Best Picture Quality: Dish or Directv

raoul5788

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Not much doubt that Directv's picture is better than Dish's, but the difference isn't glaring.
 

edisonprime

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Hands down DirecTV. Unless with my Hopper 3 that splitting the signal 16 ways reduces image quality (I have no idea), I was easily able to tell DirecTV has better picture quality.
 

lgb0250

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Oct 15, 2006
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Everything is in the eye of the beholder. Since I’m old and not too nit picky about things like that and DISH offered a much better bang for the buck it was very easy to leave Directv many years ago.
 

edisonprime

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Everything is in the eye of the beholder. Since I’m old and not too nit picky about things like that and DISH offered a much better bang for the buck it was very easy to leave Directv many years ago.
Well, my eyes are very above average. The only problem with my eyes are a couple floaters.
 

chainblu

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Aug 25, 2006
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A couple of years ago we stayed at one of the Disney hotels where DirecTV was the provider. The PQ was very good, no argument here. But it almost seemed like 'Dynamic mode' was the default setting from Direct.
 

Jimbo

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A couple of years ago we stayed at one of the Disney hotels where DirecTV was the provider. The PQ was very good, no argument here. But it almost seemed like 'Dynamic mode' was the default setting from Direct.
More than likely the "Dynamic mode" you described was more than likely the TV setting, not the Directv portion, Its very common for a TV to come from the factory in that type of mode, it was tested at the plant and it happened to be the last one and was left there.
 

edisonprime

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I wonder with Dish if the reason the picture quality is inferior may be because since the Hopper 3 has 16 tuners that the signal is split 16 ways?
 

TheKrell

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I wonder with Dish if the reason the picture quality is inferior may be because since the Hopper 3 has 16 tuners that the signal is split 16 ways?
I believe the answer is, "No". DIsh has engineered the RF signal strength of transponders to be adequate for decoding without causing the digital error rate to skyrocket, regardless of the number of transponders decoded.
 

Jim5506

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Signal strength on satellite TV is just like or at the least very similar to OTA ATSC 1.0 transmission. If the signal drops below the threshold necessary to assemble the digital picture it quickly falls off the digital cliff and you get nothing. So, splitting the signal gives you a digital image or nothing, not gradual loss of sharpness, evidence of weak signal is macro blocking and image drop out. Dishes slightly softer picture was due mostly to a slightly lower resolution of the image or lower bandwidth. Improvements in digital encoding have helped somewhat with that.

I, myself find no cause to complain about Dishes picture on my 65" 4K non-HDR Samsung (2015 model). We set about 10-12 feet from the TV.
 

edisonprime

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Signal strength on satellite TV is just like or at the least very similar to OTA ATSC 1.0 transmission. If the signal drops below the threshold necessary to assemble the digital picture it quickly falls off the digital cliff and you get nothing. So, splitting the signal gives you a digital image or nothing, not gradual loss of sharpness, evidence of weak signal is macro blocking and image drop out. Dishes slightly softer picture was due mostly to a slightly lower resolution of the image or lower bandwidth. Improvements in digital encoding have helped somewhat with that.

I, myself find no cause to complain about Dishes picture on my 65" 4K non-HDR Samsung (2015 model). We set about 10-12 feet from the TV.
Thanks for that information as well!
 
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