VOOM Goes BOOM - update Dish Drops all 15 VOOM Channels

[charlesrshell]

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.

Does the HDTVs with 120Hz refresh rate help the fast motion HD to look better?

[Bradp56]

That 120Hz is great everything looks more like live video than a movie. You will either love it or hate it.

[AekaGSR]

Does the HDTVs with 120Hz refresh rate help the fast motion HD to look better?

not at all. I also turn off the motion enhancing that it does, it makes film look like video. Rather than being detached from reality that film gives you, you end up getting a sense that you are watching actors on a set. It just looks... strange.

[Bradp56]

It does look strange but once you are used to it, I think it makes the movie seem more real

[jrp]

Today, a month after the VOOM blow-up, my wife asked me what happened to World Cinema. She was pretty unhappy when I told her that WC, Equator and Rave were gone, along with the other dozen, even though it took her a month to notice.

I didn't even try to explain about WC's name and format change prior to its take down.

[Hemi 6.1]

Today, a month after the VOOM blow-up, my wife asked me what happened to World Cinema. She was pretty unhappy when I told her that WC, Equator and Rave were gone, along with the other dozen, even though it took her a month to notice.

I didn't even try to explain about WC's name and format change prior to its take down.

Yea I guess they weren't that important to her. But with her only watching 1 once a month ,she might have found something worth watching.

[ekilgus]

Today, a month after the VOOM blow-up, my wife asked me what happened to World Cinema. She was pretty unhappy when I told her that WC, Equator and Rave were gone, along with the other dozen, even though it took her a month to notice.

I didn't even try to explain about WC's name and format change prior to its take down.

Not sure about that. I've come across a few people that didn't notice VOOM had been removed for a week or more and they were really unhappy. They could be considered part time viewers of VOOM and not forum participants, However they indicated they would move their service if VOOM were to become available elsewhere.

I personally think VOOM as we knew it is dead but believe that a few channels will emerge as independents at some point in the future.

Getting off of the topic a bit here but I remember when VOOM came into existance about 4 or so years ago. They advertised over 40 channels all in HD but at that time how many HD TV's were really out there? I think if the VOOM service were to have been launched today rather then 4 years ago it woukld have had a better chance of succeeding and been a real competitor to the two satellite services.

In conclusion, I think VOOM was the right service but before it's time.

[jrp]

I've come across a few people that didn't notice VOOM had been removed for a week or more and they were really unhappy. They could be considered part time viewers of VOOM and not forum participants, However they indicated they would move their service if VOOM were to become available elsewhere.

I think she fits in that category. I'm not really surprised it took her this long. She normally browsed for show titles and doesn't really pay attention to the channel the show is on. I think she had missed the programming for a while and had just realized that the channel that showed the programming she liked was missing.

[John Kotches]

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.

Fish:

You can think that; but it isn't factual. MPEG4 (really AVC/H.264 in this case) you're talking about a compression codec that is much newer than MPEG-2. There have been significant advances in the compression world and MPEG-4 takes advantage of them.

You're falling into the trip of "less bits is bad" which is not always the case. With video, until we have a tremendous increase in storage density we won't see any substantial changes. An hour of uncompressed HD video at 24 frames is 22,394,880,000 bytes. That's 20+ terabytes. Something simply has to give.

Another point to make, is that realtime AVC/H.264 encoding is at its infancy and it will only get better. With that being the case; I expect to see great advances in PQ over the next several years and it's already doing quite well.

Cheers,

[Redwolf]

just spoke with dish tech and they dont know what is going on. they set me up with an appt for this thursday for someone to come trouble shoot my vip 622 because i don't have all the VOOM HD channels (Monster/Kung Fu/etc.) Gonna charge me $29 for that? Like to see them fix it...