Had the Hopper installed 2 days ago. The 722 is still sitting on the floor. My wife and I both mentioned the day the Hopper was installed that the PQ improvement was quite obvious. For her to notice without me saying anything to her is astonishing.
Dish Picture Quality Discussion
- Thread starter primetimeguy
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"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Monday Night Football, presented in Definition."
For the past couple months I have been noticing a variety of issues with various HD channels. I notice it more obviously on my Local HD channels which I can compare directly to my OTA feed I also have. I put in an e-mail to the dish quality folks but they took so long to reply that the issue had gone away. And lately it's been back.
What I'm calling new, is moments during a television show where all the detail that is normally in an HD picture goes away. Edges of objects and people become fuzzy and color becomes more flat. The color thing is the first indication. human faces in rooms that dramas and comedy's use tends to have light from many different directions creating a variety of shades across a face when filmed. When HD it working at it's best, you see all of these shades and the human face looks very human. When HD isn't working like I would expect, the human faces loose all the shades and tend to be stuck with some average color that makes them look pasty.
Now.... I would blame it all on dish, if I wouldn't also notice this from time to time on my OTA feed. I notice this problem most often on the FOX local affiliate and it's shows. As far as sports like football? I'm surprised how bad the image quality is even OTA for HD football games. I can only assume that the HD systems used by the networks is hamstrung by transmitting the feed live from these remote locations. I know HD-Net in their infancy could do much better. Watching football action on a green grass field shows good detail while most people are standing still. Crowds are indistinct in the background and as soon as the picture starts moving, all the detail disappears into a hail of digital buzz until the tangle of folks is over, and you can actually see the picture gain detail once again things quit moving.
I think in general the networks are still feeling their way with HD and many of them seem to be willing to accept the lower end of the quality spectrum.
What I'm calling new, is moments during a television show where all the detail that is normally in an HD picture goes away. Edges of objects and people become fuzzy and color becomes more flat. The color thing is the first indication. human faces in rooms that dramas and comedy's use tends to have light from many different directions creating a variety of shades across a face when filmed. When HD it working at it's best, you see all of these shades and the human face looks very human. When HD isn't working like I would expect, the human faces loose all the shades and tend to be stuck with some average color that makes them look pasty.
Now.... I would blame it all on dish, if I wouldn't also notice this from time to time on my OTA feed. I notice this problem most often on the FOX local affiliate and it's shows. As far as sports like football? I'm surprised how bad the image quality is even OTA for HD football games. I can only assume that the HD systems used by the networks is hamstrung by transmitting the feed live from these remote locations. I know HD-Net in their infancy could do much better. Watching football action on a green grass field shows good detail while most people are standing still. Crowds are indistinct in the background and as soon as the picture starts moving, all the detail disappears into a hail of digital buzz until the tangle of folks is over, and you can actually see the picture gain detail once again things quit moving.
I think in general the networks are still feeling their way with HD and many of them seem to be willing to accept the lower end of the quality spectrum.
I've been noticing that too with the locals. I really notice it with faces - they go fuzzy and then back to clear. I was worried it was something with my equipment. I also notice it more with Fox.
Yep, compression artifacts. Welcome to the world of "not really" HD. It is both on the provider side (adding more compression to the signal they receive) and the station itself (adding subchannels into the alotted bandwidth that isn't big enough for one channel.)
Not saying that can't be the case, but again, not comparing the exact content at the exact same time, and you have expectation bias because you got something new. Go away from HDTV for a day, watching only SD, and come back and you'll be like "wow, Dish picture is awesome!". Give it an hour and pretty soon things look as they had before.
Ditto though not just with Fox, and it's OTA as well. Sub channels are doing more harm even at SD than I would have thought. I say that because both the local (Ct) CBS and PBS dropped a sub channel. Before I knew the CBS dropped the sub channel I thought the picture has sharpened some. And PBS gave up on three sub channels and went back to two even though they had to drop programming to do it.
(The Ct. PBS has a sports channel for local sports, and PBS4U ( here called CPTV4U), and they tried to keep the "Create" channel but didn't have enough bandwidth)
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Boy E* is stuffing too many channels per transponders. When I compare OTA locals is like night and day. You have to to have vision problems not to notice. I recorded a 3 hour x-mas concert and it took 17.3 GB on my hard drive and the same program through E* it was like 5 GB. The sound through OTA was full and very clear and E* was sort of flat, both on 5.1 DD.
I had Little Rock ,Arkansas locals for a short while to see Metv WITH GUIDE information. Now this is an SD channel ota at 480i. On the satellite the picture looked like bad streaming video, while the ota version I could see on my antenna ,looked clear and sharp and colorful. DISH compresses the CRAP out of sd channels making them almost unwatchable. Another example is Tv land channel. I watch for some new shows like Hot in Cleveland , Happily Divorced and the sd quality looks God Awful.
for sure, back in the beginning of the industry the sd looked about as good as the HD does now....
And now HD looks as good as Sd used to. I can remember when HD was breath taking and now it can look pretty good or pretty blah. I predicted as much back about nine or ten years ago when we were first getting new hd channels added. So when 4k comes out it will be the same thing. Start at excellence and then move to normal looking and mundane. I guess this is the cycle we have to live with, in order to get people to buy the newest and greatest electronics. But I won't be an early adopter of new technology any more in the promise of better picture quality, at least at the high prices the early adopters have to pay.
Me too especially the past month, cbs is the one in my area that it is more prevalent.
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You are comparing apples and oranges. OTA is MPEG 2 and E* is MPEG 4. So the size is never going to be the same. So saying that it is stuffing to many channels per transponders us a not a correct statement. You can get comparable stats only when you use 2 of the same thing. In MPEG 4 the size would be close to what you have quoted for OTA.
As pointed out size of the recording tells you nothing other than it was recording two different Codecs. I don't hear a sound difference going through my audio receiver via HDMI.
That said, I have long said I see virtually no difference between OTA and satellite locals, and I no longer say that. It's very possible since they rearranged the locals this started. I do see what others do, but much more with locals than say History or A&E or HBO. From my viewing distance of 10' or so from a 55" screen it's not always easy to see but can be, but a little closer and no doubt faces are less defined on locals. It was not this way in Ct before.
It's also worth noting OTA is not pristine either sometimes. The more subchannels, even in SD, the more it takes from the bandwidth. The Ct. CBS recently dropped a subchannel, before I knew that I thought the picture looked better, crisper. So there's more to it than just what Dish does.
I do see the OTA channels have deteriorated. Not to the point of ruining watching if you are at what most people will be for a viewing distance, but lets hope it does not get worse.
SD locals have historically looked worse on Dish than SD "cable" channels. So, it seems only natural that it would end up the same for HD.
To say that E* puts too many channels per TP is a fact. I understand OTA is MPEG 2 but I tell you, especially Univision looks as good as a Blu Ray disk. I only record OTA for special events on this channel due to the size it takes, but transfer it to the EHD which has 1 TB right away.
Transmitter is 6 miles and signal is 98-100. Other channels don't look as good.
so I just started watching last nite shows on CBS, wow do they look horrible. Blurry faces, kinda flat really. I hope this something that can be corrected soon. This was not a problem until recently.
Sent from my phone using SatelliteGuys sweet app.
Sent from my phone using SatelliteGuys sweet app.
I have compared sat locals to my local OTAs, other than being very slightly softer (probably due to 1440x1080i vs 1920x1080i,) most of the artifacts and imperfections I saw on the sat feeds were also present on the OTA stations.
