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.
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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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. 
