Does DTV still use "HD lite"?

[miguelaqui]

The salesman at Sam's told me that DTV was no longer using HD lite. He said that he knew what I was walking about and that they were only using HD lite,my definition is 1920x1080 native resolution, not having the receiver set up the resolution from 1440x1080.

He also told me that Dish had recently purchased a sat from DTV....I couldn't find any info on that.

 

[harshness]

Don't believe anything you hear at Sam's Club (or Costco, Best Buy, Walmart, etc.).

DIRECTV is much improved over what they were passing off as HD back in the MPEG2 days. It isn't Blu-ray, but it is better than many. There may be some slippage here pretty soon as they begin conversion in earnest from 5 channels to 6 on their HD transponders.

Echostar hasn't purchased anybody else's TV satellite since they bought Rainbow 1 (Echostar 12) more than seven years ago.

There is the matter of Hughesnet (once pretty closely tied to DIRECTV), but those aren't TV satellites.

 

[gadgtfreek]

The HD Lite really came from 1280x1080i which Directv was at fault for back in the day. At one time, not sure now, they were sending 1920x1080i and Dish is sending 1440x1080i (AFAIK). Those numbers mean little to me, as compared to how many channels are stuffed on one TP. Directv has gone from 5 to 6, but I've not noticed a slip yet and an employee of theirs claimed the increase came at the result of better compression schemes. Who knows on all of that, I just know Directv is one of the better looking ones Ive seen, so Im happy.

 

[dfergie]

I notice some channels from Directv look washed out compared to their Dish counterparts, SMC, HBOE & HDNet look better to me from Dish than from DIRECTV.

 

[jcrandall]

To my knowledge Directv doesn't reduce resolution on any of the HD channels any longer, it's been about 3 years (from memory) since the launch of the D10 satellite. At that point, HD transitioned from the 119 satellite to the 103 satellite and was dramatically improved resolution and picture.

Now five or six channels share a transponder. When you have six on a transponder, or multiple channels showing something with significant motion, that is when you'll see macroblocking and such. I don't notice it often, but it can happen - just depends on what is showing on the channels that are sharing a transponder.

Bottom line, no, they no longer us HD Lite.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I think they also monitor bandwidth usage and try and set an equal amount of hogs with non hogs on the same TP. Which does seem smart.

 

[Jimbo]

HD Lite was back in the Mpeg2 days ...
Hasn't had issues that I would consider HD Lite since Mpeg4 took over.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I would say DISH was more HD Lite then DIRECTV.

But now both with MPEG4 both look good.

 

[Ramy]

I would say DISH was more HD Lite then DIRECTV.

But now both with MPEG4 both look good.

I think so too.

 

[tigerfan33]

MPEG4 has made all the difference to me. No more "swimming grass" when watching a baseball or football game. I remember when Direct briefly had both MPEG2 and MPEG4 of the same channels at the same time. The difference was amazing.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I think a lot of the problems now are the channels themselves. Two of my locals (I record OTA) stink because they have 2 subchannels.

 

[raoul5788]

I think a lot of the problems now are the channels themselves. Two of my locals (I record OTA) stink because they have 2 subchannels.

The ota channel quality may suffer, but the feed that Directv gets may be fiber, so the quality shouldn't be degraded since it isn't reduced by the subchannels.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Ive compared the ones here, and the OTA is superior than Directv, it just could be better. CW last year added a subchannel, before that the PQ on Supernatural and Nikita was excellent, I mean really good 1080i, but now I see blocking on scenes with a lot of motion. Makes me shake my head.

 

[Jimbo]

Ive compared the ones here, and the OTA is superior than Directv, it just could be better. CW last year added a subchannel, before that the PQ on Supernatural and Nikita was excellent, I mean really good 1080i, but now I see blocking on scenes with a lot of motion. Makes me shake my head.

I don't consider CW to be a OTA network, how does the Major Networks look.

I use both OTA and D*'s locals hear and they are very close.

 

[gadgtfreek]

CBS and NBC are bad because they also had sub channels. When Cw here only had the main channel, the pq was awesome.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Not sure about resolution, but DirecTV does give a fair amount of bandwidth to their HD channels. Significantly more bandwidth, on average, than does Dish. I see far less compression artifacts on DirecTV. I sub'ed with Dish for almost 10 years and left because of their declining HD image quality. I do spot check Dish from time to time at a neighbor's and I continue to find it well short of what I get from DirecTV. This is the main reason why I sub to D*. Not as good as OTA or Blu-Ray, but decent. Don't know how it compares to other providers.

 

[smaug07]

DirecTV also has a better HD picture when compared to Verizon Fios here in the Boston area. My brother in law has Fios and when I tried to watch a Red Sox game on NESN, there was a lot of pixelation when the camera moved; I almost never see that on D*. Other stations were similar in quality. D* may not be perfect but it's pretty darn good, and let's face it, it's far better than the old days before HD.