Hey everyone, been a lurker for a while now and have decided to start posting. I've been with Dish for almost 8 months now and have been pretty happy so far. I have the VIP 722 DVR with the HD package. One thing I've been noticing lately is that the quality of the HD channels has been going downhill. When I first got Dish, football games on ESPN and Big Ten Network looked very good. Now, watching basketball games on any network has had almost youtube like quality. Tons of mosquito noise and other compression artifacts. Is anyone else having similar issues? Is Dish slowly compressing their HD into oblivion so they can add more channels? Could the PQ also be a issue with a poor signal? I don't really care about PQ that much except when it comes to sports. I'd like to be able to watch March Madness with somewhat decent HD. Thanks for the input.
HD PQ Question
- Thread starter Frank Drebin
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Dish is still using the same bitrate and resolution they have since they made the "turbo" upgrades last year. Even then, turbo was more about error correction but that affects compression artifacting so turbo was supposed to possibly improve things.
The PQ mainly resides in the quality of the source signal PROVIDED TO DISH. From there it is sent through Dish's system to the sats and back to you. Some events look very good and others just barely cut it.
The PQ mainly resides in the quality of the source signal PROVIDED TO DISH. From there it is sent through Dish's system to the sats and back to you. Some events look very good and others just barely cut it.
I'm with you. I swear when the first switched ESPN and others finally to MPEG4 I thought things looked pretty good. But now not so much. So either things have gotten worse or I haved raised my standards.
That being said, I've never been one to boast about Dish PQ.
That being said, I've never been one to boast about Dish PQ.
Because you're comparing football to basketball, it sounds like an apples to oranges comparison, and thus not good grounds for concluding that it's a problem with the satellite compression. One might point out, for example, that there's a huge difference in quality between football and basketball on my local CBS affiliate that I watch OTA. The football games look spectacular, but the basketball games are just so-so.
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Are you sure your TV isn't enlarging to fit the screen. Many of those games are SD on HD channels....
Are you sure your TV isn't enlarging to fit the screen. Many of those games are SD on HD channels....
That may be true, but basketball games on ESPN had been pretty good picture wise up until early January. The last game I watched was MSU v. Indiana on Tuesday and I've never seen so many compression artifacts before. The "Indiana" lettering on the baselines was literally moving. This was while I had the 722 set to 1080i. I've never had complaints about Dish's picture quality until early January so I was just curious if anyone else noticed a difference. I guess I don't see the point in paying for HD service if the signal is compressed so much it almost looks like SD.
Thanks for the welcome. I'm pretty sure I have the settings correct on my 722. I have it set to 1080i with a picture size of 16x9. I do have an older HDTV as I have one of old Sony Wega picture tube TVs that is HD ready. I'm not sure if its now older technology that would pick up on compression artificats more, but when I had cable last year, the NCAA tournament on CBS was absolutely stunning. THe last couple games I've watched on CBS this year have been terrible.
If your quality seems to be "slipping", I would check signal strength first, your dish may have moved a little bit. Once your dish is peaked, color calibration removes much of the reported compression artifacts like mosquito noise. Link below to help...
HD Do's & Don'ts
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Was it on ESPN or ESPN2? All the Big Ten games I've watched this year on ESPN2 originated in SD. It's easy to identify because the picture is in 4:3 format with "ESPN2HD" graphics on both sides where the black bars would be.
I wonder if this might be part of the problem. While I haven't had any signal dropouts I did run a test last night and got an error message for 118. The other satellites were green. I searched a couple other threads and found out the error message for 118 was possibly a software issue with the 722, I wonder if my dish is in fact out of alignment enough that the picture looks like crap.
I've noticed on ESPN and CBS. Ironically, the upconverted games on ESPN2 sometimes look better than the HD broadcasts due to all the artifacts.
I'm guessing the problems with that broadcast were from the source. The game that came on ESPN after the Indiana game was decent PQ, and last night's NBA game was good as well.
Big Ten Network is usually pretty good (last night's Minnesota/Wisconsin game was very good, in my opinion), but it can vary. Basketball on the local CBS station, OTA, has really sucked lately.
I don't think this is a Dish issue. Maybe you could ask in the DirecTV forum in the Indiana/MSU game was bad for them too. I suspect it was.
I know most of the other channels quality might vary, but the premium movie channels are all good, depending on the original movie print. And HDNet Movies has some that are very very good.
I was watching Christmas Vacation on Cinemax last night and it was pretty bad. Might be because it was a older movie being upconverted, but the artifacts were bad. Cinemax had normally been good up to that point.
Peaking the dish is a good idea. It will not however make your PQ any better because you go from say 75% to 90%. The only thing that will do is lessen your chances of sat service going out during a storm.
While the premium channels may be good, they still suffer from the same macroblocking/bandwidth starvation as the other channels. The only channel I haven't seen macroblocking on from dish is 501 HD VOD.
Signal Strength on a digital signal will have NO effect on PQ. You either have a picture or you don't.
If your dish is out of alingment, you will be getting dropout and signal Blocking on the screen.
Peaking your system reduces Rain Fade and dropouts , NOTHING ELSE! If your PQ is not what it should be , Check your screen settings or TV menu settings. If your E* signal is GREEN its good to go!
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