Response from DISH RE: Overall PQ

abricko

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Feb 12, 2006
559
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Greater Los Angeles area.
I sent an email a week ago complaining about the soft picture on some channels and asking about the possibility of improving audio on SD channels, here is my response:

[**BEGIN PASTE**]
At DISH Network, we are constantly adding channels and programming choices resulting from customer requests. We are continually upgrading our technology to support these additions. We believe that we have designed a product that meets or exceeds the needs of our customers. We are always trying to improve the service through the continuous pursuit of improved hardware and software solutions.

We are using statistical multiplexing technology to compress our signals. This means several channels share a pool of bandwidth. If the activity level of the video on some of those channels is very high, some of the others may suffer. An example is several fast action sporting events happening at the same time on channels sharing bandwidth. The demand for bandwidth in this scenario is high and the picture quality of channels within that pool may exhibit lower quality characteristics at that instant.

There are a lot of attributing factors that can affect the sharpness of the picture quality including size of the monitor, type of cabling, and line of sight to the satellite.

We work for improvement in this area every day. We are constantly analyzing our channel layout and try to find better "match ups" for the bandwidth sharing. As we add channels and improve technology, you may, from time to time, see fluctuations in the picture quality.

We apologize for this; however, we are doing this in an attempt to continue to offer more choices to our customers without serious quality degradation. We have also made strides in improving the quality of many channels on the service in the past few months and strive for additional improvements in the future.

EchoStar Satellite LLC
Quality Assurance Department
dishquality@echostar.com
[**END PASTE**]

That's what I was expecting... I'll keep holding my breath on Echo X improving the situation, we'll see... I blame PQ on dish having to provide too many locals... if people would just put an antenna on their roof and properly point it / boost... I know there are many who can't do this due to location...
 
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How long have you been a Dish subscriber?

I ask because PQ now is much improved where is was for years. From around 2000 to 2003 it was pretty bad.

And for years it was behind DirecTV's PQ, but now most feel it is better.

I wouldn't say it was good right now, but its probably as good as it is going to get.
 
I think it is good on everything EXCEPT Sd locals.

I have New York distant networks and they are far superior to the Houston locals over the spot beam. I wonder if the New York distants are over conus beam and not spot beam , is why the picture quality is better. The locals over spotbeams are over compressed and you can see pixelation in the back grounds of the scenes.

The way I rank the picture quality is the following, best to worst:

1) Hd programming the best ( don't know about hd locals yet )
2) Pay per view channels
3) Premium channels ( Hbo/Showtime/Cinemax/STarz)
4) National programming or variety channels
5) Distant networks for locals
6) Sd locals the worst.
 
abricko said:
I sent an email a week ago complaining about the soft picture on some channels and asking about the possibility of improving audio on SD channels, here is my response:

[**BEGIN PASTE**]
At DISH Network, we are constantly adding channels and programming choices resulting from customer requests. We are continually upgrading our technology to support these additions. We believe that we have designed a product that meets or exceeds the needs of our customers. We are always trying to improve the service through the continuous pursuit of improved hardware and software solutions.

We are using statistical multiplexing technology to compress our signals. This means several channels share a pool of bandwidth. If the activity level of the video on some of those channels is very high, some of the others may suffer. An example is several fast action sporting events happening at the same time on channels sharing bandwidth. The demand for bandwidth in this scenario is high and the picture quality of channels within that pool may exhibit lower quality characteristics at that instant.

There are a lot of attributing factors that can affect the sharpness of the picture quality including size of the monitor, type of cabling, and line of sight to the satellite.

We work for improvement in this area every day. We are constantly analyzing our channel layout and try to find better "match ups" for the bandwidth sharing. As we add channels and improve technology, you may, from time to time, see fluctuations in the picture quality.

We apologize for this; however, we are doing this in an attempt to continue to offer more choices to our customers without serious quality degradation. We have also made strides in improving the quality of many channels on the service in the past few months and strive for additional improvements in the future.

EchoStar Satellite LLC
Quality Assurance Department
dishquality@echostar.com
[**END PASTE**]

That's what I was expecting... I'll keep holding my breath on Echo X improving the situation, we'll see... I blame PQ on dish having to provide too many locals... if people would just put an antenna on their roof and properly point it / boost... I know there are many who can't do this due to location...

I really have no issues with the PC here.....
As for your local channel conspiracy theory....both Dish and DTV would go out of business if they didn't provide access to locals...
 
conspiracy?... that's lame... i'm just saying, the sats have a harder time keeping it all looking good because they are forced to provide LIL's... if we didn't have them all squeezing on the sats the overall PQ would be better, I've actually been a subscriber for almost 10 years now, some PQ has increased and some is often worse... and yes if you have a decent (HD)tv you notice the overall softness as a result of over compression in the SD stuff, especially on the LIL's they broadcast...

Also here in L.A. there are many channels (SD LIL) that I get better reception with my $40 Rat Shack roof top antenna than dish LIL, I wonder what/where the source for some of these channels is, often PBS and others there's a bit of analog ghosting coming over and if i flip to my OTA tuner the same analog channel looks sharp with very little analog noise... in some cases it'd make sense for them to broadcast the digital (480i) version of our locals... we're lucky in LA most analog stations we get also broadcast at least a digital (480i) version of that same analog channel and it's always static free...

I post that response up for people who don't know how dish chooses to compress channels, no conspiracy theories...
 
At least SD is good enough now that it creates a decent picture on a SD TV set. That wasn't true a few years back.

It is quite soft on my CRT RP HDTV.

I would be VERY surprised if E* decides to give SD more bandwidth now. After all, they are now beginning to squeeze SD to carry more HD channels and LiLs.

If they were going to prioritize SD quality they would have done it 3-5 years ago. And they did improve it.
 
Yes, LiL is why there's not enough bandwidth, which forces both D* and E* to overcompress most channels.

If we didn't have to worry about every podunk city's channels, PQ would be much better for the remaining channels.

I want my networks (no OTA here), but couldn't care less whether they are local or not. Screw the NAB!
 
Of course the OTA picture from a clear path using a Radio Shack antenna will be better than a generatio or two away from it on satellite. DirecTV and Dish both use either direct fiber feeds or off air antennas to get the locals, then multiplex them. The result is then fibered to the uplink facility (which on the most part is not anywhere near the local market) where it hits ground control, gets encoded again and goes up to the bird you receive it on. Digital only stays the same when you don't add compression over and over again. With compression, it starts to have generation losses, although not as bad or fast as analog.
 
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