Question on TNT-HD quality

[haertig]

Is TNT-HD really what Dish advertises as HD? I tried to watch Jurassic Park last night, but gave up and figured I'd just watch it later, with better PQ on my old VHS tape.

I believe the movie was originally shot in 1.85:1, which is just about the aspect ratio of my 16:9 display. But the people were all short and fat, like TNT started out with a chopped pan-n-scan version of the movie and then stretched that out to widescreen! Beside messing up the aspect ratio, the PQ was just terrible. VHS tape quality ... hardly the advertised HD.

And something on Dish's 722 DVR that I have, I tried the "format" button to correct the aspect ratio. They have several options to stretch and zoom an already stretched image out to silly proportions, but I found one setting - "gray bars" - that sounded promising. It did put up the vertical pillars I was expecting (why did they pick gray instead of black?) But these pillars did nothing to adjust the aspect ratio. All's they did was cover up the left and right sides of the image. So the people were still short and fat, you just couldn't see as many of them because the sides of the image were masked off. What's with that?!

I will admit, my HD locals through Dish look just about as good as my HD locals OTA. But Dish is not asking us to pay $20/month to get those ($6 "enabling fee" only). I expected Dish to transmit HD stuff on the channels they advertise as HD. Not necessarily 24x7, but at least primetime movies. Isn't that what we're paying for? If the fact is TNT just doesn't put this stuff out in HD, obviously Dish can't broadcast it that way, but Dish shouldn't advertise it as HD in that case.

I haven't had Dish HD long enough to check out all the other HD channels. I sure hope this is isolated to just TNT, and it's not what they consider the norm for HD programming.

 

[NightRyder]

What you see on TNT-HD is what is delivered to Dish and every other carrier. Dish does not determine what the channels broadcasts, the aspect ratio, or whether the provider chooses to call it HD. This is the source providers idea of an HD channel, it is what it is and I'm afraid we're going to see a lot more of it before things get better.

NightRyder

 

[n0qcu]

Welcome to TNT Stretch-O-Vision. Yes unfortunatly TNT upconverts and streches alot of what they show. If they wouldn't stretch I would not mind it so much. Usually when I want to watch something shown on TNT if I see it's stretched, I'll change to the SD channel rather than watch the stretched BS.

 

[haertig]

I can't complain too much, because this HD is free for me for the first six months. However, I certainly can't see paying for it after that. We'll see what other channels look like and how things might change over time.

I agree, TNT-SD looks better than TNT-HD. I wonder what target audience TNT is shooting for broadcasting like this? I don't need them to stretch out the picture for me. I'm perfectly capable of distorting the thing myself using my TV controls, if that's what I wanted to do. Unfortunately I can't find a way to un-distort it after they're stretched it out.

Now I'm starting to understand some of the threads I've browsed where people are talking about how many HD channels DirectTV carries vs. Dish vs. Comcast. Whatever number any of them claim is totally bogus, if they're counting stuff like TNT-HD!

Luckily, I really only care about the locals anyway. Everything else is just icing on the cake. I won't pay for that icing if it tastes rancid however.

 

[haertig]

Come to think of it, I *do* think I know the target audience TNT must be shooting for. Tonight my father-in-law came over and sat down to watch the baseball game (SD, 4:3, on TBS) on my new HDTV. He pointed out that he didn't think I had an HD set, because the people weren't short and fat like on his son's set. I told him that I could misadjust my set too, and proceded to cycle through the aspect ratio options with the remote. He said "There you go!" when we cycled to an option with some short, fat baseball players on it. Sigh.

I guess many people must like this Stretch-o-Vision, judging by all the options my set has to do that. I've got "wide", "stretch", "stretch plus", and who knows what other options that I haven't bothered to look at. Father-in-laws buy TVs and satellite programming too, so that might be where the demand comes from.

 

[zenithtv]

TNT-SD looks better than TNT-HD Get your glasses check!

 

[n0qcu]

TNT-SD looks better than TNT-HD Get your glasses check!

An undistorted (unstretched) SD picture is 1000 times better than a distorted picture of ANY resolution.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I caught a bit of that Jurassic Park movie too. The PQ was very poor, definitely worse than my DVD of that movie. I don't know why TNT would broadcast a sub-DVD quality airing of a movie on their HD channel.

If they had taken a copy of the Superbit DVD of this movie, played it through a sub-$200 Oppo DVD player and upconverted it to 1080i, it would have had vastly improved PQ.

 

[dfergie]

Bad Upconvert... 6 months ago TNT had better Bitrates than most of the Dishnetwork Channels...

 

[Wrangler3]

Does anybody have an e-mail address for TNT? The stretching is terrible!

 

[sprintcarcrazy]

I have sent email and others too, it seems to do no good !! But give it a try.. tnt@turner.com

 

[Ronald_Jeremy]

They won't even reply. I have sent them several.