I have had HD with dish for quite some time but it's only very recently but I've mainly watched television shows, but with the free trial for Dish HD and the $0.01 deal with Cinemax, I'm having my first opportunity to check out movies.
I've heard lots of discussions and complaints about PQ so I decided to get some DVDs and compare. A week or so ago, I gave The Fifth Element a comparison (with a Superbit DVD) when it was broadcast on TNT. In switching back and forth between the HD and DVD version, I could tell the HD was better, but not by much, but what was really obvious was that the image had been distorted. I wrote that off as TNT just sucks as so many people seem to think.
Now, I've made a second comparison with Eragon on Cinemax. I figured Cinemax would be better but the results appear similar although I would say the picture looks better.
The thing I least understand is why Cinemax and/or Dishnetwork feel the need to screw up the aspect ratio. The DVD version is shown in an aspect ratio higher than 16:9 so I still get black bars on the screen. The HD version has no black bars with the picture filling the whole screen. Now if they had simply stretched the picture vertically so it filled the whole screen, I could understand that, but it seems they went even farther. Parts of the entire outer edges of the screen on all four sides are cut off as if they just zoomed in the picture by well more than was needed to remove the black bars. I can understand zooming in to remove the black bars and thus cut off the sides, but the HD version cuts off parts of the top and bottom, and by significant amounts! This boggles me.
Are all HD movies like this on everything Dish broadcasts? I have no interest in watching distorted and cropped movies and I look forward to my plans later in the year to buy a Blu-ray player but until them, am I stuck with DVD? Any thoughts?
I've heard lots of discussions and complaints about PQ so I decided to get some DVDs and compare. A week or so ago, I gave The Fifth Element a comparison (with a Superbit DVD) when it was broadcast on TNT. In switching back and forth between the HD and DVD version, I could tell the HD was better, but not by much, but what was really obvious was that the image had been distorted. I wrote that off as TNT just sucks as so many people seem to think.
Now, I've made a second comparison with Eragon on Cinemax. I figured Cinemax would be better but the results appear similar although I would say the picture looks better.
The thing I least understand is why Cinemax and/or Dishnetwork feel the need to screw up the aspect ratio. The DVD version is shown in an aspect ratio higher than 16:9 so I still get black bars on the screen. The HD version has no black bars with the picture filling the whole screen. Now if they had simply stretched the picture vertically so it filled the whole screen, I could understand that, but it seems they went even farther. Parts of the entire outer edges of the screen on all four sides are cut off as if they just zoomed in the picture by well more than was needed to remove the black bars. I can understand zooming in to remove the black bars and thus cut off the sides, but the HD version cuts off parts of the top and bottom, and by significant amounts! This boggles me.
Are all HD movies like this on everything Dish broadcasts? I have no interest in watching distorted and cropped movies and I look forward to my plans later in the year to buy a Blu-ray player but until them, am I stuck with DVD? Any thoughts?
