PQ improving on Starz & HBO????

[cr0mag]

I was switching channels last night and I noticed that for HD, HBO seems to have gotten better as far as PQ goes. There seemed to be a sharpness and sense of 'depth' that hadn't been there on Saturday night.

Am I just getting used to crappy PQ or did anyone else see this?

BTW, Starz on 520 seemed to have great SD PQ as well. Nothing else that I noticed changed on any other channel.

 

[Curtis0620]

They may have started to use Directv 8.

 

[LonghornXP]

They may have started to use Directv 8.

That would be my guess.

 

[cr0mag]

I have to tell you, I even watched a re-run of the Sopranos last night on HBO2W, SD letterboxed. I "zoomed" in with the Samsung so that it would nearly fill my 42" plasma, just on a lark, and not only was it still watchable, but for a artificially enlarged pic, it looked better than it used to.
I don't know for sure what's happening, but I like what I'm seeing (for now).

 

[LonghornXP]

I have to tell you, I even watched a re-run of the Sopranos last night on HBO2W, SD letterboxed. I "zoomed" in with the Samsung so that it would nearly fill my 42" plasma, just on a lark, and not only was it still watchable, but for a artificially enlarged pic, it looked better than it used to.
I don't know for sure what's happening, but I like what I'm seeing (for now).

I can say that some changes are being made with a few behind the scene devices. I'm not sure about the specifics but I'm hearing that brand new advanced compression encoders are involved.

 

[CWS_kahuna]

Not exactly on topic here but I watched the incubus concert on HDnet last night and thought it really looked wonderful.

 

[Chado]

Not exactly on topic here but I watched the incubus concert on HDnet last night and thought it really looked wonderful.

Crap! I forgot about that!! Any good?

 

[slacker9876]

Wow! It sounds like the SD PQ may be on the up. New encoders eh Longhorn? I am surprised that hardware would yield this, however, being that it is not 15 years old would certainly help! I also noticed this but I thought I was just drunk. My local channels (Denver) had a better color saturation and it did seem that many channels were improved.

Mind us that they still have a log way to go ... DirecTV used to look as clean as a DVD. New bird or not, it is not that good. I guess we'll see what MPEG4 AND new hardware might yield! Sharp eye cr0mag

 

[cr0mag]

Wow! It sounds like the SD PQ may be on the up. New encoders eh Longhorn? I am surprised that hardware would yield this, however, being that it is not 15 years old would certainly help! I also noticed this but I thought I was just drunk. My local channels (Denver) had a better color saturation and it did seem that many channels were improved.

Mind us that they still have a log way to go ... DirecTV used to look as clean as a DVD. New bird or not, it is not that good. I guess we'll see what MPEG4 AND new hardware might yield! Sharp eye cr0mag

Slacker, that brings another little anomaly into question... about the same time, I noticed that all of my local OTA channels (Analog and digital) had been 'duplicated' in my program guide. Some of the new duplicates didn't even come in as channels, but they were there on the guide and had the same channel designator numbers as the ones that were there in the first place. The wierdest part of all is the new duplicates had different names....
I thought it was just my Sammy 360 throwing another curve at me and chalked it up as SNAFU. Now, I'm really wondering what is changing up in the skies, as the prog. guide does come from above.

 

[slacker9876]

Slacker, that brings another little anomaly into question... about the same time, I noticed that all of my local OTA channels (Analog and digital) had been 'duplicated' in my program guide. Some of the new duplicates didn't even come in as channels, but they were there on the guide and had the same channel designator numbers as the ones that were there in the first place. The wierdest part of all is the new duplicates had different names....
I thought it was just my Sammy 360 throwing another curve at me and chalked it up as SNAFU. Now, I'm really wondering what is changing up in the skies, as the prog. guide does come from above.

Yeah I'll have to dig into this tonight, I am going to check LyngSat and see if they have noted anything at all. My channels always get messed up ... but that is the TiVo every time I scan, but I have not scanned in more than a month and all the local OTA channels popped in there again about a week ago.

Okay check out lyngsat and sure enough DirecTV 1,2 & 4 were bumped off the 101 slot to 100.8 and 101.2. I am pretty certain these were always in the 101.0 slots before, but I have not looked at lyngsat in months. I think we're on it!

 

[cr0mag]

Wait... I'm really confuzzled now... if those birds moved, can our LNB's still see them?

 

[charper1]

You are correct, DirecTV 1/2/4 were at 101.0w before on the packages chart, but not sure if they were "rounding it off" to that slot from 101.06 for DirecTV4S, 100.81 for DirecTV1R & 100.75 for DirecTV2 or if they are actually moving on the tracking chart.

 

[slacker9876]

Wait... I'm really confuzzled now... if those birds moved, can our LNB's still see them?

Sure they can. I am not the "expert" on this on by a long shot, but I believe I read that with 1/2 degree signals can be picked. It all translates to "How far is that once you get 22,400 miles down the pipe."

You are correct, DirecTV 1/2/4 were at 101.0w before on the packages chart, but not sure if they were "rounding it off" to that slot from 101.06 for DirecTV4S, 100.81 for DirecTV1R & 100.75 for DirecTV2 or if they are actually moving on the tracking chart.

I thought so but I wasn't positive and did not want to get anyone in a huff. I don't think lyngsat does rounding either. Rainbow 1 and ES3 are both really at 61.5 .... FWIW

 

[cr0mag]

The .5 degree of seperation at 22.5k miles is what I was thinking about when I asked. Obviously, it still works but considering how finicky the LNB's are when you are aming your dish, I had to ask the question.

 

[charper1]

Yep, it will be interesting reading when you find out what the real story is. What does your signal strength look like for transponders from those birds compared to say about 30 days ago? One would guess that even if the dish can still see a bird moved less than 1deg, it still should show a miniscule drop in signal peak; maybe a few points.

 

[slacker9876]

You know from the tracker page it shows the following ... and this is almost "live" data

DirecTV 1: 101.11
DirecTV 1R: 101.81
DirecTV 2: 100.75
DirecTV 4: 101.06
DirecTV 8: 103.42
SpaceWay1: 107.19 (not in geostationary orbit)

I could be wrong but 2.5 degrees out of position would indicate that some of us are hallucinating unless they moved programming off to the 110 & 119 slots. Which does also seem logical.

Yep, it will be interesting reading when you find out what the real story is. What does your signal strength look like for transponders from those birds compared to say about 30 days ago? One would guess that even if the dish can still see a bird moved less than 1deg, it still should show a miniscule drop in signal peak; maybe a few points.

I am at the office right now but I'll have to check this out tonight. It would go a long way to explain how they lit up the Active services too.

 

[slacker9876]

OK anyone who is an engineer for NASA or MIT feel free to chime in here anytime ....

 

[CWS_kahuna]

Crap! I forgot about that!! Any good?

If you like Incubus it was awesome. I think I am going to go buy this DVD now.

 

[cr0mag]

I'm going to go home tonight and take a good look at my signal strengths.... I'm still blown away by the fact that at .5 degrees seperation a LNB can still get enough of a signal. In my infantry days we learned just how far off course you can walk by being 1-10 degrees off your azimuth when you are looking at 1-5 miles.

Now, my trig is very rusty but I think (think, mind you) that a .05 degree of seperation at 22,500 miles would net you a difference of 1,125 miles on the ground. Isn't that a big reach for small dishes and LNB's?

 

[LonghornXP]

I can say that stuff is being moved around but from and where to I can't say. From what I've been told is that the new encoders are both MPEG2 and MPEG4 SD and HD encoders. So these encoders will be used for all current D* offerings both now and into the future and one benefit of them at least for current national and LIL SD offerings is that they can have much better error handling which results in an increase in bandwidth because they can use more bandwidth on each xponder for actual bits instead of error correction. Just that little bit of difference will increase picture quality across the board on the SD side. Also it seems that some if not all of the HD channels will be moved onto D* 8 because it has higher power on the KU side of things so that combined with the new encoders would both increase picture quality and bandwidth. Now how much of an increase is unknown at this time. What is known is that this is more of a testing aspect and also is needed to prepare for upcoming LIL and national HD offerings.