How Dish's 1080p is going to work...

Thank you very much for posting that chart, PSmith. It puts numbers to the reality. You still get the number of personal recording time advertised, I think it was 30Hrs on the 622 and 55 hours on the 722.

If this is the case, I say you should have no real gripe about Dish using 22% - 35% of the hard drive space inside your DVR to bring you VOD service. But if it really bothers you, think of it in this way. The 622 has only 30 hours of MP2 HD recording time, not 250Gb hard drive. The 722 has only 55 Hours of recording time, not 500Gb hard drive. Then if MP4 you'll get more recording time than that. Now if you are telling me you only have, say 18 hours of recording time now on MP2 and before VOD you had the full 30 you were told you'd have then I will agree with your "principle" Fair enough, Walt? I really need a slam dunk case to take the principle side that Dish sold me on a DVR with recording time promise and then took it away. They didn't sell me the DVR on the basis of me having access to 250Gb of data storage for my own choice. I got promised 30 hours of HD recording time, that's it. Heck, I think its even higher now with MP4. So I'm getting more than promised. PLUS, I paid a one time dev fee to have external hard drive and they only promised support for 750Gb. I have two 1TB drives now. Can't complain at all.
 
Well and true but you can't blame Dish. Blame the studios, blame the movie industry, mostly blame your Congressman or Senator :mad:, they are the ones forcing DRM down ours and the providers throats.
Really? Well Dish (and every other provider) knew well enough this was coming, how it would effect consumers and basically did nothing.

Considering the stinks Dish has raised in the past (supposedly on behalf of consumers) regarding pending legislation? Where was it this time? It wasn't there because although the DMA hurts consumers, it has and will continue to help the providers. For example (and those that can't add 2+2), think about who gets a cut each time you have to R-E-R-E-N-T the same movie instead of just watching if off your HDD.
 
Rented the 1080p I am legend movie this weekend looked great on my hdtv in 1080p but no sound at all through the hdmi......chatted with tech and they are having problems with that software download for the vip622dvr series. Hooked up my optical cord and sound worked. Had some problems after stopping the movie and going to live tv....it would cause my unit to reset each time I tried that....anybody else having problems that are similar?
 
Would of been great to do a spreadsheet

In hindsite.. as its always 20 20...:) all the issues put in a spreadsheet with TV model, 1080p/24 supported, test pass/fail and a couple of other items would of been great for this topic. Maybe Scott could of fed this up the chain to Dish so they can really see whats going on. I just hope they at least read the threads and just aren't declaring 1080p a done deal.
 
Given the quality of the 1080p24 downloads, I'm not so sure that I'll even bother getting a BluRay player. I generally watch movies one time and that's it. With around 80 DVDs that sit in a nice cabinet collecting dust, I may skip the whole BD player system.
Couple of things to consider...

  1. While the video quality on this movie has been said to be comparable between Dish and BD (ignoring that Dish has changed the aspect ratio), I don't think that will be true on every movie. This particular movie on Blu-ray only has peak encoded bitrates of just over 20Mbit/sec (using VC-1), which isn't much higher than the average bitrate of about 15Mbit/sec provided by Dish, and the pictures could indeed be comparable if the Dish AVC encoding was done with more aggressive compression. Many other Blu-ray movies have peak bitrates approaching 40Mbit/sec, which Dish will almost certainly be unable to match. Bottom line, even if video quality appears comparable on this movie, it almost certainly won't be on every movie.
  2. Dish only offers 5.1 Dolby Digital, whereas most Blu-ray movies offer lossless 5.1 or 7.1 audio (either PCM, TrueHD, or DTS-HD MA). If you don't have the ear or the equipment to hear the difference then it may not matter, but there is no question that there is a significant difference in audio quality when using equipment which supports it.
  3. Blu-ray releases generally have significant bonus content. If bonus content is never of interest to you, ignore this point.
  4. Based on DVR storage areas, it would appear Dish will only be able to offer a couple of 1080p choices at any given time. Compare this to the nearly 1000 (and rapidly growing) selection of movies available on Blu-ray from Netflix, Blockbuster, or other sources.
  5. At $6.99/release with a 24-hour viewing window, you're both paying a lot for the convenience of watching one of the few available movies and giving up a lot of flexibility in splitting your viewing over more than a 24-hour period, especially relative to the cost of Netflix or similar services.
I'm all for Dish improving the quality of their VOD offerings, but advertising it as "Blu-ray quality" is both incorrect and misleading.

In one of the other online forums, I posed the question that if this 1080p24 download of Dish has changed their mind about buying a BD system. Most the response blasted Dish and said that it couldn't possibly be as good. In my opinion, its as good or better and given that I don't have to worry about buying additional hardware and all the glitches that BD players are having, it somewhat a no brainer for me. I can enjoy the movie and not be stressing about the movie freezing or the player locking up.
Blu-ray playback glitches are primarily related to early player and title releases and are rarely seen now. Additionally, most reports here indicate dropouts during I Am Legend playback, so it's clearly not a seamless playback experience for most.

- Talk
 
talkstr8t said:
Couple of things to consider...
You forgot #6 - BluRay is OAR, which some people prefer. This also brings up another point about compression (disclaimer: this only applies to 2.35:1 movies):

1080p BluRay discs with 2.35:1 aspect ratio require very little data to encode the black bars, almost 0. So the effective BluRay image is really only about 1920x820. If the Dish VOD version is really 1080p Pan+Scan, then it should be 1920x1080, which means more data to encode, and therefore lower quality at the same given bitrate. On top of that, it sounds like the Dish bitrate is lower as well, adding an even bigger gap between it and BluRay quality.

Another option, although I think this is less likely, is that instead of Pan+Scan, Dish simply takes the BluRay format and crops the sides off. So it takes the 1920x820 OAR image, and chops off the sides down to around 1460x820. Thus, they get a smaller image, but might still call it 1080p because it was taken from a 1080p source. In OAR on BluRay, its still called 1080p even though part of that is just black bars. I think this isn't likely, but its just a thought that crossed my mind.
 
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Well, I tried the test on 501 and my set didn't pass. It is a 1080p 60" Sony but it isn't 24fps compatible which may be the glitch. I will also have to check and see if I have the 622 hooked up via HDMI or component, although I think they both pass 1080p.

Did they ever get the 622 to pass 5.1 over HDMI on HD because when I got it, it only send a stereo audio sig though the HDM spigot.

My set does a great 1080p with the bluray player!!


:confused:
 
Couple of things to consider...

  1. While the video quality on this movie has been said to be comparable between Dish and BD (ignoring that Dish has changed the aspect ratio), I don't think that will be true on every movie. This particular movie on Blu-ray only has peak encoded bitrates of just over 20Mbit/sec (using VC-1), which isn't much higher than the average bitrate of about 15Mbit/sec provided by Dish, and the pictures could indeed be comparable if the Dish AVC encoding was done with more aggressive compression. Many other Blu-ray movies have peak bitrates approaching 40Mbit/sec, which Dish will almost certainly be unable to match. Bottom line, even if video quality appears comparable on this movie, it almost certainly won't be on every movie.
  2. Dish only offers 5.1 Dolby Digital, whereas most Blu-ray movies offer lossless 5.1 or 7.1 audio (either PCM, TrueHD, or DTS-HD MA). If you don't have the ear or the equipment to hear the difference then it may not matter, but there is no question that there is a significant difference in audio quality when using equipment which supports it.
  3. Blu-ray releases generally have significant bonus content. If bonus content is never of interest to you, ignore this point.
  4. Based on DVR storage areas, it would appear Dish will only be able to offer a couple of 1080p choices at any given time. Compare this to the nearly 1000 (and rapidly growing) selection of movies available on Blu-ray from Netflix, Blockbuster, or other sources.
  5. At $6.99/release with a 24-hour viewing window, you're both paying a lot for the convenience of watching one of the few available movies and giving up a lot of flexibility in splitting your viewing over more than a 24-hour period, especially relative to the cost of Netflix or similar services.
I'm all for Dish improving the quality of their VOD offerings, but advertising it as "Blu-ray quality" is both incorrect and misleading.

Blu-ray playback glitches are primarily related to early player and title releases and are rarely seen now. Additionally, most reports here indicate dropouts during I Am Legend playback, so it's clearly not a seamless playback experience for most.

- Talk
Well said. :up

Really when you get right down to it, even if Dish could / would consistently match the quality of BD (which they won't, why should they, they've already got a track record of NOT doing that with HD), $7 for 24hrs is just plain ridiculous and IMO will never bring in enough $$ to justify the space it's taking up.

Think about it. You've paid $7 to watch a 1080p PPV a couple days ago. It was a good movie and a couple members of your family didn't get to see it or you all want to see it again. It's still sitting on YOUR HDD, taking up valuable space, in fact it will probably still be sitting there a month from now (if E's history with regular PPVs is any indication) but you'd have to pay another $7 for the privilege of watching it again. This is a movie you could have from Netflix for half that price and watch as many times as you want and keep until you got sick of it.

I'm sure the "E" shareholders are going to love the results of this grand marketing scheme.
 
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Well, I tried the test on 501 and my set didn't pass. It is a 1080p 60" Sony but it isn't 24fps compatible which may be the glitch. I will also have to check and see if I have the 622 hooked up via HDMI or component, although I think they both pass 1080p.

Did they ever get the 622 to pass 5.1 over HDMI on HD because when I got it, it only send a stereo audio sig though the HDM spigot.

My set does a great 1080p with the bluray player!!


:confused:
Yes, I just switched the audio input last night. The 622 now passes the 5.1 over the HDMI cable. I agree with other posters, that it indeed sounds better than the 5.1 on HBO etc., and more similar (but not equal to!) the lossless PCM, Dolby tru-HD on BluRay. I also had several glitches in the playback.

Steve
 
BDA Releases statement in response to satellite 1080p

It looks like the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is not too happy with the satellite companies saying that their 1080p is equivalent:

www [dot] strategyanalytics [dot] com/blogs/322/

One quote from that blog:
"the Blu-ray Disc Association is exploring these claims further and will take appropriate action, as necessary, to prevent consumers seeking the ultimate in high-definition home entertainment from being misled."

(Sorry for the funny link, it wouldn't let me post a URL)
 
I never got the damn 1080p offering in my channel guide, so I guess I will never see what you guys are talking about,.,,
Are there others out there that got the L612, but I AM Legend in 1080p never showed in their guide?
 
It looks like the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is not too happy with the satellite companies saying that their 1080p is equivalent:

www [dot] strategyanalytics [dot] com/blogs/322/

One quote from that blog:
"the Blu-ray Disc Association is exploring these claims further and will take appropriate action, as necessary, to prevent consumers seeking the ultimate in high-definition home entertainment from being misled."

(Sorry for the funny link, it wouldn't let me post a URL)
Blu-Ray claiming to want to make sure consumers aren't misled. That's the funniest thing I've heard today.
 

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