VOOM Goes BOOM - update Dish Drops all 15 VOOM Channels

**psychicmind** · 06-05-2008 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by Bradp56

Well its a more thought out email response at least. Either way I dont think you will get an answer other than what the scourt says.

I'm not sure how thought out that is.

It took two weeks to start writing people back and the reps have NEW scripts this week.

Well thought out would have been being prepared before removing the channels.

Just seems like Dish's public relations department is doing a lot of writing these days.

**Apologist** · 06-05-2008 11:34 AM

Originally Posted by psychicmind

Sorry - I see a Charlie script in that email...

The complaints about Voom continue. Whomever said there was little complaining at Dish lied or is believing their lies.

Agreed.

**whatchel1** · 06-05-2008 01:31 PM

I have now sent Charlie an email as well. We will see what his reply is. If I get the same thing back as the other poster.

**KAB** · 06-05-2008 01:44 PM

Originally Posted by whatchel1

I have now sent Charlie an email as well. We will see what his reply is. If I get the same thing back as the other poster.

You really think HE is going to answer each e-mail from scratch? If there are variances, it's being done by someone else.

**EmpireState** · 06-05-2008 09:17 PM

Originally Posted by fz5j2r

6. your HD channels should not macro block.

I'm not a Dish Network or Charlie hater, but that almost certainly has to be a false statement on Charlie's part. I see macro blocking during a lot of fast transitions between scenes, and during some shimmering water and fire on the HD channels. Anything moving fast, very fast, that takes up the entire screen tends to macro-block on my television. I live in the midwest and have very good reception and I see it all the time. It also occurs on some of my OTA HD channels too, so blame whoever you will.

Unless I don't understand what macro-blocking is (I think it is when the clear HD picture becomes blocky with small blocks instead of clearly defined pixels), this is no different than what they started doing to the "pure digital" SD signals back in the late 1990's. Give me a break. I'll live with it, but don't tell me I need a bigger dish. Unless a bigger dish will fix it, someone let me know.

**whatchel1** · 06-06-2008 12:45 AM

Originally Posted by KAB

You really think HE is going to answer each e-mail from scratch? If there are variances, it's being done by someone else.

Actually it doesn't matter just as long as he keeps getting a mailbox full of complaints.

**whatchel1** · 06-06-2008 12:50 AM

Originally Posted by EmpireState

I'm not a Dish Network or Charlie hater, but that almost certainly has to be a false statement on Charlie's part. I see macro blocking during a lot of fast transitions between scenes, and during some shimmering water and fire on the HD channels. Anything moving fast, very fast, that takes up the entire screen tends to macro-block on my television. I live in the midwest and have very good reception and I see it all the time. It also occurs on some of my OTA HD channels too, so blame whoever you will.

Unless I don't understand what macro-blocking is (I think it is when the clear HD picture becomes blocky with small blocks instead of clearly defined pixels), this is no different than what they started doing to the "pure digital" SD signals back in the late 1990's. Give me a break. I'll live with it, but don't tell me I need a bigger dish. Unless a bigger dish will fix it, someone let me know.

Are you also getting this from your OTA signal?

**fz5j2r** · 06-06-2008 07:36 AM

Originally Posted by whatchel1

Are you also getting this from your OTA signal?

I do not ever get macro blocking OTA. I occasionally get dropouts but that is just the digital technology.

Prior to November 2005 the picture we received from Dish was awesome. Resolution was high as was the bit rate.

After November 2005 the era of hd-lite began and it continues to get worse.

My big beef is that a standard definition program received OTA will sometimes be as good as a HD picture received from Dish Network.

**long_time_DNC** · 06-06-2008 01:03 PM

Can't get anything OTA here, so I can't make any decent comparisons.

I will say this though: I have Open Range on one of my EHDs that I recorded from HDNet Movies before it was down-rezzed from true HD. It looks spectacular. It's also a huge file...18+ gig. The filesizes from HDNet Movies and HBO tend to be about 30% larger than the same runtime movies from Starz or Cinemax. I'm wondering if this is an MPEG2 vs. MPEG4 difference, or just a lower compression % on HDNet Movies and HBO?

Any thoughts on this from anyone?

Back on-topic: I always thought Rave looked terrific. MHD looks almost as good, but I can't stand all the commercial breaks...

**fish2222** · 06-06-2008 01:34 PM

I think the issue is MPEG2 vs MPEG4... You have a lot less data to reconstruct the picture with, and with HD, there is a lot more data needed to fill all the pixels. MPEG4 saves a ton of bandwidth, but you will have to live with the loss too. I think fast-motion HD is always going to have issues though.