811 vs 6000

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MrDRC

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Pub Member / Supporter
Jan 29, 2004
191
190
Way South via the Northern Lands
Well, my neighbor had his 811 installed yesterday and I had my first chance to compare it to my 6000. I even brought it over to my place today and hooked it up to my TV so I could get a true comparison with my box.

Bottom line, I wasnt impressed with the 811 and thankful I stayed with my old 6000 instead of taking the bait on the $149 deal.

Neither one of us have a DVI input on our TV's so we are stuck with component and S-Video to compare. The S-video output on the 811 is HORRIBLY dark. My set is professionally calibrated, his is not, but on both the darkness was unwatchable. We had to turn off every light in the room just to see the whole picture on my calibrated TV. Watching during the day would be a strain at best.

The HD picture qualty was basically identical. I couldnt tell the difference between the two and we evern tried fooling each other. Same with OTA signal, basically the exact same quality with no way to tell what receiver was in use. We didnt have any of the OTA problems being discussed here "yet". Its only been a little over 24 hours since he had his dish installed so its possible he will still have them but we'll see.

Of course the 811 has some new features the 6000 doesnt have. Outputing HD and SD at the same time is something I would love to have but not at the expense of this dark picture. He has DishPro while I have legacy so the interactive features are superior to my 6000 but I'll keep what I have thank you.

I havent seen too many direct comparison's with the 6000 but in my view, the 6000 is a better product at this point. Maybe when the 811 has the software updates it will solve the dark picture problems but I wouldnt be holding my breath. If you are watching most all of your SD programming over S-Video I dont think you will be happy.
 
P263 here and very dark on the 811 s-video output. From the number of posts on this and other forums, it is a widespread problem. Count yourself lucky.

Keith.
 
franzius said:
What version of the firmware is running on the 811? The latest version , P263, has corrected the 'dark' problem.
Not on my version P263... Mine 811 with v263 was installed 3 weeks ago and it's dark on S.

If some with v263 do not have dark S video, that's not good news.... that points to a hardware difference instead of software... :(
 
willy said:
How come y'all are using S-video? Doesnt that defeat the purpose of having HD?

I use the S-Video for SD stations because it looks better on my Mits 65" HDTV. The S-Video goes to it's own input. When I watch HD, I simply change inputs on the TV, and voila, HDTV.
 
MrDRC said:
He has DishPro while I have legacy so the interactive features are superior to my 6000
These are completely unrelated. The 6000 was originally supposed to have interactive but the upgrades went to HD functionality instead.
 
Why S video?

willy said:
How come y'all are using S-video? Doesnt that defeat the purpose of having HD?


Another reason is some folks record from their 811 and use S video to connect to a SVHS recorder or composite to connect to a VHS recorder...
 
I watch TV on the component connections, and record via the SVHS connections. Some shows are really too dark to watch on the SVHS. It is not all shows all the time, but dark scenes are too dark. It is almost like the bottom 20% of the dark range get flattened out to 0.
 
I dont have much choice with S-video on my 6000 since the component doesnt output unless its in HD mode.

Me neighbor is now having the audio dropouts, receiver lock ups and everything else mentioned on these forums. I listened to him blister a CSR and then a 2nd tier CSR last night and they gave him another month of free programming! They also said it would be fixed by the end of February. We'll see...
 

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