Is anyones HD locals even close to OTA?

[Eric_C]

I picked up HD locals so I could record stuff we watch off of two different channels.

The PQ is terrible. I know people complain about other channels but they are bi far the worse I've seen.

I flipped back and forth today on the Chargers/Patriots game and its not even close to be decent.

Anyone else?

 

[pdxsam]

The channels here in Oregon are no where near OTA quality but to my eye they are quite good.

A lot depends on how they backhaul signals. In some places, like Portland, they get both HD and SD off air and backhaul on their own fiber net.

Also depends on how they are delivered to you. What satellite, how well your Dish is aimed. There's no many variables involved there's no blanket "My HD sucks" answer.

 

[jayiw]

Here is NE Phila PA 19154 you can barely tell the difference between the two. OTA is a bit clearer but I think most people could not tell the difference.

Jay

 

[cebbigh]

OTA is better as long as you can get the station reliably. Who wants to willingly watch even a slightly fuzzier HD signal? Even if the difference is slight, the lingering feeling of accepting something inferior grates on those of us who care about these things.

 

[jayiw]

OTA is better as long as you can get the station reliably. Who wants to willingly watch even a slightly fuzzier HD signal? Even if the difference is slight, the lingering feeling of accepting something inferior grates on those of us who care about these things.

Exactly. My wife and kids will have the Dish locals on and I will throw a fit because if the OTA locals are coming in ok I insist on having them on instead. They cannot tell the difference but even if it's slight I can. They'll even leave an HD channel on Stretch and all. I can tell instantly that the picture is stretched or on a Dish channel when they have no clue, lol. Drives me crazy.

Jay

 

[larrykenney]

Here in San Francisco the Dish HD locals are almost as good as OTA. There is a slight decrease in overall sharpness on the channels received from Dish, but it's not enough to be objectionable at all. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being best, OTA is a 10, Dish HD locals a 9.

When we first got the HD locals from Dish the picture quality was terrible, like a 5 or 6 on the 1-10 scale, but they worked on it and over a couple of months time they got it looking really good.

Larry
SF

 

[Claude Greiner]

Our Dish HD Locals are pretty good, but im too lazy to put up an OTA antenna to see if they are the same or worse!

 

[riffjim4069]

The DC area HD LIL has been pretty reliable the past 6 months, but the PQ is certainly very soft when compared to OTA. Most people don't noticed or don't care...but it's like sticking a red hot poker in my eyes. I only use HD LIL if there are multipled broadcasts shows I am wanting to record on a 622.

 

[leegart]

PQ of DISH HD locals in the Boston area is very close to OTA except for problems with WCVB-TV (ABC affiliate) where there is occasional audio drop out and pixellation.

 

[PowerMax]

I actually ran this very experiment last night with 24. OTA was much sharper than HDLIL. Again, this depends on how the channel is delivered to you, aka the backhaul.

 

[sunelec]

OTA should be a better picture because it comes straight to you. The sat. signal by the time it is compressed, uplinked, downlinked and decompressed it can't help but lose some quality. My OTA is much better than the dish for locals be it standard or HD. I have both signals available in my system because I only have OTA hooked up to 3 of my 6 tv's.

 

[MikeD-C05]

The Houston channels are all very good EXCEPT Channel 13 KTRK ABC. IT continues to have audio drop outs 1 -3 every hour and the green screen pixelations that upset the whole picture. Numerous emails to dishquality@echostar.com since last spring, hasn't helped either. It must be the mpeg 4 compression or the channel itself. Since I "moved " to get the channel I can't compare the ota to the Dish channel.

 

[DISH_NC]

In the Raleigh/Durham market, the ABC and NBC are quite good, but not perfect. There is a bit of 'softness' to the picture and occasional pixelation. But given my marginal signal strength on NBC OTA, I enjoy having a more stable and reliable picture off the Sat than OTA.

And yes, OTA will have a better picture regardless since you are getting it direct vs. backhauled over fiber and then uplinked. And you can guarantee that both ends will get the minimum bandwidth on the fiber that's acceptable for the lowest cost.

 

[Need]

I cannot tell the difference in Los Angeles. I tried a few time to switch between local and OTA and so far they almost exactly the same, as least for NBC and Fox (the 2 I tried).

 

[JohnC]

Atlanta HD Locals

Here in San Francisco the Dish HD locals are almost as good as OTA. There is a slight decrease in overall sharpness on the channels received from Dish, but it's not enough to be objectionable at all. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being best, OTA is a 10, Dish HD locals a 9.

When we first got the HD locals from Dish the picture quality was terrible, like a 5 or 6 on the 1-10 scale, but they worked on it and over a couple of months time they got it looking really good.

Larry
SF

I would rate the Atlanta HD locals the same: OTA a 10 and Dish HD locals a 9 with generally very little difference. The Dish Atlanta HD locals have also gotten better with time.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

E* doesn't offer HDLiL to my location, but I have a hard time believing that once E* mashes several Mbps out of the image that it could look almost exactly the same.

I know that my OTA HD locals are significantly sharper than any HD channel I get from E*, with the sometimes exception of ESPN HD and the rare exception of HBO HD.

If people are saying that E*'s HD locals are as good as their OTA HD channels, then those HD locals must be better than all of the other E* HD channels. Well, except for the HD Demo channel, which is superb.

 

[NOHDjunkie]

THe Boston HD locals look pretty good in comparison to OTA. Hard pressed to tell the difference.

 

[caam1]

The DFW locals are quite good in picture quality. If you look very close you can tell a difference in picture quality but they they are very close. I have noticed some audio problems with the Dish HD locals that are not present on the OTA channels, although this seems to be improving. Considering how bad they were when they first put them on, there has been a huge improvement.

 

[stck4evr]

I subscribed to local dish HD channels back in March 2006. I had it for few months and since they were dramatically worse than channels from comcast, I stopped paying for them. Now, starting in Jan 2007 I subscribed again, and I noticed that
the pictures seems to be much better - much closer to what I get from comcast.
Note the quality is still slightly worse than cable signal, but it's seems way better than in March of 2006.
This is locals from Chicago (CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX) Note I was comparing CBS and NBC only. Now a question - did they really improve or my eyes are going? Did they switch to mpeg4 sometime last year? Do they use a better compression codec? Better bitrate?
Note I'm using Vip622, DishHD 1000

Note: it depends also on what size your TV is, my is a mid size HDTV - 42 Inch sony LCD projection... I bet you on a 30 inch HDTV set it would be very hard to see a difference between comcast and Dish HD locals.

 

[StanUbankit]

PQ, IMO, is slightly better with ota than thru Dish, got a Toshiba 56hm66 dlp set for Christmas, just recently hooked up the ota directly to the new tv (the Tobshiba replaced a 34" Dish branded hd monitor) and on a couple of programs (that happened to be in hd) I didn't notice much difference. When time allows I'm gonna check it against a live sporting event and see how it looks, I suspect that might show a bigger difference. Did notice the tv tuner gets a higher signal reading on the local pbs station (KUHT-Houston) than the 622 (80 vs 65) and at 65 I"m subject to some pixellation, droupouts, etc. The sat hd locals look much better than when first available, both pq and audio.