Quality improved on Dish?

[Guest]

Has Dish pumped more bandwidth into their signal lately? On many channels, things seem a little sharper w/ better colors.

Coincidentally, I changed inputs on my tv recently. Is it just me or has dish actually restored quality lately?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Dish Network (as well as DirecTV) are ALWAYS working to improve the quality of their service.

I know they are always using new encodes and encoding software to give the best picture possible.

 

[Sean Mota]

Has Dish pumped more bandwidth into their signal lately? On many channels, things seem a little sharper w/ better colors.

Coincidentally, I changed inputs on my tv recently. Is it just me or has dish actually restored quality lately?

What type of TV and how big screen you have? I have a 60" LCD rear projection and SD channels are very crappy on E*. Locals are even more crappy. Change to HD channels and then I am in heaven :!:

 

[BobMurdoch]

Many of the HD monitors are lacking in their SD quality, ESPECIALLY on a large 60" Rear Projection picture.

I'm salivating that with the 921 I will FINALLY able to feed my Sony some HD content that hasn't come out of my XBox.....

 

[Stargazer]

They always have new compression schemes from time to time that allows them to compress more channels onto a transponder without sacrificing picture quality. If they have a new compression scheme without compressing additional channels onto a transponder the result is better picture quality.

 

[ScottChez]

I was watching a USA Network movie.

Wow it was almost like HDTV quality.

Could this be the new Enhanced USA Network channgle in action? Maybe a test?

The movie was in Wide Screen. It was not Dolby 5.1 though.

 

[baloo75]

My TV Mits 55613 has a built in OTA tuner which I use for networks in my area. I have to say that when I compare the OTA Digital channels (SD) to the Dish local channels...well there really is no comparison. The OTA channels are in a different league. Of course OTA HD is a huge step above this yet.

Now when I think the local networks are doing the same as dish is, basically taking a network feed, MPEG2 compressing and transmitting it I have to say that I am NOT a happy dish subscriber when it comes to IQ, in fact I would go as far as to say I am extremely unhappy. BTW my networks on Dish are some of my best stations IQ-wise that Dish has to offer.

The first provider, whether it be satellite or cable to give me decent quality that is even almost close to the OTA IQ I would jump to them in a second. For now I really don't have much choice unfortunately, Dish, DirectTV and Comcast (my local cable provider) all SUCK! :evil:

 

[Sean Mota]

My TV Mits 55613 has a built in OTA tuner which I use for networks in my area. I have to say that when I compare the OTA Digital channels (SD) to the Dish local channels...well there really is no comparison. The OTA channels are in a different league. Of course OTA HD is a huge step above this yet.

Now when I think the local networks are doing the same as dish is, basically taking a network feed, MPEG2 compressing and transmitting it I have to say that I am NOT a happy dish subscriber when it comes to IQ, in fact I would go as far as to say I am extremely unhappy. BTW my networks on Dish are some of my best stations IQ-wise that Dish has to offer.

The first provider, whether it be satellite or cable to give me decent quality that is even almost close to the OTA IQ I would jump to them in a second. For now I really don't have much choice unfortunately, Dish, DirectTV and Comcast (my local cable provider) all SUCK! :evil:

I completely agree with you. My 6000 OTA turner when I use it to get the Digital Local channels there is no comparison to the same channels that dish transmits. The SD digital OTA channels look excellent! the same cannot be said about E* locals. Compression is not good and makes you :x

 

[Guest]

Cable companies have far more bandwidth to play with, I don't quite understand why they would compress the feed, but then again, they get their feed from satellite, which is already compressed.

 

[orcatek]

HMM - Most channels look pretty good on my 61. Of course I did have to get the set adjusted.

HD looks awesome, but SD is pretty darn good. There are a few channels that sometimes get the jaggies from compression, but still better than non-digital OTA and cable.

 

[Stargazer]

I do not think you can get enhanced definition on SD tv's but have to have HD tv's to get the enhanced definition.

 

[baloo75]

HMM - Most channels look pretty good on my 61. Of course I did have to get the set adjusted.

HD looks awesome, but SD is pretty darn good. There are a few channels that sometimes get the jaggies from compression, but still better than non-digital OTA and cable.

The picture doesn't look bad if you don't have anything to compare it against. I agree compared to analog OTA Dish does look better, however compared to digital OTA SD channels there really is no comparison. Digital OTA SD channels look at least as good as DVD quality where in my opinion Dish doesn't come close to this. I can definitely see compression artifacts in the Dish signal whereas on digital OTA signals there isn't any. Dish looks very good as long as there is no movement in the picture. For instance watch a show that normally has closeups of something, the closeups look very good, then when they pan out you can see obvious blurring around edges because of the compression.

I don't get cable...they have the bandwidth why can't they find a way to get source material from the broadcaster instead of through a 3rd party like Dish or DirectTv. Their picture could be so much better. If only cable knew what they are capable of satellite companies sure wouldn't be as popular as they are today. Satellite companies have obvious bandwidth issues but they also have to find a way to compete with cable companies when they finally get their act together.

Soon hi-res (HD) TVs will take over (growth is already exponential), there isn't enough HD material to keep everyone happy so these people with these nice digital TVs will be watching SD at least part of the time. It would seem to me that both satellite and cable have to get their act together IQ wise to make the mass market happy, and soon.

 

[rcbridge]

I have a 43" Hitachi RPTV, with Dishnetwork I on occasion notice some channels look very good, I stop and stare at it (to enjoy the detail), the quality seems like it is as good as it was about 5years ago.
(less compression)
and others look very bad.
The quality of the same channel at different times varies.

 

[John Smith]

I like to see a good picture and to me the Dish signal in most cases is quite acceptable on a normal 32 inch screen, some channels are better than others but am sure most of this comes from garbage in, garbage out syndrome.

I really think it is unfair to say the picture quality sucks, its got to be a compromise to squeeze so many channels into the very limited frequency spectrum. My argument for the merger was that we should not have two systems plundering a very finite and valuable natural resource for the sake of an ideal.

Quite honestly when 525 line NTSC was devised nobody ever dreamt of 60 inch screens or for that matter 32 inch screens, it is a tribute to technology that we get things as good as we do on oversize screens through a very limited capacity pipe!

 

[xgrep]

I've noticed that the PQ on TV5 (and the audio, by the way) has always been mediocre. I don't know whether it's the TV5 feed or whether E* and TV5 have negotiated low-bit-rate carriage, but it's noticeably worse than almost all other channels.

Now, I watch TV5 for the content, not the PQ (obviously), but it has made me wonder a bit about some of the technical aspects of DBS. Do some providers send pre-encoded MPEG-2 content to E*? That could explain some of the poor PQ. It would also explain why TV5's PQ is identical on Comcast and E* (I even compared them side-by-side once, and they had identical artifacts).

On the other hand, I suspect that some providers may deliver their signal to E* over a C-band analog link, because their video has telltale C-band style noise on an otherwise very good signal (occasional "tics" visible as white flecks). No doubt there are other ways of getting the signal there, too.

Anyone have a pointer to more info on this?

Thanks a lot.

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