Is TNT-HD really what Dish advertises as HD? I tried to watch Jurassic Park last night, but gave up and figured I'd just watch it later, with better PQ on my old VHS tape.
I believe the movie was originally shot in 1.85:1, which is just about the aspect ratio of my 16:9 display. But the people were all short and fat, like TNT started out with a chopped pan-n-scan version of the movie and then stretched that out to widescreen! Beside messing up the aspect ratio, the PQ was just terrible. VHS tape quality ... hardly the advertised HD.
And something on Dish's 722 DVR that I have, I tried the "format" button to correct the aspect ratio. They have several options to stretch and zoom an already stretched image out to silly proportions, but I found one setting - "gray bars" - that sounded promising. It did put up the vertical pillars I was expecting (why did they pick gray instead of black?) But these pillars did nothing to adjust the aspect ratio. All's they did was cover up the left and right sides of the image. So the people were still short and fat, you just couldn't see as many of them because the sides of the image were masked off. What's with that?!
I will admit, my HD locals through Dish look just about as good as my HD locals OTA. But Dish is not asking us to pay $20/month to get those ($6 "enabling fee" only). I expected Dish to transmit HD stuff on the channels they advertise as HD. Not necessarily 24x7, but at least primetime movies. Isn't that what we're paying for? If the fact is TNT just doesn't put this stuff out in HD, obviously Dish can't broadcast it that way, but Dish shouldn't advertise it as HD in that case.
I haven't had Dish HD long enough to check out all the other HD channels. I sure hope this is isolated to just TNT, and it's not what they consider the norm for HD programming.
I believe the movie was originally shot in 1.85:1, which is just about the aspect ratio of my 16:9 display. But the people were all short and fat, like TNT started out with a chopped pan-n-scan version of the movie and then stretched that out to widescreen! Beside messing up the aspect ratio, the PQ was just terrible. VHS tape quality ... hardly the advertised HD.
And something on Dish's 722 DVR that I have, I tried the "format" button to correct the aspect ratio. They have several options to stretch and zoom an already stretched image out to silly proportions, but I found one setting - "gray bars" - that sounded promising. It did put up the vertical pillars I was expecting (why did they pick gray instead of black?) But these pillars did nothing to adjust the aspect ratio. All's they did was cover up the left and right sides of the image. So the people were still short and fat, you just couldn't see as many of them because the sides of the image were masked off. What's with that?!
I will admit, my HD locals through Dish look just about as good as my HD locals OTA. But Dish is not asking us to pay $20/month to get those ($6 "enabling fee" only). I expected Dish to transmit HD stuff on the channels they advertise as HD. Not necessarily 24x7, but at least primetime movies. Isn't that what we're paying for? If the fact is TNT just doesn't put this stuff out in HD, obviously Dish can't broadcast it that way, but Dish shouldn't advertise it as HD in that case.
I haven't had Dish HD long enough to check out all the other HD channels. I sure hope this is isolated to just TNT, and it's not what they consider the norm for HD programming.
