omg, locals PQ is HORRIBLE!!

[HokieEngineer]

I was just visiting a friend who has the atlanta local tv channels through dish... HOLY COW! What the heck compression ratio is dish using on some of their locals? It was painful to watch, and this is on a 27" tv. I couldnt even imagine if I had this on my projector. Every player on the field was like a big block of color, kinda like back in the nintendo days. Hahaha. Wow I feel spoiled with my DC locals now, even though I thought they were pretty bad. Watching the halftime highlights from some games with snow made the picture completely unwatchable. I know mpeg2 doesnt handle scenes like that well but this was just POOR. Again, I feel for you people that have locals crammed onto transponders...

Now I feel bad wanting more HD chans, when people have to suffer like this with their locals.. Seems to me charlie is going for QUANTITY, not QUALITY (in locals, shopping chans, etc).

 

[ROLLTIDE]

I agree 200%

 

[Stargazer]

Hmm, well I guess it will do no good to sell locals to people in areas that have a hard time picking up their locals OTA if they are going to tell me that they would be better off with their crappy OTA signal that comes in half way and not switch to Dish until they get a good quality picture to have some type of advantage over what they get OTA right now. Will be hard to get new subscribers if the locals are crappy, unless they get such bad OTA reception where satellite would look so much better that they would not be able to notice.

 

[AkShark]

Same problem here in Anchorage, I feel I now have very bad OTA reception.. I may have to go back to cable.........ARRRRRRGGG!

 

[Stargazer]

Something new for the cable companies to advertise against satellite about. You know, a lot of people expect satellite to actually have better picture quality than cable let alone OTA. Its pretty pathetic if you get better reception OTA than off of satellite. Dish has stated so many times how they have the best picture quality and all that bull because they are digital.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Refer all Pq issues to : www.dishquality@echostar.com .

They will respond and give a phone # they can reach you incase they want to call and talk to you about what you are seeing. Have worked on both Houston and Little Rock locals and they have now improved to good quality as the national channels.

If you want to change what you are seeing be advised you will have to email them and email them and work with the engineers till your issues are resolved. They will even go to the uplink center and tweak them with you over the phone to improve what you are seeing. They worked with me over the phone and fixed most of my sound and picture issues while I talked to them.


This is the way to resolve your issues, complaining on this web board will not fix them. Even though Dish does read these boards they will not know which channels you have issues with so do something about them. E- mail them today and start the process. They will be more than happy to work with you on these problems.

Be prepared though ,with Dish adding all these local channels there is bound to be issues with the quality. It takes us , the subs to tell them what we see in order for them to tweak and fix the problems.

 

[Tampa8]

A trolling we will go, a trolling we will go, ....................

 

[A_Noland]

Tulsa locals were really bad at first, then most of the stations provided fiber feeds. Things improved a bunch. Still over compressed, but at least watchable.

 

[Stargazer]

OK, when the locals go up here, and they are not very good in quality, then I will expect them to tweak them, especially if the customers complain about them. They WILL threaten to switch to DirecTv or cable. I have already been threatened that already because the locals are not up and they are expected to be up soon. It seems like the customers would rather have the sucky cable service that is in some areas where there are only about 25 channels to get their locals than all of these channels that is available on satellite.

 

[HokieEngineer]

1. MikeD: I will pass info along to friend.

I always assumed the pq was close to cable on the locals, since mine are that way. (I have cable since my internet is cable, and I could either pay $60 for JUST internet, or $62 for internet + bare bones, but the installer forgot to install whatever filter haha so i get expanded ) We flipped back and forth on his system and

I did a little research and atlanta is actually on a conus transponder. 11 channels on that one according to lyngsat. I'm assuming the 20000 SR means 20mbit? There are only 10 channels on the transponder DC uses. I noticed some even have 12!! Oh well, just something to keep in mind if you are shopping around. I have no clue what dtv's local pq is like.

I find myself watching the hd chans the most anyways. Going back to sports on sd is murder on the eyes! Congrats on dish having very very good hd pq. I saw dtv demos in a store and they were noticably compressed :x

 

[RJS]

We were lucky with the Madison, WI locals here. Thay look quite good. I don't know if everyone in the state gets them this well but I'm happy.

 

[dbronstein]

I get the Denver locals and they look fine to me.

Dennis

 

[Mr Tony]

Minneapolis locals + my 2 distants (FOX Denver & FOX LA) look fine to me...

 

[ROLLTIDE]

For all those who say that PQ looks fine for locals then I guess that you never seen stuff in HD. It's hard to go back to dish .

 

[Mr Tony]

For all those who say that PQ looks fine for locals then I guess that you never seen stuff in HD. It's hard to go back to dish .

Nope..havent seen locals in HD....too far from the towers, have to rely on translators

 

[jlhugh]

We dont even have Digital OTA locals here. all of them are still analog. I get my locals on the Dish from the DFW market and there is nothing wrong with them. Alot better than my analog locals here in town.

So I don't have anything HD to compare them too.

 

[Yahkin]

Comparing locals to HD is just plain stupid. *sorry to be so blunt* Of course HD will be better. That is the point of HD (HIGH Definition)

Now, comparing dish locals to OTA locals...that is a discussion. I cannot comment since I'm on Distant locals right now...my OTA is Nonexistent. (Milwaukee, where are you?) I do see artifacts occasionally during sporting events, but that is not uncommon for sporting events and MPEG2. Since 100% of the screen is changing at all times, the "Compression" that MPEG2 does is rendered somewhat useless.

ROLLTIDE, I see you show up in every PQ thread on here...Have you worked with Dish to get your problems resolved? Or do you just flame them here and do nothing about it? Just curious.

 

[StevenD]

jlhugh, where are you located? You should be able to pickup the digital channels out of Dallas for up to about 70 miles out from Cedar Hill.

 

[Big Bob]

For all those who say that PQ looks fine for locals then I guess that you never seen stuff in HD. It's hard to go back to dish .

I have seen my locals in HD. My PQ is fine.

 

[jlhugh]

jlhugh, where are you located? You should be able to pickup the digital channels out of Dallas for up to about 70 miles out from Cedar Hill.

I live in Wichita Falls, so I am a little far. I wish I could get that though. I guess I could put up a high powered ant. and pull them in. The reason I even get the locals from DFW is because I had them when I lived in a town that you couldn't get local at all OTA. So I am grandfathered in for as long as I keep them on.