Master Feed vs. Dish Network Shootout

[pendragon]

Now we get into the nitty-gritty. The camera was slowly panning across a static scene, so this is not quite as easy as the absolutely static shot in the first post in this thread. Nevertheless this is not particularly challenging except for the detail. I zoomed 300% on a portion of each HD image, and 900% on the SD images, which is the equivalent. The order is the same as in my immediately preceding post.

The DN HD isn't too bad, but one can certainly see more mosquito noise than in the master feed. There is also some detail loss overall, see for example the wood grain immediately to the right of FDR.

It was interesting to compare the simulated SD feed and the upscale. While the two have the same effective resolution, it may be a matter of personal preference which 'looks' better. The non-upscaled version may seem a bit sharper because of the more distinct edges, but the upscaled version is smoother. The bottom line is neither of these highly idealized images is at all competitive with the real-life DN HD-lite.

I won't spend a lot of time on the DN SD frame. The colors are washed out and the edges very ill-defined, but it's closer to the simulated SD 'master' than the simulated SD 'master is to DN HD-lite.

 

[pendragon]

Motion comparisons

I'm going to perform one more comparison for the moment, this time with some motion. I suppose I could find a gross example, like basketball or football, where I could find and incredibly high rate backhaul and compare it to a DN uplink. In HD I'm sure the latter is often horrible, if not nauseating. But I don't find watching sports on a SD master any more involving.

So I found a short sequence where a newspaper hawker is waving around a paper, where the type is somewhat legible. This is the same movie where I have previously compared the title sequence frame. This example does not have a ton of motion, but it makes analyzing the detail very easy. I didn't bother with any SD, DN or simulated, partly because of the amount of frames that would be needed, and partly because there is no detail to compare in the first place.

In this post I only present a sequence of frames, alternating for each source, with the 4DTV HD master feed being the odd frames and the DN HD as the even. A few intervening frames were omitted that contributed nothing to what has already been shown.

With some motion, the DN frames are suffering more. Compare not only the type on the newspaper page, but also the detail in the hawker's face. I'll post some zooms to make the differences more obvious in a following post.

 

[truckracer]

It does boil down to this: its no secret that the pizza pan people chop down the bandwidth on HD channels compared to the masters they receive..they have to- you can't cram 1,000,000 channels on 4 satellites. i even read somewhere where they can in real time re-allocate bandwidth for certain channels at certain times of the day to satisfy the mainstream crowd much like sirius radio can do.

I think HD will never be consistent on pizza pan systems. Its quite a shame that politics have ruined the best possible highest quality delivery system available...C band. The middle man makes lots of money, they provide cheap little plug and play systems that require no effort on the part of the user. C band requires some skills on the behalf of the owner...One would think in this high tech world we live in more people would have electronic skills. it seems that the more advanced the electronics get...the further behind the average citizen is being left as they are not taking interest educating themselves on how technology works. Maybe that's the plan..who knows.

Pizza will never match c band HD (itc HD masters) until they launch a bunch more satellites and quit trying to give so many hundreds of channels.

 

[pendragon]

Here are the zoomed shots for each frame from my immediately previous post. The order should be the same. Across all the shots, it's apparent that even the master feed could use more bits. It's MPEG-2 macroblocking is obvious in the zoomed shots, but may not be so apparent in motion on a screen. The DN uplink shows much less detail, but it does demonstrate how H.264 tries to conceal the more obvious macroblocking artifacts of MPEG-2 (the sharply defined edges in MPEG-2 make this easy to spot).

The master is way ahead of the DN version in showing detail from the outset, while the paper is in motion. The early DN frames are simply blurred, while one can make out some of the type in the master. Both make errors tracking elements of the type, but this is much more severe in the DN images, causing far more distortion. By the final frames, the master is showing a lot of accurate detail, albeit with a little mosquito noise. The DN version is still far behind at the end, but the larger type is becoming legible.

In the interest of time and space, I haven't zoomed into other parts of the frame to compare. This is left as an exercise for the reader. The background is blurred, and there are differences in how each encoder handles this. Also as mentioned before, the hawker's face shows far more detail in the master feed.

 

[pendragon]

it seems that the more advanced the electronics get...the further behind the average citizen is being left as they are not taking interest educating themselves on how technology works. Maybe that's the plan..who knows.

I think their solution is 3D. By the time we put on the glasses, which will further reduce our visual acuity and distract us from the poor quality images, we'll be so happy that we won't notice that the image quality is worse. NOT!

We need truth in advertising. The food industry is forced to comply, why not cable and DBS providers?

 

[tvropro]

Dish cannot compete with a C band master and never will. Which brings me back to why I like even the c band SD masters. They may lack pixels 480 vs 720 or 1080 but are cleaner with less artifacts if any. On a good tv with a good scaler they can look quite pleasing to the eye.

I found a test ts stream file on my PC that is from the FMC SD master. It's an old movie so not the greatest for comparison though I took a couple snapshots for you to look at. When I get time I will record some DVB SD master ts streams from the Visionsat and post some snaps of various stuff.

 

[tvropro]

Here is a few quick snapshots from the CW and FX SD masters from the ts streams I just recorded.

 

[pendragon]

There is nothing dreadfully wrong with your SD masters. But they're still SD and remind me of what I used to work with and watch 35 years ago. In fact I just put a few up on my 30-year-old, 25" CRT studio monitor and they look the same as on my HD screens. My studio monitor is limited by the NTSC standards set for B&W in 1941 and for color in 1953. I would shudder to use a 30-year-old computer, let alone one 57-years-old, when given the option of using the one on which I am typing. I believe video technology has also moved forward since that time.

Compared to true HD, these frames are extremely soft and carry very little detail. Compared to DBS HD-Lite, the same can be said. My thesis was that DBS HD-Lite is an adequate approximation of a HD master feed, and provides far more detail than a idealized SD master feed ever could. I have supplied examples that demonstrate this. I have also shown how motion can deteriorate the detail in a HD-Lite frame, but not necessarily with devastating results.

I am not sure of what point you are trying to make by only posting SD master frames. If you believe these look better than HD-Lite, you have not provided any evidence of this. You have only succeeded in convincing me that I was too kind in my methods of simulating SD masters. In real life SD master quality appears worse than my simulations.

I'm fine with people who want to keep watching the only game left on 4DTV. But just as we all rail at the DBS and cable providers for their faux-HD, I think it's only fair that the 4DTV SD crowd recognize the reality that a SD master is not a replacement for HD-lite for the rest of us. It's not that we are blind or ignorant. Some of us are very discriminating. There is simply more detail in HD-lite than you are willing to admit, and there has been considerable progress in compression techniques over the past few years.

This is one of the main reasons 4DTV is dying. 4DTV is stuck with the state-of-the-art technologies of the mid 1990s, while the distribution channels are advancing to newer ones that provide higher data rates and better quality video compression. I wish Motorola had kept 4DTV technology current, but they didn't. This won't be the first domain overrun by obsolescence and it won't be the last.

HD has essentially disappeared from 4DTV access. We were lucky the costs of replacing all the uplink and headend installations delayed this process until now. But it makes no sense for program providers to pay for more transponder space than is required with newer technology. It might take a bit longer for these same economics to kill off SD on 4DTV. What may prove more deadly is that cable and DBS providers are driven to supply more and more HD to keep up with their competitors. There is little to be gained by providing redundant SD streams. As new cable boxes and DBS receivers are rotated into customers, downconverting HD for the SD-only customers will make more sense than dual SD and HD distributions. It's already happening on DN's eastern arc and I'm sure elsewhere. The impetus to continue or even migrate the 4DTV SD feeds is rapidly diminishing.

 

[tvropro]

The SD masters may be soft in detail but so is HD lite. Also the SD counterparts don't have the digital artifacts that rear from not enough bandwidth. I guess I'm used to analog that didn't have digital artifacts. It took me a long time to accept macroblocking and mosquito noise when I first got into digital. It still bothers me. The good masters show very little or none thats why I like them so much. I don't have pizza HD or SD, probably never will, hate there games and terms with a passion. But I have seen pizza HD lite and wasn't overall impressed. It did have some sharpness but also had digital artifacts which I really can't stand.

My CBS OTA channel in town runs one HD channel at 1080i and looks very good. All the rest in town looks so so or like crap. I base a good HD signal which Dish should be providing on what I see on my CBS affiliate. So far Dish or Direct from what I have see can't compete. I know it has to do with lack of bandwidth and processing. But before I would pay what they want or agree to their terms they would have to provide that type of quality which I don't see in the near future. I would rather do without if and when the 4D goes away and run strictly OTA, FTA and possibly look into Shaw since they have about the best thing going I think.

 

[pendragon]

The DBS providers are inconsistent with HD quality. Some channels appear to have a higher bit-rate budget than others, but this may not be done by logic. I would not be surprised if locals and RSNs get the short end of the stick, but we get our locals OTA and the only time I see sports on DN is when I am telling the boys to go to bed.

I'm not happy with having to buy gigantic programming packages from DN just to get the few channels the other family members watch. If I was single I would not subscribe to them. Their HD-lite is adequate and the artifacts on the channels I watch are tolerable. I'd rather put up with that than lose 5/6 of the picture, but I prefer higher quality HD when I have the option. Sadly, 4DTV HD is on life support and our OTA is being overrun with bandwidth-stealing subchannels. We added Shaw as a stopgap, and overall their HD is much better looking than DN's. Sometimes it rivals a master feed, probably on the channels they distribute to their headends. I'm hoping this tides us over until either the US DBS providers add enough capacity to care about quality, or fiber into the home solves the problem.

 

[truckracer]

I hate the un-natural tinny sound you sometimes hear with digital. Even at age 38 i can still hear effectively up to 18khz so i notice those sounds from digital sources. Mp3 players sometimes drive me nuts.

 

[equant]

I hate the un-natural tinny sound you sometimes hear with digital. Even at age 38 i can still hear effectively up to 18khz so i notice those sounds from digital sources. Mp3 players sometimes drive me nuts.

I'm completely with you on that. I gave up Sirius because the quality of audio was so bad. Sure, some channels were listenable (maybe even slightly better than that), but the less-popular niche channels (and isn't that the whole reason to have it?) sounded dreadful.

 

[tvropro]

They call that tinny sound ringing I believe.

 

[Davage]

They call that tinny sound ringing I believe.

: - Yes.. I've got that continual ringing in my ears. Too much loud music on my Walkman years ago I guess.. Plus, going to concerts without ear plugs causes it too.. These days, EARPLUGS is the top thing on my list when I attend classic rock festivals. Years ago I saw Judas Priest at a small bar in Toronto. My ears rang for days. Last year I saw Judas Priest again at an outdoor event in Walker Minnesota, but I made use of the earplugs when I went down front and didn't experience any temporary hearing loss..

Getting back to the discussion about the 'digital' sound. I notice the W5 re-uplinks on 4DTV to have the tinny sound to them, even on the National Geographic channel, Biography etc.

I subscribe to XM Radio, mainly for the talk radio channels. The audio quality of their music channels is way too compressed.

The occasional sneak peek at the Master feeds when they go in the clear is a nice treat, for the video and audio quality.

 

[pendragon]

...There is also some detail loss overall, see for example the wood grain immediately to the right of FDR.

My spatial relationships got confused here. While the wood grain is technically to the right of FDR, from his "perspective", it is actually to the viewer's left in the movie's frame. Thanks to the soul who pointed this out to me.

 

[pendragon]

I avoided discussion of the sound quality in master vs. DBS refeeds because it is my assumption the audio tracks are often the same or altered only mildly. The audio bit-rates were identical for the movies compared in this thread. For better or worse audio is often distributed in AC-3 format, which is compressed. My personal experience in the industry is that for the most part movie soundtracks are recorded, processed and layered in a manner that the quality of the result is negligibly affected by AC-3 compression. I've had this confirmed in dialogs with film sound mixers. There are exceptions to this rule.

Some movie channels do perform audio processing on sound tracks, including transforming matrixed, stereo and mono sound tracks into 5.1. This is an evil that can drive me mad because the results can be quite disconcerting. But this comes in the master feed, and I have found no evidence of tampering of this kind by DN.

MP3 and other severe forms of audio compression are next to unlistenable for me. Such processing removes or simplifies radically large parts of the frequency spectrum that are judged to be masked by the primary spectrum peaks. Unfortunately this alters the tone coloring at the minimum and can strip inner parts in a complex work. Generations of listeners are being trained to accept music that is only vaguely related to what went down in the recording studio. The quality of sound recordings has been steadily improved, but we have regressed badly on the consumer product side.

 

[B.J.]

I don't pretend to have state of the art ears, heck, my ears went on SS long before I did. However I will say, that back when I had much better hearing, I was never even close to being satisfied with the quality of music, no matter how much money I through at my audio system, and back before I retired, I was throwing thousands at it. However once digital music came along I instantly loved it, and have since converted virtually all of my old favorites over to digital. Not only that, even though I know mp3 is a step down in quality, we've also converted all of our CDs over to MP3s, and haven't noticed enough difference to ever consider going back.
Anyway, compared to listening to the hum coming from high gain preamps needed for phono and tape heads, noises coming from the cartridge needle scratching across the record, or the pitch changes coming from slipping or stretching tape, or magnetic effects causing sounds coming from other parts of the tape, etc, etc, I am a real fan of digital music, and wouldn't trade it for any analog format I've ever heard.

That being said, however, I sure wish that surround sound and AC3, and all those other similar formats had never been invented. It REALLY drives me crazy when you get one of these movies putting out 5 channel audio, and you can't hear the dialog because all the dialog is in one channel that's being overwhelmed by music or street noise of car chases that are coming out in the L/R channels. Using stereo downmix, or whatever they call it sometimes helps, but usually doesn't. I try listening via a 5 channel receiver and via 2 channel stereo either through TV or through a stereo downmix, and sometimes play 2 or 3 audio devices at the same time trying to balance things out, but it just doesn't seem like they ever get the various channels balanced so that you hear things the way they are intended. We often have to turn up the volume almost to max to hear parts of the audio, but then get blasted out by other parts.

 

[pendragon]

I generally now prefer digital recordings, but until the late 1990s and the advent of really good 24-bit ADCs, I would have to say the best recordings I heard and made were on 30ips, 1/2" analog magnetic tape with two channels. I had devised an analog encoding system in the mid 1970s, sort of a super-Dolby but not using any of their techniques, that I employed for the next 15 years or so in my sound business, which measured and sounded better than any digital system up through 20-bit ADCs. I finally bought an outrageously expensive 24-bit ADC around 1998 that passed all the transparency tests I could devise, and since I have counted myself as a convert.

Given that even the best CDs are a step down from this, to me the MP3 format is one of the most brutal tortures devised in the name of music. At least on par with playing rap music to Taliban prisoners. MP3 has also all but nullified attempts to improve upon CD-quality sound through DVD-A and SACD media.

I'm a bit surprised about your surround sound headaches. While we mostly use a 7.0 audio system (the main speakers play well below almost any subwoofer) for movies, we sometimes use one of our 4.0 systems and occasionally a 2.0. I can't recall a dialog audibility issue on any of these that wasn't traced to some incorrect setting. Since you have a 5-channel receiver, one would think it could mix the center channel equally into the L & R outputs when configured to do that. It is rather odd.

 

[B.J.]

....

I'm a bit surprised about your surround sound headaches. While we mostly use a 7.0 audio system (the main speakers play well below almost any subwoofer) for movies, we sometimes use one of our 4.0 systems and occasionally a 2.0. I can't recall a dialog audibility issue on any of these that wasn't traced to some incorrect setting. Since you have a 5-channel receiver, one would think it could mix the center channel equally into the L & R outputs when configured to do that. It is rather odd.

Well I find it odd too, but I'm not that knowledgeable about the 5 channel stuff.
We HAD been using a fairly nice regular stereo system with just L/R and a big subwoofer thing, and we had been playing audio through my ROKU, which takes the input via ethernet, so it gets 5 channel sound, but has the choice of either doing a stereo downmix, which as I understand it, is supposed to take all the other channels and mix them into the L/R..... OR, it can output via an SPDIF output to a 5 channel sound system. So we WERE just doing the stereo downmix thing. That helped a little, but it was still pretty bad. So to experiment, we go a cheap ~$150 Wall Mart 5 channel system that has optical and coaxial SPDIF inputs. It actually doesn't sound too bad, and running the audio through that does seem to improve things a bit more, but we still have to turn the volume way up to hear dialog. This Wall Mart special didn't have much in the way of a manual, so there may be some way of adjusting the relative volumes of the various channels, but we haven't found it yet. I'm hesitant to get a full blown 5 channel system, since there is no reasonable place for us to put rear speakers to take full advantage of the 5 channels. We just wanted something that would balance out the various channels, so we have the rear speakers pretty much in the same places as the L/R speakers. Not sure if the phasing would attenuate some sounds by doing that or not. If we could find a system that would do the job for sure, I wouldn't mind getting a better 5 channel system, but we've been through 2 fairly nice systems, then this Wall Mart special, and nothing seems to work.
We've been feeding the 5 channel thing not only from the ROKU, but also from our TV, and from the PopCornHour. I don't think I've tried from the Azbox yet.

Not all 5 channel stuff does this but when it does, it's very annoying.
The background music and stuff like car chase sounds, and explosions, etc are awesome. It's just when someone starts talking you can't hear them.

I guess I'll continue to play with any settings I can find. We USED to have a fairly nice A/V store downtown, but it went out of business, so we'd have to buy things on-line, and not know if it will work or not.

 

[pendragon]

Not all 5 channel stuff does this but when it does, it's very annoying. The background music and stuff like car chase sounds, and explosions, etc are awesome. It's just when someone starts talking you can't hear them.

I'm sure you know this, but if your 5-channel receiver thinks you have a center channel speaker, even if it is set to perform a two channel downmix, it can still send L+R to the phantom channel and subtract this out of the L & R that are there. Instant dialog loss. The same thing applies if you receiver believes there are rear channels connected. Do you have a crummy speaker of some sort that could be connected to the center output for an example movie that causes problems? That would at least tell you where the dialog is going.

I can't offer a lot of advice for low-end solutions, but we bought a real cheap Sony 5.1-channel AVR a couple of years ago for the kids. At the moment we only have two front channels connected. When it is set up correctly, dialog and special effects come out fine over two speakers, but if I set it to the wrong speaker configuration it will do exactly what you describe.