Showtime Package ordered, promptly cancelled

[Kandiru]

Hi, i decided to diversify my viewing experience as i only get the Dish HD Pak and Voom currently.

So i went for Showtime, after i first called and tried to haggle for ShowtimeHD only without success. I got excited as the Flix and Sundance i loved on cable will be back.

Alas i discovered the ugly reality of Dish SD. For some reason the ShoHD channel was also airing an SD movie. The other 9 channels reminded me of Atari games, horrendous PQ. I cannot believe the xxxxty lousy images.

Needless to say i was not going to pay extra for poop so i quickly cancelled. Thx God that i still kept my basic cable. In fact it looks better through the TVs tuner than it did trough the SA 3250 decoder.

Sorry, also extending my condoleances to the poor souls who have to put up with the Dish SD programming. Now i see why so many of you guys out in the boonies (Boone county WV is where they shot Deliverance) have both Dish and DirecTV on your poles. I had DTV SD years ago and liked it.

 

[Juan]

How big was your tv and what model/make is it

 

[teachsac]

My SD looks fine through my 942, 411, and 501 on a Fujitsu projector, Toshiba LCD, and a very old Mitsubishi respectively. Granted the SD on my 811 wasn't that great but was still better than my neighbor's cable.

 

[Kandiru]

The HD, even HD Lite on my Sanyo PLV-Z3 720p native feeding off a Panamax Max 5510 hooked via HDMI-DVI with 110" Carada Brilliant White Screen looks stunning. I can see the pores on the players faces on ESPNHD (720p hehe) and the 1080i channels look awesome thanks to the PJs built-in internal scaler which is of good quality, making the use of a DVDO or Lumagen redundant.

The NASA channel, and CCTV (Commie China) look half decent, but the Showtimes didnt.

Who knows, maibe it is the 811. In any case i know how SD cable looks and to me and my family it looks a lot better than Dish SD.

 

[T2k]

It's your unit. SD, particularly after HD, looks ugly but not this much and usually looks way better than cable here (TWCNYC).:exclamati

 

[kb7oeb]

I think you are missing out, sure the sd sucks but all the sd on dish sucks. SHOHD is usually HD but just like TNT it mirrors the sd channel and if there is no hd version they upconvert sd, the only difference is they don't stretch it like TNT does.

They just finished showing Sleeper Cell and I thought it was some of the best original programing they have ever done. Weeds,Barber Shop,Huff are some others that are good. Penn and Tellers Bullsh!t show is also great, not HD but its good enough to watch anyway. They will be running Sleeper Cell from the beginning in January if you want to give it another shot.

Then again I don't have hbo and showtime for the movies, I have it for the original programing, if movies are what you want then HBO is probably a better choice (not by that much though).

Edit: I do agree with the original post about the bad sd quality, I had chance to watch a digital cable sd version of encore on an hd set similar to mine and while not good I though the picture was much better than dish sd on my set. Dish SD on my hd set reminds me of streaming internet video, if I want to watch something only available in sd I watch it on my smaller sd set.

 

[jerryez]

My SD looks fine on my 65" Toshiba HD set. It must be your TV.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

SD was better from Direct for several years, say from 2000 to 2004. But over the past year, SD image quality is a bit better on Dish than from Direct. Not just my observation but also backed by several others who have compared them. So if someone doesn't like what they see from Dish, Direct is no safe haven.

SD quality from Dish is mediocre. From time to time, channel to channel, hour to hour, it can be good. There have been times when I've searched the EPG to find four showings of the same movie. Let's say it is on Encore, so it is broadcast on Encore-E at 7PM on Friday, Encore-W at 10PM, and then it comes on again on Wed morning on both channels. When I've had the recording capacity on my DVR, I've recorded the movie all four times. Then I watch the first minute to find which one has the best image quality.

I've seen pretty significant differences when I've done this. Sometimes the quality is surprisingly good. At other times, it is unwatchable.

Oh, and if you do watch SD on a HDTV set, the quality is MUCH better if you watch it in 4:3 with black or gray bars on the side. Zooming and/or stretching SD, when it isn't that good to be begin with, can make it much worse.

 

[rocksahead]

Sorry, also extending my condoleances to the poor souls who have to put up with the Dish SD programming. Now i see why so many of you guys out in the boonies (Boone county WV is where they shot Deliverance) have both Dish and DirecTV on your poles. I had DTV SD years ago and liked it.

Ah, years ago is not now. D* SD currently is far worse than E*.

Rocks

 

[weati]

I just wanted to agree with the guy who says that dish sd sucks. I watch it on a Mitsubishi 65" and the picture quality is pretty horrid. The quality does look like streaming video from the internet. If Direct is worse than Echo, I feel bad for the Direct people. Tried watching the Triangle on Scifi and Scifi looks like Realplayer.

 

[kb7oeb]

My SD looks fine on my 65" Toshiba HD set. It must be your TV.

I really doubt that, it might be the 811 does a poor job upconverting but SD on the tv built in tuner looks much better than dish sd.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

By "SD on the tv built in tuner" do you mean OTA channels from an antenna connected to your TV, or do you mean cable channels?

 

[kb7oeb]

Digital OTA. I've always though SD was bad on dish, even on my sd box on my sd set. I constantly notice the compression artifacts. I get the 148 version of Showtime and rarely notice artifacts. I used to occasionally on the 110 version and that is the reason I set up the 148 dish.

In any case, the Showtime SD channels look about the same as the other dish sd channels. I was trying to point out the HD version looks good when HD content is on. I consider the SD HBO/Sho channels a bonus and don't subscribe to any other sd channels.

 

[wvcowboysfan]

Sorry, also extending my condoleances to the poor souls who have to put up with the Dish SD programming. Now i see why so many of you guys out in the boonies (Boone county WV is where they shot Deliverance) have both Dish and DirecTV on your poles. I had DTV SD years ago and liked it.

Perhaps you were kidding, but Deliverance was shot in GA, not WV.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I constantly see E* SD compression artifacts when sitting 9' from my 32" analog TV. To my eyes, they are numerous and obvious. So it was no surprise when they were all that much more obvious on my 47" HDTV.

They aren't as bad if you watch in 4:3 mode. Stretching and/or zooming only makes it worse.

Not surprising that they are worse than an OTA digital channel. There should be substantially less compression via OTA.

 

[AndyOI]

Dish SD looked very strong on our 27" SD set, and SLIGHTLY worse yet still very clear on our 32" SD set. Now with a 42" plasma the SD looks pretty blurry. Some channels aren't bad at all, yet some are horrendous. SD OTA looks fine to me, never any problems. And needless to say any true HD content from Dish looks amazing. Even when OTA stations are actually showing HD it doesn't compare to Dish's (Especially ESPN)

 

[kb7oeb]

Your set is probably 720p so abc and fox should look as good as espn. The others are 1080i and some sets drop it to 540p and then bring it back up to 720p. The end result on those sets is less resolution than native 720p channels.

Some people just don't see the artifacts, I tried to show a friend on his set and he just couldn't see it. An easy way is to look in the background of a scene. An ordinary wall will look like it has similarly colored blocks dancing around on it. The other time is during fast motion the movement will turn into a bunch of blocks. The worst channels are dish locals.

I think I read somewhere that dish runs the SD channels at 480x480i where digital ota sd is 704x480i

 

[Kandiru]

I think i nailed this sucker.

The 811 was the problem. The 942 off ebay does a better job, still laggy compared to cable SD. But hey i kept basic expanded cable and now have the best of two worlds.

But the "being spoiled by HD" factor is so true, that is why i dont even run cable to the basement home theater PJ system.

Thank you all for your input.

 

[Tampa8]

Kandiru,
First thank-you for be honest and reporting you did find out it was more the receiver than anything else. A friend of my Wife's got Dish after we had told her how much we liked it. After the install she was unhappy with the SD picture on her 42" TV. I have a 45" and have been very happy overall with the picture. We went to her house and sure enough alot of pixalization. She also had an 811.
We took my 508 to her house, and WOW what a difference. So yes, the receiver can make a big difference.