DSR-410 vs 4DTV - question

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litew8

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Oct 3, 2010
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Wondering what the broadcast resolution is coming down from W5, what the 4DTV output reolution is vs the DSR-410. and is it better still than pizza? All I think I know is that 5.1 surround is capable from 4Dtv. thanks
 
This subject is controversal. I will give my personal opinion as the video quality looks on my equipment. I have 4dtv using composite video connection into a 42" toshiba regza. I also have a pizza system.

Honestly-w5 looks better than pizza standard definition! Pizza HD is only slightly better on my tv with my eyes.

Sometimes when master HD feeds are in the clear on c band fta the pics are stunning!!!!
 
I have my 922 and my DirecTV D11 SD receivers hooked to my 32" Sharp Aquos 1080p hdtv. Master feeds on the 4D wins hands down. When it comes to 4DTV W5 vs Direct SD it depends on the channel. Some are better on W5 some or better on Direct. It all depends on how much compression is being used and the source. I have them both connected using S video out. The 410 looks good but don't have S video out. Composite though on both bud receivers are very good.

When I got Direct hooked up I had to set that input to look good with Direct. All receivers and services have there own color shifts, sharpness, brightness differences etc. Until I did that W5 looked better than Direct. (maybe truck needs to mess with that a bit) But I had my 4D input already peaked too.

If I had the choice the old Analog and Digital masters IMHO blow it all away including pizza HD lite. One of the reason's I didn't get HD with Direct was to me there isn't enough content of what I watch to justify it. While HD lite may look better than pizza sd, until its all in HD I don't want it. If the Comcast thing works out with retaining the generics and more channels are added pizza will get the boot here. The only reason I have it is because I got sick of NPS's games and needed something to fill the void in the interim. When I ordered Direct the word from Skyvision, SRL and NPS was that Dec 31 was the end. (Things have changed since then :)) Direct has a few benefits such as everything in one place (like W5 only will be) and plenty of channels but there are negatives too such as rain fade in bad storms. (never had that with the bud) It will be interesting to see how how Direct fair's this winter with snow & ice.

All in all if everything you want is on W5 go for it it is a great system be it a 410 or 4DTV receiver. I'm stuck with Direct for a while due to that darn contract :(
 
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The one thing I'd like to add (though nothing to do with resolution) is the fact that any network channels people have on the 4dtv ( I think they're most Denver east coast ones) do not exist on the 410. So people who need they're fix of those Ncis, Bones etc type shows will be out of luck. I don't suspect they'll be on the 4dtv anymore either if everyone will be on the W5 satellite.
Its been my one major hurdle with my 410 and has forced me to keep a sub to pizza at the same time. There are some networks on c-band but they hardly carry any of the content that the common FOX, NBC, CBS etc networks show.
 
The one thing I'd like to add (though nothing to do with resolution) is the fact that any network channels people have on the 4dtv ( I think they're most Denver east coast ones) do not exist on the 410. So people who need they're fix of those Ncis, Bones etc type shows will be out of luck. I don't suspect they'll be on the 4dtv anymore either if everyone will be on the W5 satellite.
Its been my one major hurdle with my 410 and has forced me to keep a sub to pizza at the same time. There are some networks on c-band but they hardly carry any of the content that the common FOX, NBC, CBS etc networks show.

If they need the network stations then they should install an FTA receiver as I seriously doubt you will see any on W5.
 
I used a DSR410 for several months 3 years ago but needed the flexibility of 4DTV. While at the time I was used to a DSR905 using the RCA yellow video output and the DSR410 video was identical. Then I bought a DSR922 and started using the S- Video, which to my eye is even better.
 
Thanks everyone for the replies. I have the 920 4D now and am considering doing the DSR410 OS conversion on it when the day comes. I have an older (new to me) KDF-E50A10 Sony 3LCD Rear Projection (720p native) television. I'm still on the fence about what I'll end up doing - but so far it sounds promising that the resolution would be high enough for my setup - to make it worth wild. I will never buy into pizza or cabull - even though I've been slammed HEAVILY by the direct/dish advertising over the last few years via mail. If I were to guess, my big dish sub info from the past was probably sold to those companies. :mad:

I also have a new Onkyo TX-NR808 AVR that can upscale the signal (s-video out from 920) to the tv's native 720p. It sounds like it'll all be a good match if I decide to go that route.
 
Master feeds on the 4D wins hands down. When it comes to 4DTV W5 vs Direct SD it depends on the channel. Some are better on W5 some or better on Direct.

tvropro, are you implying that all digital channels on W5 are of SD quality?
 
I found this explanation, so it's up in the air for the most part (as tvropro implied) -
depends on the compression levels when leaving W5, right? It cannot be translated into a general format? I'm guessing the signal could appear as if it is between 480i 1080i depending on the compression levels for any given channel. True?

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The 4DTV receiver uses a digital standard that is capable of receiving the HD signal along with the associated Dolby Digital audio and delivering this signal to the Multimedia Access Port (MMAP) output of the receiver (this makes sense since NextLevel Systems Inc., when it was known as General Instrument, was a pioneer of HDTV). This signal can then be decoded by a compatible television or intermediate translation device. The 4DTV system has an advantage delivering HD signals over DBS systems because the high bandwidth requirements of the signal are typically 4-5 times greater than typical compressed NTSC video.
 
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tvropro, are you implying that all digital channels on W5 are of SD quality?

W5 is 480i SD it does not look as good as the original 480i master feed but looks good. I don't know if the W5 DC 2 passes the full 640x480 video or if it gets down reszed like pizza does. I think Direct is 480x480.

When I was comparing the master feed to the W5 equivalent. W5 was softer, less chroma and macro blocking and mosquito noise shows up. It's the same with DirecTV. I was comparing a well known generic master that is ITC right now to Direct the other night. All I can say is Direct sucks compared to the master, this is the same with W5. No second generation signal I have seen can touch the original.

We are stuck with second gens for the most part especially after 12/31. You learn to accept the anomalies to be able to watch the channels. I don't like it but it is what it is.
 
I also have a new Onkyo TX-NR808 AVR that can upscale the signal (s-video out from 920) to the tv's native 720p. It sounds like it'll all be a good match if I decide to go that route.

Your better off to let the tv do the scaling and upconverting. Allot of cheaper upconverters do a worse job then the tv. If I had to do it over I would have got a 720p set vs the 1080p. 720 will look better with a 480i SD signal than a 1080 set. 720 is closer to 480 so it has to do less filling in the blanks. Actually I have toyed around with picking up a big used 480i bottle and use that for SD. A true 480i set looks better than any HD set that has the signal upconverted when it comes to the SD stuff.
 
For the most part, I think CRTs up to the 32" Sharp TV I have used in the past, do a better job of displaying SD than any LCD TV of similar size running SD IMHO.

I have to agree. My two 27" SD's look real nice. My old 32 looked nice too. HDTV's want a very high quality signal to look good. The Bud masters do look the best on my HDTV. Just shows you the quality of a good bud master.:) Everything else pales by comparison.
 
Master vs DirecTV

Here are two pictures I took of a 4DTV master feed and DirecTV's counterpart. I did this of the channel logo so it can show the sharpness difference and artifacts. You'll notice with the master it's very clean and sharp (no artifacts) Direct is soft and has mosquito noise hanging around it. It's the same for the W5 stuff, like the Direct shot. I took this with my tripod off my 1080p HDTV screen.

EDIT: Look at the word channel, see how it looks smeared in the Direct shot. I bet that is because of the downsizing of the resolution then blowing it back up. We know in the master it's the full 640x480. What I'm showing here is no second generation be it HITS, pizza or cable all loose quality because of the re compressing of the original to fit in the bandwidth the provider allocates. This also is why the quality of the second gen's don't shine on a HDTV since it wants pure signal. The master provides this and looks good on a HDTV even though it's SD. With the kill off of the masters for good as of Dec 31, except when something goes ITC we will not be able to enjoy this quality anymore. This is why I need to keep the generic maps. To enjoy these open events and the quality I had daily for 23 years. What I took for granted is now only a hobby type thing :(
 

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For the most part, I think CRTs up to the 32" Sharp TV I have used in the past, do a better job of displaying SD than any LCD TV of similar size running SD IMHO.
I agree also. I just got this 50' Sony 3LCD tv to replace a Sony KV-34HS420 which was AWSOME for HD and non HD - BUT it weighed 200LBS! The stand I recently purchased cannot hold that much weight! But I got it at a steal too, so... now I'm left wondering if the quality of the W5 is piss poor and not worth the price they ask for subs. What's going on in the industry? Is everyone selling their MASTERs to the pizzas, and then the pizzas are putting it all on one bird? Is this a monopoly by definition? Thanks everyone for getting me up to speed.
 
Your better off to let the tv do the scaling and upconverting. Allot of cheaper upconverters do a worse job then the tv. If I had to do it over I would have got a 720p set vs the 1080p. 720 will look better with a 480i SD signal than a 1080 set. 720 is closer to 480 so it has to do less filling in the blanks. Actually I have toyed around with picking up a big used 480i bottle and use that for SD. A true 480i set looks better than any HD set that has the signal upconverted when it comes to the SD stuff.

The tv won't upscale the signal itself, that's why I'd run the sig through the audio/video reciever
(which has Faroudja DCDi cinema, it does okay) to upscale to 720p, and then to the native 720p tv -

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The Faroudja name is synonymous with high-quality video processing. The Faroudja technologies incorporated give you the power to bring out the best from both high-definition and standard-definition video content. The Faroudja DCDi Edge™ video processor converts interlaced video signals to progressive scan signals and effectively eliminates video artifacts from HDTV images. The Faroudja DCDi Cinema™ video processor is a more sophisticated version that drastically reduces video noise without sacrificing image quality and sharpness. Both processors can scale standard-definition sources up to 1080i—and DCDi Cinema can additionally upscale to 1080p—for output to HDTVs.
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So it sounds as if the signal will get cleaned up just enough to make it look decent on the 720p 3LCD tv.
I also agree, trying to push the signal to a 1080p tv wouldn't come across all that well.
 
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I agree also. I just got this 50' Sony 3LCD tv to replace a Sony KV-34HS420 which was AWSOME for HD and non HD - BUT it weighed 200LBS! The stand I recently purchased cannot hold that much weight! But I got it at a steal too, so... now I'm left wondering if the quality of the W5 is piss poor and not worth the price they ask for subs. What's going on in the industry? Is everyone selling their MASTERs to the pizzas, and then the pizzas are putting it all on one bird? Is this a monopoly by definition? Thanks everyone for getting me up to speed.

W5 is not piss poor and looks good but cannot compare to a master. They use I believe 12 to one compression which is stretching the envelope pretty thin for mpeg 2 Digicipher, especially at 19510 3/4. That old codec at that SR and FEC was never designed to have more than 8 to 1 to have a clean picture. Now if they went to 29270 7/8 they could do 12 channels very good. Just looks what HBO does over on G1 with their "The Works" masters 16 to 1, and it looks great.

DirecTV uses a 20000 6/7 in their SD muxes and 12 to 1 also Im pretty sure. Dishnetwork SD uses 20000 7/8 and is 14 to 1 and some transponders up to 16 to 1. These programmers are all pushing their equipment to the end of design and beyond. They rely heavily on the statistical multiplexer to allocate bits from one channel to the other. I have noticed with Direct that when the picture is changing that the mosquito noise will be bouncing around and when the picture stops moving the mosquito noise will catch up then disappear. Tells me the processor can't keep up with the limited bandwidth.

The days of crystal clear beautiful video at a consumer level are over with all the providers. Don't get me started on HD lite and how it's butchered on pizza & cable and even OTA. They all really don't care about the end product that much. Most people are brain dead and or stupid and can't see the poorness being delivered. Just because it says HD and Digital it don't mean it's good.

We have one thing with our buds that most don't have. Access to master signals some ITC always and some here and there. So we can enjoy the benefits of our big dishes. People with a pizza plate or cable only can never enjoy this. It's a shame where things have gone and it does aggravate me from time to time but we lost control now especially with the true 4DTV master data stream going down as of Dec 31. Its soon all going to be a memory and a part of history.
 
The tv won't upscale the signal itself, that's why I'd run the sig through the audio/video reciever
(which has Faroudja DCDi cinema, it does okay) to upscale to 720p, and then to the native 720p tv -

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Faroudja name is synonymous with high-quality video processing. The Faroudja technologies incorporated give you the power to bring out the best from both high-definition and standard-definition video content. The Faroudja DCDi Edge™ video processor converts interlaced video signals to progressive scan signals and effectively eliminates video artifacts from HDTV images. The Faroudja DCDi Cinema™ video processor is a more sophisticated version that drastically reduces video noise without sacrificing image quality and sharpness. Both processors can scale standard-definition sources up to 1080i—and DCDi Cinema can additionally upscale to 1080p—for output to HDTVs.
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So it sounds as if the signal will get cleaned up just enough to make it look decent on the 720p 3LCD tv.
I also agree, trying to push the signal to a 1080p tv wouldn't come across all that well.

I'm familiar with the Faroudja, thats like the Cadillac. Try W5 and see how you like it. I really had no complaints while I had it. My subs ran out a week ago or so, and thats it till next year and I see what happens. Remember one thing HITS is feeding that signal to cable companies for distribution so they are limited in how bad they can make it looks since it will get reprocessed again back at the headend before going to consumers.
 
I'm familiar with the Faroudja, thats like the Cadillac. Try W5 and see how you like it. I really had no complaints while I had it. My subs ran out a week ago or so, and thats it till next year and I see what happens. Remember one thing HITS is feeding that signal to cable companies for distribution so they are limited in how bad they can make it looks since it will get reprocessed again back at the headend before going to consumers.
Thanks for all the intel. Really appreciated. HITS is all major movie channels?
 
Thanks for all the intel. Really appreciated. HITS is all major movie channels?


HITS offers all the movie channels except Showtime which got pulled by Showtime to any consumer C bander this year. (no great loss they stink) Look at Skyvision here for what the 410 offers :

Skyvision Satellite Equipment

Just remember the Showtime stuff is gone (they need to update that website)
 
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