Anyone else HD quality going down?

[vaylon]

Has anyone else been noticing the decline in some of the clarity of your HD channels?
For about the past 2 weeks I have been seeing a graininess starting to show up in some of the stuff I watch more and more.

Its mainly prominent on the food network, scyfy, fx and some of the cinemax stations.
And its not all the time.
Shows start out fine but then they go a little less perfect. Still HD but just not as clear. Then a commercial will come on and it goes clear again. Then the show comes back on and the unclear comes back. Then when the show ends, everything goes clear for the next program.

The unclearness is kind of hard to describe.
its not artifacting or blockishness.
Its more like a matte finish on a photo as compared to a glossy photo.

 

[bookworm370]

Funny you mention it. I made mention of that to my wife while we were watching Americas got Talent final show. The Shakira portion was very 'non-hd' but the very next act and cuts to the panelists were crystal clear.

I attributed it to some contract agreement with Shakira's mgt that her act could not be transmitted in hi-res. But now I'm wondering.

ED: I also recorded it and replayed the same sections over and over. What we saw live was also recorded so it wasn't my TV.

 

[vaylon]

Something weird is going on with the signal.

I was just scanning thru the channels and stuck it on the history channel. It was a rerun of the show "life without people". The picture was a bit unclear.
But I had originally recorded this same show on the night it premiered a while back.
I compared the recorded image of the show to what was being shown now and there was a big difference in the quality of the picture.
The one showing now was less clear, slightly darker and less detail. The colors were not even as vibrant as the recorded show.

Yea, the first thing went thru my head when I started seeing it was " oh my god!!! My TV is going bad" and it is way to big to be sent for repairs.

 

[MikeD-C05]

It is probably the gradual continuing transition to crap that I thought that the sat companies would do. Just like they did with the sd channels- they compressed them till they looked God awful , they will now do with the HD channels. By the time everything is in hd it will look as bad as the sd channels do today. The worst part is that most won't notice the difference ,especially if they don't have ota to compare it to.

 

[RVD420]

It is probably the gradual continuing transition to crap that I thought that the sat companies would do. Just like they did with the sd channels- they compressed them till they looked God awful , they will now do with the HD channels. By the time everything is in hd it will look as bad as the sd channels do today. The worst part is that most won't notice the difference ,especially if they don't have ota to compare it to.

Mike OTA HD blows away the HD-lite that is on Dishnetwork.

 

[whatchel1]

Bull

 

[old corps]

Bull

+!:up

It is VERY difficult to see the difference between my HD OTA and the ones I get through Dish. Most I the time I can NOT detect ANY difference at all and when I think I do I actually wonder if it's not just perceived. JMHO

Ed

 

[andyin137]

Ive been noticing this alot lately too,thought it was just my TV.One thing I have noticed is alot of Networks tend to only show a program once in HD and then the rest of the time they air the same program it goes back to SD.WGN HD does this with "Corner Gas" the first showing of a particular episode is in great Quality HD,when it gets shown again back to SD.Whats up with That.Food Channel used to have great HD but lately not so much.I will give it a little while more and if Dish keeps this up I will check out competition.

 

[shorrock]

I'm wondering if it's something specific to the software update. I've seen the same "softening" going on, but it is something weird with key frames. I've even noticed it on OTA channels, which it def. should not be doing.

 

[bookworm370]

I'm wondering if it's something specific to the software update. I've seen the same "softening" going on, but it is something weird with key frames. I've even noticed it on OTA channels, which it def. should not be doing.

Actually, on that one I could agree with you but if it was, it was the only time during the show I watched (during the Shakira segment) that it occurred. Loss of key frames would also result in significant artifacts not just a softening of the picture. But it is a good conjecturer.

 

[vaylon]

One of my local ABC affiliates has a strange way of brodcasting ever since the digital transition. From 6am to 9am they have great looking HD. Then it goes to a very nasty grainy image till 8PM. Then its full HD again till 11:30PM.
But its not dishes fault with them. Their broadcast looks the same on OTA as it does on dish.

On some of the avs forums a few others have started to notice the same thing.
Some of the more in the know people say its compression and bandwidth rationing.
Most say they never see softening on major sporting events but are starting to see it more and more on other shows.

I am just glad to know it's not my TV.

 

[KAB]

I think the reminder of "digital does not mean HD" is in order. The bad times you have sketched out are non-network, locally fed time slots. Your affiliate is probably broadcasting non-hd programming, rather upconverted SD. Some stations do not even yet have the ability to record or play-back HD.

 

[primetimeguy]

+!:up

It is VERY difficult to see the difference between my HD OTA and the ones I get through Dish. Most I the time I can NOT detect ANY difference at all and when I think I do I actually wonder if it's not just perceived. JMHO

Ed

To each their own. On action programming such as sports the difference is pretty obvious to me. On sitcoms and dramas not as obvious but still there.

 

[primetimeguy]

+!:up

It is VERY difficult to see the difference between my HD OTA and the ones I get through Dish. Most I the time I can NOT detect ANY difference at all and when I think I do I actually wonder if it's not just perceived. JMHO

Ed

To each their own. On action programming such as sports the difference is pretty obvious to me. On sitcoms and dramas not as obvious but still there.

And this is not a recent thing, been that way for quite a long time.

I agree we are just seeing the same trend with did with HD, gradual degredation.

 

[bookworm370]

I agree, Digital does NOT mean HD.

OTA broadcasters were given enough bandwidth for only 1 or 2 full HD channels depending on their market. If they use it for full HD then that's it. But if you have a local station that is using something like. 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 then they have chosen to split the bandwidth into more channels other than use it for HD.

They are still broadcasting digitally but not in HD. That's the good thing with digital (like cell phones) you can take the same bandwidth and split it up as many ways as you want. What you sacrifice is quality for content. Analog always used the entire frequency spectrum but meant less channels. Digital allows for more channels (logical channels) using the same bandwidth. The good (and bad) thing with digital is that it's all or nothing. You either receive enough signal strength to get all the 'bits' or you don't. Analog would just degrade and show snow, ghosts and static. With digital you either get a true picture (HD or SD) or nothing because if the TV doesn't get all the data it just will refuse to display the picture. Miss a few key frames in a row and you'll get a signal loss on your TV. The signal can still be there but not strong enough to deliver all the data.

You'll also notice that when a broadcaster does show something in real HD that the upper channels (.3, .4, etc) will be a blue screen or static pattern as they compress those to almost nothing in the data stream and reallocate it to the HD picture.

 

[Hemi 6.1]

I'd say my HD pq is the same as its been.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I can tell a slight difference on the HD Sat locals as compared to the OTA HD. I record OTA as much as possible for this and reliability, but if I only had HD locals on Sat, it would not be that big of a deal to me.

I'm watching R Lee Ermey on Hist HD right now and it looks real good.

I've not noticed an HD decline.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

The glory days of True HD are long behind us (unless you are lucky enough to have FIOS)

For my locals most look better on Dish as they do OTA, this is because the stations here have many subcarriers which eats the OTA HD bandwidth. But Dish is getting these channels via fiber from the stations master feeds so the Dish local HD looks better.

As far as Dish goes, looking at Tsreader there have been no changes that I can see in the HD signals. But since all the HD are now VBR the show on one channel could look terrible in the afternoon but look amazing at night. It all has to do with whats happening on the other channels on that transponder. The action on the other channels may be robbing the channel your waching of some of its bandwidth.

Dish is working to add a huge new wave of HD over the next 4 or so months and will be doing many changes over the next few weeks in getting ready for these rollouts.

 

[gadgtfreek]

It'd be nice if they dropped from 8 per tp to 5 or 6.

I'm lucky, my local channels down have many subchannel issues, so the PQ is good. Only thing I hate about recording OTA, is how much space it eats up compared to the Sat HD local.

7.5gigs vs 2.5gigs

 

[bookworm370]

Yup, OTA is broadcast in MPEG2 vs. MPEG4 for Dish. So there is at least a 2:1 or 3:1 data stream penalty for recording.