picture quality changed

[gunner44]

I had directv in the houston market for 9 years,the old round dish when moved to corpus christi area had Dish tv installed....Directv gave an unbelieveable difficult time about coming out, i had installed system my self but could't get all channels because of old shape dish..

Anyways Dish hd package in on may 1 and all acceptable but in december pix quality on all standard def channel worse,,,they have ghosts as an old antenna reception problem,,,pixelation,, and so unclear i cant belive they are digital....

Service out yeaterday and replaced everything no change except they managed to loose bird 119 signal and couldn't get it back...
After 5 1/2 hours asked them to get off roof as was dark and to come back today,,well 11:00am and haven't heard or reach anyone by phone...
Any good sugestion?????

 

[tsduke]

Did you have an actual appointment for them to return today?

 

[gunner44]

yes actually dish was supposed to have generated a work order last night

 

[tsduke]

Call Dish and ask them when they will be there.

 

[Dacwi]

Try to ask them to use a different dish as that dish might have been bent etc.

 

[Jim S.]

Funny, I thought the picture quality on most SD had gotten better late last year since I subscribed in 2006.

If you're getting ghosting, it's not the satellite signal. Either there's a bad cabling situation at the source (in which case everybody would see it, except on locals) or a bad cabling situation at your house (although I don't know why it wouldn't affect HD, unless you're watching HD via a different connection.)

Are you sure the settings on your TV haven't changed? Getting the brightness/contrast/sharpness out of whack can blow up MPEG artifacts that are almost invisible with proper settings. Some of these artifacts can look sort of like ghosting, although not really like analog ghosting.

 

[gunner44]

none of that they are coming out on a sunday,,the tv is a sony crt mod only 3 yrs old every thing on it is great dvd, vcr.....

not to hopeful as they keep every thing so secretive as to who is coming and from where and no company name no one to ask about any thing but adress in colorado...what the hell only tv..i would rather be burnining powder but have family you know

 

[gunner44]

ghosts on abc channel

follow up to what is a problem no resolve....they came and restyoed the bird i lost. the first 2 techs did not know how to align the dish,,,,unbelievable,,,,going to make new post ok

 

[dishcomm]

yes actually dish was supposed to have generated a work order last night

Unless the tech on site closed the original work order, there cannot be a new work order opened. Therefore you have no appointment unless the install company is going to do what we call a "follow up".
Why this guy took 5 hrs to figure out and eventually screw up a line of sight is a mystery. Can you give more details as to what the tech said. Any comments on his part. What he thought the problem might be, etc....Who was the original installer. A Dish tech, contractor, you or your friend down the street?

 

[dishcomm]

Funny, I thought the picture quality on most SD had gotten better late last year since I subscribed in 2006.

If you're getting ghosting, it's not the satellite signal. Either there's a bad cabling situation at the source (in which case everybody would see it, except on locals) or a bad cabling situation at your house (although I don't know why it wouldn't affect HD, unless you're watching HD via a different connection.)

Are you sure the settings on your TV haven't changed? Getting the brightness/contrast/sharpness out of whack can blow up MPEG artifacts that are almost invisible with proper settings. Some of these artifacts can look sort of like ghosting, although not really like analog ghosting.

Soundls to me like there is a cabling issue, a problem with the input on the customer's tv or the output connection on the reciver...It's not a signal issue if the OP's comments are to accpeted as accuraate...

 

[gunner44]

dish installed

 

[dishcomm]

dish installed

thnaks..Call Dish and request a tech..You'll be better off for it...Good luck.

 

[Barry Erick]

Ghosting, if only on yours is between the dish receiver and your TV. Nothing else. The locals might have some, as dish's default is to obtain them OTA in each market. Otherwise there is no way to get ghosting between the dish and its receiver. Only between the receiver and your TV.

 

[gunner44]

actually when the tech came out he said he sees this problem every where he goes in the corpus christi area so it is not just me and i receive the locals from dish not ota,,,too many trees and wind to even think about an antenna..

my family says poor pix better than no pix,,they win every time...

maybe it get better when some of the change over settles down next year

 

[osu1991]

Dish picks up your locals with an antenna before it is sent to the satellite for you to receive. So if the signal that Dish receives has ghosts in it then what you get will have ghosting also. They had this problem when Tulsa's sd locals first launched. FOX23 was horrendous for 2 weeks until they could get a fiber feed from the stations new broadcast center.

 

[dave2609]

I have seen something similar to this several times...if your local market channels are channel 3 or 4 and you are modulating out on the same channel number try changing your modulator out to the opposite of your local market..(ie. channel 3 is in your area change modulator to 4..)

 

[WhitePolarBear]

The signals on my local channels contains pixels when there are fast changing picture (such as sports programs). You can also see pixelation around letters with small font size. I think this is an indication Dish has weak local signal feed somehow and they make things worse by data compression. I get the Houston locals. Fox and CW are usually the worst.

 

[highdefjeff]

Proof of digital picture quality variation

Anyways Dish hd package in on may 1 and all acceptable but in december pix quality on all standard def channel worse,,,they have ghosts as an old antenna reception problem,,,pixelation,, and so unclear i cant belive they are digital....

Gunner describes not only pixelation, but a picture "so unclear" he couldn't believe they were digital. He even describes ghosting.

Uh, oh...that's not possible, is it?

It certainly is! Gunner described it for you. It is a fact that digital picture can vary. And not just pixelation, tiling, and macro-blocking, but he also describes an unclear (blurry) picture as well.

So what happened to Gunners system? Did someone sneak in and replace his digital system with an analog one? Nope.

Here’s what happened to gunner44’s system.

His 119 LNB was dying. (This explains why he had problems with his SD, only. Satellite 119 provides the largest portion of the SD programming. His HD was unaffected as the HD programming comes from other satellites.) As the “mini-antenna” in the feed horn began to break down, the signal strength began to lessen. The malfunction in the LNB was probably adding increasing noise, as well. These factors created an ever increasing bit error rate. Bit error rate is the digital cousin to signal-to-noise ratio. Bit error rate is the quality measurement of the signal. It is a function of both noise and signal – it is a signal dependent measure.

“The bit error ratio will be affected by both the data transmission rate and the signal power margin.” Definition: error ratio

As the signal weakened, the signal power margin became too small to provide the necessary signal to fully overcome the noise and provide the expected clarity of picture. The signal continued to degrade to the point where there was not enough signal to satisfy the minimum input needs for the receiver. At that point, the 119 satellite was lost – not to be found again until a replacement was installed.

It is a signal issue. And, once again, I will state that digital picture quality can be compromised by low signal, even if you have lock.

 

[lakebum431]

Here we go again with Jeff's confusion of the facts. You actually stated the problem yourself in your post "His 119 LNB was dying" but then you went on to get confused again: "digital picture quality can be compromised by low signal, even if you have lock" His digital picture wasn't compromised by low signal it was compromised by a dying LNBF, but here we go again...

 

[highdefjeff]

Dying LNB symptoms

We obviously agree about everything except the explanation...and who's confused.

You agree that the dying LNB is the cause, yet you want to reject the explanation I offered, based on science, and accept your mystery LNB death? How does that go?

Actually, one of the symptoms of a dying LNB is decreased signal and sometimes, missing transponders. Often, a failing DPPlus Twin LNB will fail this way. They will lose the low number, even transponders sometimes, too.

The explanation I wrote is an accurate description of the situation based on digital signal science. If I incorrectly stated something, let me know.

If we look at Gunner's case, we see that he was indeed watching severely compromised picture quality. It was a digital picture, and to suggest that he was watching his system without locked signal, would be ludicrous. So, his signal had lock AND provided a compromised picture.
Therefore, contrary to popular belief, digital picture quality is not all or nothing. Digital picture quality does vary.

And my statement about compromised digital picture being possible in the presence of low signal is correct as well. Or is there an alternative explanation of degraded picture, based on science?