Those of you who have both services concurrently, and those that have had both in the not too distant past, can you help me decide which service I should choose?

My house is pre-wired with RG6 in all rooms, single cable to each room, with junction box in a closet.

There are six RG6 cables coming in from outside of the house to junction box from where I can route one cable to each room.

Ideally, the system I choose should be able to support dual tuner receivers on a single cable.

I have two HD televisions and an HD projector. I watch a mix of SD & HD programming.


My current provider's picture quality leaves a lot to be desired, especially when I am watching SD on the projector. My primary decision criteria is picture quality, SD & HD. Which of the two have better picture quality in SD & HD?

From what I have seen, I give D* the edge in HD, but it varies from channel to channel.

I give E* a slight edge in SD, and again it varies channel to channel.

Just pick your provider by the content you want. Sd will be fine on smaller TVs but gets softer as you increase screen size. In HD there isn't enough difference to care IMHO. I watch a lot of SD and have a SDTV that I use only for SD.

I stated this in another thread just a few days ago. I have a Samsung LN40A550 LCD and my SD PQ is really, really, good from Dish, but I do agree that it does very by stations & programs.
Ghpr13:)

I am 100% completely satisfied with the SD and HD PQ from Dish Network.

With the quality of sd and hd reasonably comparable on both, I suggest you choose based on content. I picked Directv since they have the YES network and Dish doesn't. YMMV

If want eye-popping HD then get FiOS and a quality BD player (PS3). Additionally, there is a lot of sub-par or marginal programming out there being passed-off as HD...so garbage HD programming looks pretty much the same on any of the providers. You usually can't go wrong with HDNet, and FiOS SD cannot be touched (but who watches SD these days). Good luck in your search for HD with D* or E*.

My father has Dish, I have DirecTV. We have the same TV, Panasonic Plasma. I think they are comparable in quality. I think it comes down to content and price. Picture quality is very similar.

D'oh. I had posted some DIRECTV vs. Dish WA (Western Arc) vs. Dish EA (Eastern Arc) frame grabs here (http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-network-forum/170172-sd-resolutions-dropping-110w-14.html#post1790299) but it looks like the images are gone now.

Considering only SD picture quality and not HD or available content, Dish EA is superior to both Dish WA and DIRECTV. People can try to debate it if they want, but the simple facts are that Dish's excessive filtering on most major WA channels (on 119W) brings the effective resolution of the video well below the encoded 544x480, and DIRECTV softens their picture more than Dish does on EA. This can be verified by anyone who does their own comparison. Otherwise I wouldn't dare to make such a bold claim. Please note though that comparisons are harder to make accurately on CRTs and smaller flat-screen TVs than on computer monitors and larger flat-screens.

I don't want to start any arguments here. I'm just trying my best to present facts and findings. This is a breakdown of how much or how little destructive tampering is present in the video from each service.


The situation is that due to much less filtering on EA, much more vertical information is present than on WA. Also, with less filtering more horizontal information is almost unconditionally present on EA even with the 544x480 vs. 480x480 difference. One of the three-way comparisons I had done is reposted below to help make this clearer. If anyone is interested, there was another comparison I could repost that shows more effectively than this one that more horizontal detail is retained on EA than WA and DIRECTV even with the lower resolution than WA.


Dish Network WA - MPEG-2 on 119W:
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/7997/wagrass.jpg (http://img40.imageshack.us/i/wagrass.jpg/)

The image above from 119W is the kind of picture most Dish customers are used to since most major channels are on 119W and are processed in this manner (except when certain commercials are inserted by Dish and the video is virtually untouched). There is:
- Heavy vertical edge enhancement (blurry glow on many horizontal edges such as the mountain tops, blurry darkening on some horizontal edges that artificially thickens them, and general distortion of the whole picture),
- Tampering with the levels so that colors are washed out and unbalanced (look at the grass, leaves, and unnaturally darkened sky),
- Shifted chroma (red and green bleeding out of the right side of leaves), and
- Lots of mosquito noise around the tree branches.


DIRECTV - MPEG-2 on 101W:
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/6209/dtvgrass.jpg (http://img246.imageshack.us/i/dtvgrass.jpg/)

The DIRECTV image above is soft and lacking details, but there's no edge enhancement (including no artificial sharpening of edges that are supposed to be somewhat soft like the tree branch in the upper-left corner), no distracting distortion, no color damage, and no chroma shifting that I can see. Far less mosquito noise as well. With its many problems, the Dish WA image may still look more detailed in some areas by comparison, but most (not all) of this comes from the edge enhancement brightening/darkening and/or merging details and/or artificially sharpening edges so that some things stick out more than they normally would.


Dish Network EA - H.264 on 72.7W:
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/8819/eagrass0000.jpg (http://img40.imageshack.us/i/eagrass0000.jpg/)

The Dish EA image is similar to the DIRECTV image in that the image hasn't been tampered with much compared to Dish WA. There is also much less softening and loss of detail. The rescaling to 480x480 slightly softens the image horizontally and may occasionally cause some rainbow artifacts, but the 544x480 on WA and 480x480 on DIRECTV both suffer from the same problems. Also notice that the EA image is filling the sides of the frame rather than having unused horizontal lines on the left and right. I have no doubt that EA isn't as crisp as the source feed, but all things considered there isn't much detectable tampering in this image.

Just to be clear, I am not saying here that 480x480 is always better than 544x480. I am just pointing out that if you have video at 544x480 that has been heavily tampered with so that a large amount of detail is lost, it is possible (and is the actual case here) that you can have less filtered video at 480x480 that has more detail. Factors such as resolution and bitrate play a certain role in picture quality, but there are far too many other factors involved to ever consider just those alone.


Hope this info is helpful, and I apologize if this response is too technical. Just look at the pictures and make up your own mind what you like best. :)

Thank you for the very detailed, technical comparison.

Do the three use VBR and CBR?

Is all Directv SD in MPEG2?

What resolutions are the HD channels using? I remember talk of quarter HD etc. some time ago... is it still the case?

Again, thanks.

Well from what I see, Your pictures clearly show D* lacking SD PQ vs E*.
D* Picture looks faded and just smeared together with very little small detail.
But I gotta say Between the Eastern Arc and Western arc, There is hardly a difference what so ever, But I have to give the Edge to Western arc. But thats looking at a frozen image too I might add, a Live moving picture may tell a different story.
Looking at the grass in all 3 pictures , Picture Number 1 shows the more clearer details then the other 2.

Also look at the Branch in the top Left corner of all 3 pictures. The Branch with no leaves on it.
On the D* picture its barely visable.
On E* Western arc the Branch is very visable.
On E* Eastern arc not as Visable as Western arc , But not much better then D* picture either
Sorry But Clearly again E* SD PQ off the 119 is much better then the 2 other pictures.

Well from what I see, Your pictures clearly show D* lacking SD PQ vs E*.
D* Picture looks faded and just smeared together with very little small detail.

Only one of the pictures is faded, both in light and color, and that is the Dish WA picture (#1). DIRECTV (#2) and Dish EA (#3) both have proper colors and such. Not sure how you see the DIRECTV picture as faded, although it is plenty soft as was noted.


But I gotta say Between the Eastern Arc and Western arc, There is hardly a difference what so ever, But I have to give the Edge to Western arc. But thats looking at a frozen image too I might add, a Live moving picture may tell a different story.
Looking at the grass in all 3 pictures , Picture Number 1 shows the more clearer details then the other 2.

I know what you're saying about there being more details. That's why I said most but not all of the perceived additional/clearer detail in the WA image is coming from the edge enhancement. Yes, there are some areas where the WA image has more actual detail. As for there hardly being a difference between the WA and EA images, that is of course your opinion to have, but the images are actually substantially different from one another if you run down the list of compression/filtering artifacts I gave. DIRECTV is often less detailed than WA and EA, but its picture doesn't have nearly as many other problems with it otherwise, including compression artifacts from motion (shown in two previous posts in other threads, not here). Throughout a large amount of the rest of the frame, there is more detail in the EA image, and more importantly none of the other destructive filtering and encoding artifacts from WA are present on EA.



Also look at the Branch in the top Left corner of all 3 pictures. The Branch with no leaves on it.
On the D* picture its barely visable.
On E* Western arc the Branch is very visable.
On E* Eastern arc not as Visable as Western arc , But not much better then D* picture either
Sorry But Clearly again E* SD PQ off the 119 is much better then the 2 other pictures.

The branch is more clearly defined in the WA image there, yes, and it has been artificially darkened and thickened by the edge enhancement, and it has a glow around it from the edge enhancement, and the fine branches below it are drowned by mosquito noise.


Here's that other comparison I mentioned since I think it will be helpful. The details on the shirts of the woman in the middle and the girl on the left should help give a better idea of which service retains the most detail in general.

Dish WA:
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/8814/waspots.jpg (http://img216.imageshack.us/i/waspots.jpg/)

Looks like the woman is wearing a striped shirt. She also has a magical bed that casts a white glow around itself (edge enhancement). It also looks a bit like the woman's face is melting. All of the other problems mentioned with the first Dish WA image are also present in this one.


DIRECTV:
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/1922/dtvspots.jpg (http://img233.imageshack.us/i/dtvspots.jpg/)

Great, she isn't melting anymore and the bed stopped glowing, that's a relief. Still pretty much looks like a striped shirt, but here some subtle stripes are visible on the woman's left sleeve that had been a blur of pixels in the Dish WA image. It's DIRECTV, so it's soft but pretty clean looking.


Dish EA:
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/8073/easpots0000.jpg (http://img196.imageshack.us/i/easpots0000.jpg/)

Ohhh, the woman's shirt isn't striped, it actually has a sort of checkerboard pattern on it. Amazing how much more you can see when tons of details aren't obliterated.


Couldn't resist having at least a bit of fun with the comments this time. :)

Do the three use VBR and CBR?

Is all Directv SD in MPEG2?

What resolutions are the HD channels using? I remember talk of quarter HD etc. some time ago... is it still the case?

Again, thanks.

All three are VBR.

DIRECTV's SD is all MPEG-2.

DIRECTV's MPEG-4 HD is supposedly 1920x1080i, although I've never personally verified this. DIRECTV's MPEG-2 HD channels, which have basically been retired, are 1280x1080i.

Dish's HD is all MPEG-4 now and is almost always 1440x1080i. I've seen a couple of channels at 1920x1080i this year but they dropped to 1440x1080i after a fairly short time.

I'll admit that this time the Eastern Arc Picture is the best of the 3, But in the first set of Pictures I stand by my previous comments.
D* was Clearly the loser. And Western arc had the most detailed Picture. That Branch proved that, just like the Shirt proved that Eastern arc was the best in the last set of pictures.
Sorry but from those Pictures you posed D* still comes in 3rd from what I've seen. Directv contrast looks to high, and the colors are not deep and rich what so ever. Just look at the curtains,and her shirt. It looks like they are faded compaired to western arc.

on my personal setup (LCD 32" Vizion 720p) I have both D* and E* D*'s HD picture is a little crisper but E* has more movie channels in HD. SD is about the same on both (wish it were better) I watch SD normal (without partial zoom, or cropping, so I have bars on right and left)

Sorry but from those Pictures you posed D* still comes in 3rd from what I've seen. Directv contrast looks to high, and the colors are not deep and rich what so ever. Just look at the curtains,and her shirt. It looks like they are faded compaired to western arc.

On WA the video is darkened a bit compared to "normal" video. This darkening may be creating the appearance of the richer colors you are describing in the areas you mentioned, but the colors are actually washed out on WA compared to what they should be. Of course, the particular color being looked at will play a role in how apparent the reduction in color is. As an example, in the WA image the people have sickly, pale looking skin in comparison to the DIRECTV and EA images, and compared to what skin tends to look like in real life (on people that aren't dead at least). This is not an isolated case of this as I've examined the picture quality on at least a couple dozen WA videos over the past 7 months. Skin basically never looks "normal" on WA in texture or in color.

In the DIRECTV image with the woman, the brightness is slightly higher than it probably should be, but the contrast appears normal and so do the colors (minus the tiny bit of extra brightness), which are extremely similar to the EA image. The WA colors are very different from the other two, and are not what they should be even if you find them most appealing. Again, I'm trying to mostly focus on whether or not source video is being well represented in the encodings done for these services, not the preference of whether or not something looks better to a certain person. :)


As much as it is useful to see how the different services compare to one another, I find that comparing WA to itself after being cleaned up to be a really great way to see what kind of damage has been done. This can be helpful if trying to choose between Dish WA and Dish EA since Dish EA doesn't suffer from any of the problems that will be corrected below. Here's a before and after from WA:

Dish WA - Original Frame, Cropped and Zoomed 1.5x:
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/4204/strangerswarawlbx.jpg (http://img35.imageshack.us/i/strangerswarawlbx.jpg/)

What's wrong with the picture above?
- The colors are quite dull, but it's a cloudy day in this shot so there ultimately isn't a ton of color to be had. However, I have a pretty good idea of what color a school bus is, and that isn't it. The poor bus almost has a gray tinge to it.
- The edge enhancement is trashing the letters on this title screen (among other things) by creating bright glowing gunk around the edges of the letters. The letters are unnaturally dull like the bus.
- The chroma is shifted to the right, mostly noticeably on the large title letters. See how the vertical line on the left side of the big 'S' at the start of the title looks white rather than yellow? That's not from the edge enhancement since the EE is not applied to vertical lines. It's from the shifted chroma. The "yellow" information, and all of the other color information, has been pushed to the right and isn't fully covering the left sides of some of the letters as a result.
- In general, the whole image looks smeared. That's mostly due to the edge enhancement, but it's enough of a problem that it seemed worth bringing up again.


Dish WA - Cleaned Frame, Cropped and Zoomed 1.5x:
http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/8465/strangerswacleanedlbx.jpg (http://img2.imageshack.us/i/strangerswacleanedlbx.jpg/)

Ahh, that's better! Far from perfect, but a nice improvement all the same. The edge enhancement has only been moderately reduced because, since Dish laid it on so thick, reducing it too much strips away details. The impact of this change is visible throughout the entire frame (reduced glowing, de-thickening of artificially thickened lines, etc). The chroma has been shifted to the left as close as it can go to where it should be (due to YV12 limitations). This combined with the EE reduction has made the letters look far better by evening out the color. Lastly a bit of color correction has been done, so now the bus looks more like a bus and letters aren't washed out either.

Now if only Dish's receivers made these kinds of corrections automatically, that would largely make up for the damage done to the video in the first place. Unfortunately, the processing is very intensive, so I wouldn't expect anything of the sort to ever happen.

Just pick your provider by the content you want. Sd will be fine on smaller TVs but gets softer as you increase screen size. In HD there isn't enough difference to care IMHO. I watch a lot of SD and have a SDTV that I use only for SD.


This has been my reason also to be with the satellite provider I have chosen.;)

SD on an HD set is nasty no matter how you put it :D:D:p

SD on an HD set is nasty no matter how you put it :D:D:p


That's why I am still watching a 50" PhillipsMagnavox RPTV.Yet if you checkout ConsumerReports there are some HDTVs that are rated to show SD programming good.;)

I'll admit that this time the Eastern Arc Picture is the best of the 3, But in the first set of Pictures I stand by my previous comments.
D* was Clearly the loser. And Western arc had the most detailed Picture. That Branch proved that, just like the Shirt proved that Eastern arc was the best in the last set of pictures.
Sorry but from those Pictures you posed D* still comes in 3rd from what I've seen. Directv contrast looks to high, and the colors are not deep and rich what so ever. Just look at the curtains,and her shirt. It looks like they are faded compaired to western arc.
Look at the pattern near her left arm. The Direct picture has much more detail than the WA picture.

Thanks Buckchow for the info and images!

To me, it's obvious what looks the best to worst is Dish EA, DirecTv, Dish WA.

Look at the pattern near her left arm. The Direct picture has much more detail than the WA picture. Sorry , don't agree. That picture looks slightly foggy and faded.

Sorry , don't agree. That picture looks slightly foggy and faded.
That is simply because the WA image has greater sharpness. That is easily fixed by adjusting the sharpness on the TV itself. Even with the greater sharpness, the blurry image has more detail

they both stink ;):p

they both stink ;):p
It is funny that we are debating which crappy picture looks the least crappy. :D

I put up a short AVC HD disc image to a few awhile back with Blind caps from Both Providers of the the same program... Stargate Atlantis, both recorded at the the identical bitrate and surprisingly the Dish caps won out in a non scientific side by side test from most that viewed...

It is funny that we are debating which crappy picture looks the least crappy. :DYes, let's agree to agree...both are inferior to various degrees of crap. ;)

I put up a short AVC HD disc image to a few awhile back with Blind caps from Both Providers of the the same program... Stargate Atlantis, both recorded at the the identical bitrate and surprisingly the Dish caps won out in a non scientific side by side test from most that viewed... Do it now in SD.:)

It is funny that we are debating which crappy picture looks the least crappy. :D
hilarious for sure :D:D