HDNet Movies joins the HD-Lite crowd??

[keenan]

Over at AVS it's been posted that HDNet Movies has been down-rezzed to 1440x1080i and bistarved down to 13mbps fro 18mbps. Apparently this happened when Dish added the NFL Network preview channel? Can any of you experts verify this?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=709255
E* goes HD-Lite on HDNet Movies for NFL-HD Preview - AVS Forum

 

[Smithy]

There is something posted about it in the uplink report

 

[keenan]

Thanks.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Great.

They just gutted the best HD available.

If true, then this is just another brick on the wall of Dish having no commitment to providing quality HD.

 

[HDTVFanAtic]

I messaged Scott last week that something was happening as they changed the headers 2 weeks ago. Over the weekend they started dropping the bitrate a few points and they pulled the plug today

It's a VERY, VERY, SAD DAY.

HDNET, R.I.P. via Satellite.

 

[Sean Mota]

A freaking nonsense. I couldn't careless about NFL HD. f**** a****H****

 

[Kirby Baker]

Man this sucks.. Wake up, get a high from the InHD news, then read this. Thanks for the rollercoaster ride Dish.

NFL HD was moved for what reason? Do I understand correctly that it is now on 61.5, 110 and 129 (with 110 being for a preview)? So it *might* return to full bitrate and resolution? I can only say thank god I got 2001 and 2010 captured before this happened.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

As far as I know its only for the free preview. I was flipping last night between the MPEG2 feed and the MPEG4 feed and besides the delay in the audio between the two the MPEG2 looked better to me then the MPEG4.

I dont think MPEG4 is ready for primetime yet.

 

[Kirby Baker]

I agree. And the MPEG4 they are pushing out is usually at 15mbit or higher, so whats the point? Just put those channels in the ViP receiver only mode, and run them in MPEG-2 at 15mbit. Plenty of bandwidth there. And then do PRIVATE testing of MPEG-4 somewhere else, and not subject us to the crappy picture!

 

[keenan]

A freaking nonsense. I couldn't careless about NFL HD. f**** a****H****

Yes, pretty much how I feel about it as well.

 

[keenan]

As far as I know its only for the free preview. I was flipping last night between the MPEG2 feed and the MPEG4 feed and besides the delay in the audio between the two the MPEG2 looked better to me then the MPEG4.

I dont think MPEG4 is ready for primetime yet.

I don't think it is either based on the issues I observed with our local HD, it seems to be dependent on what kind of source material whether or not there will be issues or not. Live sports, like NBC's NFL game Sunday looked fine, video type stuff like Leno can look fine, yet L&O looked like crap, with smearing images, unwatchable.

Re: HDNet Movies, will they put the resolution back to 1920x1080i when the preview is over, or will it be left at 1440...????

 

[kokomogator]

Amazing!!!!

I am absolutely amazed that anyone is surprized by this move on Dish's part. This will be the standard going forward for all of their HD content. It is acceptable to them, Direct did it, it's an accepted industry standard, why are you surprized?

Back months ago when all the HD-lite talk started, a few predicted that this would happen as soon as everyone got complacent and stopped bitching about it to everyone who would listen. There were many that had no problem with the decrease in PQ and said so on this forum. Quantity was much more important that quality. Well, be careful what you ask for as you might just get it. Unfortunately, there will be no going back and our only options are to dump Dish and hope that cable makes more inroads into smaller market areas or buy HD DVD.

A very sad day for those of us that who did want quality over quantity.

 

[philhu]

Don't worry, all will be fixed when voom uplink gets their fiber!!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Re: HDNet Movies, will they put the resolution back to 1920x1080i when the preview is over, or will it be left at 1440...????

I don't have the technology to verify its 1440, and have seen no indications of this, however I DO know that they have lowered the bitrate.

 

[grb]

I can only say thank god I got 2001 and 2010 captured before this happened.

Amen! I was astounded by the PQ of the DVR'd 2001. And that movie is 38 years old! I now have a copy of this movie that is superior to most of the scratchy copies I have viewed at the movies.

I just hope that the 622 doesn't do what our 510 did last week -- it announced on the screen that it had detected an error and needed to erase all recordings -- and proceeded to erase all 80 hours saved on the system...

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I watched 2001, but didn't record it. Aack!

It was phenomenal.

 

[keenan]

I don't have the technology to verify its 1440, and have seen no indications of this, however I DO know that they have lowered the bitrate.

I'll see if I can find the reference, I believe it was from someone with a modded STB.

 

[HookedOnTV]

Yes, it is 1440 and the bitrate is around 12Mbps.

 

[Ilya]

I can only say thank god I got 2001 and 2010 captured before this happened.

Me too! It will be interesting to do a before-and-after comparison.

It's great that E* keeps adding new HD channels, but it's so frustrating that they keep degrading the picture quality. Once again, they put quantity above quality!

HDNet Movies has always been one of the best looking channels. It will be so sad to see it sacrificed. I have nothing against InHD, occasionally they do show good content, but I would take one full-bandwidth HD channel over two over-compressed channels any time!

 

[ThomasRz]

Does equipment show the resolution of the programming being received? If not how can you tell (other than subjective judgment)? If you want to complain I think some "evidence" would be useful. Is it also possible that true HD programming shown on a screen of lower resolution (using software) looks worse than if the view has a 1080 screen? I've seen TVs side by side (same size/type) but with differetn "native resolution" and the same signal looks totally different.