Not happy with StarzHD quality

[rockymtnhigh]

UniversalHD generally hangs around anywhere from 6mbs to 12mbps. They have a VERY good encoder (most other stations at that bitrate and at full 1920x1080 would look even worse), but the bitrate is a bit too low for even that encoder to make things look good. From what I've seen, the majority of the time UHD looks pretty good, but if there's a decent amount of action or the 'wrong' type of grain in a film... forget about it.

I asked this in a different thread, but no one answered... how do you figure out that a channel's bitrate? Or the resolution they are running at? Do you output the receiver to a PC and then determine what the bitrate is based on how much space is taken to record to a hard drive?

Just something I have wanted to better understand!

 

[Mark Strube]

Take a look at my signature... I have the R5000-HD add-on which lets me rip HD channels to my PC. Once it's there, there's many many programs to choose from which will report the bitrate.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Thanks!

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Yep, the final 3 minutes or so of Army of Darkness is very fast action under moderate lighting levels. The resultant PQ was sub-VHS tape. And I'm not exaggerating. The only frames that were crisp were those where the motion stopped.

I wish I had a way to capture some of the frames and upload them. I have them recorded, I could try to use a digital camera to capture them but I've never attempted to photograph a TV screen.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

After thinking about this overnight, I must say that this really burns my butt.

All of these years of putting up with the over-compression crap from E*'s SD channels. Looking forward to watching great HD finally.

Now on several (most) HD channels, they can't handle fast motion or low contrast. Just like the SD channels don't.

And it is getting worse month by month. The HD was very good last summer. Now it sucks. And we all know that E* and D* are going to squeeze it even more, to get more channels per transponder. In a couple of years it won't even be HD-lite, it will be HD-crap.

 

[ChetK]

Just deal with it?

Just learn to live with HD crap?

Yep.

I learned a long time ago not to stress out over things I can't control. If you don't like it, you could always cancel. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are out now. Guess what. They're not perfect either.

You can e-mail them or cancel your service. The second option will only get their attention if many people do it. Those of us who are picture quality freaks are in the minority. So basically, what I'm saying is, you're screwed if you want things perfect because there is absolutely, positively NOTHING you can do about it.

It's not like they're sitting around thinking of ways to make the picture quality worse. The engineers are trying to make things look better with the bandwidth that they have available to them. I can however guarantee that they are sitting around thinking of ways to make more money. If adding HD channels and compressing the heck out of them make them more money, then they'll do it (just look at everybody coming over to E* because of the number of HD channels they have.)

So, although it burns your butt, E* is laughing all the way to the bank. Oh, I should also warn you. It's probably not going to get any better. In fact, it's likely to get worse.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Yep.
(snip)...

So, although it burns your butt, E* is laughing all the way to the bank. Oh, I should also warn you. It's probably not going to get any better. In fact, it's likely to get worse.

Well that is just depressing, even if it is true, which I agree that it probably will - at least until the day comes when many of the SD channels just go away (but I am not holding my breath on that either!). But we can dream of the day when everything is in HD, all the time.

I guess I am glad that I only have a 34" HDTV; in that I am guessing the bigger the screen, the more you notice these compression artifacts. On my Sony XBR, the picture is pretty good the vast majority of the time. In fact, compared with the old first generation Sony Wega 27" that I had until April, the vast majority of the compression issues and pixelization on basically anything with a dark background is 99.5% gone on even the SD channels (what life was like without a digital comb filter on the only tv in the house!).

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Take a look at my signature... I have the R5000-HD add-on which lets me rip HD channels to my PC. Once it's there, there's many many programs to choose from which will report the bitrate.

I just checked out the site for the R5000-HD; looks great, but geez, that thing is expensive! I think my wife would kill me if I were to do that.

And I am guessing you could only do it if you owned - and did not lease - the 622. At least now I understand it better. Thanks again.

 

[retorq]

You can do it on a lease . . . you might have to answer some questions when you return it for service or when the lease it up.

 

[Mark Strube]

Tom... Just for the record, Dish's feed of UHD is the same feed that everyone with Cable gets... they just use a very good encoder with a bitrate that's a bit too low even for that. So, in this case, it's not Dish's fault. However, I have a feeling if this was an 18mbps channel, Dish would be lowering the bitrate.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

So UHD sucks everywhere?

This is not a good trend for anyone. Although I know the cable companies don't want a channel that uses a lot of bandwidth as they are more strapped than E* and D*.

 

[Dan Rapp]

I should have done my homework by checking here first because I was all set to enjoy StarzHD when I ordered the 622. I feel like I went out of my way only to end up with what looks like the "up-rezzed (maybe) movies straight from VHS" channel. If this is their idea of the future of HD it is truly sickening and only hope that as more people get bigger screens and compare the pq of dish and HD-DVD they'll make their unhappiness known.

I've emailed dish with my complaint for what that's worth, and from what I read here that's not much.

Dan

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Some of the Starz HD movies are up-converted SD. Fewer than a year ago, but it still happens.

My gripe is with both upconverted and that the "HD" versions are overly-compressed, to the point that fast motion and low contrast scenes are significantly degraded.

 

[Dan Rapp]

Terminator 2: Judgment Day was presumably in HD. As you say, Tom, fast motion created noticeable blur and contouring, facial textures lacked detail and looked compressed, much as an older LCD display might look. RUSH, though, looked quite good, perhaps better than I'd ever seen it with my 942.

Fortunately HBO/SHO-HD looked better but I began to suspect if they, too, were a little worse than I what I've seen with the 942, that I kept. I'll have to do some A-B'ing with those two channels. That could have solely been observer bias after the negative perceptions with StarzHD.

My recommendation to anyone thinking to upgrade from the 942 to the 622 at this moment solely for StarzHD is to think twice.

Dan

 

[ChetK]

Notice that Dish Network's latest press release states, "DISH Network(TM) Expands High Definition Programming Lineup to 30 Channels and not "DISH Network(TM) Expands High Definition Programming to the Highest Quality Available". Anyone wanna guess why?

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Yep, got to agree about it not being worth an upgrade to get Starz HD. I've already put it on my list of "casual viewing" channels, along with TNT HD. You have to accept that the PQ will be average at best and not get your expectations up. And the more action or low-light scenes, the worse the PQ. It should be fine for well-lit, talking heads movies.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Tonight's "Die Hard with a Vengeance" must be a SD upconvert. The PQ is terrible. Facial detail is almost nonexistent, with lots of contouring.

 

[dfergie]

Not listed in Seans StarzHD thread as HD...

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I wonder why a SD upconvert, given the bandwidth that the HD channels get, have far worse PQ than a DVD. You'd think it would be very close.

 

[ChetK]

I watched Casino last night on Universal HD last night and it looked pretty darn good. I know it's not StarzHD, but isn't Universal HD an HD-Lite mpeg-4 channel?