I currently subscribe to D* with my HD TiVo. I'm adding a 921 from E*. I was wondering what people think of E*'s HD PQ versus D*'s? I've heard lot's of complaints about D* starving their HD of BW, but how does E* stack up? Does anyone have a site that breaks down each's specs?
E* vs D* HD PQ
- Thread starter dturturro
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DIRECTV is very starved for bandwidth at this time. They have cut back the bit rate of their HD channels quite a bit. Dish has some channels (like HDNet/Movies) at full 19.2mbit bandwidth, and some at lower bandwidth. But, none of their channels are at as low a bandwidth as DIRECTV.
DIRECTV has to wait on some satellite launches (probably end of 2005) before they get more bandwidth to fix up the HD situation.
DIRECTV has to wait on some satellite launches (probably end of 2005) before they get more bandwidth to fix up the HD situation.
Well, I installed my 921 and here are my thoughts, so far:
Installation on the 921 was a nightmare! The box defaulted to a legacy switch check so I had to move the box to a legacy setup to do the initial download (over an hour!). After getting up and running I have the Menu & DVR functions stopped responding. A reboot fixed that.
Now that everything is working I did some D*/E* comparisons. Dish's PQ on common channels (HDNET, HDNETM, DISCHD & ESPNHD) was slightly better. Still not the WOW factor you get from OTA, but a definite advantage to Dish. I only have HBO/SHO on D* so I couldn't do a comparison on them. I also think Universal HD looks better than TNTHD.
As far as the boxes go, the 921s guide is MUCH faster than the HDTiVo. However, channel surfing on the HDTiVo is far superior to the 921. The 921 tended to lock up when hitting an OTA channel with low signal.
All in all I still favor the HDTiVo on it's functionality and reliability. If E* can get Name Based Recording for the 921 that would certainly narrow the gap, but until then D* has the better box.
Installation on the 921 was a nightmare! The box defaulted to a legacy switch check so I had to move the box to a legacy setup to do the initial download (over an hour!). After getting up and running I have the Menu & DVR functions stopped responding. A reboot fixed that.
Now that everything is working I did some D*/E* comparisons. Dish's PQ on common channels (HDNET, HDNETM, DISCHD & ESPNHD) was slightly better. Still not the WOW factor you get from OTA, but a definite advantage to Dish. I only have HBO/SHO on D* so I couldn't do a comparison on them. I also think Universal HD looks better than TNTHD.
As far as the boxes go, the 921s guide is MUCH faster than the HDTiVo. However, channel surfing on the HDTiVo is far superior to the 921. The 921 tended to lock up when hitting an OTA channel with low signal.
All in all I still favor the HDTiVo on it's functionality and reliability. If E* can get Name Based Recording for the 921 that would certainly narrow the gap, but until then D* has the better box.
PacersGuy said:
Well you can see what the transponder capacity is:
1. Go to www.lyngsat.com
2. pick packages->america
3. pick a satellite (like 110 for dish HD) then click on "freq"
This will give you a list of what channels are on which transponder.
For example HDNet/Movies are both on transponder 7
Using the codes you will see the symbol rate (SR) is 21500, the error correction (FEC) is 2/3. Dish broadcasts HD in 8PSK and uses the standard R/S error correction at 188/204. So you have to plug into the formula:
symbol rate * bits in a symbol * FEC * R/S is the transponder bit rate:
8PSK is 3 bits in a symbol so:
21500 * 3 * 2/3 * 188/204 = 39.6 mbit/sec (this is what dish uses on all their HD TPs at this time)
So, 39.6 is the data rate. There is some overhead on the transponder for everything to the info button to packet overhead. Even if you "give" a megabit/sec to that (I think it is much less) and still have more than the 38.4 data rate needed divided up by the two channels to give 19.2 mbit/sec each.
3/TP on dish would be around 13 Mbit/sec if they all peaked at the same time. But, the three channels share the bandwidth dynamically, so it is better than it looks since a channel can hit 19.2 while the other ones are not so busy. You are playing the odds.
DIRECTV is doing 20000 * 2 * 6/7 * 188/204 = 31.6 on a TP. DIRECTV used to only have 1 HD and some SD on a TP giving the HD the full 19.2. Now it is reported that they put 2 or 3 on a TP giving an average of 15.8 (2/TP) or 10.53 (3/TP).
