Poor HD Quality

[mlad]

I recently purchased a Panasonic TH-50PX60U plasma and had Dish installed. I was not impressed with picture quality and upgraded to a Dish HD package. Still, the picture quality was not good at all. It was especially poor while I watched a NFL preseason game on the NFLHD channel this past weekend. The TV seemed to constantly try and figure out color shades, for example the green of the field. The TV would change parts of the field from a light green to dark and back again. Also, the faster the camera would move, the worse the picture became. When the play began, it was very hard on the eyes...when the play stopped, the picture would clear up. I have tried all HD settings on the TV, and HD settings on the Dish menu. I have a HDMI cable installed between the Dish box and TV. Could there be a problem with the TV or could it be the Dish? I contacted Dish about the problem, but turned out to not be much help as the support person was basically reading off a troubleshooting tree. He set up an appointment to have a technician come to my house, but that has been 2 weeks ago and have not been contacted since. I guess I am just really frustrated because I expected a much more quality picture, and at the least, not to have a blurry HD picture. Does anyone have any suggestions?? Thanks

 

[redman042]

This sounds like something is set up wrong, or you may have a defective DVR/receiver.

I have a Dish VIP622 hooked up through HDMI to a 50" DLP and the HD channel picture quality is great. Granted, the image is slightly soft and there is some pixelization during motion or very busy scenes due to the down-rezzing and compression, but in general this is not a significant problem at all, certainly not as bad as you describe. 90% of the time I'm very impressed with the picture quality and it's 100x better than anything I've seen on D* or on satellite SD channels from either provider. OTA is still the best but you only get locals and you have to mess with antennas and signal drop outs.

What you describe sounds far beyond the minor effects of downrezzing and compression, so you should try the following in this order:

Try component connection (you should have a cable in the box)
Get a replacement HDMI cable (if switching to component helped)
Check receiver and television settings
Get a replacement receiver
Check dish alignment
Get a replacement dish

 

[TBarclay]

Also, make sure you have your HD receiver is not outputting 480i or p. (It should be 1080i or 720p depending on your set).

 

[mlad]

Thanks, I will give it a shot.

 

[grb]

What you describe sounds far beyond the minor effects of downrezzing and compression, so you should try the following in this order:

Try component connection (you should have a cable in the box)
Get a replacement HDMI cable (if switching to component helped)
Check receiver and television settings
Get a replacement receiver
Check dish alignment
Get a replacement dish

If you don't find your problem in the first four, don't bother with the last two. These would result in no picture or a frequently pixelating picture, but not a blurry picture.

I would guess it to be something in your tv setup or a poor HDMI connector.