Football Games Looked Bad

[Vasto7]

I just had a 522 installed on Friday with a Super Dish. When watching the football games this weekend I notice a lot of blur in the fast motion image. I could hardly keep track of the football when it was in the air. I have a SD 32" Sony, but noticed the problem in my other SD sets as well.

Previously I had Directv (non DVR, a few years old). Never noticed a problem watching the games before (they looked fine last week). I have read a previous thread about this problem, but I am not clear whether it is a rare problem or common. I also don't know if it is unique to the 522, Dish in general or DVRs in general. My brother has a Directv Tivo and has not noticed this issue.

Dish tech support said they were unaware of any such problem. The installer said it might be the 522 and is bringing out another box tomorrow.

Basically I am trying to figure out if this can be fixed. If not I would like to know if it would be a good idea to switch to a non DVR unit or Directv Tivo.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[DougE]

I have a 721 and everyone who watched this weekend's games commented on the great picture quality. The TV is an old (15 year old) Mitsubishi 35" CRT. The stations were from the San Francisco DMA spot beam.

 

[Dan522]

I have always had lower quality on the local channels. Usually, it is not too noticable when watching standard shows, but it is pretty annoying watching football games. If the national feeds are fine for you (ESPN, etc), it may just be the locals. I know they push the locals through on spotbeams, but am not sure of the technical reason the quality difference.

 

[fenwah]

All my local channels look really good except for the WB channel. I have a lot of ghosting on the channel. It's annoying as can be and just started about a month ago. Prior to that, it looked just fine.

Luckily for me though, I don't watch too much on there.

 

[chaddux]

I have problems with football games on my locals, paricularly my local FOX affiliate. There is normally a lot of pixelation on them.

 

[Thor263]

All my local channels look really good except for the WB channel. I have a lot of ghosting on the channel. It's annoying as can be and just started about a month ago. Prior to that, it looked just fine.

Luckily for me though, I don't watch too much on there.

You might want to send an email to dishquality@echostar.com . They may be able to do something about your local WB channel. See this thread - apparently they actually do check things out.

 

[road_rascal]

I had Dish installed on 12-1-04 and the picture quality from the local stations and ESPN are horrible. I'm new to this 'digital televison' stuff, and I'm told it's called compression artifacts. From what I've learned so far it can be corrected two ways: 1) dump Dish, or what I call the "upsell" from the local installer, 2) buy an HDTV and upgrade to an HD receiver. I'm not too happy...

 

[Vasto7]

As I stated earlier, I had Directv until last weekend and never noticed this issue. I assume they are using the same compression (mpeg2) as Dish. I'm wondering if Directv is able to provide a higher data rate, particularly for local, than Dish.

 

[Shadowtester]

Picture quality of the locals has a lot of factors that effect it.

Mpeg compression - higher compression more compression artifacts
Original signal quality - garbage in garbage out ie original satellite uplink from local station each satellite company has it own for each channel
Satellite signal strength - weak signal strength will cause signal drop outs and breakups

Those are just a few factors that will effect signal quality in my local market the locals look reasonable on Dish Network on the 105 satellite however the Fox local station for Direct TV looks terible almost un-watchable they have had many complaints about it. Infact I know of several people that have changed from DTV to Dish over the problem. Most people think the problem is with DTV satellite uplink for our local FOX station since the other locals in the same market look reasonable. I can tell you from previous experience with Direct Tv in the past that Direct TV's picture quality on the locals always gets worse during football season since they decrease bandwith alloted for them to provide additional bandwith for the Football channels and other sport channels it seems to happen when there are 2 different sport seasons going at the same time seems like they are robbing peter to pay paul.