What difference do you think you would see...Blu-ray quality? You wouldn't. 1080p is not going to enhance already compressed and lower (sometimes) bit rate signals. Even 1080p PPV won't match up to Blu Ray for those reasons.
Is my dish network broadcasting 1080p?
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BTW you have hit the way it used to be done by accident. They used to put Vaseline on a neutral density lens filter. They also used gauze over the lens to for a similar effect.
Sorry but it isn't going to do what you have convinced yourself that it does. The picture info just isn't there to make it look that much better. It just changes the scan output of the device.
YES!!! "UPCONVERTING" from 1080i to 1080P is impossible. It's the same resolution. It's just taking and interlaced image and progressively scanning it at 60hz. It's like if you had a flip book, and put one identical page after each picture. You're not getting a better flip book, you're just getting a flip book with duplicate pictures. Read about interlaced in the previous Tylenol inducing post. My PS3 broadcasts in 1080p but I don't believe when I'm watching HuluPlus its magically 1080p.
I honestly have to think it's the placebo effect. A source sent at 720P is 720P. Upconverting can't add the missing info to make it 1080P. If it could, you could take a 480P signal and make it 1080p, you can't. Heck, if you could why not just broadcast in 480P or 720P and forget broadcasting in 1080, just use an upconverter.
If you upconvert 720p and 480P signals you are adding lines of resolution to fill the screen. The added lines are really filler and don't make the picture as clear as a full 1080P signal. Another way of saying that is it makes the picture a little softer.
The interesting part of this upconversion conversation is when I watch a regular DVD on my Samsung Bluray Player, I have my resolution setting on Automatic.My HDTV's screen information capabilities tells me the picture I am viewing is 1920x1080p.When I viewed the same picture with my older Insignia Bluray Player with the resolution settings on Automatic my HDTV's picture information tells me I am only watching a 1920x1080i picture,so it would seem the newer Bluray Players are better at upconverting the picture quality than the older ones.At the least they are good enough to make my HDTV's picture information capabilities think the picture on the screen is 1920x1080p.
Two things at play. There is a picture quality improvement (or can be) when watching an SD DVD on a newer blue-ray player. Different things at play than upconverting. But you do know it's not 1080P quality, right?
Second, it all depends how the information on the setting of the blue-ray player is sent to the TV. You are making the mistake that the TV is reporting what it is actually receiving. So take OTA straight from the antenna and OTA from the Dish receiver for instance. Take an ABC station, OTA the TV should report 720P. That same OTA station using the Dish receiver will report whatever you have the receiver set at. If at 1080I the TV says it's getting a 1080I signal, it isn't it's getting a 720P signal, but the receiver is reporting what it is set to, not what the signal is. Using a Roku does the same thing. Set it to 1080P and the TV will report every channel is in 1080P, clearly they are not.
Second, it all depends how the information on the setting of the blue-ray player is sent to the TV. You are making the mistake that the TV is reporting what it is actually receiving. So take OTA straight from the antenna and OTA from the Dish receiver for instance. Take an ABC station, OTA the TV should report 720P. That same OTA station using the Dish receiver will report whatever you have the receiver set at. If at 1080I the TV says it's getting a 1080I signal, it isn't it's getting a 720P signal, but the receiver is reporting what it is set to, not what the signal is. Using a Roku does the same thing. Set it to 1080P and the TV will report every channel is in 1080P, clearly they are not.
So if my HDTV tells me the picture I see on the screen is 1920x1080p in my HDTV's on screen display, I should not believe it?.
That question has been answered AND EXPLAINED several times here.So if my HDTV tells me the picture I see on the screen is 1920x1080p in my HDTV's on screen display, I should not believe it?.
Correct, it does not always mean it is 1080P. There is next to no programs/channels online that are 1080P, yet as I said if you set a Roku to 1080P, even the worst crappy low resolution channel will show as being 1080P on the TV info. If you give it some thought, an SD DVD is not all of a sudden 1080P just because the player is set to that. If that were the case why bother making 1080P blue-ray discs. Don't mix up a DVD looking better on a newer blu-ray player, it can. My new LG TV makes SD look better, than my older flat screen does, but that is something different than upconverting.
I have a Dish VIP922 and have pretty much the complete package of movie channels. My TV is the Pioneer Elite Kuro Pro-151FD 60" monitor. I've been a Dish customer for more than 10 years. This is an interesting topic and have often wondered about it myself. I cannot state with any certainty that the Dish signal that is sent via satellite to my Dish is 720p but I very strongly suspect that it is. For those of you that believe that there is little noticable picture difference between 720p and 1080i resolution setting I can offer some input. If you have a source capable of sending an uncompressed 1080i signal vs a 720p signal to a TV monitor that is capable of resolving either of those signals in native mode, then the 1080i signal will look markedly superior to the minds eye in terms of clarity, detail resolution, motion and dimension. This then raises the question; is it better to set my TV resolution on the dish receiver at 720p or 1080i, given that the evidence is strong that the native signal is indeed 720p?
I believe I understand what is going on in the dish receiver / set top box itself. First you have the decompression engine, then the scaling and output function, which on the older models, say, VIP722 for example was done on two seperate chips. As I understand it, the newer models, including the VIP922 and Hopper combine those functions onto one chip. I am convinced that for all but PPV the programming is broadcast by dish at 720p. If your TV is capable of resolving 1080i signals, and given the dish allows you to select 1080i as the output (due to internal scaling of the 720p signal) I would still suggest that you carefully observe the performance of your dish programming picture with the dish resolution set to 720p. In many cases, you may find suble but important improvement in picture by selecting 720p. By using the internal scaler on the VIPxx or Hopper as opposed to the scaler on my TV i find that rather than an improvement, there is a additional noise overall and false edge contouring which diminishes the quality of the picture. For instance, watching the Yankees Vs Tigers on TBS, the 720p picture looks more still and noise free. It looks slightly clearer, indicating that this is the native resolution of the signal. Even a t 720p the picture looks good. I am confident though that it would look much better if the broadcast signal was a true 1080i and I could watch it at this resolution.
Also, i will admit that having owned the VIP722 in the past and since having upgraded to the VIP922, I much preferred the picture of the 722. I won't go into that further though because that way lies madness.
So bottom line, yeah I do believe all but PPV (maybe) or perhaps some select programming such as on the Blockbuster channel is broadcast decompressed 720p then scaled at the set top box. I also will note that the Dish picture has diminished somewhat over the past several years, where I think that Dish several years ago did in fact broadcast at true 1080i especially for the VOOM channels which were glorious in HD. The Dish picture is simply not as good as it was in the days of VOOM IMO.
I believe I understand what is going on in the dish receiver / set top box itself. First you have the decompression engine, then the scaling and output function, which on the older models, say, VIP722 for example was done on two seperate chips. As I understand it, the newer models, including the VIP922 and Hopper combine those functions onto one chip. I am convinced that for all but PPV the programming is broadcast by dish at 720p. If your TV is capable of resolving 1080i signals, and given the dish allows you to select 1080i as the output (due to internal scaling of the 720p signal) I would still suggest that you carefully observe the performance of your dish programming picture with the dish resolution set to 720p. In many cases, you may find suble but important improvement in picture by selecting 720p. By using the internal scaler on the VIPxx or Hopper as opposed to the scaler on my TV i find that rather than an improvement, there is a additional noise overall and false edge contouring which diminishes the quality of the picture. For instance, watching the Yankees Vs Tigers on TBS, the 720p picture looks more still and noise free. It looks slightly clearer, indicating that this is the native resolution of the signal. Even a t 720p the picture looks good. I am confident though that it would look much better if the broadcast signal was a true 1080i and I could watch it at this resolution.
Also, i will admit that having owned the VIP722 in the past and since having upgraded to the VIP922, I much preferred the picture of the 722. I won't go into that further though because that way lies madness.
So bottom line, yeah I do believe all but PPV (maybe) or perhaps some select programming such as on the Blockbuster channel is broadcast decompressed 720p then scaled at the set top box. I also will note that the Dish picture has diminished somewhat over the past several years, where I think that Dish several years ago did in fact broadcast at true 1080i especially for the VOOM channels which were glorious in HD. The Dish picture is simply not as good as it was in the days of VOOM IMO.
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I don't agree 1080I is going to necessarily show any real improvement over 720P. In fact some videophiles will say 720P looks just as good or in some instances better.
http://lifehacker.com/5908969/why-you-should-watch-and-record-video-in-720p-instead-of-1080i
Not only is 1080I not necessarily going to look better than 720P, even 1080P may not. That's because at the distance most are going to be watching TV the human eye can not see the difference.
inches diagonal = 55
So you would need to be watching a 55" TV at about 7 feet to see an improvement from 720P to 1080P. Note I am not saying 1080P is not a better picture, it is better, but to appreciate it most will not be sitting close enough. Therefore, no way will 1080I look better.
Add to that, LCD and Plasma are Progressive, so 720P will be native.
It's possible if you are sitting close enough, a still picture could appear to look better in 1080I over 720P. It is true 1080I does fool the mind into seeing more frames than are there. But with movement, and at distances people will most likely be watching, 720P has the more benefit over 1080I.
http://lifehacker.com/5908969/why-you-should-watch-and-record-video-in-720p-instead-of-1080i
Not only is 1080I not necessarily going to look better than 720P, even 1080P may not. That's because at the distance most are going to be watching TV the human eye can not see the difference.
inches diagonal = 55
- For 480p (720×480) resolution, you must sit: 16
feet or closer for full benefit - For 720p (1280×720) resolution, you must sit:11
feet or closer for full benefit - For 1080p (1920×1080) resolution, you must sit:7
feet or closer for full benefit
So you would need to be watching a 55" TV at about 7 feet to see an improvement from 720P to 1080P. Note I am not saying 1080P is not a better picture, it is better, but to appreciate it most will not be sitting close enough. Therefore, no way will 1080I look better.
Add to that, LCD and Plasma are Progressive, so 720P will be native.
It's possible if you are sitting close enough, a still picture could appear to look better in 1080I over 720P. It is true 1080I does fool the mind into seeing more frames than are there. But with movement, and at distances people will most likely be watching, 720P has the more benefit over 1080I.
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Going back to the original question, I would agree that the DISH signal is over-compressed and losses quality. This statement is based on the fact that the same program viewed via OTA antenna and DISH look very different. The DISH picture looks good until you switch to the OTA signal. You really notice the difference when you switch back to DISH. Just for the record, we have a 720p TV.
It isn't the same for everyone. If you look at other threads very many see so little difference that it's really no difference between OTA and Sat. That can be because some OTA signals are also not full resolution. I recently saw a slight improvement in the local CBS channel, before I realized they dropped one of the sub channels. I don't know, but could also be a difference between the EA and WA, and, the receiver. Recently several people reported when they first starting using the Hoppa they felt the picture was better looking, nothing they had expected or was that a feature being touted by Dish, which to me lends some credence to it. (Wasn't in their mind before even watching)
At my house off the EA there is virtually no difference most of the time. But even that is not 100%, on a very few occasions there can be a little more difference, with OTA being slightly better. I also have the WA, but not with a TV large enough or good enough to see any difference at all.
On paper OTA should look better, but in practice not always.
At my house off the EA there is virtually no difference most of the time. But even that is not 100%, on a very few occasions there can be a little more difference, with OTA being slightly better. I also have the WA, but not with a TV large enough or good enough to see any difference at all.
On paper OTA should look better, but in practice not always.
I remember reading a well-written article about 6 months ago about how 720p is superior to 1080i. Ad that point, I changed my Dish setting from 1080i to 720p on my receiver hooked up to my Sony 55" LCD TV. Honestly, I'm not sure I can tell the difference. If it is there, it is very slight to me. Does anyone else set their Dish receiver to 720p when they have a large TV capable of 1080i/p?
edit: Actually, it may not have been an article--I think it was this video: http://www.petapixel.com/2012/05/09/hd-video-explained-why-720p-is-better-than-1080i/
edit: Actually, it may not have been an article--I think it was this video: http://www.petapixel.com/2012/05/09/hd-video-explained-why-720p-is-better-than-1080i/
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David Taylor said:
I don't think it makes a huge difference. Our TVs are all 1080p. I set our hoppers and joeys to 1080i. The reason I do this is because the majority of HD channels are broadcast in 1080i. Fox and ABC/Disney owned channels are 720p but almost everything else is 1080i.
In my opinion you want the fewest amount of conversions possible because I think each conversion adds to the likelihood of a degraded picture. If a channel is broadcast in 1080i and I have my Dish receiver set to 720p it has to to convert it to to 1080i before sending it to my TV. Then my TV has to convert that signal to 1080p before displaying it. If I set my Hopper to 1080i the Dish box doesn't have to convert a 1080i signal before sending it to my tv. My tv still has to convert it to 1080p but 1 conversion is better than 2. Of course, the opposite is true for 720p native channels but like I said the majority of HD channels are 1080i.
This is why I wish Dish would give us the option of native pass through like my old Directv receiver did. It probably wouldn't make a huge visible difference but I do think it would make some. It would keep the receiver from making any conversions so all channels, whether they are 720p or 1080i, would only have to be converted once.
The question is, where can we get an accurate answer with respect to the native broadcast signal resolution (not the upconverting done at the box), whether it is 1080i or 720p. As I said in the post above I have been a dish customer for more than ten years and still am. I also set up Direct TV for my Father and Mother in Law. I was at my parents house last night to watch the game and noticed that several of the channels look more resolved and clearer.
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