HD picture quality not as good as before?

[lern4483]

Yepp, and FIOS is getting ready to pump out some more HD channels. They are working close to my area, I hope they move into Williamsburg soon.

Wish I could get Fios! At@t coming to my area. Jury is still out on them. I am out of contract with dish.

They have burned me enough. Looking at options. I do have direc but dont like the dvr..Its poor workmanship.

However, people are right the PQ is much better than dish. Maybe I just slide over to diec and deal with the dvr..

Not sure yet. But dish is on its way out..too dissapointed in what they have done.

 

[mrsdrgn]

Wish I could get Fios! At@t coming to my area. Jury is still out on them. I am out of contract with dish.

They have burned me enough. Looking at options. I do have direc but dont like the dvr..Its poor workmanship.

However, people are right the PQ is much better than dish. Maybe I just slide over to diec and deal with the dvr..

Not sure yet. But dish is on its way out..too dissapointed in what they have done.

I have their DVR and I don't have a problem with it. I actually like the fact that I have it connected to the internet and I get a lot of ON DEMAND stuff. Including HD on demand.

 

[lern4483]

I have their DVR and I don't have a problem with it. I actually like the fact that I have it connected to the internet and I get a lot of ON DEMAND stuff. Including HD on demand.

I tried the on demand. Hooked up to my computer. I have a cable connection..Man it was sooooo slow.

Great idea, just takes to long to download. At least for me. I gave up on it.

 

[kstuart]

I noticed this too, every HD channel. It has to be an increase in compression when they added the new channels and made room for more. (It did happen at the same time as the Voom removal, but I think it has nothing to do with Voom, just compression).

This is why I recently asked, who is compressing more these days E* or D*.

The HD picture quality has been crappy and pixelated since the new channels were added.

This is plan "B" after their failed launch - great plan.

This is complete nonsense.

All the new channels were added in different transponders from the existing HD channels.

No changes whatsoever had to be made to existing HD channels to add the new ones.

This comes from complete lack of understanding and research into how any of this is actually done.

So far, the only actual channels mentioned in this thread have been two RSNs.

It is true that the source material used by Equator and Rave were better than most of the source material used by channels like TNT and National Geographic, so it is true that you are less top quality material, but that has nothing to do with compression.

 

[larrylwill]

I think part of the problem is many people have smallish HDTV's 32" or smaller and probley cant notice the decrease in quality. I have a 61" and notice it hugely. I also have OTA HD on Tivo and there is a big difference. After they dumped Voom they added other HD'sh channels maybe they stole some bandwidth. I am hoping that if they ever get some more satellites up they will again increase the Bandwidth.

Thinking back I saw my first HD transmission in Berlin Germany in about 1982 at the Producttronica show. They had standard Pal and NTSC along side HD Pal and HD NTSC both broadcasting live 1080I signals from a local flower garden, then about 8 years I got a Unity Motion C band HD receiver and saw the Kentucky derby in 1080I its been downhill from there. A couple of years ago PBS had great HD until they stopped broadcasting it , great travel logs etc. A lot like Voom a great picture that looked better than real life. Great color saturation and clarity. There is nothing that good on Dish, even Nat Geo channel. Take a look at Flags of our fathers on 5-max I have SVHS video tape that looks better.
I think little by little they are compressing HD hoping people wont notice the difference.

 

[kstuart]

After they dumped Voom they added other HD'sh channels maybe they stole some bandwidth.

No, they didn't.

I think little by little they are compressing HD hoping people wont notice the difference.

All HD is compressed.

 

[larrylwill]

No, they didn't.

A few days later they did add several more channels to my HD only package.
Maybe they were already available though to higher tier packages.


All HD is compressed.

I meant compressed more and more.

 

[kstuart]

A few days later they did add several more channels to my HD only package.
Maybe they were already available though to higher tier packages.

No, they were added on transponders that previously were inactive.

At 61.5, there were two transponders of Sky Angel channels that went out of service on March 31st, so the space was freed.

They also freed more space by moving New York locals and other locals that had been on CONUS transponders to spot beams.

You can read about these sort of changes in:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/uplink-center/

 

[chrisb83]

I was watching CSI Miami last night on A&E HD. Horrible PQ. Very jumpy. On the Food HD is a huge lip sync issue. At one point I unplugged my receiver to see if that was the problem. Hope they get a handle on this soon. I have OTA HD and there is no problem with my local networks.

 

[bela_blasko2006]

too bad Voom had great picture quality

 

[larrylwill]

Maybe that's why Dish dumped them so we couldn't see how good HD could be. ;<}

 

[psychicmind]

I think part of the problem is many people have smallish HDTV's 32" or smaller and probley cant notice the decrease in quality. I have a 61" and notice it hugely. I also have OTA HD on Tivo and there is a big difference. After they dumped Voom they added other HD'sh channels maybe they stole some bandwidth. I am hoping that if they ever get some more satellites up they will again increase the Bandwidth.

I think little by little they are compressing HD hoping people wont notice the difference.

I may not know the tech speak, but I also own a 61" which is how I noticed the changes so dramatically. Someone else even mentioned they thought it was their TV. From my perspective, the picture quality dropped sharply in a day, a few week back.

We all aren't crazy, allot of people seem to be noting a marked decrease in picture quality.

Dish is doing something to make that happen, whether it is compression or whatever - DECREASED PQ HAS OCCURRED.

I just what to know how and why!

 

[VaberMan]

I noticed a drop last night watching the hockey game. It is way down from earlier in the playoffs. Also the Twins were back on SD and my schedule states it should have been HD. Dish!!! Don't bring me down!

 

[larrylwill]

When is HD no longer HD? How much compression can they do and still call it HD. Can source material that was shot on kinescope and put on a HD station be considered HD? When I had C- band almost everything looked as good as much of the so called HD today.

HD today is much like candy bars. 40 years ago 5 cents got you a 10oz candy bar, over time little by little the bar got smaller and smaller, finally the bar bottoms out at 5 oz and then they advertise, Now new big sizes 10 oz at 50 cents per bar and so it goes.

 

[kstuart]

I noticed a drop last night watching the hockey game. It is way down from earlier in the playoffs.

And conversely, I'm not the only one to note that the PQ got steadily better during the basketball playoffs.

Perhaps you need to switch sports.

I notice that still not one specific National HD channel has been mentioned.

As I said before, subjective feeling of worse PQ is simply due to the fact that the source material on Voom was better than most of the other channels we are now watching instead. No change in compression has occurred.

 

[Dune]

I'm in Hawaii and we get our HD from the 110 spot beam in the 5000 series channels and also from the 110 conus beam in the 9000 series.

The picture quality has steadily gone down from when I used to get it on the 110 regular beam several years ago. The only thing better is now we don't get rain fade as often.

I used to be able to pick out threads on hockey players jerseys on HDnet and now I'm lucky to read the number.

We only get the national channels over here and it is readily apparent that something has changed in the picture quality.

Whether it is Dish or the source material, I don't know but this is not true HD anymore.

 

[One Wolf Productions]

Now that you mention it I have noticed a difference in the PQ. My parents were watching an Oklahoma City local KOCO Channel 5, and the reds and blues where out of sync I thought for a moment it was the tv, so I checked out the settings and it wasn't the tv. The reds were super blurry and the blues were distant, it almost looked like it was trying to ghost. Then I was watching WWEHD on USAHD and it seemed as if there skin wasn't porous if you know what I mean. It looked blurred, I was like woah what is going on here. So maybe Dish is working on some new technology, Like Japan and the new UHDV.. When will we ever catch up?

Super Hi-Vision, also known as Ultra High Definition Video, UHDV, Ultra High Definition Television, UHDTV and UHD is an experimental digital video format, currently proposed by NHK of Japan.
Super Hi-Vision's main specifications:

• Resolution: 7,680 × 4,320 pixels (16:9) (approximately 33 megapixels)
• Frame rate: 60 frame/s.
• Audio: 22.2 channels
  • 9 — above ear level
  • 10 — ear level
  • 3 — below ear level
  • 2 — low frequency effects
• Bandwidth: 21 GHz frequency band
  • 600 MHz, 500~6600 Mbit/s bandwidth

UHDV resolution shown in comparison to other digital video formats.


The new format with a resolution of 7,680 × 4,320 pixels is four times as wide and four times as high (for a total of 16 times the pixel resolution) as existing HDTV, which has a maximum resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will be starting a public-private partnership to develop technology for UHDV in the hopes of setting an international standard for Super Hi-Vision in addition to broadcasting with it beginning in 2015.One particularly large advantage of 4320p is that it will be able to scale 480i, 480p (both with pillarboxing), 720p, 1080i, 1080p, and 2160p images accurately, as a height of 4320 pixels is a least common multiple of all common NTSC and ATSC TV resolutions. This will create for a more pleasant viewing experience, as the picture will be less distorted than with today's conventional 720p/1080i/p televisions.

 

[EmpireState]

I was watching CSI Miami last night on A&E HD. Horrible PQ.

I noticed it was bad too. I thought CSI Miami was usually a very high PQ HD show. The episode I watched was from 2004 though, so I don't know how it was shot back then. Perhaps they didn't bring their game up to full 1080 until later on.

I think the majority of poor HD can be explained by the quality of the content as opposed to how Dish Network sends it to us. The PQ is determined by the equipment used to create the programming and the equipment used to deliver the programming to Dish Network. Am I wrong? Dish Network can always compound the problem, but even under the best case scenario they can't make chicken salad out of chicken crap.

At any rate, no greater argument can me made for VOOM than the quality of the content they had. Smithsonian and most of the other new additions are HD lite at best.

 

[TheKrell]

No change in compression has occurred.

Do you genuinely know something from the inside of Dish Network engineering, or are you just shooting from the hip? Because none of the known facts (changed transponders, same # of HD channels) proves what you are stating with such finality. Something as simple as a different transponder might well change the SNR on the ground for some (or all) customers, thereby messing up PQ in complicated ways. Yes, it's a digital signal, and if everybody got every bit back that was originally uplinked all the way through their receiver hardware, then everybody's picture might be the same. Otherwise, we're talking about error correction for missing bits, and this may be complete and result in a pristine picture, or might not be complete in which case you see the ghastly artifacts reported in this thread and elsewhere.

Furthermore, Dish very well might be tweaking one or more of (how many?) parameters on their statistical multiplexers, without altering the channel count. After all, the channel count is quantized, whereas the amount of compression is not. (Well, it's quantized too, but on such a fine scale that it won't matter.) If I were a Dish Network broadcast engineer, I'd be playing with those parameters all the time. This would of course be in preparation for increasing the channel count/transponder further. That is my guess as to why so many have reported this erosion of HD PQ over time.

Isn't there a PQ email address to report problems like this? If all we do is bitch/moan about macroblocking, green squares, fuzziness, and lousy lip sync here on Satelliteguys.us, then you can be assured the PQ will only go down over time.

 

[EmpireState]

Something as simple as a different transponder might well change the SNR on the ground for some (or all) customers, thereby messing up PQ in complicated ways. Yes, it's a digital signal, and if everybody got every bit back that was originally uplinked all the way through their receiver hardware, then everybody's picture might be the same. Otherwise, we're talking about error correction for missing bits, and this may be complete and result in a pristine picture, or might not be complete in which case you see the ghastly artifacts reported in this thread and elsewhere.
.

Hmmm, this is interesting. What is the algorithm behind a typical Dish Network receiver's bit corrections and/or drops. Can it correct? If so how? If not, what does it do? Also, what does a corrected picture look like? Less sharp, or flared up with blocks, etc?