Picture clarity

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broeddog

broeddog

SatelliteGuys Guru
Original poster
Mar 7, 2010
134
29
Grand Rapids, MI
For the last week I have noticed a difference in picture sharpness and the colors seem washed out. I have a Hopper 3 and 4K tv and I have been nothing but impressed with the picture quality for the past year . I checked the firmware in both the TV and the Hopper 3 and neither have gotten updates in the past month, so my question is, has Dish changed something in the way it delivers its signal, i.e. bandwidth.
 
Sounds like your eyes have adjusted to the picture quality that you were receiving all along. I always notice an improvement in picture quality with any new DISH receiver and any new tv I get. Once a month goes along , I really have adjusted to the picture and no longer feel the WOW factor I did when I first got it. The one thing I have noticed with 4k is that it looks clearer and a bit sharper ,but really no different to me than the hd I had before. The human eye really can't tell that much difference in the extra pixels that the 4k uses- unless the screen is like 60" or greater. Now 8k ,coming in three years or less , will be more game changing. It is supposed to be more like the picture quality you get with a digital movie theater projector. But if you are really seeing a marked difference , I would check the Tv as the main problem. Check it on a 4k blu ray player and see if the content improves compared to your DISH receiver. Also check and make sure you are using all high speed 2.0 or higher hdmi cables. I had my 4k tv for three weeks before I noticed that I had an older hdmi cord in my mix and an hdmi splitter to my computer room ,that was making my picture quality on my living room 4k tv default to hd only ,like my computer room. Once I discovered this I checked and made sure that I took all older hdmi cords and the splitter out of the mix and my picture quality improved greatly. I was actually watching a 4k pay per view and it was like night and day difference on the same show once I changed the cables out.
 
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I thought it was just me. But I have noticed a change on the "just HD" end since replacing my 8 year old DLP (a kin to your digital movie theatre projector) with an upper end 4k LCD and luckily I can get the DLP fixed. The PQ on a DISH HwS is all over the place over the past few weeks compared to any other HD, not even factoring 4k, source on the LCD, as is suggested to try. Although some of the DISH VOD is better than the regular programming, some of the regular channels are not good. So it is noticed on other gear than the H3. Will be getting that when it's a little more solid. Got the LCD in mid-December and I initially dialed it in to several channels that I watch all the time and have noticed that the picture has taken on the characteristics that the OP describes over the past month. I am seeing more washed out and color shift/flattening especially in "Caucasian" faces, "faces of color" look far better and darker backgrounds/scenes there is banding and blotching. This is not the first time that this subject has been brought up over the years. Every so often someone pipes up about this. I have had up graded cabling (2.0a/2.2) from leftover of a Fall install that I did in preparation for all things 4k. Have also noticed this on the newer, last Fall, 40" LCD in the kitchen. Whereas, with the DLP, since it made everything even the worst source look good, out of the box it was incredible and I only had to play with it for a couple of minutes and never had to touch it again. So any fluctuation would have been negligible to notice. I have a couple other DLP's in storage which are too big to use in this instance, thus the replacement, otherwise, I'd probably not even have noticed.
 
I have a 75" Vizio 4k TV. Some of the programming doesn't look all that great. Most of it, however, looks outstanding. What I have noticed mosly is that local programming, like news, can go from good to bad. The studio shots, not so good, the remote shots mostly very good. I see this with both satellite and OTA. National programming looks great!
 
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Bobby said:
I have a 75" Vizio 4k TV. Some of the programming doesn't look all that great. Most of it, however, looks outstanding. What I have noticed mosly is that local programming, like news, can go from good to bad. The studio shots, not so good, the remote shots mostly very good. I see this with both satellite and OTA. National programming looks great!
Click to expand...

I've noticed the same thing on my Vizio 50" 4K tv. National channels and premium channels look great, the local stuff, not so much.


Sent from my iPad using SatelliteGuys mobile app
 
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now dish needs to start offering 4k channels so we can see what 4k actually looks like it did when the olympics were on
 
Actually, I've noticed some improvement of HD PQ, even on the bottom ranking worst channels like FreeForm and kids channels. I thinik Hallmark is not much improved.
 
patmurphey said:
It's excellent on a Samsung 4k...
Click to expand...
Its not that great on my Samsung either.
My CableTV is better.
I'm not saying its bad.
But there is definitely room for Improvement.
And I can also now see why there were some PQ complaints from the Hopper3.

First thing I noticed right off the bat, is the Hopper3 right out of the gate is the PQ is way over contrasted.

But thats the first thing someone would do when they are trying to compensate for average HD PQ.

Make the Whites look too white, and the Reds, greens, blues extremely pop.
Thats give the impression our PQ is great, when in fact its a big old pile of colors and bright spots.

After Calibration the PQ is much improved, and I still find it to be the same old Dish PQ as always.
Motion Blur and fuzzy detail.

If the Left side of your on screen Guide isn't black.
Then you are definitely not at optimal calibration.
 
I have to agree that the Dish image is soft and lacks the clarity that I would expect from full HD. It is not bad, but it could be so much better! I think that Dish assumes that most of its customers don't care that much about picture quality, but if you have a good TV, it is easy to see that there is much better picture quality from other sources compared to Dish.

I still wonder whether it is resolution (HD lite), bitrate, or Dish image processing that is causing the "soft" look. Maybe it is a combination of factors.
 
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I got a 78" Samsung 4K 9800 TV for Christmas. I had to calibrate it for the PQ to be acceptable. On my old 60" TV it wasn't so bad, but the increased pixels and size and I could tell a difference.

I find that my locals have great pictures, and if I view the OTA it's even better. Now my sub locals the PQ is still good, just not as good. I hate that the 4K joey can't do Netflix, but I just watch it through my 4K player. I can tell a difference from Netflix 4K and DISH. Actually if I watch Netflix through my H3 vs my 4K player, the PQ is better from the 4K vs DISH.

Now if I watch a 4K movie on the 4K player, there is night and day between Dish 4K VOD and the movie. Maybe it's just me.
 
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You guys are saying to calibrate the hopper 3 picture, sounds good, what are you using for source material to calibrate with??

Or is the input being calibrated using a different source?
Thanks
 
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JS_racer said:
You guys are saying to calibrate the hopper 3 picture, sounds good, what are you using for source material to calibrate with??

Or is the input being calibrated using a different source?
Thanks
Click to expand...
I have a Disk, But lots of times Just good ole fashion standard tv adjustments are needed.
 
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