D* LIL vs OTA Picture Quality

[Al K]

I've had D* (with OTA locals) for about 3 weeks and I finally looked at the D* LIL HD picture. I expected it to be much much better. I've read here that the mpeg4 picture quality was almost as good as the OTA picture. At my house it's not even close. If my OTA picture is a ten, then the D* picture is a six or seven.

The time delay introduced by the conversion from mpg2 to mpg4 and the transit time(s) to and from D* add up to about 3 seconds. So I can watch the OTA picture, flip over to the LIL picture and watch the same thing via the D* LIL feed. The LIL picture has much less detail and higher contrast.

 

[aramus8]

Sorry to hear your locals don't quite cut it in Phoenix. Here in the Salt Lake City DMA, they all look great. It wasn't that way a year ago, but the local station engineers and D* worked out the kinks. Other than the delay, the OTA signals and the D* signals are almost identical. Two of our network affiliates were O & O's when they first went on the satellite which may have given them a little more clout in getting the signals right.

 

[raoul5788]

I've had D* (with OTA locals) for about 3 weeks and I finally looked at the D* LIL HD picture. I expected it to be much much better. I've read here that the mpeg4 picture quality was almost as good as the OTA picture. At my house it's not even close. If my OTA picture is a ten, then the D* picture is a six or seven.

The time delay introduced by the conversion from mpg2 to mpg4 and the transit time(s) to and from D* add up to about 3 seconds. So I can watch the OTA picture, flip over to the LIL picture and watch the same thing via the D* LIL feed. The LIL picture has much less detail and higher contrast.

Are you referring to an hd or sd picture? Here in CT the hd ota is very similar to the D* lil.

 

[rockaway1836]

To my knowledge locals are still Mpeg2. The delay vs OTA is from the signal bouncing back and forth in space before it gets to you. Your OTA comes to you direct from the source. When I lived in NY (a few moths ago) I had locals from D and OTA. The HD PQ was about the same from both. Living here now I have nothing to compare to.

 

[Ramy]

HD LIL's from Directv are in Mpeg-4.
I have locals from NY which are still in Mpeg-2 but those are only for those that have waivers.

 

[warkovision]

I still feel that OTA looks a bit better here in Los Angeles. One thing I have noticed is that the volume level on most OTAs here is greater than their D*
counterparts.

 

[Al K]

Are you referring to an hd or sd picture? Here in CT the hd ota is very similar to the D* lil.

I'm referring to HD. I think I was just surprised at the difference. I've seen LIL HD on a neighbors HDTV with a smaller screen and it looked okay. I put up my antenna in 1999 for HD before the stations were adding SD material to the data stream and it was really good then.

 

[Indiana627]

Buffalo's D* HD LIL is the same grade as our OTA HD locals. Both would be 10s in my book (except NBC but that's NBC). No difference between the 2 sources.