Not happy with StarzHD quality
- Thread starter Mark Strube
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I caught part of "The Deer Hunter" off of UNIHD last night too. It was okay, even on low-contrast scenes. It wasn't an outstanding demo of HD, but it was a good, crisp picture with few compression artifacts.
Re-opening this thread.
I am watching "Man of the House" tonight. This is a 2005 movie with Tommy Lee Jones.
The picture is so soft that I wasn't sure if it was bad HD or good SD. So I looked it up on the Starz HD schedule and found that it was "True HD". Could this be wrong in the guide?
It looks like a reasonably decent 640x480 program, although with a fair amount of motion blur and contouring. Facial detail is almost nonexistant, as is typical with SD.
I am watching "Man of the House" tonight. This is a 2005 movie with Tommy Lee Jones.
The picture is so soft that I wasn't sure if it was bad HD or good SD. So I looked it up on the Starz HD schedule and found that it was "True HD". Could this be wrong in the guide?
It looks like a reasonably decent 640x480 program, although with a fair amount of motion blur and contouring. Facial detail is almost nonexistant, as is typical with SD.
ChetK said:
Funny you should ask... it hangs around 6-12mbps, and it's MPEG2. They could save bandwidth on StarzHD AND have it look better than it does now if they had any common sense. (Although full bitrate is always preferred.)
StarzHD and NFL-HD are both in mpeg2 (on the 129 sat, on the 61.5 they're still mpeg4), but apparently the bitrate on StarzHD is now hanging around 8mbps. It's a bad bitrate, but it still looks better than the horrible, soft, blurry, detail-killing mpeg4. At least now we have small object detail when there isn't too much motion, and the picture of live action doesn't almost look like there's an animated glaze over it (in certain movies).
Right now on sat 129 StarzHD is MPEG2. I've checked it myself. I do not have access to 61.5, but I've heard that the MPEG4 version is now on that sat.
I wrote dishquality about starzhd breaking up. They commented they had someone else tell them how good it looks.... I'm on 61.5 and the picture was the pits...
I wrote dishquality about Starz-HD breaking up as well...must be at least 6 weeks ago now. No reply whatsoever...
Strange things going on tonight on Starz.
I'm watching the Chronicles of Narnia. There is spot near the middle of the screen, about half the width of the screen, where the image "gets stuck" a bit. Over and over again, the image corrupts there a bit and then freezes a half-second, before the screen kinda resets and everything is fine again.
In the first 30 minutes of the movie, I saw this happen at least 35-40 times. Happens almost everytime there is motion across the screen.
As I type this, there was about 30 seconds with a lot of motion and the area pixelated/corrupted 7 times.
I can replay the scene and it does exactly the same thing.
Haven't seen Starz act up quite like this before.
I'm watching the Chronicles of Narnia. There is spot near the middle of the screen, about half the width of the screen, where the image "gets stuck" a bit. Over and over again, the image corrupts there a bit and then freezes a half-second, before the screen kinda resets and everything is fine again.
In the first 30 minutes of the movie, I saw this happen at least 35-40 times. Happens almost everytime there is motion across the screen.
As I type this, there was about 30 seconds with a lot of motion and the area pixelated/corrupted 7 times.
I can replay the scene and it does exactly the same thing.
Haven't seen Starz act up quite like this before.
I watched Enemy of the State earlier and the PQ is better than SD, but still softer than HBO-HD or Showtime-HD...
opps, i see there was a thread on starz and narnia sucked worsethan anychannel i have seen
and it hasabout the highest signal on 61.5 for me, 88 - 90
about 1/3rd up narnia had issues. Did not see anything off in the upper 2/3rds
and it hasabout the highest signal on 61.5 for me, 88 - 90
about 1/3rd up narnia had issues. Did not see anything off in the upper 2/3rds
long_time_DNC said:
I caught it on the 2nd showing, off of 61.5.
It was hard to believe that this was supposed to be HD. I agree definitely better than SD, but very soft for HD. I wish I had the DVD here to compare it to.
And it also had the same middle of the screen pixelation on motion that Narnia had.
None of the other channels had the same artifact.
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Boy was I disgusted with a Fast Forward through Narnia. Dissolve to all blocks and getting worse. Is this true of a true MPEG-4? Mostly I watch MPEG-2 including VOOM with MPEG-4 headers (still? I get 61.5 and 129, wonder which) and have not seen any this bad.
-Ken
-Ken
StarzHD is MPEG4 on 61.5, MPEG2 on 129. The MPEG4 definitely looks much worse than the MPEG2, even though it's higher bitrate.
When's the last time someone tried complaining directly to Starz about this and if they did, what did they hear back?
We can complain amongst ourselves and even to Dish all we want but ultimately it's the channel itself that has the best chance of getting Dish to fix things.
I mean like this is so beyond pathetic - we can't even get Dish to bring Starz up to the quality of their other HD and their other HD is already sub-standard.
There's not one single HD channel on Dish that has as good a PQ as my two little home town digital stations. Trouble is, mine are NBC & PBS and a lot of the good shows are on Fox & ABC.
We can complain amongst ourselves and even to Dish all we want but ultimately it's the channel itself that has the best chance of getting Dish to fix things.
I mean like this is so beyond pathetic - we can't even get Dish to bring Starz up to the quality of their other HD and their other HD is already sub-standard.
There's not one single HD channel on Dish that has as good a PQ as my two little home town digital stations. Trouble is, mine are NBC & PBS and a lot of the good shows are on Fox & ABC.
Starz doesn't want to hear from us.
Here is what they post on their own web page
Question: I am experiencing audio/video problems with one of the Starz or Encore channels. Who should I talk to?
Answer: Please contact your cable or satellite provider directly. Your cable or satellite provider controls service delivery to your home.
Here is what they post on their own web page
Question: I am experiencing audio/video problems with one of the Starz or Encore channels. Who should I talk to?
Answer: Please contact your cable or satellite provider directly. Your cable or satellite provider controls service delivery to your home.
