How Dish's 1080p is going to work...

[TheKrell]

These quotes mean nothing without the frame rate. I assume you mean 1080i60 and 1080p60. If so, I agree. But if you mean 1080i60 vs 1080p30, then I don't.

Man oh man this is confusing as hell. Correct me if I'm wrong.



1080i30 and 1080p30 have exactly the same information in each frame, and each frame comes down 30 times/second. The only difference is the interlaced signal horizontal line data come down in a different order than the progressive line data. This is not an exciting difference.

I think we all agree that 1080p60 is a rare bird indeed (and is not part of the ATSC standard). But what about 1080i60? What does Dish mean when they say 1080i? If it's just 1080i30, then I fail to see what all the commotion is about.

[rglore]

On the other hand, a good 1080i source upscaled by the panel internally to 1080p should look just as good as a good 1080p native source like this 1080p VOD scheme.

That's true until there's motion in the scene, then 1080i will look fuzzy compared to 1080p. Because it's 1080p24 instead of 1080i60, then it will be a little jumpy with motion instead of blurry with motion scenes. I much prefer the 24p over the 60i for the increased sharpness.

[allargon]

This goes for Dish and D*:

Why in the world would you want to pay all that dough for a movie that doesnt even have HD audio, when Netflix and a BR player would set you right?

I just really dont see the point to HD VOD, but to each their own. Im thinking this just gives the Sat companies a PR gimmick(kinda like the HD totals counting)

There are plenty of people that don't want to pay $350 for a Blu-Ray player plus subscribe and WAIT for Netflix movies.

The HD audio thing? Seriously... Most people I know with HDTV's that actually have HD sources listen to audio via their TV speakers. Most of them don't even have surround. Many that do have it via their DVD players. Very few have it via their receivers. The average American does not care about sound.

This is a smart move on Dish and (later) DirectTV's part. Swanni predicted this last year. I kind of shrugged. I didn't realize it was coming this early. I do agree that it amounts to a hill of beans compared to true 1080i60. However, it will make the average consumer stand up and take note. Plus, it will further differentiate satellite from cable.

That's true until there's motion in the scene, then 1080i will look fuzzy compared to 1080p. Because it's 1080p24 instead of 1080i60, then it will be a little jumpy with motion instead of blurry with motion scenes. I much prefer the 24p over the 60i for the increased sharpness.

Motion blur is only an issue on cheap LCD's. The 1080p24 vs. 1080i60 has about telecine judder and a 3:2 pulldown. It has nothing to do with motion blur. People who have sets capable of doing a proper 3:3 and 5:5 cadence of 1080p24 see smooth, not jumpy motion at all. BTW, 1080i60 stuff is jumpy, too unless you have one of those sweet Pioneer plasmas that does a reverse pulldown and coverts the 1080i60 to 1080p24 and displays it at 1080p72 (3:3).

[lhess]

So how about audio? Will it be bitstreamed and uncompressed like Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA? That, I seriously doubt. Prove me wrong Dish!

BTW, thanks Scott for this useful thread. When will channel 501 show up?

The HD audio thing? Seriously... Most people I know with HDTV's that actually have HD sources listen to audio via their TV speakers.

And those people are missing half the excitment of the HD experience!

[CubsWin]

What happens if I’m connected with component cables? It won’t be able to detect the resolution of my Television. Do I get to choose which resolution I want?

I'm wondering this also, since my 1080p TV is connected with component cables. If I had to guess, I would say they won't allow 1080p through component, but I would like to hear an official answer.

[BobMurdoch]

component can not produce 1080p.

Component CAN produce it, but for political reasons, most TVs WON'T accept the 1080p signal over component inputs.

In this situation, if E* can't talk to your TV over the HDMI cable, then you are SOL, if I'm reading this right....

But my XBox360 CAN send a 1080p signal to those few TVs that didn't build in this limitation to their sets...

[db2]

My biggest question is whether 2.35:1 OAR movies will be shown on E*'s 1080p VOD system open matte or OAR??

If they go open matte I will be ordering exactly 0 of the 1080p movies.

[abricko]

I am hearing that receviers chipsets have a hard time upconverting to 1080p which is why its not an option at this time.

That would make sense, I would imagine it does require quite a bit of horsepower to push 1080p at 30p or even 60p

We can still DREAM for native passthrough... though that would be impossible as E* doesn't broadcast ANYTHING at 1920 x 1080, or am I wrong with the new MPEG4 HD stuff?

[8bitbytes]

Here's a good explanation for why 1080i may not look anywhere near as good as 1080p and why even those with 720p panels will see a cleaner, sharper image from 1080p than from 1080i:


HQV - Hollywood Quality Video Processing for HD : De-Interlacing (Video)

[K9SAT]

wikipedia says it's capable of it. You don't see it implemented often because the movie studios require a "secure" or digital connection to prevent copying.

Yes, but I can also change wikipedia to say that componate cables are used to make a chicken dance in a French circus.

It doesn't mean that its right or not.. But because wikipedia says it is it must be true. While I'm not disputing the claim, I am disputing wikipedia because the information can easily be changed by other people to support invalid claims.