Recent reports on AVS indicate downrezzing to 1280x1080 on D*. And that Hdnet movies looks no better than DVD quality. Are the days of HDlite beginning for D*????
riggscm said:Is it possible that this is a temp. measure to feed us HD signals till more bandwidth (read more satellites) become available?
As with any data service its all about the bandwidth, and with HD at high PQ taking up alot of it, well it seems that this is just a band-aid till they can get some birds in the air.
curious for opinions...
slacker9876 said:Agreed, this is a temporary issue....
I have had both and I like knowing the available channels and PQ. And I would bet you have posted far more than I in those threads.Darin said:It's quite obvious this is being done to make room for all the HD games on Sunday ticket. I feel quite certain this is a temporary issue, which worst case will be over at the end of the ST season, but hopefully they will continue changing things around so the impact on the two affected channels will be constrained to Sundays.
The bigger question, Vurbano, is why you are so obsessed with this. In just the two threads on this topic at AVS, you've posted over 30 times in the past week, and it's not the first time you've brought it up here. In fact, doing a search on your username at AVS reveals that the majority of your recent posts are on DirecTV. That's not unusual in itself, except that you're a Voom customer. You'd think that you'd be much more concerned with the signal they are sending you, instead of what we are getting from DirecTV. What bitrate is Voom using? What resolution are they encoding at? How long have these numbers been in place?
I think it's a bit premature to be fearing the end of PQ as we know it on DirecTV. There's a lot going on right now... ST just started, they've added NBC-HD E/W, and they are beginning testing of locals from 72.5. They've also announced MAJOR long term bandwidth increases specifically for HD. Considering everything that's going on, I think I'd be looking for a little more than a week of higher compression on two channels before running around like chicken little.
andrzej said:In other words, no problem?
Somehow, this "temporary" label doesn't make me feel better or make PQ any better on my monitor.
You subscribe to the HD package and Showtime from both? Seems kind of wasteful, all that would gain you is HDNet.vurbano said:I have had both and I like knowing the available channels and PQ.
I would say that's a fair bet. They are my sole source of HD (well, except for OTA, but I watch more "cable" content than broadcast network), and I am interested in what they are providing to me. But honestly, in those threads, I was actually more interested in they hysteria that ensued than I was concerned over my HD quality.And I would bet you have posted far more than I in those threads.
If you are suggesting that I get paid by DirecTV, then that's about as baseless as some of your other posts. I can assure you, the monetary exchange between myself and DirecTV is quite in the opposite direction. At least my posts are primarily in response to specific issues being discussed. I don't generally go around praising DirecTV, or creating new threads bashing Voom/Dish/cable.D* must pay their atack dog well.
vurbano said:Recent reports on AVS indicate downrezzing to 1280x1080 on D*. And that Hdnet movies looks no better than DVD quality. Are the days of HDlite beginning for D*????
rkr0923 said:he's a Voomer anyway
I watched Blue Realm on DiscoveryHD yesterday and looked fine, no PQ problem here.
and, you know where the door is. if you don't like what D* is doing, call them up, they will have you cutoff in a matter of minutes.
The reason I mentioned DiscoveryHD is because if you look at the bottome of Cheezmo's bitrate page, he's got DiscoveryHD listed 3/xponder with Bravo and a ST channel. If that is accurate, it would only be 3/xponder during a game, so it wouldn't be a constant difference like the movie channels currently are. But even outside of Sundays, DiscHD could take a slight hit with the ST changes... before ST, DirecTV combined one primarily video based HD channel with one primarily film based HD channel. Cheezmo's comparisons at that time showed the video channels taking the lion's share of the bandwidth. That is to be expected, and appropriate, because the combination of lower framerate (24fps) and inherently lower resolution of telecined film means that it can get away with much lower bandwidth than most video based HD. Now that DiscoveryHD is sharing a transponder with another video based channel, it doesn't have the advantage of being able to steal bandwidth as needed from a less demanding channel. I haven't watched much TV in the past week... not sure if I've even seen any DiscHD in that period. But based on the mapping shown on Cheezmo's site, I could see how it could be compromised too, probably just not to the extent of the movie channels.Sean Mota said:P.S. the two channels in question are Showtime HD and HDnet Movies; Discovery-HD Theater is fine according to various reports.