Will Dish ever go full resolution HD?
- Thread starter pduncan
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All reports indicate the Direct is running at full resolution now. If Charlie doesn't do full resolution once the new bird is up, he'll surely lose customers. I'm sure a lot of us are just holding on to the promise, but if he doesn't act, we'll move.
I guess I should clarify it to state that they are running at a true HD resolution and good bit rate rather than HD Lite
Come on!.
Which resolutions do you claim are true HD resolutions? And how many bits is a good rate?
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I thought maybe you meant at the original quality level that the individual broadcaster provides it to Dish; that is, Dish simply does a pass-through (if that's possible).
Sure, it is possible, but NOBODY does a "pass-through." Not DiSH. Not DirecTV. Not even your local cable company. Not even FIOS or uVerse. Everyone transcodes into a different bitrate and sometimes a different resolution. The marketing and "word-of-mouth" marketing is trying to convince people that FiOS is not compressed so you should buy FiOS instead of satellite. It's simply not true in any form.
In addition, the myth that OTA HDTV is not compressed is also false--ATSC always uses MPEG2 compression. Sure, its quality is higher than what you see on the satellite, but it is still compressed, and that compression constantly varies because statistical modulation is used among the HDTV stream and the 3 or 4 "subchannels" on that ATSC channel, constantly varying the bitrate.
In addition, the myth that OTA HDTV is not compressed is also false--ATSC always uses MPEG2 compression. Sure, its quality is higher than what you see on the satellite, but it is still compressed, and that compression constantly varies because statistical modulation is used among the HDTV stream and the 3 or 4 "subchannels" on that ATSC channel, constantly varying the bitrate.
Then your CBS sucks then.....I dont have that issue. Our CBS blows everyone out of the water...No sub-channels full bitrate and sound.
I don't think there's anything even slightly unreasonable about demanding that 1080-line channels be the full 1920 pixels wide. There are lots of affordable displays capable of displaying it these days, and I can certainly tell the difference.
A good bit rate is whatever rate that doesn't lead to obviously visible compression artifacts most of the time, which disqualifies whatever they're running right now on, for example, HDNET.
Right.
When mp3's made their debut there was a great hue and cry that compressed audio was crap compared to raw wav files. Now mp3 bit rates vary all over the place and most folk don't know the difference. And let's not even get into AACs and WMFs.
The trouble is there is a little truth in all those complaints about compression. But who made a line in the sand and said "this much compression is OK but any more and the picture is crap"?
"Good" bit rate video is just what a room full of rubes says is OK on run-of-the-mill TVs under ideal conditions. It means nothing.
Me; when I look at my screen and see the bit bucket half full! And my wife is still a knockout after 40 years. Anybody want to argue?
I'm going to be meaner and say your displays suck. (Yes, I read your sig. I'm only kidding.)
My cheap 768p Westy LCD ghosts like crazy on 1080i sports. My 1080P Mitsubishi DLP is butter smooth if the bitrate is there.
CBS sports are gorgeous for most SEC games. NFL games are hit and miss. I think they are splitting up uplink bandwidth or something.
The big stinker is NBC. That has nothing to do w/ interlaced vs. progressive. Some ABC college games suck, too.
Bingo...we have a winner. Bit starvation is the real evil here....then if your set sucks too....you have a double wammy.
I think the OP is talking about resolution not re-encoding. No one distributes uncompressed HD so thats moot. If the distribution feed fits in the space available why wouldn't a provider just pass it through? They need to re-encode the video otherwise.
BTW the Fox network is encoded by Fox and passed through affiliates without re-encoding. It saved the stations from needing HD encoders.
