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I for one have noticed a lot more fuzziness to the HD on E* and with the SD channels too, however, in society now, what can we do about it? Nothing. Yeah, you can go elsewhere, but your options are limited. To me, my 4dtv C-band is the best (and regardless of its future, always will be the best), cable is horrible, E* is about half ok, and my StarChoice is almost as good as C-band!--and D*--what a joke! So honestly, I got all of this and I am still not happy, so I can imagine how most of you with just Dish feels. I am one who hopes it gets better, I hate to see what happens when everything has to change over to digital/HD. But then again, it gives us all something to talk about!


I say get rid of most of them international channels on E* and open up more space for true HD. No offense to the international subscribers. Hell before you know it, it will take a dish with about 9 lnb's just to get all the channels you want...and it will still look horrible.

Ok, I'm done.

jself1982 said:

I say get rid of most of them international channels on E* and open up more space for true HD. No offense to the international subscribers. Hell before you know it, it will take a dish with about 9 lnb's just to get all the channels you want...and it will still look horrible.

Ok, I'm done.

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You're joking about getting rid of the International channels right? VERY soon down the line Dish and DirecTV's profit margin will be severly threatened by FioS, Project Lightspeed and ALL the terresterial channel services gone Fiber. In fact even to the end of International channels their market there will soon be threatened by the IPTV STB services like XTV/ITVN unless Dish and DirecTV make them exclusive. This being said D* owns the rights to some so that won't be a problem but E* might want to buy some in the near future.
Btw to all the people wanting A La Carte you'll soon have close to that, think the packaging on Canadian Satellite Services, when ITVN and the other IPTV STB's become the Vonage of extra channel tv and it WILL happen, trust me. Bye bye forced ESPN carriage for most providers.
Now as to the HD-Lite issue I'm with Tom here. I was actually impressed by "Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire" though I couldn't understand why, when HBO debuted it, they didn't note it was in HD when they presented it. To be honest I think most HBO-HD product looks like crap, including their shows and frankly most of Showtime's original product hasn't impressed me either though I do appreciate them seeming to air all their HD channel product in OTA and a lot of their new stuff in that as well on their SD version. Maybe I have this problem because I watch Showtime HD on 110 since I have no chance of getting 148.
So to all the people talking about Tom being nuts, I guess I am as well. Of course I also have seen programming on PBS and CBS OTA that looks great so I have a standard I measure it by. About the ONLY good channel I've really seen on Dish for HD is HDMovies and I have the 7 HD channel pack. To be fair some of the previews for HD-Net's original programming look good though.
Oh btw in further statement to people NOT noticing picture issues I think the complaints will come streaming in when more people see the pictures on HD-DVD's and Blu-Ray discs. Also this issue will become readily apparent to the people who end up owning SED's and watching ANY slightly subpar HD program, broadcast or whatever.
The solution to really deal with all the PQ complaints is to take all the HD programming, with it's full bitrate as being transmitted and compress it as much as possible without sacrificing PQ. Whichever MPEG4 codec is most feasible even. Btw is Dish using the VC-1 codec for compression and if not, why so? Does it just work better off a static stream like a disc?
P.S. What few stuff I've seen on FOX HD OTA looks like crap. I REALLY hope it's the transmission and not the equipment they're filming the shows on.

Does the 1280i/1080 actually make the picture closer to 4:3 than 16:9?

Sarang said:

Now as to the HD-Lite issue I'm with Tom here. I was actually impressed by "Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire" though I couldn't understand why, when HBO debuted it, they didn't note it was in HD when they presented it. To be honest I think most HBO-HD product looks like crap, including their shows and frankly most of Showtime's original product hasn't impressed me either though I do appreciate them seeming to air all their HD channel product in OTA and a lot of their new stuff in that as well on their SD version. Maybe I have this problem because I watch Showtime HD on 110 since I have no chance of getting 148.
So to all the people talking about Tom being nuts, I guess I am as well. Of course I also have seen programming on PBS and CBS OTA that looks great so I have a standard I measure it by. About the ONLY good channel I've really seen on Dish for HD is HDMovies and I have the 7 HD channel pack. To be fair some of the previews for HD-Net's original programming look good though.

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Interesting, as everyone else thing Harry Potter looked HORRIBLE - just as the people complained about the DVD.

In fact, its one of their worst looking titles this month.

On the other hand, Showtime now has better bitrates (when telecine is factored in) then HDNET's HDLITE on E*.

So I guess you are on some parallel planet.

RockinRight said:

Does the 1280i/1080 actually make the picture closer to 4:3 than 16:9?

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No because it uses non round (elliptical) pixels. Then the receiver upscales to 1920.

Many plasmas use this "trick" by downscaling to claim 1080 when the display panel can be as low as 1080x1080.

Julien said:

No because it uses non round (elliptical) pixels. Then the receiver upscales to 1920.

Many plasmas use this "trick" by downscaling to claim 1080 when the display panel can be as low as 1080x1080.

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Sounds like they're doing the same thing with their quality that GM, Ford, and Chrysler did in the 70s/80s...take a good technology and cheapen it up making it crap in the process.

While I routinely see 100 to 200, and sometimes more like 400-500, compression artifacts during a 2 hour movie, I did not spot a single one during last week's Harry Potter movie on HBO. Not even in dark scenes during camera pans. No macro-blocking, no contouring, no motion blurring. This is extremely rare on DishHD.

Well, I did see a little mosquito noise in some dark scenes. It was slight and may have been in the transfer. Whenever this is the biggest problem on an E* HD program, I thank my lucky stars.

Couldn't guarantee this would still be true on this week's showing. I have seen significant PQ differences between airings of the same programs on the same channels.

Thus my comments had to do with there being no noticable PQ degradations stemming from something E* was doing to the picture. The image quality of the movie itself was okay. Even on the big screen it wasn't great.

Tom Bombadil said:

While I routinely see 100 to 200, and sometimes more like 400-500, compression artifacts during a 2 hour movie, I did not spot a single one during last week's Harry Potter movie on HBO. Not even in dark scenes during camera pans. No macro-blocking, no contouring, no motion blurring. This is extremely rare on DishHD.

Well, I did see a little mosquito noise in some dark scenes. It was slight and may have been in the transfer. Whenever this is the biggest problem on an E* HD program, I thank my lucky stars.

Couldn't guarantee this would still be true on this week's showing. I have seen significant PQ differences between airings of the same programs on the same channels.

Thus my comments had to do with there being no noticable PQ degradations stemming from something E* was doing to the picture. The image quality of the movie itself was okay. Even on the big screen it wasn't great.

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Think about what you are saying.

As you note the original PQ isn't great - there isn't as much macroblocking/compression artifcats.

Less detail on a worse original doesn't require the bandwidth for the detail and thus less macroblocking.

Its no different than showing a transfer 2.35:1 OAR and requiring far less bandwidth as the black bars take literally no bandwidth.