad as on the other TVs but still there.

How about a CRT vs. LCD? (I obviously am just making a hypothesis here, as I do not have a LCD screen to compare with on a regular basis; but even from looking at tv's in Circuit City, it was the PQ of the SONY CRT that pushed me to purchase the big behemoth of a tv that I got instead of a flat screen for just a few hundred more.)

 

[RobR7]

No doubt having the best HD display certainly helps... the 34" XBR CRTs are some of the best (I'd argue my XBR960 is THE best... but I'll get a lot of flack) the better the display the less chance it'll be introducing its own issues. The smaller screen size also helps in not revealing a lot of the pixelation, though probably not the macro blocking. I do see some macroblocking but only in certain content. I'm quite pleased with the PQ with the Voom channels which adds creadence to the arguement of the quality of the sources or in the broadcast.

Having said that, I'm a recent switcher from D* and I was hoping the picture would be significantly better and it isn't (when comparing same HD channels - Voom certainly is) but having more HD is at least making general TV viewing enjoyable again since the state of SD is so bad. I think we have to be patient with the transition and I don't believe its going to get worse... I'm betting they've done the numbers and have sized for the near term deployment. MPEG4 is their only solution long term but I have no idea how they'll compete with Fios besides price, its just not mathematically possible for them.

For now I'm happy with the switch and not being tied down to a contract...

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Actually the better quality HDTV set you have, the more noticable it will be if there is any down-rezzing or bandwidth compression. Sure a great set won't introduce its own shortcomings, but to a good eye, those should be distinguishable from the compression/resolution issues.

The lesser a TV, the more it will smooth over any artifacts.

Certainly on a smaller screen the shortcomings will be less obvious.

The Sony 34" XBRs have a horizontal resolution of 1400 lines, which is very good. The 9" CRT-RP sets can do around 1600 but they are disappearing. Of course the 1920x1080 LCD sets have 1920 lines. I always loved the picture on the XBR960, gave it some serious thought but decided I had to have something with a bigger image. Even my 47" is really too small.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Actually the better quality HDTV set you have, the more noticable it will be if there is any down-rezzing or bandwidth compression. Sure a great set won't introduce its own shortcomings, but to a good eye, those should be distinguishable from the compression/resolution issues.

The lesser a TV, the more it will smooth over any artifacts.

Certainly on a smaller screen the shortcomings will be less obvious.

The Sony 34" XBRs have a horizontal resolution of 1400 lines, which is very good. The 9" CRT-RP sets can do around 1600 but they are disappearing. Of course the 1920x1080 LCD sets have 1920 lines. I always loved the picture on the XBR960, gave it some serious thought but decided I had to have something with a bigger image. Even my 47" is really too small.

I wanted the XBR960 but couldn't get it. But I love the XBR970 I have, and 34" is more than enough for me - particualrly since I was coming from a 27" first generation WEGA without digital comb filters or 3:2 pulldown; you should have seen the pixelization and macro-blocking on that puppy! I figure this tv should be good for me for several years; although I recognize that its most likely my last CRT. Sadly, they seem to be a dying breed.

(which is why my three PCs are holdouts (one 19" SONY Trinitron, one 17" Trinitron; and one 17" Viewsonic CRTs).

 

[Tom Bombadil]

High-end CRT is indeed a dying breed. But it sure had a long life cycle.

Between the price, the physical size and weight, and the screen size limitations, it really doesn't have a chance against some of the TV technologies now in development. There are already 42" LCD panels with full 1920x1080 pixels, selling at $1800. In five years the sets are going to be much better than these LCD panels and at much lower prices. I can't see how CRTs are going to have any market at all, especially if prices on 15" LCDs drop down to the $100 range.

The CRT's successor could be sets based on SED. Very promising, but it will take a while for the prices to come down.
http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/sed_tvs.htm

 

[riffjim4069]

The CRT's successor could be sets based on SED. Very promising, but it will take a while for the prices to come down.
http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/sed_tvs.htm

Well, my four year old Mits Diamond CRT still works perfectly, and the SED that I had planned to purchase this fall to replace it (I made these plans two years ago) is still vaporware.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

High-end CRT is indeed a dying breed. But it sure had a long life cycle.

Between the price, the physical size and weight, and the screen size limitations, it really doesn't have a chance against some of the TV technologies now in development. There are already 42" LCD panels with full 1920x1080 pixels, selling at $1800. In five years the sets are going to be much better than these LCD panels and at much lower prices. I can't see how CRTs are going to have any market at all, especially if prices on 15" LCDs drop down to the $100 range.

The CRT's successor could be sets based on SED. Very promising, but it will take a while for the prices to come down.
http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/sed_tvs.htm

I agree. My hope is that when the time comes for me to move to a huge flat panel, the technology will have improved dramatically. In the meantime, I'll enjoy my CRT and its great PQ. And heck, I want to use this SONY for several years - Its too dang heavy to carry upstairs to the bedroom as a second set!