... The satellite signal is so over compressed that it looks bad no matter what....
Agreed.
We have a Hopper 3 + 32in TV. The PQ of most satellite programs are roughly the same as the PQ of similar programs streamed over our very low bandwidth internet connection (2Mbs). For example, both do a very poor job of handling dark backgrounds i.e. night shots.
But interestingly….During the Feb previews I downloaded quite a few VOD movies from HBO, CineMax, ShowTime, and Starz via our very low bandwidth internet connection (2Mbps). I was surprised to see the large variation in download times of similar length movies of approx 2hr. Some would download in little more than 2 hours and others took as much as 6 hours.
BTW This difference was not because of internet traffic completion. I monitor/record the throughput on our router in real time via SNMP. The downloads that took 2+hrs and the ones that took 6 hours were all “saturating” our available bandwidth. The difference was the quality of the video being downloaded.
As you might imagine, the movies that downloaded in a little over 2hrs looked like they would when viewed via highly compressed satellite transmission or low bandwidth streaming. While the PQ of the ones that took 4-6 hours was much better.
