Poor quality of HBO On Demand

[blackjackmark]

Downloaded several episodes of Game of Thrones. During playback, I periodically have macro blocking and dropouts. It's not due to download speed since they already reside on the hard drive, so it had to happen during the download.

Even during playback, I'm pretty unimpressed with the overall quality even though I downloaded the HD version. Seems to have a lot of compression artifacts. That part doesn't bother me as much as the dropouts I'm having.

Has anyone else experienced this with any of the OnDemand content?

 

[garys]

I have it happen on my 722 and 622 from time to time. Deleting the recording and trying it again might get you a better result.

 

[fuzzfacefrombboard]

I've had those issues on some of the HBO stuff. We watched all 3 seasons of Bored to Death that way. Maybe half of them had that problem. a handful of the Ricky Gervais show had minor blocking. About half the movies I've downloaded seemed to have some compression artifacts about every 20 minutes or so. Seems hit or miss.

 

[blackjackmark]

What doesn't make any sense is, if you download the program, shouldn't it be the perfect file and not some corrupted gibberish? I wonder if the fault lies with Dish, or with HBO? If HBO is providing a perfect file, then Dish's equipment should be able to download and play that back with no problems. Dish seems to be able to do it with their own data feed from the satellite, so why can't they pull it off with HBO?

 

[garys]

What doesn't make any sense is, if you download the program, shouldn't it be the perfect file and not some corrupted gibberish? I wonder if the fault lies with Dish, or with HBO? If HBO is providing a perfect file, then Dish's equipment should be able to download and play that back with no problems. Dish seems to be able to do it with their own data feed from the satellite, so why can't they pull it off with HBO?

It probably has to do with supplying download through your internet connection and not via the satellite.

 

[king3pj]

I had a problem with this on a couple episodes of Spartacus from Starz. I haven't noticed any problems with HBO or EPIX on demand yet though. I wish Dish would get Showtime on demand or Showtime Anytime.

 

[garys]

I had a problem with this on a couple episodes of Spartacus from Starz. I haven't noticed any problems with HBO or EPIX on demand yet though. I wish Dish would get Showtime on demand or Showtime Anytime.

Showtime says I can watch online, but can't do it no matter what I try with the website. Having it on Dish would make easy (I hope).

 

[king3pj]

Showtime says I can watch online, but can't do it no matter what I try with the website. Having it on Dish would make easy (I hope).

According to the iOS AppStore it only works for people with Verizon fios or AT&T uverse. I would love to catch up on the back seasons of Dexter but there is no Showtime anytime or even on demand for us Dish customers.

 

[KAB]

I've only watched HBO GO via the Roku, and PQ (especially Game of Thrones) has been excellent, even with 5+ Mbps DSL.

 

[blackjackmark]

It probably has to do with supplying download through your internet connection and not via the satellite.

So there's no error correction built in if the download hiccups? (I have 20+Mbps through cable modem)

 

[blackjackmark]

Continued problems, and it's getting worse. Now up to season 2/ep7 of Game of Thrones. Episode played fine for 10 minutes, then I lost audio. Fast forwarded through it and audio was gone for the rest of the episode. So I deleted and redownloaded, and now I get no audio at all. I've done this three times, with soft reboots between, and nothing has solved it. I guess next step is to unplug overnight and see if that fixes it. If not I'll be calling Dish tomorrow.

 

[Teehar]

I don't watch it that much but when I have watched hbo on demand via the 722 or 612 it has been very good.Just a minor hiccup here or there.Like Kab I have been watching more of hbogo on the roku,it works great

 

[syphix]

Any desire to actually fix this, Dish??? It doesn't seem so...it's still an issue, even on S230. Although, it doesn't seem to be a software issue, but rather your data that you send. Other on demand shows from other channels download and playback fine.

For the money we spend, THIS SHOULD'VE BEEN FIXED BY NOW!!!

 

[lucky86]

Any desire to actually fix this, Dish??? It doesn't seem so...it's still an issue, even on S230. Although, it doesn't seem to be a software issue, but rather your data that you send. Other on demand shows from other channels download and playback fine.

For the money we spend, THIS SHOULD'VE BEEN FIXED BY NOW!!!

Does all hbo on demand content look sub par regarding quality or only certain programs/movies?

 

[KAB]

Of late (last couple of weeks) quality of HBO Go on Roku has been hit or miss, so may not be a Dish problem. And BTW sypix, Dish is not "sending" any data, rather accessing it from HBO.

 

[TigerpounceTN]

I've had it happen with Starz On Demand. They seem to do a pretty standard internet stream and record that to your DVR instead of recording the unmodified file whether you choose to watch it instantly or download it for later. Those should be acquired through two separate methods, but they are not. The result is that you'll get hiccups in the file as if you are streaming it live and your connection is low on bandwidth. This is more of an annoyance than anything though. I have been very happy with the Hopper and Joey setup, but seriously, they should have rolled the update and THEN released the module or just made the presence of the module cause the Hopper to automatically fetch the update.

 

[blackjackmark]

Any desire to actually fix this, Dish??? It doesn't seem so...it's still an issue, even on S230. Although, it doesn't seem to be a software issue, but rather your data that you send. Other on demand shows from other channels download and playback fine.

For the money we spend, THIS SHOULD'VE BEEN FIXED BY NOW!!!

. And BTW sypix, Dish is not "sending" any data, rather accessing it from HBO.

True, and I'm no programmer, But Dish built the interface that accesses the HBO content. Shouldn't Dish have built in some error correction such that if there is a dropout or glitch in the download, it can resume and not lose any data? That's what's very puzzling to me, if the Hopper downloads an entire program for playback later, shouldn't it be perfect? If it is not perfect then that would point to HBO's content being corrupted, in which case everyone would see the same problems.

 

[satjay]

Wonder why This is occurring ? Was watching flight of the concords and was having picture issues as well. Have had no issues in the past

 

[FlaSheridn]

Streaming quality indicator

What does the Streaming Quality indicator say? (Hit the right-arrow button to see the info screen.) My Game of Throne downloads have generally been about three bars out of four, and look OK but not great. My latest download of Newsroom, was only one bar, and looked it. I haven't been able to find any documentation on what determines the quality, and my retailer, DishNet Direct, hasn't answered my query.

 

[lucky86]

Have these issues been reported to DIRT and escalated? I know that usually if there is an issue with an IPVOD file or playback or whatever, they usually test the issues once DIRT sends the report and if the file has an issue, they address it pretty quickly.