new technology

[CowboyDren]

No I didn't say i wouldn 't see the dfference. I said I had no source to these other sources so i don't have the oppurtunity to see this difference.

Good news! If you've never seen the difference, you'd never know the difference, and you won't bitch about it!

can anyone of you see the differnce between photos taken with your toy digita lcamers that cost $300 or are you astute enough to detect the difference between those cameras and a $900 digital slr?

Interesting argument, but made of straw. A $300 camera can take pretty good pictures in the right conditions. A $1700 SLR rig can take pretty crappy pictures in the wrong hands. Also worth noting that a lot of point'n'shoot cameras advertise 12, 16, or even more megapixels, and a lot of 6MP SLRs are still being used by pros at this point. The number of pixels is only one factor.

As I also said copied compressed dvd's look as good as the original dvd. Not as as good as a blu ray, but I never mentioned blu rays. It all depend on how much compression my copying process gives it before it's ever noticeable.

Well, for titles like "The Hangover" that require no compression at all (I think the final VOB was around 3.8GB), that's true. But if you play a Sony Superbit copy of "The Fifth Element" in an A-B comparison with something that DVDShrink kicked out to fit a 4.7GB disc, and you can't see the difference, then you've spent a LOT of money on gear that you don't need.

 

[ronfelder]

Like i said, before you resorted to name calling. "People who think E*HD looks great don't know any better or sit to far away from there TV". Looks like you, "don't know any better".

No name calling. Just like razzing everyone. Plus I do know a good picture when Isee one. That's why I use a 35mm slr rather than a cheapo range finder digital camera.

Seriously since I have no way of proving you correct about FIOS and OTA being better than Dish. I suppose you might say i'm from Missouri. Please elaborate how are those two sources better than Dish besides in the numbers department? When I watch Dish HD I see no pixelatting or smearing of the picture. The picture is clear and sharp IMO. So in words please explain how FIOS and OTA look better. What should I look for? Perhaps one day i'll have the chance to see it that way. For a short time I tried using an indoor antenna on my atsc tuner card on my pc but the reception was very poor (very few stations received) so I no longer have access to OTA. When I did from what I remember there was nothing to write home about.

I hope you are listening to the audio through some type of surround sound decoder, aren't you? Please say not the tv speakers. After all the audio is as important as the video. Hope too that you aren't compressing the hell out of the audio for you don't like the difference in sound levels between Dolby Digital channels and the pcm channels as many people want to do on this web site. That's just as bad and more annoying imho than Dish doing some compression to the video.

In closing i'm assuming my eyes are able to resolve the difference. I know I was the only one playing laser discs back during the golden age of vhs for the picture quality. Most people were happy with vhs. To make matters worse most were even happy recording in the extended play mode. That i suppose is why Dish and everyone else gets away with the compression. The average person knows no better and most likely doesn't care either. So you're fighting a loosing battle in trying to get Dish to improve their picture quality.

I have one more question how much more or less do the cable companies compress in comparsion to Dish and DirecTV? I just came from my girlfriend's home who has DirecTV hd. She has the same hdtv as I do and in my opinion only I feel that Dish's picture is better. Also don't like their hd dvr, but that's another story and another thread.

Thanks for your input.

Ron

 

[ronfelder]

Good news! If you've never seen the difference, you'd never know the difference, and you won't bitch about it!



Interesting argument, but made of straw. A $300 camera can take pretty good pictures in the right conditions. A $1700 SLR rig can take pretty crappy pictures in the wrong hands. Also worth noting that a lot of point'n'shoot cameras advertise 12, 16, or even more megapixels, and a lot of 6MP SLRs are still being used by pros at this point. The number of pixels is only one factor.



Well, for titles like "The Hangover" that require no compression at all (I think the final VOB was around 3.8GB), that's true. But if you play a Sony Superbit copy of "The Fifth Element" in an A-B comparison with something that DVDShrink kicked out to fit a 4.7GB disc, and you can't see the difference, then you've spent a LOT of money on gear that you don't need.

Answer me if pixels are only part of the equation to make a quality picture, then why the fuss if the resolution of Dish is less than the brodacast standard? Which is more important the resolution of what was it 1900x1080 with Dish being 1440x1080 or a high bit rate number? If the bit rate number is more important than I agree the pixel count of a digital camera isn't as important. What makes the slr abetter camera is the optics in the lens. The lens on a good slr can be more than the entire price of the point 'n shoot digital.

As for the compression from DVDShrink. I usually don't copy the extras so there is less compression than would be if I copied everything. I try to keep the compression as low as possible if compression is needed. Secondly i've never viewed let alone copied a Sony Superbit dvd so again I have nothing to compare to. Do these discs take up the room of a two sided dual layered dvd with the bit rate being so high?

Ron

 

[CowboyDren]

Answer me if pixels are only part of the equation to make a quality picture, then why the fuss if the resolution of Dish is less than the brodacast standard?

Because people who complain about downresing don't know any better. They assume that just because a program is "broadcast in 1080i" that the source material is full-frame 1920*1080 or 1280*720 and taking the full 19Mbit/s that ATSC broadcasting allows, and they're wrong. The "bitstealing" of trying to multicast one HD feed and two SD feeds from one broadcast TV tower is far more detrimental to picture quality than a little downres. SD feeds take up to 3.5Mbit/s each (according to the ATSC standards themselves), which is subtracted from the total allowable 19Mbit/s, leaving only 12Mbit/s for the HD feed. This is analogous to Dish's problem, trying to push too many channels down one pipe (transponder).

Heroes, or any number of other TV shows, is shot on film (probably 35mm, definitely at 24fps). After the film comes out of the cans, it goes to a processing lab, where the film is scanned onto tapes via a process called Telecine. The tapes onto which it's transferred don't have the bandwidth (bits per second) to hold full-frame 1080i let alone 1080p data, so the telecine lab downreses it to 1440*1080i to make it fit on a D5 tape. When the D5 tape gets put into the play deck at the production studio at your local affiliate, they upconvert it to full frame and broadcast it.

As someone else previously stated, you get superior PQ at the same bitrate by downresing. When artifacts appear, they're visually larger on the image, but usually have a shorter duration.

Which is more important the resolution of what was it 1900x1080 with Dish being 1440x1080 or a high bit rate number? If the bit rate number is more important than I agree the pixel count of a digital camera isn't as important. What makes the slr abetter camera is the optics in the lens. The lens on a good slr can be more than the entire price of the point 'n shoot digital.

Bitrate, hands down. See above. Yes, the optics in an SLR are superior, but comparing a DSLR to a PnS CCD isn't a fair fight, either. More dots on the sensor does not make a better image, it's in how those dots are fed (optics) and handled (supporting electronics and firmware) downstream.

Secondly i've never viewed let alone copied a Sony Superbit dvd so again I have nothing to compare to. Do these discs take up the room of a two sided dual layered dvd with the bit rate being so high?

Sadly, Superbit is dead, having been killed by Blu-ray. The goal of Superbit was to keep as much of the feature as possible up at the hard maximum of 9.8Mbit/s so as to keep the picture and sound track as high-fidelity as possible. Superbit didn't have "Extras;" insert the disc, menu loads, press play. No trailers, no director commentary, no special features. They're all dual-layer, but rarely double-sided. Sony Superbit titles are regarded as the best way to test the picture quality of DVD-era hardware, because there were no compromises made during the mastering, except to the hardware speed limit noted above.

You say you're from Missouri; so am I, and I know the difference, because I've seen it. If you haven't seen it, then you don't know. It's okay to ask questions, because that's why this forum is here. Just try not to be a tool about it.

 

[ronfelder]

Because people who complain about downresing don't know any better. They assume that just because a program is "broadcast in 1080i" that the source material is full-frame 1920*1080 or 1280*720 and taking the full 19Mbit/s that ATSC broadcasting allows, and they're wrong. The "bitstealing" of trying to multicast one HD feed and two SD feeds from one broadcast TV tower is far more detrimental to picture quality than a little downres. SD feeds take up to 3.5Mbit/s each (according to the ATSC standards themselves), which is subtracted from the total allowable 19Mbit/s, leaving only 12Mbit/s for the HD feed. This is analogous to Dish's problem, trying to push too many channels down one pipe (transponder).

Heroes, or any number of other TV shows, is shot on film (probably 35mm, definitely at 24fps). After the film comes out of the cans, it goes to a processing lab, where the film is scanned onto tapes via a process called Telecine. The tapes onto which it's transferred don't have the bandwidth (bits per second) to hold full-frame 1080i let alone 1080p data, so the telecine lab downreses it to 1440*1080i to make it fit on a D5 tape. When the D5 tape gets put into the play deck at the production studio at your local affiliate, they upconvert it to full frame and broadcast it.

As someone else previously stated, you get superior PQ at the same bitrate by downresing. When artifacts appear, they're visually larger on the image, but usually have a shorter duration.



Bitrate, hands down. See above. Yes, the optics in an SLR are superior, but comparing a DSLR to a PnS CCD isn't a fair fight, either. More dots on the sensor does not make a better image, it's in how those dots are fed (optics) and handled (supporting electronics and firmware) downstream.



Sadly, Superbit is dead, having been killed by Blu-ray. The goal of Superbit was to keep as much of the feature as possible up at the hard maximum of 9.8Mbit/s so as to keep the picture and sound track as high-fidelity as possible. Superbit didn't have "Extras;" insert the disc, menu loads, press play. No trailers, no director commentary, no special features. They're all dual-layer, but rarely double-sided. Sony Superbit titles are regarded as the best way to test the picture quality of DVD-era hardware, because there were no compromises made during the mastering, except to the hardware speed limit noted above.

You say you're from Missouri; so am I, and I know the difference, because I've seen it. If you haven't seen it, then you don't know. It's okay to ask questions, because that's why this forum is here. Just try not to be a tool about it.

Thanks for the information. Very informative.

BTW a telecnine is also called a film chain. It's the combo motion picture projector , diplexer and tv camera. Not the kind of camera you see in a tv studio.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm not from Missouri but I was trying to say I just wanted proof of the improvment, for someone to "show me".

Also from what you have said the problem with dish's hd isn't the resolution but the bit rate? How does this increase improve the picture? I know when it's to low you get the smearing, pixelating and finally the blocking. After a certain point in the increasing of the bit rate where is the improvement? So your complaint is with the bit rate or the resolution? Is what people here call hd-lite the 1440x1080 that you mentioned above?

Ron

 

[CowboyDren]

When I watch Dish HD I see no pixelatting or smearing of the picture. The picture is clear and sharp IMO. So in words please explain how FIOS and OTA look better. What should I look for? Perhaps one day i'll have the chance to see it that way. For a short time I tried using an indoor antenna on my atsc tuner card on my pc but the reception was very poor (very few stations received) so I no longer have access to OTA.

Well, your TV probably has a better tuner in it than the PCI card did; have you ever tried plugging rabbit ears into it?

Mostly I see the problems with static images. Dish has poor color depth, which is mostly seen in dark images, like a lot of shows on SyFy. If all you watch are soaps and late night talk shows, which have dim lighting but vibrant colors, you won't see it. If you watch spelunking documentaries on History, you'll notice that all of the cave walls are exactly the same shade of black, which isn't what you'd see in real life or on a higher-bitrate feed. In real life, we have millions of shades of every single color; on ATSC OTA, they have hundreds of thousands of shades of every color, but Dish only uses thousands of shades. It's the difference between using 32 or 24 bit color depth on your computer monitor compared to 16-bit depth.

I also notice a lot of stuff that looks like edge enhancement or upscaling errors, like looking at the peacock or fox channel bug in the corner of the screen. Colors and lines behind the channel bug are jagged or flattened on the Dish feed, where they aren't present on the OTA feed.

In closing i'm assuming my eyes are able to resolve the difference. I know I was the only one playing laser discs back during the golden age of vhs for the picture quality. Most people were happy with vhs. To make matters worse most were even happy recording in the extended play mode. That i suppose is why Dish and everyone else gets away with the compression.

Bingo. You also said, "I know a good picture when I see one," which I hereby challenge. I know a lot of people who can't tell a bad picture when they see one, until I point it out to them. Knowing a good one when you see it, with no point of reference, is much much harder. I have the points of reference, and you don't; that doesn't mean that my eyes are better than yours, it just means that I've seen things that you haven't.

I have one more question how much more or less do the cable companies compress in comparsion to Dish and DirecTV?

It's a mixed bag. Some of the smaller cable companies have very good to excellent PQ, because they don't have that many HD (or even SD) channels to deal with. It comes back to bandwidth; how many channels are you trying to force down the finite pipe at the same time?

Bitrate, hands down. See above. Yes, the optics in an SLR are superior, but comparing a DSLR to a Point-and-Shoot CCD isn't a fair fight, either. More dots on the sensor does not make a better image, it's in how those dots are fed (optics) and handled (supporting electronics and firmware) downstream.

To clarify, bitrate is more important than resolution, given the same video codec. A 12Mb feed of 1440*1080 is going to look far better than an 8Mb feed of 1920*1080, assuming they're both encoded with MPEG2 or both encoded with MPEG4. An 8Mb feed of MPEG4 is going to look about the same as a 12Mb feed of MPEG2, assuming they're both 1920*1080. All dish HD is now MPEG4, and all OTA broadcast is MPEG2, just for the record. Dish reaps benefits from both angles, downresing AND a superior codec.

 

[Kb Cool]

What kind of HDTV do you have? CRT,Plasma,LCD?
If it's a small CRT like i have in my bedroom. Then you might not see that much of a diference between a Cband Masterfeed, Blueray,OTA or FIOS. Personally i've never seen FIOS and unfortunatly probally never will in my lifetime. But, i have seen Master satellite feeds of some of the same channels we get on E*. And they look better. E* being the worst followed by OTA. To see the difference, i just step a little closer to the 50" Plasma and watch the pixels dance around the screen on E*. I don't see that w/ Blueray or Cband. But, don't get me wrong. With all the Bit-stealing E* does. At times they do provide a good picture. Just look at HDnet. That channels usually decent. On the other hand the premium movie channels seem to have varying quality depending on what time of the day.

 

[ronfelder]

Well, your TV probably has a better tuner in it than the PCI card did; have you ever tried plugging rabbit ears into it?

Mostly I see the problems with static images. Dish has poor color depth, which is mostly seen in dark images, like a lot of shows on SyFy. If all you watch are soaps and late night talk shows, which have dim lighting but vibrant colors, you won't see it. If you watch spelunking documentaries on History, you'll notice that all of the cave walls are exactly the same shade of black, which isn't what you'd see in real life or on a higher-bitrate feed. In real life, we have millions of shades of every single color; on ATSC OTA, they have hundreds of thousands of shades of every color, but Dish only uses thousands of shades. It's the difference between using 32 or 24 bit color depth on your computer monitor compared to 16-bit depth.

I also notice a lot of stuff that looks like edge enhancement or upscaling errors, like looking at the peacock or fox channel bug in the corner of the screen. Colors and lines behind the channel bug are jagged or flattened on the Dish feed, where they aren't present on the OTA feed.



Bingo. You also said, "I know a good picture when I see one," which I hereby challenge. I know a lot of people who can't tell a bad picture when they see one, until I point it out to them. Knowing a good one when you see it, with no point of reference, is much much harder. I have the points of reference, and you don't; that doesn't mean that my eyes are better than yours, it just means that I've seen things that you haven't.



It's a mixed bag. Some of the smaller cable companies have very good to excellent PQ, because they don't have that many HD (or even SD) channels to deal with. It comes back to bandwidth; how many channels are you trying to force down the finite pipe at the same time?



To clarify, bitrate is more important than resolution, given the same video codec. A 12Mb feed of 1440*1080 is going to look far better than an 8Mb feed of 1920*1080, assuming they're both encoded with MPEG2 or both encoded with MPEG4. An 8Mb feed of MPEG4 is going to look about the same as a 12Mb feed of MPEG2, assuming they're both 1920*1080. All dish HD is now MPEG4, and all OTA broadcast is MPEG2, just for the record. Dish reaps benefits from both angles, downresing AND a superior codec.

Thank you very much for the information. I was not considering the differences you mentioned above in how the picture is better. I do understand and believe about the color depth even though I have a color perception problem and won't personally be able to see every shade of the color anyway.

For the pc tuner I tried one RCA indoor antenna. It was flat and amplified. I also tried one I purchased from Tiger direct. It was from Terk. Both on the first floor of my house where my compuer is would only get a few channels. I'd get different channels depending if I used the software that came with the tuner card or if I used windows media player. As of now I have no other antenna indoor or outdoor to try on my hdtv. I certainly hope that the tuner in the tv is more sensitive and would pick up more channels. I hope one day to try one and try to do a comparison.

Ron

 

[rad]

Here's a link to a handly calculator where you can input screen size and view distance and it will tell you at what difference you can see a difference betweem 720p and 1080i resolutions. Viewing Distance Calculator

 

[ronfelder]

What kind of HDTV do you have? CRT,Plasma,LCD?
If it's a small CRT like i have in my bedroom. Then you might not see that much of a diference between a Cband Masterfeed, Blueray,OTA or FIOS. Personally i've never seen FIOS and unfortunatly probally never will in my lifetime. But, i have seen Master satellite feeds of some of the same channels we get on E*. And they look better. E* being the worst followed by OTA. To see the difference, i just step a little closer to the 50" Plasma and watch the pixels dance around the screen on E*. I don't see that w/ Blueray or Cband. But, don't get me wrong. With all the Bit-stealing E* does. At times they do provide a good picture. Just look at HDnet. That channels usually decent. On the other hand the premium movie channels seem to have varying quality depending on what time of the day.

I have what they now call an LED tv. In other words an lcd back lit with leds. 42" LG.

Ron

 

[Kb Cool]

I have what they now call an LED tv. In other words an lcd back lit with leds. 42" LG.

Ron

You should easily see E* deficiencies with that. I would think?

 

[CowboyDren]

You should easily see E* deficiencies with that. I would think?

If you know what to look for, yeah. A good friend of mine feeds his $4000 Samsung 58" plasma with DirecTV, and I see the same problems on his screen that I see on my $800 4-year-old 37" LCD. His picture engine and display itself are vastly superior to mine, but compression and resolution artifacts only get louder as those two technologies improve and the display size grows.

Ron: What's your zip code?

 

[ronfelder]

If you know what to look for, yeah. A good friend of mine feeds his $4000 Samsung 58" plasma with DirecTV, and I see the same problems on his screen that I see on my $800 4-year-old 37" LCD. His picture engine and display itself are vastly superior to mine, but compression and resolution artifacts only get louder as those two technologies improve and the display size grows.

Ron: What's your zip code?

08080 why?

 

[CowboyDren]

Looks like all of your TV towers are 14-21 miles away, but the transmitters are HOT. Rabbit ears might not be the final answer for OTA reception for you, but you're far too close to use an "amplified" antenna. Hint: Most antenna "amplifiers" hurt reception more than they help. If you ever decide to put the third tuner on a Dish VIP receiver to good use, I can help with that.

 

[ronfelder]

Looks like all of your TV towers are 14-21 miles away, but the transmitters are HOT. Rabbit ears might not be the final answer for OTA reception for you, but you're far too close to use an "amplified" antenna. Hint: Most antenna "amplifiers" hurt reception more than they help. If you ever decide to put the third tuner on a Dish VIP receiver to good use, I can help with that.

I tried with and wihout the amp on the two indoor antennas i tried. I don't recall much of a change either way.

Ron

 

[ronfelder]

article from multi channel news

What Comcast's Crunched HD Looks Like - BIT RATE | Blog on Multichannel News

 

[cfkillers]

whats the maxium distance to get a dtv signal. i can easily get baltimore and d.c. if i get a rooftop antenna but can i get eastern shore channels. they are 90 to 100 miles away. zip code 20720. i want to stop paying dish 5.99 for just d.c. when i can get baltimore hd plus the cwhd and pbshd.