The phrase "proper video encoding" on the Internet is used 99.9% of the time to refer to further compression of anime and pirate DVD, TV, Blu-Ray and HD-TV material, often in a two-pass method.
Satellite and Cable use real time encoding . This is done quite differently from what is called "encoding" on the Internet.
When I referred to "proper video encoding," it was quite clear that I was referring to the use of lower bitrates for less filtered (less compressible) video and the use of higher bitrates for more filtered video (more compressible, if filtered intelligently). Dish seems to have the bitrate allocations backwards for the two general types of filtering they apply to SD channels on WA. I can't see how you made the leap from that topic to online video piracy.
Based on your comments, it seems that your definition of real-time encoding excludes the possibility of any multi-pass encoding. You almost seem to believe that multi-pass encoding in general can only be used for illegal activities, which is just silly since it is probably used to prepare everything from movie trailers online to streaming Netflix content to video downloads via iTunes. For a real time (or near real time) system, the video duration over which an analysis pass could be done would have to be limited to at most a few seconds in order to push all of the video through on a short delay close to real time, but multi-pass encoding could definitely be done. Their current system appears to only offer a channel in a mux more bits after increased activity has been detected rather than when the activity begins, and short-duration multi-pass encoding would help to reduce artifacts in those cases. In general, anything that can help further to dynamically prevent compression artifacts and not overspend bits on low-detail/low-activity scenes reduces the need to apply aggressive filtering to the input/source material in order to meet an average bit rate target (over an extended period of time). This can result in overall improved PQ, which would be very nice.
It seems that you chose to overlook the matter of how ugly the video becomes when Dish overuses edge enhancement. The resulting video has noise added, edges distorted, and details blurred together or shifted. When video has just been softened, as Dish does for many channels on 110W, it is reasonable for end users to adjust the sharpening on their TV to partially compensate for this effect in they want to. However, when excessive edge enhancement is applied, as it is for many channels on 119W, the end user can't reasonably fix the broken picture. The filtering has messed up the picture to a point that no TV adjustment, no improvement in encoding, and no increase in resolution or bitrate can improve the PQ.
I don't have and don't need the specific "professional" experience you seem to think I need in order for me to make educated comments and express opinions on the subject being discussed here. Nothing I've seen or heard so far has demonstrated that Dish is actually giving SD PQ much consideration, and evidence has been given in this and other threads to demonstrate that they definitely aren't giving SD PQ much consideration. I understand that Dish's resources are finite and that only so much can be done given bandwidth constraints and limitations of MPEG-2 video compression, but there are definitely some things that could be done to improve on the current situation that don't involve huge expenses such as launching more satellites, swapping out all receivers, or even replacing encoders. If they would drop the edge enhancement on the channels they're applying it to then that would shut me up quite a bit, but that doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.
Best case - Dish HD channel in par with DVD quality or if you want - to mediocre EDTV.
