SD channels - more a case of "garbage in" ??

[kstuart]

I was watching a talking heads news channel show today on an SD channel, and they had the usual thing where 3 guys were commenting from 3 different locations (presumably patched in via satellite feed).

The pictures of two of the guys had a lot of the sort of defects that we find in SD channels. But, one of the guys was actually in the same building as the show, and that guy looked really good with very few of those usual picture defects.

The previous night, I watched two different travel shows on HD-Net. One ("Rick Steves' Europe") looked incredible - the cliched situation of "like looking through a clean window". The other ("Smart Travels") just did not look as good - even though it was obviously HD.

These two events - especially the relatively good SD image of the third talking head - leads me to think that "garbage in" might be responsible for people's impression "Dish Network's SD PQ is getting worse".

Perhaps the actual situation is that engineers at the actual channels no longer pay much attention to their SD channels, because they are focused on the HD versions, and also they think that only people who don't care about PQ are watching SD channels these days.

 

[Jim5506]

The degraded SD picture on most SD TV's is not that noticable.

It is however, VERY noticable on an HDTV.

I have never noticed much PQ difference in the two travel shows. I record and watch both all the time.

 

[Need]

For the news program, I found that if the reporter is reporting a sudden event (like an accident or something), the quality of the video is usually bad. If it was a planned event like on location of a speech, the quality of the video is usually good.

As for the 2 travel shows, are you sure you saw them both on HDNet? I know Smart Travel is shown on multiple HD channels. I remember seeing Smart Travel on Equator HD and thought it doesn't look as good as the same show on my local PBS HD OTA channel.

 

[Jim5506]

Often the local instant feeds may even be via internet video, which is noticable poorer quality even when watched on SD TV.

 

[bigblock468]

The previous night, I watched two different travel shows on HD-Net. One ("Rick Steves' Europe") looked incredible - the cliched situation of "like looking through a clean window". The other ("Smart Travels") just did not look as good - even though it was obviously HD.

I also watch these 2 shows quite frequently and haven't noticed a big difference in their PQ. I'm going to assume neither show was recorded in HD or 16x9 so how does HDNet get such good PQ ?

 

[Jim5506]

Smart Travels was done for PBS in HD, I'm not sure about Rick Steves, but both are definitely"HD".