HD-Lite: Truth in Advertising

Tom Bombadil

Supporting Founder
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Supporting Founder
May 5, 2005
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Chicago-Milwaukee Region
Well, while Dish is not saying that they are broadcasting in HD-lite, they are at least now advertising the degraded PQ on their HD Demo channel. The PQ on the Demo channel was once fantastic, and continued to be for a long time after several other channels went to HD-lite. But now the Demo Channel is in HD-lite, or at least it is being highly compressed / bit-starved (which I consider to be part of HD-lite).

The PQ from the Demo channel is now terrible. You can see severe macro-blocking on many of the shots. It is so bad that I find it hard to believe that they are using this channel to advertise their services ... as in it being the demo channel at many retailers selling Dish and HDTVs.

The sport scene sequences are the worst, some of them being astoundingly bad. Examples include several basketball clips, the first one they show in one series of a guy dunking the ball is very bad ... the entire screen macro-blocks. The one of a guy scoring a goal in soccer is awful too. Or you can see partial macro-blocking in a big way when the bull charges out of the chute - just watch the dust flying off of him in huge square blocks.

If you aren't seeing the effects in real-time, then try watching these scenes at 1/4 or 1/15 speed.

Even the graphics screens are bad, they move a panel of red squares around behind images and graphics. Red is a tough color to pan on when a stream is overly compressed and if you watch these squares they macro-block a lot.

Shots of a couple of red racing cars are really bad. A sunset showing low contrast, dark clouds has significant contouring on the clouds.

If I were a competitor to E*, I would use this demo against them to show that while Dish proports to have HD (and the audio track praises the quality of their HD over and over during the demo), it is clear from the video that the quality is poor.

But at least Dish is now showing it like it is. For the Demo channel is now an excellent demo of the quality of HD E* is now providing.
 
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It's funny (in a very sad way) that you mention this tidbit. I tuned into the DishHD Preview channel while watching the U.S. Open (PQ was outstanding - OTA by the way!) and noticed the demo channel looked degraded. It was the first time I had tuned to the DishHD demo channels in the past two months or more, but I was still surprised to see the picture degraded on their "showcase" HD channel.

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding...
 
Before one of those "we luv HD Lite groupie dweebs" finds this thread and jumps in with a hair across his b*tt, I wanted to mention that I also noticed some degradation of some of the SD channels this weekend.

I suppose it could've been the weather or something but we should probably keep an eye on it because since we already know their position on HD PQ, maybe the new strategy will be to subtly lesson the SD PQ enough so that HD Lite looks better by comparision.
 
I guess I'd rather have the demo channel bit-starved then the one's I am paying for. :D But as a marketing tactic, it doesn't make sense to have a cheesy looking PQ in a showroom floor. Of course, what do I know about marketing? I teach criminal justice. :rolleyes:

And why is it with my Dish 1000/vip622 I can't get this demo channel? Is it not on 129?
 
Here lately I have noticed that it seems all of the HD and some of the SD channels have poor pq, the pop is missing! I thought it might be my TV but that was not the case. I tried adjusting several things on the TV and could not get it to look like it should! This the why we want HD for the jaw dropping pq, I'm truly concerned and saddened to see Dish going this route! It just SUCKS and really ticks me off and yes Dish has heard my concerns as I have let them know about the poor pq, but what can we do! I just hope they fix it! :mad:
 
I saw an ad on one of the local stations in the Phoenix market for COX Cable HD...The ad specifically stated that HD was "TrueHD in 1080i". I have not seen HD programming on COX. I wonder if this is just the start of something? A little competition might be good?
 
Competition is always good. I think once fiber becomes more widespread, more people will notice the superior picture quality on both HD and SD and move that way. I'm hoping this will force satellite providers to improve their quality.
 
I noticed blurring during the Hbo presentation of Waterboy the other day. I recorded the show and when ever there were fast scenes like the football team members and the cheerleaders jumping up and down, there would be macro blocking or blurring . This was only on any fast motion scenes not on more rigid shots. This happened just about anytime there were fast motion shots. This used to be the more stable of the hd channels.
 
MikeD-C05 said:
I noticed blurring during the Hbo presentation of Waterboy the other day. I recorded the show and when ever there were fast scenes like the football team members and the cheerleaders jumping up and down, there would be macro blocking or blurring . This was only on any fast motion scenes not on more rigid shots. This happened just about anytime there were fast motion shots. This used to be the more stable of the hd channels.

I think that was on STARZ-HD(ish) which is still plagued by the crappy MPEG4 Encoder...

I still think STARZ-HD(ish) just broadcasts crappy up converts most of the time so when E* runs that through their crappy MPEG4 compressor... we get Garbage In, Rotten Garbage out. I wish E* could just RTFM on that MPEG4 compressor (if it were only that easy, I know!)
 
I agree with the poor PQ on Dish and Direct. I was a long time sub with Dierct and switched because I watched the PQ degrade over the past two years. I switched to Dish because of the quantity of HD channels available, however it turned out to be a bad idea because the PQ is the same if not worse that Direct. The HD is compatible, however the SD channels are compressed so much it is difficult to watch TV. I have one week left in my 30 day trial and another installer will be out again this weekend to address more of my issues such as signal strechgth of 33 on my HD Locals. It appears that this PQ has been an issue for some time from all that I have read, so my question is do I go back to Direct or ditch the Dish all together and give Comcast a try?

Scott D.

46" Samsung DLP
Dish 1000+ w/622
Yamaha 7.1 A/V Receiver
 

College Football Extra is missing somthing

720p or 1080i

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