Very poor picture

[CupcakeKid]

I've been a DishNetwork customer for many years. I have never been happy with the picture. I started out with a 501 and just recently upgraded to a 522 and added a 311. I installed the original dish and pointed it myself.

The picture is OK until movement occurs. Anything that moves becomes slightly grainy until movement stops. Some channels are better than others. My thought is that the mp4 decoding does not have enough data bandwidth to make a moving picture look good. But that's just a guess. On the day of the 522 install I tuned to a baseball game and couldn't make out the outfielders when they were chasing the ball.

The reason this is an issue today is that the Dish tech came out and install the 522. He checked the pointing of the dish and said it was perfect. Then he hooked up the 522. I immediately noticed a poor picture. He said it was do to my HDTV not being able to handle the analogue signal well. This I don't believe. I can tune to an OTA channel that is analogue and the picture is much better than the Dish picture. No grainy pictures with movement. Plus I had the issue way before I purchased an HDTV.

Originally I had complained to everyone at Dish that I could. They just didn't seem to care. Upon the new installation of the 522 the tech told me that he was going to discuss my issue with his supervisor but he never got back to me.

I may have some type of grounding issue because I recall that when I grounded the RG-6 through the grounding block that came with the equipment the picture was even worse. So I diconnected it. My home is older and I don't have the 3 prong recpticals for the 110v.

There's more to the story but this is the nutshell version.

So, I guess my question is: Should there be a break down of the picture when movement occurs? Should the picture be better than a SD OTA picture?

I would really appreciate some help.

Thank you

 

[HIFI]

with a 522 on a hdtv you will have that,because of sd equip trying to feed hd equip!what you need is to upgrade to an hd receiver!

 

[HIFI]

also the 522 is an mpeg2 receiver!

 

[CupcakeKid]

I connected a SD analogue TV to the 522 and have the same issue. Plus the original TV was analogue and it had the same problem. And, why don't I have this issue with SD OTA on the HDTV?

 

[TheKrell]

Are you saying that the 501 still looks great, while the 522 and 311 on the same TV do not?

Are you using the best possible output on all receivers (svideo)?

And, why don't I have this issue with SD OTA on the HDTV?

Dish SD channels (when they aren't experimenting) are a non-standard 544X480. An ATSC digital subchannel will be 704X480. Your HDTV may have a scaler that does a crappy job on 544X480, but does a great job on 704X480. I returned a Sylvania 32" that was that way.

 

[whatchel1]

Get rid of the SD crap and go HD. Give the new HDTV an HD signal and get over the SD issue. In less than a weak all OTA analog goes away anyway. Get rid of the old analog stuff and go HD and move on. Then you will see what good looks like.

 

[BuddyBoy]

Some Dish SD channels are so bad they're virtually unwatchable. Fortunately, just about every channel I watch is now available in HD. I probably would not subscribe to Dish if all I received was SD.

Most OTA digital SD is much higher quality than Dish SD. The best SD on Dish might come close to OTA digital SD picture quality, but much of it is a lot worse.

 

[guhuna]

Some Dish SD channels are so bad they're virtually unwatchable. Fortunately, just about every channel I watch is now available in HD. I probably would not subscribe to Dish if all I received was SD.

Most OTA digital SD is much higher quality than Dish SD. The best SD on Dish might come close to OTA digital SD picture quality, but much of it is a lot worse.

QFT. When the Giants are away (SD) I cant watch them. The SD is horrible. Mostly on 110. Everything on 119 seems to be okay but most of the stuff on 110 looks like crap IMO.

 

[tempVAdish]

Analog SD will always look better than digital SD (unless there's a lot of snow in the analog). I watch Dish SD on both my HDTV (with a 622) & an old analog Panasonic set (with a 311). The SD on my HD set is completely watchable unless I zoom to watch an SD letterbox pix in full screen. If you're zoomed or stretched for SD, it's gonna look like crap, no way around it. Also, it looks fine on my old Panny as well using the SVID input... You may want to look @ the sharpness settings, etc, on your set to make sure that's not what you're seeing.

Just for curiosity, if you've been unhappy for 5 years, why haven't you had it looked at till now?

 

[Pepper]

Watching an HDTV with only SD input sources for five years would make me VERY unhappy.

 

[rdinkel]

Once you get an HD receiver, it will do the upscaling of SD pictures before it goes to your HDTV. Most of the SD will look fine. I am able to say that since we have six HDTVs, and all of them are different brands. Most SD still looks reasonable when upscaled to 720p or 1080i by the receivers.

 

[allargon]

Once you get an HD receiver, it will do the upscaling of SD pictures before it goes to your HDTV. Most of the SD will look fine. I am able to say that since we have six HDTVs, and all of them are different brands. Most SD still looks reasonable when upscaled to 720p or 1080i by the receivers.

No, it doesn't. E! looks particularly bad. Fuel doesn't look that bad compared to the other SD channels. However, E!, Oxygen and We look awful. Moreover, the Dish receivers (along with all multichannel STB's) are horrible scalers. I usually output to 480i/p from my 622 and let my display, receiver or upscaling DVD recorder take over.

The OP should be very pleased with the improvements afforded to him/her by the 722k and HD service.

 

[CupcakeKid]

Are you saying that the 501 still looks great, while the 522 and 311 on the same TV do not?

Are you using the best possible output on all receivers (svideo)?
Dish SD channels (when they aren't experimenting) are a non-standard 544X480. An ATSC digital subchannel will be 704X480. Your HDTV may have a scaler that does a crappy job on 544X480, but does a great job on 704X480. I returned a Sylvania 32" that was that way.

The 501 is as bad as the 522. I am using S-video.

 

[CupcakeKid]

Analog SD will always look better than digital SD (unless there's a lot of snow in the analog). I watch Dish SD on both my HDTV (with a 622) & an old analog Panasonic set (with a 311). The SD on my HD set is completely watchable unless I zoom to watch an SD letterbox pix in full screen. If you're zoomed or stretched for SD, it's gonna look like crap, no way around it. Also, it looks fine on my old Panny as well using the SVID input... You may want to look @ the sharpness settings, etc, on your set to make sure that's not what you're seeing.

Just for curiosity, if you've been unhappy for 5 years, why haven't you had it looked at till now?

I complained many times. I even complained at trade shows. No one connected to Dish Network cared to help. I think I got use to the poor picture. Then when the tech installed the 522 the issue resurfaced in my brain.

 

[CupcakeKid]

Looks to me like many of you guys think the picture from Dish is poor.

 

[highdefjeff]

"Overview of the Scalable Video Coding Extension of the H.264/AVC Standard"

I've been a DishNetwork customer for many years. I have never been happy with the picture. I started out with a 501 and just recently upgraded to a 522 and added a 311. I installed the original dish and pointed it myself.

The picture is OK until movement occurs. Anything that moves becomes slightly grainy until movement stops. Some channels are better than others. My thought is that the mp4 decoding does not have enough data bandwidth to make a moving picture look good. But that's just a guess. On the day of the 522 install I tuned to a baseball game and couldn't make out the outfielders when they were chasing the ball.

The reason this is an issue today is that the Dish tech came out and install the 522. He checked the pointing of the dish and said it was perfect. Then he hooked up the 522. I immediately noticed a poor picture. He said it was do to my HDTV not being able to handle the analogue signal well. This I don't believe. I can tune to an OTA channel that is analogue and the picture is much better than the Dish picture. No grainy pictures with movement. Plus I had the issue way before I purchased an HDTV.

Originally I had complained to everyone at Dish that I could. They just didn't seem to care. Upon the new installation of the 522 the tech told me that he was going to discuss my issue with his supervisor but he never got back to me.

I may have some type of grounding issue because I recall that when I grounded the RG-6 through the grounding block that came with the equipment the picture was even worse. So I diconnected it. My home is older and I don't have the 3 prong recpticals for the 110v.

There's more to the story but this is the nutshell version.

So, I guess my question is: Should there be a break down of the picture when movement occurs? Should the picture be better than a SD OTA picture?

I would really appreciate some help.

Thank you

Your signal quality is poor, despite what the tech said. You have too little signal strength or too much noise. Since your initial installation had poor picture to begin with, I suspect that your alignment was off since then. When a tech says the signal is fine, it sometimes means "Your dish is too high and I would have to get out my ladder and climb."

What are your signal readings for sats 110 and 119 on transponder 11?

You came very close to the truth in your guess, "My thought is that the mp4 decoding does not have enough data bandwidth to make a moving picture look good. But that's just a guess."

If you remove one word from your guess, you have the answer. Well done!

Your answer is found by removing the word "bandwidth":
"that the mp4 decoding does not have enough data to make a moving picture look good."

There is a closely guarded bit of information that the digital industry is not willing to make public; so I will.

Here's the term no one told you about: SVC Scalability

The term SVC Scalability or Scalable Video Coding, used to be called "SNR Scalability" or "Signal-to-noise ratio Scalability. The name was changed by the PTB in the digital industry. (To hide the term...)

First, what is scalability? It is the ability to adjust something according to a scale or to adjust in relation to more than one scale.

And second,

SNR is the SIGNAL STRENGTH-to-noise ratio, which is the determiner of the value called signal quality, signal fidelity, or signal integrity. This value (signal quality/fidelity/integrity) is what is shown on your receiver's signal meter.

So SNR scalability refers to the ability of the MPEG error correction decoding to change the "scale" of the picture when the signal is below the digital cliff.
It allows for scale of change in quality or resolution of the picture, it allows for change in the display size of the picture, and it allows for temporal scalability also.

From: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2007, the abstract gives the short story.

"With the introduction of the H.264/AVC video coding standard, significant improvements have recently been demonstrated in video compression capability. The Joint Video Team of the ITU-T VCEG and the ISO/IEC MPEG has now also standardized a Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension of the H.264/AVC standard. SVC enables the transmission and decoding of partial bit streams to provide video services with lower temporal or spatial resolutions or reduced fidelity while retaining a reconstruction quality that is high relative to the rate of the partial bit streams. Hence, SVC provides functionalities such as graceful degradation in lossy transmission environments as well as bit rate, format, and power adaptation."


Here is what it means in lay terms. "All-or-nothing" and "as long as you have lock" are two things that no one in the digital business (sat, cable, OTA) should ever say. They are false statements and the digital industry (especially Dish and Directv) should be held accountable for continually TEACHING the lie, and for not teaching the science of digital picture quality. The SVC extension standard was adopted in 2005, prior to the mass roll-out of MPEG 2 and MPEG 4 receivers. The first Dish Network 811 models used SVC coding and ALL receivers using MPEG 2 or above (ALL digital receivers in America), have had this.

Your HDTV and SDTV picture quality is only as good as your signal.

All-or-nothing? Nope. Deception due to greed? yep.

Read it for yourself! Very interesting!http://ip.hhi.de/imagecom_G1/assets/pdfs/Overview_SVC_IEEE07.pdf

 

[Awohar]

Having an HDTV with an SD source is like have a really hot wife and you never get in the same bed.

 

[CupcakeKid]

119 has 59 and 110 has 66.

 

[BuddyBoy]

CupcakeKid, since you're new here I'll tell you something now that would otherwise take you a day or two to figure out yourself: highdefjeff doesn't have a clue what he's writing about. His ignorance would be laughable except he insists on repeatedly posting long examples of it, making him more of a nuisance than an entertainment source.

 

[TheKrell]

highdefjeff doesn't have a clue what he's writing about.

Actually everything he's posted above looks good to me, although I don't know about assigning motives (such as greed) to people trying to bury certain terms. Various forms of error correction are in fact performed to mimimize the visible impact of marginal signal conditions. I once got into a big argument about this vis a vis the DTVpal on AVSforums, and lost, because I didn't know about highdefjeff's favorite topic of scalability. So this digital legendremain is even performed in really cheap consumer electronic devices.

That may or may not have anything to do with the crappy PQ the OP is seeing on Dish SD transmissions. From time to time I've seen really crappy SD on some channels. So if these are the channels important to the OP, I can well imagine he's displeased. Also, Dish has been known to experiment. There's another thread around here somewhere on reduced SD resolution of 480 X 480, rather than the usual 544X480. Or it could be low signal strenth, or a crappy scaler in the TV.