Not happy with StarzHD quality

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StarzHD quality

Tried to watch "The Matador" on STZHD last night on my 622 and the picture was terrible. Pixelating at the slightest movement on the screen, and huge green blocks covering as much as 3/4 of the screen. Worst I've seen in months, on any HD channel. I have good signal strength and I've done a hard reset. No weather issues either, or trees in the way. Anybody else seeing this? It's unwatchable.
 
SteveinDanville said:
Tried to watch "The Matador" on STZHD last night on my 622 and the picture was terrible. Pixelating at the slightest movement on the screen, and huge green blocks covering as much as 3/4 of the screen. Worst I've seen in months, on any HD channel. I have good signal strength and I've done a hard reset. No weather issues either, or trees in the way. Anybody else seeing this? It's unwatchable.
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Same thing here with a 211 and good signal from 129. Pixelating was horrible and the green blocks were really bad.
 
I'm sure it's related to the fact that the transponder for StarzHD shares transponder 30 on 129 with 3 other channels (NFLHD, NGHD and HGHD). All the other HD channels on 129 are 3 to a transponder or less. I have complained to E* ceo and dishquality several times, with no response. E* better make improvements to the HD picture quality soon or they may experience a rude awakening if and when D* makes there move in the HD arena.
 
Tonight I watched Chronicles of Narnia for the first time since STZHD was switched to MPEG4. I have to say, the picture quality was much much better than when I watched it before the switchover. I thought the picture was sharper and I didn't notice any motion blurriness during the fight scenes. This is definately a step in the right direction. :up
 
richiephx said:
Tonight I watched Chronicles of Narnia for the first time since STZHD was switched to MPEG4. I have to say, the picture quality was much much better than when I watched it before the switchover. I thought the picture was sharper and I didn't notice any motion blurriness during the fight scenes. This is definately a step in the right direction. :up
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Very true i too noticed this! :up
 
Sorry for the major bump, but we're getting back into E* land in a few days... how's the quality of Starz and the rest of the MPEG4 channels doing? I know there's some people here who weren't quite as picky as others as far as this MPEG4 switchover goes, so I'd love to hear from some people who were very unhappy with MPEG4 at first like I was... how's it looking these days? I hear all the VOOM channels are now MPEG4, what else is?
 
Mark Strube said:
I'm glad they've added some new HD channels, but I must say I am very underwhelmed with the quality of StarzHD... perhaps this has something to do with the mpeg4?

I'm viewing this on a 50" 1080p Sony SXRD. All of the other HD channels (HBO, HDNet etc) look very nice and smooth, no major issues. I'm viewing on a ViP622 connected thru HDMI.

StarzHD just can't seem to achieve full fluid motion. Anytime there's a scene with the camera steadily moving, it's slightly choppy. Also, there's slightly jagged edges in some scenes, as if my hdtv cannot properly find the progressive frames or something (it's in CineMotion mode which has no issues producing a beautiful 1080p image from all of the other HD movie channels).

Also, in moderate to high motion, there's a good amount of "ghosting."

I don't know if these issues are due to their encoders or my box's decoding, but I've forced it to update and then rebooted, which has fixed none of these problems.

I hope these are just early issues that will be corrected soon, with an update or by fixing the encoding on their end. But if not, then mpeg4 is far from ready for prime time.

I've also sent this to Dish's picture quality control email address: dishquality@echostar.com
Click to expand...

wow, it was fifteen months ago that you asked that...man where does the time go? :)
 
Getting back to an old thread that I've visited many times before.

I've watched two movies on Starz HD in the past two days and found the HD PQ to be mediocre at best.

"The DaVinci Code" had a lot of low light shots. There were compression artifacts everywhere in these scenes. Macroblocking, contour mapping, and lots of video noise. Sharpness was average. As far as HD quality goes, I'd give this an "F."

Right now I'm sitting here watching parts of the awful movie "Ultraviolet." Lots of motion and vivid colors. Once again a lot of compression artifacts. A lot of break-up in the intense reds and oranges. Sharpness is below average. Doesn't look much better than DVD. Except that the colors are good.

Watched "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" on HDNET. Not perfect HD PQ but much better than either of the Starz movies.
 
I agree with you Tom. I noticed picture quality decline with the L433 software update on Thursday. I hope E* is working in preparation for some positive changes in the near future to compete with D*. Time will tell I guess.
 
Cool, thanks for your input! Please do note however, UltraViolet is very well-known for being an extremely soft-looking film, to the point of people looking almost animated. I noticed this in the theater, and every instance I've seen it since (including Blu-Ray) it's looked the same. So just for future reference, that's a bad movie for testing PQ.
 

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