Reception Questions

chucksrt

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Jan 12, 2005
38
0
Bensalem, pa
I just got dish yesterday and still have my Comcast DVR HD receiver. When I view them side by side with PIP Comcast pic. looks sharper and has a darker Black, where as the dish pic. is lighter almost makes it look like it is hazier, very hard to tell. I also noticed that Comcast pic. comes in 3 to 5 sec. sooner than the dish?? How is it that comcast can get the signal to me faster than Dish? I thought cable still got their signal via. satellite then sends it to you? where the Dish sends it directly to you Via. satellite? I also noticed that cable has a stronger audio output then dish? I have the 811 with the 500 dish, the receiver set to 1080. I keep staring at the pic. to see if I can tell which one is better or worst and I can't, they just look different. I an starting to get used to it now and I can't wait to get my OTA on Monday to see how nice the locals look.
 
Because Dish pull in the signal from satellite and then sends it back up on their satellite, thus causing a dealy.

Everything you're talking about is the wonderful word of satellite and you have made the proper evalutations. Analog cable has a sharper, richer pic than dish. and fuller sound. The only problems that cable sometime has is snowy signals on on certain channels.
 
picture delay w dish network

this is a question i have run into before and the answer from dish is pretty strange. basically you will notice that with cable companies the picture switches immediately and with dish there is a delay. several dish techs have described to me that this delay is built into the system (translated... it simply has a delay) and that the reason is...are you ready for this?.... the reason is because dish network offers adult programming and this delay allows you to switch to another channel quickly before grandma or the kids can get embarassed by x rated video showing up while channel surfing. haa now that is an answer eh?
 
Well, actually, I suspect someone was pulling your leg regarding the adult programming.

It has more to do with the satellite technology itself, some receivers are slow to switch birds and transponders, plus on many channels, there's the delay due to the extra bounce off the DBS bird.

For example, most "cable" type programming is being fed by satellite. It gets to the cable head-end and the E* uplink center at the same time. Cable sends it the "last mile" for effectively a zero delay. E* has to re-encode it, mux it, then send it up again. The last bounce alone is a 1/4 second up and back.

When you start talking about locals, it's even worse.
 
The delay when changing channels is because of the time it takes to do MPEG decoding. No matter when you request a channel change, there is a signal at your dish that has already made the last bounce.
 

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