I'm sure this has been answered but I'm finding different answers on the internet. If I stream a show from my Hopper on my home network, is the stream going out to the internet and then back, or does it stay on my local network? I just hooked up a new TV with a Fire TV and the live and DVR streams from my hopper were not great. They were watchable but definitely not HD. If it's staying on my network, it should be high quality with no problems right?
Dish Anywhere bandwidth
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It should stay local, unless there is something weirdly segmented on your home network. At ~6.5Mbps out of the home, quality looks pretty good to me.
No, both devices are connected via Wifi. Maybe there's a quality setting on the fire tv? But I'm definitely not getting HD or anywhere close.
Have you tested the download speed at your TV, both 2.5 and 5g? Kind of sounds like a slow speed problem.
The most obvious likely problem is one of bandwidth. We'll need to know a lot more about your home network to try to help. Things like WiFi router model, what frequencies you are using, distance from each device to the router, how many walls are between the devices and the router. If it was a Roku, there are hidden menus which tell you helpful diagnostic information, but I am not sure if that is the case with the FireTV and Hopper. Others may know.
Learned lesson on the walls between as well. WiFi in my Home sucks due to the original lead based paint being the bottom coat of paint(probably 100 coats over it at this point). I went from .5 MBPS WiFi on my hopper, to 1500 Mbps when connected via Ethernet. Every week it seems to get a little faster, too.
OP: Do you have or tried QOS (Quality Of Service) settings? The idea is to give certain data (in this case video streams) priority, above all other data, so that the video stream can maintain high quality regardless of any other data moving through your home network / LAN.
Yes, if the hopper and your Fire TV are on the same home network, the Stream stays within your LAN and never goes out to the internet. of course if you use Dish anywhere from a remote location outside of your LAN then obviously that stream has to go through your LAN out to the internet and to your mobile device or Fire TV in the remote location. And I can tell you that when it does go out through the internet, it is very good HD picture quality but other people have no clue that it's being sent through Dish anywhere to the Fire TV many miles away.
On the on the other hand, let me give you the benefit of learning this stuff the hard way: if your router is an older model, you could encounter disappointing results. I faced a similar situation using older routers then new inexpensive routers before finally deciding the spend the money for a really good router (partly because we were going to have a new live in family member use and further crowd our home network for their computer/internet needs.) The high-end router absolutely solve all of our problems, most significantly fairly poor and unreliable picture quality from both (the old now defunct) TiVo Fire TV app and Dish Anywhere.
If you do have an older router, you're going to be much better off with the modern, more powerful, better and greater WiFi covrrage routers with far more processing power to handle all the traffic and more memory for reliable, high quality video streams. The modern routers also have better user interface that make it far easier to implement built-in or your own custom QOS. Of course, a wired Network gives you the best performance, but if you must use Wi-Fi you're better off with the modern, far more capable routers on the market today that provide Superior Wi-Fi reliability and coverage, and by that I mean more or better antennas maintaining more powerful, or less crowded radio frequencies, at higher speeds at greater distances than the older routers, and it's worth the expense, especially if you're relying on Wi-Fi. 2.5GHz is far more crowded and, thefore, lower performing than 5GHz, which is much less crowded, and could provide far better performance.
My picture quality for Dish anywhere on my Fire TV is high definition and very close to the picture quality coming from the DVR or Joey to my eye. However everyone else can't tell any difference when they're watching Dish Anywhere Through the Fire TV. they don't have a critical eye, but they think the picture is just great. I will say that the Dish anywhere on Fire TV is high definition but to my eye it looks at a lower frame rate, something nobody else who has seen the picture notices.
Also you might want to try adjusting the settings on the TV input you're using for your Fire TV, or if you're using an AVR adjust the settings there through the appropriate input or scene-setting. Every device whether a Fire TV, Blu-ray player, Dish Hopper box, TiVo DVR, will all have some different settings in regards to sharpness the color and so-called tint and even brightness and contrast. I'll often be unsatisfied with a play back or streaming devices picture quality until I go in and adjust the settings then I find Excellent to very good picture quality experience.
And FWIW, I generally have more consistent and better picture quality experience because in my setups I'm running everything through either external switch video processors or AVR QDEO processors, and it's shocking how much they clean up for me. I've run video with processing off or directly to television for OTA and those subchannels are absolutely awful without processing viewing directly from the OTA antenna to the television, but they look pretty darn good going through the processors, then to the television. I guess my point is that there are a lot of factors involved in getting a good quality of picture.
Considering that Dish Anywhere uses Slingbox technology, in the very best picture quality possible usually requires about 8 megabits per second, however very good to good quality HD picture quality can be achieved in much slower speeds even as low as between 3 and 4 megabits per second because the proprietary encoding technology of Sling Media is really that good.
Well I would advise you to consider the Quality and capabilities of your current router, and if it's older and cheaper, I would seriously recommend an upgrade to a far better more modern, more capable, more robust wi-fi performing router. It solved all of my problems.
Yes, if the hopper and your Fire TV are on the same home network, the Stream stays within your LAN and never goes out to the internet. of course if you use Dish anywhere from a remote location outside of your LAN then obviously that stream has to go through your LAN out to the internet and to your mobile device or Fire TV in the remote location. And I can tell you that when it does go out through the internet, it is very good HD picture quality but other people have no clue that it's being sent through Dish anywhere to the Fire TV many miles away.
On the on the other hand, let me give you the benefit of learning this stuff the hard way: if your router is an older model, you could encounter disappointing results. I faced a similar situation using older routers then new inexpensive routers before finally deciding the spend the money for a really good router (partly because we were going to have a new live in family member use and further crowd our home network for their computer/internet needs.) The high-end router absolutely solve all of our problems, most significantly fairly poor and unreliable picture quality from both (the old now defunct) TiVo Fire TV app and Dish Anywhere.
If you do have an older router, you're going to be much better off with the modern, more powerful, better and greater WiFi covrrage routers with far more processing power to handle all the traffic and more memory for reliable, high quality video streams. The modern routers also have better user interface that make it far easier to implement built-in or your own custom QOS. Of course, a wired Network gives you the best performance, but if you must use Wi-Fi you're better off with the modern, far more capable routers on the market today that provide Superior Wi-Fi reliability and coverage, and by that I mean more or better antennas maintaining more powerful, or less crowded radio frequencies, at higher speeds at greater distances than the older routers, and it's worth the expense, especially if you're relying on Wi-Fi. 2.5GHz is far more crowded and, thefore, lower performing than 5GHz, which is much less crowded, and could provide far better performance.
My picture quality for Dish anywhere on my Fire TV is high definition and very close to the picture quality coming from the DVR or Joey to my eye. However everyone else can't tell any difference when they're watching Dish Anywhere Through the Fire TV. they don't have a critical eye, but they think the picture is just great. I will say that the Dish anywhere on Fire TV is high definition but to my eye it looks at a lower frame rate, something nobody else who has seen the picture notices.
Also you might want to try adjusting the settings on the TV input you're using for your Fire TV, or if you're using an AVR adjust the settings there through the appropriate input or scene-setting. Every device whether a Fire TV, Blu-ray player, Dish Hopper box, TiVo DVR, will all have some different settings in regards to sharpness the color and so-called tint and even brightness and contrast. I'll often be unsatisfied with a play back or streaming devices picture quality until I go in and adjust the settings then I find Excellent to very good picture quality experience.
And FWIW, I generally have more consistent and better picture quality experience because in my setups I'm running everything through either external switch video processors or AVR QDEO processors, and it's shocking how much they clean up for me. I've run video with processing off or directly to television for OTA and those subchannels are absolutely awful without processing viewing directly from the OTA antenna to the television, but they look pretty darn good going through the processors, then to the television. I guess my point is that there are a lot of factors involved in getting a good quality of picture.
Considering that Dish Anywhere uses Slingbox technology, in the very best picture quality possible usually requires about 8 megabits per second, however very good to good quality HD picture quality can be achieved in much slower speeds even as low as between 3 and 4 megabits per second because the proprietary encoding technology of Sling Media is really that good.
Well I would advise you to consider the Quality and capabilities of your current router, and if it's older and cheaper, I would seriously recommend an upgrade to a far better more modern, more capable, more robust wi-fi performing router. It solved all of my problems.
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Thanks for the replies. I'm running a TP Link N450 router. The tv is only about 15 feet from the router with 1 wall in between. The router does not have 5Ghz so maybe I do need to upgrade it. I'm not sure about any QOS settings. I'd have to look.
Any recommendations on a good home router that's not too expensive? What are you using?
Any recommendations on a good home router that's not too expensive? What are you using?
Just a guess, but Netflix and other "on-demand" streaming technologies are probably going to look a lot better with less throughput than Sling technology which transcodes on the fly from the format it is broadcast from or recorded in to the format your FireTV uses for playback. On-demand can do a lot of optimization ahead of time since there isn't a requirement for near real-time delivery.
If your old router didn’t even have a 5ghz band, it’s most likely very old. You’ll see much better throughput with the new router.
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I remember when I used to run Sling on a 50 meg up fiber circuit at work.
I was streaming about 8-9 megs and the picture quality was amazing
I was streaming about 8-9 megs and the picture quality was amazing
Agreed sling media's proprietary encoding can produce an amazingly high quality picture, even in moderate to slow internet speed. I have seen Netflix content look like crap compared to what I was getting with either Dish anywhere or Slingbox yes encoding on the fly but that's not the whole story. While ncted is correct on the technology of on demand streaming services, it would be incorrect to presume it's always used to its fullest, as I have observed. the on-demand streaming services including Netflix have streamed stuff that looks pretty darn good and stuff that's pretty darned awful and shouldn't be awful. Netflix is compression can be worse then satellite or cable, especially with contrast ratio or good black levels that look far worse than the worst Dish has ever dished up.
I've noticed black level issues lately on Prime, but not on Netflix on my recent Rokus. I'd be curious to know what client and TV you were using. I have a friend who watches Netflix in a browser interface, and he is constantly complaining about PQ. Knowing what I know about how Netflix builds the catalog they distribute to their CDN servers, most recent content should look really good if not great. I certainly wouldn't expect it to look worse than a Dish recording or live TV delivered over Sling. The exception being if the content provider gives Netflix a subpar original to work with. GIGO and all that.
OK, the WORST I had observed of awful black levels on Netflix was viewing through the last Gen TOP TIER FireTV--not those under-powdered sticks, and the CUBE is now the KING of Fire TV specs--with a 100mbps downstream (very reliable ISP and speed), running through Yamaha AX series AVR with QDEO chip to Sony Bravia (can't recall the model), but EXCELLENT PQ. This set up has presented breathtaking PQ--even better, the TV can display PAL (frame rate, of course) natively for FLAWLESS PQ playback of several of my PAL frame rate DVD's and Blu-rays. Now the content:
I think the content plays a very big role in what Netflix may CHOOSE to send in highest quality it can (probably big movies, etc.) and other content. OK, the WORST was the US version of "The Killing" with extremely dark scene where the detective is carefully making her way through the dark in what appears to be a life and death situation in the very first episode and very first scene. This was a recent US TV show sometime about 2017, I think. VERY modern HD production and the black was just an awful display of pixels, and the only way to get it to look DECENT was to adjust so, but then the rest of the show was way, way, too dark to see most of the picture.
Let me make the observation that I believe both Netflix and Hulu seem to reserve high quality PQ for blockbusters--in general--and less viewed content is given barely adequate. Considering the finite amount of bandwidth on the backbone and at the edge with the ISP's, it makes sense for such a scheme. Dish has a similar practice where premium movie channels and some general interest (especially Disney Channel East's glorious PQ--Charlie and Bob (Iger) are buddies now) allowed great PQ and other lesser channels can look obviously lacking detail or even "color and contrast" data and looking far too soft.
The original UK version of Shameless (far superior version to the US version ) Series 9 looked pretty bad on Hulu, and BARELY less pretty bad on Netflix. PQ was noisy, some grain and just plain NO DETAIL (way too soft or in low resolution). It looked to me that both services were sending out Standard Def versions. Well, I was looking to save money and watch the remaining series and episodes on either Netflix or Hulu, but both were so bad, I bought the DVD's (yes, SD DVD's) which was a far better PQ than Netflix and Hulu were streaming. However, some lesser known things such as "The Internet is Coming" the farewell episode of the IT crowd, looked very good on HD Hulu. Also, The Thick of It Series 4 on Hulu is in good quality HD.
Look, there are some examples of great, good, and decent PQ on both N & H, but A LOT of other content may be given the low PQ treatment on the way out of the servers. I can say that Netflix and Hulu have gotten BETTER with consistent increasing quality of PQ.
I forgot to mention Amazon. IMHO, Amazon seems to be the PQ leader in just about EVERYTHING it streams. I can't recall a less than GOOD (often GREAT) PQ from Amazon that was NOT the fault of the source production. Then again, Amazon does have pretty much all the AWS it wants; Everybody else has to pay what it feels makes sense for its varied content. Also, I think sometimes the services may have to pay MORE for the better source when it comes to OLDER TV or Movies.
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FWIW: The black issues I've seen lately on Amazon have actually been with GOT which we have been rewatching in preparation for the final season. Given that isn't an Amazon original, I am not going blame that on Amazon. It looks about the same on HBO Now.
Everything on Netflix should be encoded to a standard, but, given the number of devices out there, it means they have something like 120 possible encodings per show. Their use of VP9 on devices that support it should provide the best quality at the lowest bandwidth, but clearly, YMMV.
Hopefully the new router will make things better but don't bet the farm on 5GZ working great, that one wall it has to pass through may take a toll (2.4GHZ usually does much better going through walls).
Have you checked what channel your router is using and how much other traffic (neighbors etc) is on it?
You can download a free WFI analysis app for your phone to see what is going on, then you can select the best channel for your router to use. The router is supposed to select the best channel to use automatically and sometimes it does but.......
I've never actually found a router that is good at this. Even enterprise-grade APs with wireless controllers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars usually require some manual tuning to get it right.
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