Warning: Giant post ahead. Mods, please split if necessary.
ehren: I absolutely agree that both DIRECTV and Dish do unnecessary damage to the picture quality on SD channels. Identical MPEG-2 content with comparable bitrates from other sources looks like DVD quality.
I'm sure the reason you gave has become part of their motivation behind intentional quality reduction. It can't be their only motivation however because it can be proven that some channels consistently have a worse picture than other channels, regardless of the current bitrate, and many of the worst-quality channels have no HD-equivalent to upgrade to. Side-by-side comparisons show that on Dish, the Encore channels are much worse than the Starz channels even though those originate from the same source and generally have bitrates (from Dish) within 10-15% of one another. This is backwards in terms of your theory since HD-equivalents of the already decent-quality Starz channels are available, but only the main Encore channel has an HD version.
It is believed by some that all of this quality-reduction is necessary due to bandwidth constraints. Numerous methods of pre-filtering exist that are quite effective at improving compressibility of video, so there is some truth behind this idea. In the early days of the sat providers running out of bandwidth, there probably weren't much higher-quality MPEG-2 encoders available than when the services first launched, so they probably invested in lots of real-time pre-filtering equipment instead. The pre-filtering equipment, like the MPEG-2 encoders, was probably not of the highest quality either though. It blurs the video (on DIRECTV and Dish Network) and distorts the video (at least on Dish Network), and the amount of filtering now being used is completely overkill. After a few years of use, it must have become clear that the filtering equipment was not meeting their needs properly, which should have resulted in better equipment for filtering and/or encoding. Upgrades to the MPEG-2 SD-related equipment should have been done periodically as significantly more advanced equipment became available, not entirely unlike the switch from MPEG-2 to H.264 for HD channels since MPEG-2 HD channels have very high bandwidth requirements in order to retain quality. If such upgrades were done, they most definitely weren't done properly.
Good pre-filtering methods are supposed to make minimal visible changes that maximize compressibility without lots of blocking and other artifacts. Bad or grossly overused methods reduce DVD-quality source material to sub-VHS quality without making any appreciable improvement to compressibility. The latter seems to be the case for the sat providers in the US because SD picture quality steadily declines over time as more national, local, international, and HD channels are added. Spot beams and new birds help to add lots more channels, but that added capacity is promptly gobbled up by new channels, which leaves the previously existing channels in the same cramped quarters as before. At least on Dish, the pre-filtering is now being done in such a poor manner that I have often found pixelation to be worse on channels that have more visible pre-filtering than on those with much less visible pre-filtering, all bitrates being approximately equal, and all content compared being from the same sources.
All of this leads me to believe that some or all of the following things are happening with SD channels on Dish and DIRECTV:
- Some or all of the original, low-quality (by today's standards) MPEG-2 encoders are still in-use, requiring the use of at least some form of highly aggressive/destructive pre-filtering method.
- Some or all of the original, low-quality pre-filtering equipment/software is still in-use, causing the picture quality to be terrible even if the MPEG-2 encoders have been upgraded. Older filters are probably less configurable and efficient than newer ones are, so as long as they are in-use, the amount of damage they do to picture quality may be difficult or impossible to control.
- The older MPEG-2 encoders and/or the pre-filtering devices may have been replaced, but are also of poor quality (cheap) or have been configured improperly to maximize picture quality given known bandwidth constraints.
- Pre-filter configurations are static and are supposed to try to minimize pixelation in the event of significant, temporary bandwidth drops (due to increased bandwidth requirements from another channel in the same mux). Such dramatic spikes seldom occur, so the excess filtering causes video quality to suffer horribly the large majority of the time as a precaution against an unlikely scenario. Additionally, this unlikely scenario is supposed to be prevented already by the load balancing system that controls the bitrates for each channel in a mux at any given time. More bits are supposed to be allocated to the channel with the most complex picture data in the mux at any given moment, with the number of available bits scaled based on the number of channels in the mux, the priority of a given channel relative to all others in the mux, and a maximum allowed bitrate.
- They get some kind of discount from the programming providers because the content, once degraded, can't possibly be worth full price. This may sound far-fetched, but consider the quality-degrading copy-protection schemes that are supposed to become more common in the future, and then it doesn't seem so crazy. Such a discount would be considered substantial enough to degrade the video in order to get it, but not so substantial as to pass any savings onto the customers, and instead allow the prices for exactly the same packages of channels, with few or no channel additions, and with more commercials than ever before, to have risen by 70-80% in the past 10 years.
- They just don't have a clue what they are doing, they believe the picture quality is actually good (as they enjoy claiming, occasionally even in courtrooms) and ultimately don't care because they are so delusional that they don't
really believe the population is slowly but steadily upgrading to high-definition TVs with digital inputs that allow the bad SD picture quality that had been masked by NTSC CRTs for so many years to finally show through.
I have other theories, but this seems like more than enough for the moment. Basically, if any of that stuff really is true and the US sat providers have no plans to do anything about it, they can look forward to being buried alive by the likes of FiOS and U-Verse. Once the FTTH TV services are more widespread, and DOCSIS 3.0 becomes dominant for cable to lessen constraints on their bandwidth, DIRECTV and Dish are going to have one hell of a time trying to actively compete if they refuse to improve the quality of their service. It has been reported (maybe by Scott?) in another thread that the H.264 SD on Dish is WORSE than the MPEG-2 SD, so that's a pretty clear indication that Dish's current priorities lie solely in investing in cheap, low-grade systems for handling video compression rather than planning for the future. When used well at the bitrates Dish is currently using for SD (~1000-1500kbps), H.264 makes it easier than ever to make SD video look great with far fewer bits than MPEG-2. With the new Eastern Arc's SD looking nasty and their general inability to satisfy their customers lately, it is no wonder that Dish is losing rather than gaining. They can use the economy as a scapegoat all they like, but the reality is that due to the economic shifts, people are MORE likely to engage in stay-at-home activities like watching TV, not less, because it is more affordable overall. They're simply in the wrong business to be playing a blame game in which anyone or anything is allowed be a contestant except for themselves.
