How Dish's 1080p is going to work...

[primetimeguy]

Lets not confuse "HD Lite" (which only had to do with pixel resolution) with 24P

I'm not confusing the two at all. HD lite refers to both loss of resolution (1920 to 1440) as well as reduced/starved bit rate. But, since this is a VOD download hopefully it is not reduced resolution or bit rate starved. If this is true then you will see a PQ increase from normal Dish 1080i programming, such as this same movie on Cinemax/HBO, etc.

Since you are taking the 24p signal and converting to 60p you have lost the benefit of 24p. The only thing you could hope to see is higher resolution and bit rate compared to typical Dish programming.

I'll be interested in your comparison to Blu-Ray. I just watched the Blu-Ray last night and shortly into the movie there is a lot of high speed action. If there is no blocking/pixilation on those scenes on the VOD I'd think the movie would look good. If there are issues in this scene then Dish is still bit starving and I would consider it 1080p HD-Lite. But I don't yet have the VOD available to compare, so keep us posted.

 

[rwalsh]

Hdmi test During "I Am Legend:

Here are snapshots I took during " I Am Legend" on my Samsung LN-T 5265 and a VIP722 HDMI Test:













Note the 1250I 50Hz for the video format during the Hdmi Test when watching " I Am Legend"

 

[Smith P.]

As I suggested - the HDTV FW had bugs, hence the weird (European) video format and size of the screen - it cannot be 19x6 cm ! My Vizio and Dell displays correct sizes.

 

[TheForce]

Since you are taking the 24p signal and converting to 60p you have lost the benefit of 24p. The only thing you could hope to see is higher resolution and bit rate compared to typical Dish programming.

Actually, I saw it both ways. I can process the inbound signal from Dish and the BluRay Player to the scaler or just pass it through as it comes directly to the Projector. The original 1080p24 was passed directly to the Projector and it looked fine. I also (as in addition to) processed the 24P film from VOD to 60p and did the same with the BluRay player. And, took the trouble to process the film to 1080i. The scaler makes it easy to do this. Only in the 1080i did I see some judder in the right to left action movement while 1080p60 and the pass through at 1080p24 was clean and smooth.

I did take some stills of the full screen and tried my best to get the same frame still from the E*VOD and compare it to the BluRay frame. The obvious difference is the AR being 1.78 :1 for the VOD and 2.4:1 for the BluRay. Many people will bitch about this and you can see the missing picture in the VOD especially on the left side of the screen.

The color between the two was near perfect. There was no noticeable compression artifacts in the image, no mosquito artifacts and the contrast of the image was near identical. No macro blocking at all. General chroma noise is high for this film whether VOD or BluRay compared to many but better than some. I'd say it is about average for chroma noise.
The film uses lots of handheld shaky camera absent the steadycam and also violates the SMPTE spec for 24 FPS horizontal panning but seems to hold on the more critical SMPTE spec for vertical camera movement. These vertical camera movements were more troublesome in the 1080i than the 1080p60 or 24 fps.

The missing scenes I found were indeed on the BluRay version that were optional viewing. The Theatrical version on the BluRay I believe is identical to the VOD version.

Here are two images I caught with my digital still camera off the 92" wide screen shot from viewing distance and zoomed to full frame 1/8 second time exposure.

Edit- I added a third I shot at 4 ft from the screen of just the face shot.

 

[Smith P.]

For sure, lip's color on BR picture is more natural, then on Dish - too much blue.

 

[TheForce]

Agreed, but it is within tolerance. I'm sure the two versions were done by different colorists in the transfer. Remember, the VOD version is pan and scan and NOT OAR too. This in and of itself tells me it was a different transfer, maybe at a different facility.

 

[primetimeguy]

The color between the two was near perfect. There was no noticeable compression artifacts in the image, no mosquito artifacts and the contrast of the image was near identical. No macro blocking at all. General chroma noise is high for this film whether VOD or BluRay compared to many but better than some. I'd say it is about average for chroma noise.
The film uses lots of handheld shaky camera absent the steadycam and also violates the SMPTE spec for 24 FPS horizontal panning but seems to hold on the more critical SMPTE spec for vertical camera movement. These vertical camera movements were more troublesome in the 1080i than the 1080p60 or 24 fps.

Awesome, thanks for the info. So it appears Dish is sending us a pretty good image here.

Did you notice any difference in the audio? Wonder what Dish is sending.

 

[jacmyoung]

Don, thanks for the technical comparision, I did my visual test on my Panny 1080p plasma, and did not find any compression related issues either, good thing yours confirmed my observation.

The only thing was my picture first came as the "half screen on the top left corner" crap, and corrected after changing the 722 HD setting out of 1080i then back to 1080i. Though I don't know if by doing such reset the 722 was still sending out a 1080p signal or backed into 1080i.

In any event it should not metter that much, a 1080i signal would be scaled to 1080p by my TV. My main focus was to find out if the VOD source was truly given the bandwidth it needed, and for all practical purpose it was, which is why I think they do stand up to the "equal to Bluray" claim, at least for the PQ.

 

[spodeboy]

Really? What is the model# of your Tv? Got a link to that manual? Have you played the movie yet? Does your Tv actually report that it is getting 1080p24?

Hammer down:
Sorry it took me so long to get back. My TV is a commercial (rather than consumer) model of Panasonic plasma, the TH-50PH9UK. Its native resolution is 1366x768, so I'm sure that it is not displaying 1080p, but the fact that it passed the test means that my 622 is outputting 1080p24. I don't know of any way to have the TV show what resolution it is displaying or receiving though. The manual is found here:
service.us.panasonic.com/OPERMANPDF/TH37PH9UK-MULTI.PDF

 

[lwien]

Its native resolution is 1366x768, so I'm sure that it is not displaying 1080p, but the fact that it passed the test means that my 622 is outputting 1080p24. I don't know of any way to have the TV show what resolution it is displaying or receiving though. The manual is found here:
service.us.panasonic.com/OPERMANPDF/TH37PH9UK-MULTI.PDF

That's odd because the test is testing if your TV has a native resolution of 1080p/24.

 

[primetimeguy]

That's odd because the test is testing if your TV has a native resolution of 1080p/24.

No, it's checking if it will accept 1080p24 resolution.

What's odd is he is connected via component, not HDMI.

Maybe there is a bug in the software that if you don't connect HDMI at all you will get 1080p24.

 

[TheForce]

Audio- differences-

I did some instant replays from same starting point and the sound dynamic range I heard was identical. Even the levels in my system matched which was surprising to me. The only issue I had with VOD from Dish was the many dropouts in the playback. Never lost lipsync but did lose meta data as well.

jacmyoung- I agree, I'll give Dish the thumbs up for "equal to BluRay quality" I was really concerned with the chroma noise and it was all intents and purposes, identical to the disk.

As for this 24p issue. I feel they are ahead of the technology curve on this. It would be better4 for them to relax that requirement, IMO, and allow 1080p60 x 1920. I believe the bailout is 1080i30 x 1440 right? The standard legacy HDCAM resolution (what some mystakenly call HD lite). What would be cool is to offer this in either 1080p30 x 1920 or 1080p24 x1920. The resolution would remain but those viewing on a non-24p monitor would have to suffer the judder. ( note 30 is really 29.97 in videospeak)

 

[jacmyoung]

My guess is, from my own experience with the 50" 1080p Panny plasma, while my TV "passed the test", the 722 was outputing 1250i 50Hz, turning the picture to 3/4 of the screen size and on the upper left corner, it should have output 1080i 60Hz (apparently it detected my TV not accepting 1080p 24fps). After the movie started I manually went into the HDTV setting of the 722 switched out of the 1080i setting then back into 1080i. After that the picture was normal and the 722 was reporting 1080i 60Hz and played nicely, presumably at that time my TV kicked in and scaled the signal to 1080p/30Hz with the built in 3:2 pull down.

I think when people reported to have their component connection "passing the test", it was simply outputting 1080i instead of 1080p after the test, but with some of the HDMI connections that are not compatible with 24fps, the 722 ended up sending out 1250i/50Hz instead of 1080i/60Hz, clearly a bug they need to fix.

 

[hammerdown]

... The manual is found here:
service.us.panasonic.com/OPERMANPDF/TH37PH9UK-MULTI.PDF

Interesting model. Seems to indeed accept 1080p on the component input! Very rare feature.

 

[Mike_H]

... The obvious difference is the AR being 1.78 :1 for the VOD and 2.4:1 for the BluRay. Many people will bitch about this and you can see the missing picture in the VOD especially on the left side of the screen.
...

What the heck is it with companies hacking up movies to fill screens. Just leave the stuff as it was presented in a theater for petes sake. It's not like this is base consumer VHS or DVD stuff. It's supposed to be things where people will actually care how the movie is presented.


No channel 501 for me and my 622 yet.

 

[hammerdown]

...As for this 24p issue. I feel they are ahead of the technology curve on this. It would be better4 for them to relax that requirement, IMO, and allow 1080p60...

I totally agree. More sets available (right now) that accept 1080p60, and not 24p. But tables will turn eventually.

...I believe the bailout is 1080i30 x 1440 right?

Why do you think the bailout is 1440? The content stored on the drive is 1920. Downrezzing doesn't occur in the box, it arrives in your home 1440 then the dvr stretches it back to a fake 1920. Ask someone with a flat panel to hit status button on the Tv remote, I bet it doesn't say 1440.

 

[TheForce]

Why do you think the bailout is 1440? The content stored on the drive is 1920. Downrezzing doesn't occur in the box, it arrives in your home 1440 then the dvr stretches it back to a fake 1920. Ask someone with a flat panel to hit status button on the Tv remote, I bet it doesn't say 1440.

So what are people getting that fail the test and still want to watch this movie? I suppose I could try it on my 722 which is connected to an LCD with component but it doesn't have an OSD to analyze the H pixel resolution. If the DVR is storing the file at 1080p24 x 1920, it is pretty simple to downrez that to 1080i x 1440 for analog output. That is the SOP resolution for Dish HD programming isn't it? Of course, optional at 720p x 1280.

 

[TheForce]

What the heck is it with companies hacking up movies to fill screens. Just leave the stuff as it was presented in a theater for petes sake. It's not like this is base consumer VHS or DVD stuff. It's supposed to be things where people will actually care how the movie is presented.


No channel 501 for me and my 622 yet.

I don't know! HBO started that expensive nonsense years ago because they didn't want to deliver content with letterbox black bars. It has been a management decision. Yes, it costs a whole lot more to do it too. On AVS there was a lengthy and sometimes heated debate on this. Surprisingly many did want HBO to pan and scan because they said they were too lazy to zoom their own screens to "fill the screen" The OAR debate can get as emotional as abortion, don't you know? No point in opening up a can of worms but I only mention it as a matter of fact to describe the difference between the BluRay content and the VOD content. VOD is not HBO and you'll get more understanding from DishNetwork than from HBO but this may be a decision from the copyright owners and therefore out of Dish's hands.

 

[hammerdown]

So what are people getting that fail the test and still want to watch this movie?

On HDMI with fixed pixel displays you would be getting 1920x1080i. Since 1440 is not a real standard I think any display would choke on a 1440x1080x signal fed into the hdmi port, and give an error message like "no signal".

...If the DVR is storing the file at 1080p24 x 1920, it is pretty simple to downrez that to 1080i x 1440 for analog output. That is the SOP resolution for Dish HD programming isn't it...

Of course analog is completely different. There is no H lines of resolution, it's all about bandwidth. I still think that makes no difference. The HD Lite content leaves the E* facility at 1440, comes into the home as a 1440 stream (as analyzed by R5000-HD), then the dvr outputs an industry standard 1080i signal that ANY Tv will sync to (hdmi or component).

 

[Smith P.]

1440 and 1280 by 1080i format has been discovered before R5000, by analyzing real stream ( that time VOOM channels at 61.5 wasn't encrypted ).