How painful is it really when connecting a new TV to the COAXof DISH receivers?

Rekamah

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Original poster
Dec 4, 2010
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New York
My question may have a broader one beneath it, but I'll start simply. I considered buying a replacement tv for a less critical viewing station. These days, one can only get an "HDTV" with 16:9 aspect ratio - I settled for an inexpensive LCD, knowing that I intended to connect it to the coax output of my 508 receiver, which I understand supplies a lower definition NTSC signal with 4:3 aspect ratio. To me, this signal and TV style is not a match made in heaven, as the only way to fill the screen with an image is to manipulate the tv settings, and none of these produce an acceptable result (one either gets a distorted image, or an image with black bars right and left, or an image with heads and feet chopped off). My first call to Dish about upgrading to the 622/722 receivers (whose remotes have a working */format button) had me a little confused. So I checked the users guide documentation on the site, and on page 75 of the 622 model I found this statement.

"On remote control 2, press the */format button to change the aspect ratio of HD channels displayed on remote TVs."

Remote control 2 refers to the unit for TVs hooked up to the standard tuner (most typically via its coax line). I then called Dish's technical support and finally got an "expert" to say that the sentence in the manual was poorly written and that the */format button merely does exactly what I was able to do in the TV wrt aspect ratios. If I understand this correctly, I dont think this button adds any functionality to what I could do with the 508 and a TV with changeable aspect ratio options.

To me, this sort of knocks out any reason for buying a new TV set until such time as one is ready/willing to feed it an HD signal (or at least an ATSC signal). Another discussion thread on this forum implies that one is either distorting or blowing up and cutting off information with the */format key. Is this right?

For my broader question, what are other people doing when confronted with the need to buy a new TV for a less critical room. Are they suffering with a distorted image, or do they cough up the significantly extra dough to cover upgrade equipment/use and lease fees to the satellite/content providers? Or do they say the heck with it and just pull the local ATSC signals off the air? It all seems like such a step backward, despite the capabilities of new televisions. Am I missing something??
 
I have personally not gotten the TV2 output of my 722 to go into anamorphic widescreen mode. (The TV1 SD outputs do this just fine.) Without anamorphic widescreen mode on TV2, you will be unlikely to enjoy any widescreen content on an HDTV. The two format button settings (for TV2) are letterboxed, and zoomed with the sides chopped off. Either one looks ridiculous on a widescreen TV. The TV2 output basically assumes you have a 4:3 TV attached, and that's that. I wish Dish would fix that, but alas it has been this way on the HD duo receivers for as many years as there have been HD duo receivers.

You can get around that either by buying or leasing an additional HD receiver and using the HD output fed to all widescreen HDTVs. 211k is $7/mo. 612 is $10/mo. An additional 222 is $1/mo, while an additional 622/722/722k is $17/mo. The most expensive receiver becomes your primary receiver, so whatever is your cheaper receiver will become the additional receiver. I bit the bullet and leased two VIP612 receivers for my less critical viewing locations. I kept an old CRT SDTV for the TV2 output of my 722.

If you don't mind having the same content displayed at your primary and your "less critical" location, then you can feed the TV1 output of a 622 to it. All outputs are live at once, and TV1 does not have the missing anamorphic widescreen mode like TV2. I know this for a fact on the composite outputs of my 722, though I'm not absolutely positive it's correct over coax. :p
 
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I have a 16:9 LCD hooked up to my 622 TV2 via coax and it displays the correct aspect ratio on HD channels without distortion. The */format setting is set to "Normal".
 
According to what was said on another thread today, the coax output behaves differently in single mode vs. dual mode.
 
I like the way the 612 handles the formatting of the output of the coax better than that of the 622.
 
From our VIP722 we have a second 16x9 HDTV connected to TV2 via Coax and yeah the only way I can get the HD channels to be formatted correctly us using the TV's Format buttons, not the ones on the DISH remote. And then the Guide gets chopped off since it's basically just zooming in to make the 16x9 image span the entire screen.

I posted a comment in here a while back, and seems this is normal. When I go to the TV1 output (which is just on a different channel) it looks great with no formatting changes needed on the TV, but TV2 isn't so lucky.
 
When using my TV2 output via coax to a 2nd HDTV I can get full screen by selecting letter box on the Dish remote and then wide screen mode on the TV. While it's not true HD, I get the full picture on the 2nd TV with no cut offs.
 
If I understand other threads about receivers more modern than my 508, the only way you can get an undistorted AND COMPLETE 16:9 signal (ie with no loss of image top and bottom) displayed to TV2 is if you set the receiver to "single mode".

The discussions about capabilities of the newer receivers still seem a little inconsistent on this topic. Have the capabilities changed with versions of say the 622 and 722? Or, is it possible that people report getting a full signal displayed on their HDTV connected to TV2, without realizing that they might be viewing an artificially widened image? (this is what I would term distorted)
 
Put simply: TV1 is capable of HD output; TV2 SD ONLY, but in SINGLE mode will display so that TV's "Zoom" feature will display it in proper 16:9 (similar to anamorphic), but NOT so TV2 in DUAL mode as it is sent out 4:3 with either black bars at top and bottom (Normal format from the Dish Remote) or fill the full 4:3 screen using the "Zoom" format of the Dish remote.

Viewing HD content via TV2 in DUAL mode on a 16:9 TV is far from an ideal experience as in NO anamorphic behavior for TV2 in DUAL mode.
 
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