HD Picture Quality: Dish vs Directv
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Ive had both, and seen both again recently. For HD, I give (still) directv the nod. You could be happy with either, but side by side, D* has better PQ on most HD channels for my eyes. For SD, its close, with maybe Dish inching ahead. Thats just me.
Your best HD picture you will get with an OTA(Over The Air) antenna.
Even that will vary depending on how many sub channels the station sends out. My "local" cbs OTA is not as good as my "local" cbs through D*. Difference is sub channels.
no there is tons on C-Band but its all scrambled
If you can't get it then that means there is none.
I just switched from DTV to Dish a little over a month ago and I feel that the DISH HD looks better than the DTV. More importantly, Dish HD looks 10 times better than DTV SD which is all I used to get on some of my favorite channels such as BBC America.
The real question for me is not whether one HD is subtly better than the other. The important question is which system gives you HD on the channels that matter to you. For my family that was Dish.
The real question for me is not whether one HD is subtly better than the other. The important question is which system gives you HD on the channels that matter to you. For my family that was Dish.
There is no HD on 4DTV anymore
Actually PBS Net on W3 is ITC and still HD with the HDD 200. Others can pop open when ITC too.
That's just getting crazy. I said it before and say it again. Suck the consumer in, destroy the quality where they think that that is the norm, and rake in the gold. Isn't that what they did with SD? History repeating itself. They may as well call it wide screen SD if even SD quality. Most consumers have no clue to how good a SD master can look. If they saw it they would think it was HD.
I agree D* has the HD picture quality edge over E* at this time...We will se what happens when they finally start adding HD and additional 3D channels (If 3d ever becomes mainstream) At some point quantity will become more important than quality
I wonder if any professional entities, like Consumer Reports, Home Theater Magazine, Sound & Vision Magazine, CNET etc, have ever used measuring equipment to actually compare things like lines of resolution, compression etc so that a definitive answer to this question could be answered. They would need to compare the same broadcast at the same time and compare numbers from "D", "E", "OTA", and whatever local cable broadcast were available in the test area. Now that would be an interesting article.
The downres is just a form of compression. You are trading the resolution for artifacts. If you bit starve a picture it does not do any good to show full resolution, it will only look good on a still scene.
The problem with DBS is that it varies moment to moment. How good a channel looks depends on what the other channels on the TP are doing at the same time. They dynamically change the bit rate moment to moment depending on what is available on the TP. If they did their test on channel X and the other channels on the TPs where showing talking heads at the time, channel X would look great. If they did the test a few minutes later and all the other channels were showing action scenes the picture would look much worse. You would need the same channels in the mux on both DBS companies at the same time to see if there was difference in hardware.
Given how limited the market is for real time compressed muxed HD signals for a TP, it is very likely both Dish and DIRECTV are using pretty much the same hardware. It is just a matter as to how well the companies have mixed and matched the various channels they carry in HD to get a good balance for each TP. Plus what tuning variable they have decided to use during compression (like if Dish lowers the res up front on some channels to kick off the compression).
Those of us with the Hauppauge box only read 1920x1080i from Dish as the Dish receivers do not output in native resolution, for an example I'm watching a Space walk from dish, it shows as 1920 x 1080i, if the Hauppauge was being fed by my Directv box it would be 480i ... those with the R5000 mod should be able tell us what is coming from the Satellite....
I agree with you on this. I complain about Dish's fees, and it might be a hair cheaper for me to go with DirecTV, however, I like the HD line-up that Dish gives me. Specifically for channels like BBC America and AMC and I find myself watching Epix and IndiePlex and RetroPlex alot. I am also a fan of Dish equipment.
+1
That's the same reason I recently switched from DirecTV to Dish. I loved my D* DVR's and MRV, but Dish's DVR's are just as good, if not better, and the HD content difference is huge (not just a couple of channels, but about 30). Hopefully Dish will have MRV similar to D* soon.
To my eyes on my 60" screen, I can barely tell any difference. I couldn't compare D* and Dish side-by-side, but I can compare Dish with OTA (which should be better than D* anyway) and see very little difference. If I record HDNet's test pattern, I can still see the finest detail, just as I could with D*.
When I switched, I felt I was taking a huge gamble after reading so much about HD-lite. But I was pleasantly surprised to see practically the same HD PQ as D* and even better SD (eastern arc). So now I get tons more HD than I had before, and many of the SD channels are actually watchable. I couldn't bear to watch any SD on D*.
That's the same reason I recently switched from DirecTV to Dish. I loved my D* DVR's and MRV, but Dish's DVR's are just as good, if not better, and the HD content difference is huge (not just a couple of channels, but about 30). Hopefully Dish will have MRV similar to D* soon.
To my eyes on my 60" screen, I can barely tell any difference. I couldn't compare D* and Dish side-by-side, but I can compare Dish with OTA (which should be better than D* anyway) and see very little difference. If I record HDNet's test pattern, I can still see the finest detail, just as I could with D*.
When I switched, I felt I was taking a huge gamble after reading so much about HD-lite. But I was pleasantly surprised to see practically the same HD PQ as D* and even better SD (eastern arc). So now I get tons more HD than I had before, and many of the SD channels are actually watchable. I couldn't bear to watch any SD on D*.
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