Hey DISH, Improve Your Picture Quality

[gpflepsen]

Last night we had guest staying overnight and we cued up Dark Shadows HD from the On Demand function. About 15 minutes in, one of the guest said "That's weird how they make the picture look old to fit the time period". I had to tell him that's not the intended image, just that DISH HD is terrible for their VOD. I've seen Dark Shadows off of Blu Ray and it is a good HD film.

Last week I used one of the BB@H PPV certificates for Man of Steel 1080p. The image was horribly bit-starved and probably reduced in resolution. In no way can the PQ compare with a minimum expectation for a HD service. The ROKU can steam better quality that what you supply.

Come on DISH, you can do better. Others are doing better.

 

[inazsully]

This is a pretty good point that isn't discussed often enough. For many years Dish has been labeled as the HD Light provider. I'm not really sure anymore how we compare with "D" and COX and Comcast but I see a great deal of very poor HD on many channels with my Hopper and 722. It certainly could be the fault of the channel itself but I would love to know the answer. Because I have a 70" display I probably see the poor PQ more than some but it is obvious point of contention for me.

 

[Claude Greiner]

You would think on the VOD channels they would have plenty of time to send a good version to your DVR.

Even if it was a streaming vod, they should have software to adjust to your Internet connection

 

[Dishman1978]

Had somewhat of the same thing happen last night. Was watching Wanderlust and the vod event kept switching between crystal clear HD to what looked like SD quality. Back and forth for the while program. And when it switched it wasn't seamless it it would flicker black screen inbetween.

 

[lucky86]

I don't recall ever seeing issues like that with the ipvods I order. What's your connection type and connection speed?

 

[Teehar]

Never watch VOD but,I have to agree with sub par HD quality,granted I know it varies from station to station but still,Sundance HD is definitely what I would call HD lite.Same for some shows on ifc and amc.Then there is the NFL games,WCNC always looks sharp,WJZY looks bad for HD.

 

[DanM64]

I've had Dish and Comcast- Dish HD looks about 100x better than Comcast does. It looks better than U-Verse as well. I'd say Dish is either equal to or slightly below DTV in HD quality.

My guess is your VOD picture quality was reduced because of the internet connection. Since someone else noticed it as well, maybe Dish was having some problems on their end with the VOD connection at that time. It's working well for me tonight.

Also, how fast is your internet connection? Not sure about Dish, but I know Netflix requires a 7Mbps internet connection for 1080p with surround sound, so I'd guess Dish would require a similar connection speed.

 

[thelegendlc]

Rented "2 Guns" (1080p) a couple of nights ago and the picture quality was great and the sound was excellent.

 

[Bobby]

Rented "2 Guns" (1080p) a couple of nights ago and the picture quality was great and the sound was excellent.

I did exactly that, same movie, same 1080P.... Looked great!

 

[gpflepsen]

What would IP speed have to do with the quality of the download? It's not a streaming event. These were downloaded on a 4G connection between 10 and 30 Mb/s. I downloaded 5 movies yesterday @ ~10GB total.

I see Dark Shadows is playing on HBO this month too, I'm going to record it and compare. I watched a few minutes of OnDemand MIB 3 just now. The intro scenes w/ Boris looked good, not outstanding. The following scenes with Will Smith looked SD quality, definitely sub-HD quality. I have D/Led OnDemand Rob Roy, it looks no better than Movies! 16x9 480i WS.

I get HD FTA of stellar quality. I have Blu Ray of equal quality. I get OTA of barely marginal quality. I have Dish HD of marginal quality. I pay by far the most for DISH HD and get the worst in picture quality.

 

[ncted]

My observation of DISH PQ is it way better than TWC and almost as good at D*. That goes for regular HD channels in general and does not extend to VOD which I have never tried. Given how much they compress, bit-starve, and de-res, it is saying something that it looks pretty good most of the time.

-Ted

 

[DishSubLA]

that has been my experience with 7 episodes of Hello Ladies: Very nice HD, then a fash to SD FUZZY, then anothrr flash 15 seconds layer to great HD. I have 30mbps down and the dowload for All the Dish Hd have been at around 14 mbos when I monitor the dowload, which is plenty. In the past I had Very goos lookinh HD dowloads with no flash to SD and back to HD. I thinl Dish should really have their techs test snd chrvk their srrvers.

 

[Rey]

Had somewhat of the same thing happen last night. Was watching Wanderlust and the vod event kept switching between crystal clear HD to what looked like SD quality. Back and forth for the while program. And when it switched it wasn't seamless it it would flicker black screen inbetween.

I saw this once as well. About halfway through the movie i noticed the screen flicker and a significant drop in picture quality. Would go back but it kept happening at the same exact time in the movie. My broadband connection is way more than capable to handle simple things like this so it's not a speed issue.

 

[LER]

I haven't had a PQ issue at all with my Hoppers and Samsung 55".

it's been really good.

 

[lucky86]

I noticed this type of an issue quite some time ago and I realized it was my router that was dropping in and out. I never noticed it until I was watching IPVOD, most likely because I never did anything for an extended period of time that would manifest my router drops. Since I replaced my router I never have issues with my IPVOD streaming quality or drops. The symptoms were the same as what is being reported here. Even though I had blazing fast speeds whenever I would test my network, it was only after long periods of extended downloading that the symptoms would manifest.

 

[Scherrman]

It's been a few months since I've rented a VOD but when I did it looked great. It was one of the 1080p movies and I could tell the difference in PQ. It looked like blu ray quality to me. I'm not sure what the problem would have been.

 

[ncted]

I saw this once as well. About halfway through the movie i noticed the screen flicker and a significant drop in picture quality. Would go back but it kept happening at the same exact time in the movie. My broadband connection is way more than capable to handle simple things like this so it's not a speed issue.

There is a lot of stuff between your last mile broadband and Dish's first mile content servers. Does anyone know who Dish uses as their CDN (Content Distribution Network)? If it isn't one of the big players like Akamai, Level3, or Limelight, then the CDN might be getting overloaded during peak times.

 

[Rey]

There is a lot of stuff between your last mile broadband and Dish's first mile content servers. Does anyone know who Dish uses as their CDN (Content Distribution Network)? If it isn't one of the big players like Akamai, Level3, or Limelight, then the CDN might be getting overloaded during peak times.

Agreed. On a positive note it's only happened once out of the 7 VOD titles I rented. Like Larry, overall I am satisfied with Dish's PQ considering I came from Directv. Not a major difference between the two when it comes to this one thing.

 

[Hall]

Since when does Dish stream 1080p events? Wait, they don't... Connection speed, content delivery network, etc do not matter.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Scherrman]

Since when does Dish stream 1080p events? Wait, they don't... Connection speed, content delivery network, etc do not matter.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

What is causing the difference in quality then? I know when I watched a movie it was blu-ray quality.