Poor quality of HBO On Demand

[blackjackmark]

What does the Streaming Quality indicator say? (Hit the right-arrow button to see the info screen.) My Game of Throne downloads have generally been about three bars out of four, and look OK but not great. My latest download of Newsroom, was only one bar, and looked it. I haven't been able to find any documentation on what determines the quality, and my retailer, DishNet Direct, hasn't answered my query.

My issue is with episodes that are downloaded and are not streaming. It's stored on the HDD since it already downloaded into the Rentals folder. If it was streaming, I could understand the dropouts due to data loss during transmission.

If I start a streaming video I see the Mbps displayed on the info screen, (I tried every arrow button on the remote during playback and the info screen only displayed the Mbps, nothing about a "streaming quality indicator?) but that info is not shown when viewing an already "rented" episode.

 

[lucky86]

To see the streaming speed, you need to look at the Watch Now/Watch Later screen. Before you make a selection, it will display the streaming speed.

 

[athek]

My issue is with episodes that are downloaded and are not streaming. It's stored on the HDD since it already downloaded into the Rentals folder. If it was streaming, I could understand the dropouts due to data loss during transmission.

If I start a streaming video I see the Mbps displayed on the info screen, (I tried every arrow button on the remote during playback and the info screen only displayed the Mbps, nothing about a "streaming quality indicator?) but that info is not shown when viewing an already "rented" episode.

I have that exact same issue. Dish needs to put the roku inside the hooper and be done with it. No need to reinvent the wheel on this issue.

 

[blackjackmark]

To see the streaming speed, you need to look at the Watch Now/Watch Later screen. Before you make a selection, it will display the streaming speed.

Ok thanks for that. But streaming speed should be irrelevant for the quality of a "watch later" episode, which is why I started this thread. I understand that low bandwidth would and does impact a "watch now" episode. But if I choose "watch later" and have low bandwidth and/or periods of low bandwidth, it should just take longer to complete the download. When playing back, it should have created a pristine copy of the episode. That is rarely the case in my experience, as neary every episode that I've done through "watch later" has freezes and/or pixelization, as if I was streaming live. Evidently Dish simply stores a live stream onto the HDD, and has no error correction to account for those low bandwidth periods, which is regretful.

 

[blackjackmark]

That, or an XBOX360!LOL

 

[wjp1969]

I've seen the same issues with HBO on Demand (Rome and Deadwood so far). May have missed this reading through the thread but has anyone confirmed that the audio / video dropouts occur at the same point in the recording when re-watching? Does it happen on both the Hopper and the Joey? I hadn't thought to check but will do it today. If the dropouts show up at different points during playback then the issue is not the downloaded file but with hardware decoding of the stream.

 

[SonicsZombie]

It's when you download the title to your box. Most operators have QA gate so if there's macroblocking or audio drops, they'll contact the programmer to re-deliver.