Need Help! Poor HD picture quality on VIP 222

[rfisher1228]

Hello All,

I am new to this forum, but have used some forums in the past. I just got a Toshiba 40" 1080P and Dish sat system. I believe i have all the settings set up correctly, but the image quality seems blotchy. It does look OK from a distance, but not THAT great. I am hoping that someone here will be able to point me in the right direction before I call Dish to come out and take a look.

dish VIP 222
Toshiba 40rv525u

I appreciate the help.

Thanks

R

 

[KAB]

What connections are you using? Is your HDTV settting on 1080i?

 

[rfisher1228]

oops should have put that info in post. HDMI, switch back and forth from 720p to 1080i, no difference.

 

[sam_gordon]

What channels are you watching? Even some that are labeled as "HD" are just upconverted SD & stretched out.

Take a look at ESPNHD, USAHD, BravoHD, DiscoveryHD, etc. It also depends on how the content was originally produced.

 

[GaryPen]

Also, make sure the picture settings on the Toshiba are not the default settings from out of the box. They are crap.

If it says something like "Dynamic", change it to "Standard", "Natural", or "Neutral".

Also, if there is a "sharpness" control, back it down to no more than 50%. (I prefer 30%, myself)

Those two steps right there will improve your TV's image quality, regardless of source.

 

[rfisher1228]

I have noticed that there are differences from station to station. do you think it could be signal strength. The only thing that has looked great is Kung Fu Panda on HBO HD. there also seems to be some banding/bluring/stepping on fast moving action, could that be the TV or the Sat?

Thanks again for your help

 

[MikeD-C05]

NO it is definitely a picture quality issue with your tv. You have to set your controls at a better standard. Look at your manual and carefully read the directions on pq settings. I have a Toshiba hdtv ( 42"lcd regza). I had to adjust the pic controls to get the best picture for satellite. Also you can watch your regular sd channels in normal mode 16 x 9 with black bars . It keeps the picture look more normal.The sat receiver can be set for 720p or 1080i. I use stretch for sd and normal for hd. To me the pic looks about right. EIther way you will have to play with the pq controls till you get a picture that looks good to you. By the way the picture looks out of focus up close on my tv as well . The only way it looks right is to sit about 10 feet or more away. On my 2005 Toshiba 26: tube hdtv, I have to set the sat receiver to 720p to make the pq look good . If I use 1080i I end up seeing bars in the picture over hdmi.

 

[highdefjeff]

I have noticed that there are differences from station to station. do you think it could be signal strength. The only thing that has looked great is Kung Fu Panda on HBO HD. there also seems to be some banding/bluring/stepping on fast moving action, could that be the TV or the Sat?

Thanks again for your help

If you aren't sitting too close, then it is most likely signal strength.

What are your signal strength readings?

Follow this list for"WOW!" HD:
HD Do's & Don'ts

And this will explain how picture quality and signal are related:
Signal and HDTV

 

[Agonizing Fury]

If you aren't sitting too close, then it is most likely signal strength.

What are your signal strength readings?

Follow this list for"WOW!" HD:
HD Do's & Don'ts

And this will explain how picture quality and signal are related:
Signal and HDTV

And most important of all: ignore HighDefJeff when he talks about digital signals and HD Quality. His conspiracy theories have been disproved again and again and again, and yet he continues to spout the same gibberish. If he talks about grounding, LOS or anything other than picture quality, he's almost always right and I would quote him any day (and love his graphic showing where the signals actually come from on an offset dish). It's a digital signal so it's either there in it's full pristine quality, or it's going to pixelate horribly and be gone.

 

[TheKrell]

It is my considered opinion that highdefjeff is right and Agonizing Fury is wrong about picture quality. I too used to believe the myth, and spouted the nonsense, about a digital picture being all-or-nothing. This is simply not true, and I forgive and even applaud highdefjeff for his crusade against this myth.

Awhile back, on another forum and independently of highdefjeff, I was directed to an assortment of technical references about scalability in DTV. While it is true that a DTV receiver can completely compensate for a few errors in the digital data, it is not commonly known that they can and do partially compensate for even greater BER's. If this were not true, a lot more of us would be looking at a frozen picture a lot more often than we do now.

My revelation came as a number of us were arguing about the picture quality of the DTVpal. Different people were seeing rather different results with the same darn CECB. I was in the "perfect picture" camp, since my setup most of the time did spectacularly well. I was at first inclined to believe the other guys were crazy, until I saw the same effect myself (blurry picture) and started following up on the suggested links. We're not talking about error correction here, we're talking about error compensation, which can be better or worse (or nonexistent) depending upon the particular receiver's implementation, and each customer's setup and even the environmental conditions.

There is a wild and wooly assortment of error compensation strategies that manufacturers of HDTVs and other DTV equipment can build into their sets. These strategies can and do degrade the PQ of that supposedly all-or-nothing digital picture. We've all seen the picture freeze and the audio mute when the signal is lost. (It's not always completely lost or even lost lock, but the BER is too high to "carry on" with the video as it was meant to be viewed. That (freezing) is just the most severe form of compensation, and (you must admit) beats the heck out of blasting audio noise at you, or showing a picture of "snow" as the old analog sets used to do.

Most manufacturers (in my experience) are remarkably good at hiding artifacts due to imperfect signals. We're talking about an error rate that is too great for complete correction, but not great enough to cause the picture to freeze completely or the audio to mute. The picture can simply get blurry, or get blurry only in certain areas. It can even freeze selectively in certain areas.

OP: If Kung Fu Panda on HBO is the only show that looked really great good to you, then don't quit! This shows how good the picture can be, when everything is working right. All channels should look that good. My wag at this point is that Kung Fu Panda, being a digital animation, has large areas of the screen that are precisely identical. Therefore Kung Fu Panda (my wag!) compresses very well and requires a lower data rate than other movies. It will also be easier to compensate for errors in a lower data rate program than one with a very high data rate.

I would check into your signal strength, particularly since it's so easy. When you see a movie that looks spectacular, hit the menu 6-1-1 and read off the satellite, transponder, and signal strength you are getting. Then do the same when you're looking at a crappy picture and report back here.

 

[sca]

im with agonizing. i dont believe signal strength is an issue unless you are pixelating. what thekrell says maty have merit, but i dont think any differnce in picture clarity would be noticable. just my 2 cents.you set the 1080 from the receiver menu right?also realize, that sd channels look horrible on nice hdtv's, and some hd channels are no better than sd. depends on the show. if you have the rush channel (an hd only channel in the 9000's somehwere) i've noticed that to be one of the best channels for hd picture clarity. its a good channel to look at to see what your receiver and tv are capable of.

 

[TheKrell]

if you have the rush channel (an hd only channel in the 9000's somehwere) i've noticed that to be one of the best channels for hd picture clarity.

Rush? Rush? Are you kidding me? If that's the Voom channel I think it is, it's been off Dish (along with the other Voom channels) for over a year. When was the last time you noticed the picture clarity of Rush on Dish?

im with agonizing. i dont believe signal strength is an issue unless you are pixelating. what thekrell says maty have merit, but i dont think any differnce in picture clarity would be noticable.

This is a typical response from people (including myself!) who believe the myth and have never noticed a degraded picture before. It's a transient problem. You may never see it at all if everything is working as it should. You first have to get into a problem area, or have problem equipment or a problem setup, and also you have to look critically at your PQ, sometimes carefully and for a long time, before you might see a degraded (but unpixellated) picture.

Of course some problems are more noticeable than others. My DTVpal experience and revelation were with a good SDTV. (Of course the DTVpal, being a CECB, is an SD-only box.) And on some HD channels some of the time I would see a distinctly blurry picture on an SDTV! So it can at times be quite obvious. There are a lot of "depends".

you set the 1080 from the receiver menu right?also realize, that sd channels look horrible on nice hdtv's...

Let me clarify some of those comments and add some of my own.

If you set the receiver to 1080i (as the OP should for his 1080p Toshiba), then the scaler being used for SD to HD conversion is in the 222, not the Toshiba. I don't have a 222, but IMHO the scalers in my 722 and 612s are pretty darn good.

I did have a Sylvania 32" HDTV (briefly) running off a Dish 501 receiver (which obviously has no HD scaler) and it was awful. I returned that set and went with a Vizio. Much better scaler in the Vizio, and the SD was reasonably indistinguishable from the 501 performance on my good SDTV before. This is using a viewing distance of 5-10'.

I also have a Westinghouse 42" which I initially connected to a 625 (svideo output) and it's scaler is apparently fantastically good, even blown up to 42". So I would say the opposite that you did regarding SD channels on a "good HDTV". SD channels look horrible on crappy HDTVs. On good HDTVs with good scalers, they should look at least as good as they did before on an SDTV.

If you're looking at a crappy SD picture on a good HDTV, then you're probably looking at the degraded performance we're talking about.

and some hd channels are no better than sd. depends on the show.

I am sure there must be variations in PQ from channel to channel, and even from show to show. But I haven't noticed an HD channel that wasn't sharper than any SD channel. Do you have a channel number or show I should watch to get me irate? I think Dish (or somebody) is upconverting some shows to HD, in which case the programmers' (or Dish's) scalers are to blame if it isn't at least somewhat better than an SD channel.

 

[BuddyBoy]

There's a real easy way to prove to yourself that these two clowns don't know what they're talking about. Create an MPEG-2 transport stream containing H.264 compressed video. Introduce random single-bit errors into the stream, say 1 per 10e6 bits to start with, increasing to 1 per 10e4 bits. Decode the stream and view it, and tell me what you see.

Anyone with a technical background (EE preferred, but I'd accept CS or even Applied Math majors) can tell you these two don't have a clue what they're talking about.

 

[TheKrell]

There's a real easy way to prove to yourself that these two clowns don't know what they're talking about.

Sir, you are both outgunned and outclassed.

To those with open minds, I recommend the following taken from the federal government website here:

New Digital Video Impairments:
Digital video systems produce fundamentally different kinds of impairments than analog video systems. Examples of these include tiling, error blocks, smearing, jerkiness, edge busyness, and object retention. To fully quantify the performance characteristics of a digital video system, it is desirable to have a set of performance parameters, where each parameter is sensitive to some unique dimension of video quality or impairment type. This is similar to what was developed for analog impairments (e.g., a multi-burst test would measure the frequency response, and a signal-to-noise ratio test would measure the analog noise level). This discrimination property of performance parameters is useful to designers trying to optimize certain system attributes over others, and to network operators wanting to know not only when a system is failing but where and how it is failing.

In other words, there is no easy way to prove much of anything about DTV, even if you do have the specialized equipment recommended above.

Edit: Almost forgot this amusing comment.

Create an MPEG-2 transport stream containing H.264 compressed video.

The last time I checked, H.264 is MPEG-4 part 10.

 

[sam_gordon]

You're making it too complicated.

I posted this in the postage stamp thread, but it applies here too.

Want to actually TEST what happens when signal strength drops? Setup an OTA antenna, tuner, and TV. Tune in a local signal. Now, move the antenna AWAY from the transmit tower. Watch your signal level drop. What happens to the picture?

I'm willing to bet as the signal level drops, first you'll see no change, then you'll see increased macroblocking/pixelization/freezes, then the "no signal".

I really wish the OP would tell us what channels/shows he's watching that he's not happy with the quality on? My daughter watches DisneyHD that has shows shot in SD... guess what, the upconversion isn't very good. I'm sure E* is compressing the signal as well, but signal strength is NOT the culprit.

 

[TheKrell]

Hear hear.

Except moving your OTA antenna and TV farther and farther away is somewhat problematic, since you would very likely have to move it many miles away to see significant problems. As an alternative, one might simply block the signal or add attenuation. You could even do this for the satellite antenna, where extra range isn't workable. But perhaps a few tree branches, or else eclipsing part of the dish itself, would do the same thing.

 

[cosmo_kramer]

Hear hear.

Except moving your OTA antenna and TV farther and farther away is somewhat problematic, since you would very likely have to move it many miles away to see significant problems. As an alternative, one might simply block the signal or add attenuation. You could even do this for the satellite antenna, where extra range isn't workable. But perhaps a few tree branches, or else eclipsing part of the dish itself, would do the same thing.

He probably meant away, as in direction, not distance...

 

[johnwadams]

I have set up several systems for myself and others and my preference is that only one unit or component does all the scaling/upconverting. Ex. HD-DVR via HDMI to AV Receiver via HDMI to flat screen. Home Theater & Sound & Vision magazines give good reports on the video processors in the receivers they review. Some are just junk. Some are ok on HD but poor on SD. Same for flat panels. Very few get an "excellent" on SD. On one system I set up, the best SD comes off a Sony upconverting DVD player that outputs at 1080P. I tried a 1080i upconverting DVD player but there was no comparison. My Vizio was doing the final upscale to 1080P. I have a Panasonic 720P front projector and I have the HD-DVR that feeds it set to send everything up to it at 720P. To me the picture looks slightly better than sending it 1080i and making it down convert that to 720P. Just my 2 cents. Sorry if slightly off topic.

 

[sam_gordon]

He probably meant away, as in direction, not distance...

Thank you. That is what I meant. Putting attenuation/physical obstructions in the path can accomplish the same thing also.

 

[BuddyBoy]

Edit: Almost forgot this amusing comment. The last time I checked, H.264 is MPEG-4 part 10.

Thanks for publicly demonstrating your ignorance so everyone can now see how little credibility you should be given. You don't even know the difference between a video codec and a container format. There is no possibility for you to understand video encoding if you haven't yet even grasped such a simple concept.

H.264 is the codec. MPEG-2 TS is the container. Dish HDTV uses the H.264 codec, but packages the audio and video inside an MPEG-2 transport stream. MPEG-2 TS is just a container, just like an AVI, or MKV, or Quicktime MOV. Says nothing at all about the codec used on the audio and video streams contained within.