Question about HD or HD lite on Dish

[Ascratch]

Been reading about the HD lite issues and am confused over what if any programming is being shown on Dish in what people are calling true HD. Which as I understand it means without compression that decreases the picture quality. In the programming quides (like HD Sports Guide) it indicates 720p or 1080i for the various broadcasts but I was wondering which stations are really coming through in those resolutions.
Thanks for any input.

 

[Julien]

It is not compression (bandwidth) which is using less bits per second (which is a whole other issue) but a reduction in resolution that makes HD-Lite.

First you need to know what HD-Lite is. You take an original 1920x1080 signal and reduce it's resolution to 1440x1080 or 1280x1080 using non round pixels to maintain a 1.78 (16x9) ratio picture. This throws away 518,400 or 691,200 pixels respectively. It is then up-scaled by the receiver to output 1920x1080 to your set.

I believe that most local networks and the VOOM channels are re-broadcast in HD-Lite MPEG 4.

 

[whatchel1]

1st what is HD Lite

You should know what the term is related to before asking the question. Here is a thread from DBS talks that get thru what it is and how HD Lite is used.
http://dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=70704

 

[Tom Bombadil]

There is very little on Dish that is good quality HD. Nearly all of their HD programming is compromised by either a reduction in resolution and/or over compression and/or use of an MPEG4 compression schema that is not yet ready for prime time.

At times the problem is with the program source. Even a prefect retransmission of a lower quality source would still result in less than spectacular HD.

To people who are familiar with high quality HD, watching DishHD can be a painful experience. However most consumers haven't seen much good HD and don't know what they are missing.

 

[Poke]

Well most of use have seen good HD but I would not say watching DishHD is a painful experience. Due to it is not yes there are things to make it better but that goes for every provider in the country. Right now Dish is the HD leader and at least they have more HD content out there than anyone else. So point is don't make something out to be real bad when reality it really isn't. Its just as good as anything else on the market.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I can only speak for myself and I consider DishHD quality to be generally poor. I've lost track of the number of times I have quit watching a program solely due to its poor picture quality. Must be at least 30 times. I watch a lot of problems nowadays despite their mediocre quality. The few times I actually see good HD now hit me as a big, bonus surprise. I think to myself, "Great! Something I want to watch AND it actually has good PQ!" This doesn't happen very often.

I was surprised just the other night when watching the "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" movie. The PQ was pretty good. Compression artifacts in scenes with low lighting and contrast were minimal, even with motion. It's been a while since I've seen this from DishHD.

E* chooses to be the leader in HD channels, not HD quality. If they prioritized quality they could have decided to not offer some of the channels and given more bandwidth to the ones they kept. I know this is not a popular decision with the buying public, so I don't blame them.

Worse yet, DishHD PQ has been on a steady downhill slide over the past 12-18 months. The PQ right now is worse than it was 6 months ago. The PQ 6 months ago was worse than it had been 12 months ago. A year ago it was common to see great PQ on HDNET, VOOM Equator, HBO, ESPN, HDNMV, and other channels. On my old 942 I recorded brief clips of a few programs just to save as great HD demos to show to family & friends. But now on my 622 I have nothing of the sort. I have a lot of HD recorded, but nothing I would hold up as a good example of HD.

 

[fz5j2r]

SD Lite

I can only speak for myself and I consider DishHD quality to be generally poor. I've lost track of the number of times I have quit watching a program solely due to its poor picture quality. Must be at least 30 times. I watch a lot of problems nowadays despite their mediocre quality. The few times I actually see good HD now hit me as a big, bonus surprise. I think to myself, "Great! Something I want to watch AND it actually has good PQ!" This doesn't happen very often.

I was surprised just the other night when watching the "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" movie. The PQ was pretty good. Compression artifacts in scenes with low lighting and contrast were minimal, even with motion. It's been a while since I've seen this from DishHD.

E* chooses to be the leader in HD channels, not HD quality. If they prioritized quality they could have decided to not offer some of the channels and given more bandwidth to the ones they kept. I know this is not a popular decision with the buying public, so I don't blame them.

Worse yet, DishHD PQ has been on a steady downhill slide over the past 12-18 months. The PQ right now is worse than it was 6 months ago. The PQ 6 months ago was worse than it had been 12 months ago. A year ago it was common to see great PQ on HDNET, VOOM Equator, HBO, ESPN, HDNMV, and other channels. On my old 942 I recorded brief clips of a few programs just to save as great HD demos to show to family & friends. But now on my 622 I have nothing of the sort. I have a lot of HD recorded, but nothing I would hold up as a good example of HD.

I also am very unhappy with the degradation of the HD channels in the past year.

However, I am more upset with what has happened with the SD channels. My wife complained to me how bad the picture has gotten on our two televisions. Now you must understand, when my wife notices poor picture quality it is really bad. If there is a picture at all she is usually happy. After all, we are both from the era of Ed Sullivan in black and white.

There are a number of SD channels we just cannot watch. Anything with motion like basketball, motorcycle racing etc., will jerk and skip frames, has heavy macro blocking, etc. You just cannot watch these types of programs without getting a severe headache.

My saving grace is the $29.99 Phillips amplified rabbit ears placed in the front window of my house. It allows me to pull in awesome digital pictures from the antenna farm 15 miles distant.

The picture from a plain digital channel (not HD) from the rabbit ears is within a whisker of what Dish calls high defintion.

The HD pictures from the rabbit ears are absolutely incredible. They make the Dish HD channels look like old analog channels.

So while I would like to see a return to the full HD we once had, I would rather they concentrate on the SD channels quality issues.

 

[rickaren]

I can only speak for myself and I consider DishHD quality to be generally poor. I've lost track of the number of times I have quit watching a program solely due to its poor picture quality. Must be at least 30 times. I watch a lot of problems nowadays despite their mediocre quality. The few times I actually see good HD now hit me as a big, bonus surprise. I think to myself, "Great! Something I want to watch AND it actually has good PQ!" This doesn't happen very often.

I was surprised just the other night when watching the "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" movie. The PQ was pretty good. Compression artifacts in scenes with low lighting and contrast were minimal, even with motion. It's been a while since I've seen this from DishHD.

E* chooses to be the leader in HD channels, not HD quality. If they prioritized quality they could have decided to not offer some of the channels and given more bandwidth to the ones they kept. I know this is not a popular decision with the buying public, so I don't blame them.

Worse yet, DishHD PQ has been on a steady downhill slide over the past 12-18 months. The PQ right now is worse than it was 6 months ago. The PQ 6 months ago was worse than it had been 12 months ago. A year ago it was common to see great PQ on HDNET, VOOM Equator, HBO, ESPN, HDNMV, and other channels. On my old 942 I recorded brief clips of a few programs just to save as great HD demos to show to family & friends. But now on my 622 I have nothing of the sort. I have a lot of HD recorded, but nothing I would hold up as a good example of HD.

Tom I disagree. Is there an issue with your setup?

Sure the HD PQ is not as good as OTA sometimes, but as a past VOOMER and also a subscriber to D* HD it is still impressive enough to entertain family and friends and to receive that WOW!

Had some friends over this week and showed off my HT for over 3 hours. Use DISH and the VIP 622 to do that on a 65" set. Recorded and live events. Only thing I showed using the D* HR10 was local programs. I just use D* for overflow HD recording and most SD due to modified units. However SD even looks better with DISH.

I am very pleased with E* and have HD in some form for about five years now. Sure it could be better and has been but is not as bad as you state. I have the Platinum Package so I have 37 HD channels if you count the OTA. Friends asked how many channels do I have? My reply was maybe 150, but I only care to watch the 37!

Have you re-checked your setup recently?

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Tom I disagree. Is there an issue with your setup?

No, there is nothing wrong with my setup. I am very picky about it and am always tweaking it to keep it optimized. I regularly calibrate (amateur w/DVE & Sound & Vision DVDs) TVs for friends and family. As I mentioned above, the Harry Potter movie was very good. Some recent ESPN material has been very good. I'm watching "Blood Rayne" right now and it is pretty good (just saw a camera pan across a dimly lit room and there was no macro-blocking ... very unusual from DishHD). And I've seen stuff on HDNET recently that was good. So that's four different channels that have been fine, on occasion.

I also frequently get great PQ via multiple OTA HD channels. The difference between OTA HD and DishHD is frequently very significant, at least to me.

I admit that I have an extremely sensitive eye to compression artifacts and I have 20/12 vision with eyeglasses.

In a typical movie on a channel like StarzHD or UNIHD, I will see shortcomings of one sort or another a good 100-200 times over the course of the movie. I can easily see the constant picture softness from all VOOM channels. It is there 100% of the time on all of their channels. VOOM PQ can still be okay, with good color and low artifacts, it just isn't "HD-sharp."

 

[ZandarKoad]

Sounds like Tom is one of the very few customers I've done HD installs for who've noticed the difference. Which it not to say there is no difference. I think there very much is a big difference in true HD and DishHD. But 95% of consumers out there just really don't care all that much apparently. And probably a good portion of those 5% aren't willing to get FEWER HD channels for HIGHER QUALITY ones. Tom is right on. Dish has to make some tough calls which suck for those who appriciate quality but are good for those who appriciate quantity.

FYI - I've done probably about 1400 installs over the last two and 1/2 years. Only about a hundred of those are HD. Very roughly.

 

[Julien]

Sounds like Tom is one of the very few customers I've done HD installs for who've noticed the difference. Which it not to say there is no difference. I think there very much is a big difference in true HD and DishHD. But 95% of consumers out there just really don't care all that much apparently. And probably a good portion of those 5% aren't willing to get FEWER HD channels for HIGHER QUALITY ones. Tom is right on. Dish has to make some tough calls which suck for those who appriciate quality but are good for those who appriciate quantity.

FYI - I've done probably about 1400 installs over the last two and 1/2 years. Only about a hundred of those are HD. Very roughly.

Unfortunately this is the American way of quantity over qulity from super sized meals to Sirius/XM radio. To make matters worse your 95 to 5 ratio is probably too low and it is likely closer to 97 to 3. Sad but true.

Add to that the fact that most HDTV owners have never seen HD on their sets before the install.

 

[Smith P.]

When HD/BD DVDs will become common, the picture will change - much more ppl will have opportunity to compare HD-Lite and regular HD picture/sound.
I'm bet you'll see a lot of complains against DTV and Dish PQ, hope pretty soon.(If not this darn HD DVD format war will kill whole idea )

 

[Ascratch]

HD lite sure gets responses, mostly angry or slightly angry. My original question was regarding if any programming on Dish is not HD lite. All the responses were talking about giving me information about what HD lite was, resolution and bandwidth etc. Did not see any information on what programming if any would be so called HD. I have the platinum HD package and get locals through the dish on HD as well from Wash DC area. I am watching on a 32 inch 1080i cabable TV. I was trying to compare the different broadcasts to see if I discern a big difference, which I don't. Thus the question, are any of the broadcasts in what you would consider HD or are they all HD Lite.

Thanks

 

[Ronald_Jeremy]

Perhaps the only real HD feed on Dish is HBO.

 

[Smith P.]

Ascratch, you're not first person who asking about HD channels info and I always point to BFG's HD tables - check his profile here at SG for that URL.

 

[Ascratch]

Thank you P Smith. I have seen that table before but unfortunately for me I know just enough to be dangerous and am not sure I am deciphering it properly. I am using a 61.5 dish for HD content, am I correct in thinking the Mbps column tells me how close to HD the content is? The higher the Mbps # the higher the res? And if so what Mbps is approaching an HD quality picture?

Thanks

 

[Tom Bombadil]

HD lite sure gets responses, mostly angry or slightly angry. My original question was regarding if any programming on Dish is not HD lite. All the responses were talking about giving me information about what HD lite was, resolution and bandwidth etc. Did not see any information on what programming if any would be so called HD. I have the platinum HD package and get locals through the dish on HD as well from Wash DC area. I am watching on a 32 inch 1080i cabable TV. I was trying to compare the different broadcasts to see if I discern a big difference, which I don't. Thus the question, are any of the broadcasts in what you would consider HD or are they all HD Lite.

Thanks

I attempted to address this in my first response to this thread. It comes down to what one defines to be "HD." I decided to use the term "good/high quality HD." IMHO, Dish offers little high quality HD. Most of their HD channels never offer a high quality HD program. A few do on occasion. The full HD resolution is offered on a few channels, but only sporatically with sufficient bandwidth to render what I would consider to be real HD PQ.

If you are watching on a smaller TV, say 32" or less, then the differences are less apparent. If you are watching on a larger TV, say 42" or more, but sit a fair distance from the TV - like sitting 16' from a 50" set - then the differences are again less apparent. I sit 8.5' from a 47" set, which is still short of the ideal distance to set size for a good HDTV, and the shortcomings are significant. Now if one had a top notch 60-65"" HDTV and sat 9'-10' from it, then either you will be driven crazy by the problems or you are blessedly oblivious to them.

 

[highdefjeff]

I don't know how you setup your systems, but I have evoked so many "WOW's" with Dish HD, I can't imagine someone being less than delighted.
I have installed many Ka-Ku and 1000/1000+'s. Never have I witnessed a better picture vs Dish. I even replaced an H20 HD system with a Dish 625 and the customers and I saw a better picture quality with the SD 625.

 

[sreger]

In my opinion Tom expresses very well...

I can only speak for myself and I consider DishHD quality to be generally poor. I've lost track of the number of times I have quit watching a program solely due to its poor picture quality. Must be at least 30 times. I watch a lot of problems nowadays despite their mediocre quality. The few times I actually see good HD now hit me as a big, bonus surprise. I think to myself, "Great! Something I want to watch AND it actually has good PQ!" This doesn't happen very often.

I was surprised just the other night when watching the "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" movie. The PQ was pretty good. Compression artifacts in scenes with low lighting and contrast were minimal, even with motion. It's been a while since I've seen this from DishHD.

E* chooses to be the leader in HD channels, not HD quality. If they prioritized quality they could have decided to not offer some of the channels and given more bandwidth to the ones they kept. I know this is not a popular decision with the buying public, so I don't blame them.

Worse yet, DishHD PQ has been on a steady downhill slide over the past 12-18 months. The PQ right now is worse than it was 6 months ago. The PQ 6 months ago was worse than it had been 12 months ago. A year ago it was common to see great PQ on HDNET, VOOM Equator, HBO, ESPN, HDNMV, and other channels. On my old 942 I recorded brief clips of a few programs just to save as great HD demos to show to family & friends. But now on my 622 I have nothing of the sort. I have a lot of HD recorded, but nothing I would hold up as a good example of HD.

what a number of the die-hard audio/video buffs (many of which who were also the early adopters for HD) feel. That is, we want more HD programming yesterday, and we want the best possible picture quality for our beloved home theatre set-ups. It drives us crazy to see the networks who are slow to make the leap to HD, or don't have enough HD cameras/trucks to cover all sporting events, or satellite companies forced to compromise between channel quantity/quality, etc.

Bur then, that's what makes this forum so great. It gives us a chance to rant about it, which is another fun aspect of this interesting hobby.

 

[HDTVFanAtic]

I can only speak for myself and I consider DishHD quality to be generally poor. I've lost track of the number of times I have quit watching a program solely due to its poor picture quality. Must be at least 30 times. I watch a lot of problems nowadays despite their mediocre quality. The few times I actually see good HD now hit me as a big, bonus surprise. I think to myself, "Great! Something I want to watch AND it actually has good PQ!" This doesn't happen very often.

I was surprised just the other night when watching the "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" movie. The PQ was pretty good. Compression artifacts in scenes with low lighting and contrast were minimal, even with motion. It's been a while since I've seen this from DishHD.

E* chooses to be the leader in HD channels, not HD quality. If they prioritized quality they could have decided to not offer some of the channels and given more bandwidth to the ones they kept. I know this is not a popular decision with the buying public, so I don't blame them.

Worse yet, DishHD PQ has been on a steady downhill slide over the past 12-18 months. The PQ right now is worse than it was 6 months ago. The PQ 6 months ago was worse than it had been 12 months ago. A year ago it was common to see great PQ on HDNET, VOOM Equator, HBO, ESPN, HDNMV, and other channels. On my old 942 I recorded brief clips of a few programs just to save as great HD demos to show to family & friends. But now on my 622 I have nothing of the sort. I have a lot of HD recorded, but nothing I would hold up as a good example of HD.

One 148W, I am seeing some of the highest bitrates I have EVER seen on Dish - with at least 3-4 titles this week on SHO in the 16.25 - 16.50 Video Bit Rate area (too bad they are butchering the movies with pop ups now).

HBO on 148W is passing 98% the same bitrate as the HBO C Band feed on 128W. However, HBO seems to have dropped their feed a bit as things as about a quarter point below what they were 6 months ago.

On 110W, WHEN A SPORTS HD SPECIAL EVENT RUNS AT NIGHT - they usually do not start HD PPV up until 6am and just leave a Dish Slate up. In those overnight hours, as TNT-HD, HD-PPV and HBO-HD share that transponder via statmux, I have seen the HBO rate just as high and beat 148W in that 2% time when 148W is not passing the full HBO C Band feed.

Now,we can argue that the 14.25Mbps TOTAL bitrate cap on HBO isn't enough to give great HD, but truth be told as it's telecined - the rate can actually be higher than what HDNET used to show without telecine.

So the problem is with HBO.

But, overall, outside of SHO, I rarely see great HD on E* - they should remove Atlanta, Chicago and Denver from Conus and give us back full bitrate on HDNET. Otherwise, I have one foot out the door.

EDIT - I should note the the HD PPV off 148W does have some have some beautiful HD Quality at upward of 17.50Mbps Video Bit Rate and even telecined - putting it well ahead of what HDNET used to deliver.

Perhaps the only real HD feed on Dish is HBO.

It might be the only one not touched - but its not great HD.