SCI/FI HD and USA HD Delayed till team summit?? (NOT CONFIRMED)

[LASooner]

My how times have changed. It wasn't all that long ago that Charlie was accused of not caring about sports at all, since he didn't push hard enough to get NFL Sunday Ticket from under DirecTV. I think Charlie is more about how to get as many channels as possible for as little money as possible. SciFi HD happens to be the latest sore spot with the membership here, but there have been others.

If Charlie would just add that one channel, most of the complaining would stop. Apparently Charlie doesn't mind us complaining, as long as we keep paying our bills.

I don't care if Dish is the "HD leader" to be honest, I would be happy if they were an HD follower. If Dish had all it's current channels and added everything Direct TV currently gets in HD nationally and anything they add the same week they add it, I think the complaining would drop off 90-95%

Because there would still be those 5% complaining about channels that don't yet have an HD version available but think they do.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Here are the problems dish has:

*) Satellite that did not make it into orbit

*) PQ thats off the mark compared to D* and even cable now

*) HD channel list thats on par with cable (quite embarrasing seeing the lead they had)

*) Subs are defecting left and right

Face it, D* has one great offering(tons of HD channels with top notch PQ and a good DVR) and Dish has fallen to the cable ranks, scrambling for capacity and compressing PQ.

 

[gopherscot]

Here are the problems dish has:

*) Satellite that did not make it into orbit

*) PQ thats off the mark compared to D* and even cable now

*) HD channel list thats on par with cable (quite embarrasing seeing the lead they had)

*) Subs are defecting left and right

Face it, D* has one great offering(tons of HD channels with top notch PQ and a good DVR) and Dish has fallen to the cable ranks, scrambling for capacity and compressing PQ.

The satellite has nothing to do with current HD being added
PQ is subjective ... I have had both and I really find little difference
The 622 is far superior to anything Direct has
HD is big difference now ... but when all is said and done they will be about the same.

I still like the Voom channels and just give me about 6 more wanted HD channels and I am very happy ... while keeping, in my opinion, a far superior DVR with, for me, better pricing.

 

[Minac]

Gopher, I agree with your comments but I would have to say that SD on Direct is much better than Dish, at least on most channels. Can't say the same about HD since I haven't seen Direct to compare.

 

[John Kotches]

Scott said this yesterday:

According to uverseusers.com those that have fiber to the home are under the same restrictions, just like Fiber to the node customers.

It does not make any sense to me.

Uverse uses VDSL (Very high bit rate Digital Subscriber Line) regardless of whether it's an FTTN or FTTH topology. So copper or fibre has the same limitation.

If memory serves, that's a maximum of a 50 Mbits/second pipe to your home. 16 Mbit coming down is reserved for data service, leaving 34 Mbits/second left for video streams on IPTV. There's only room for one MPEG-2 HD channel @ 20 Mbits/second. A 2nd stream would exceed the available bandwidth.

The IPTV portion is a real time operation and quite timing sensitive. There's only one shot and no packet retransmissions allowed.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

 

[Teran]

HD is big difference now ... but when all is said and done they will be about the same.

When all is said and done I'll be dead and won't care. For now, I care.

 

[Teran]

By the way, the correct response to my previous post is...

"What, are you planning on dying soon?"

 

[gopherscot]

By the way, the correct response to my previous post is...

"What, are you planning on dying soon?"

Are you dying "soon"?

 

[gadgtfreek]

The satellite has nothing to do with current HD being added
PQ is subjective ... I have had both and I really find little difference
The 622 is far superior to anything Direct has
HD is big difference now ... but when all is said and done they will be about the same.

I still like the Voom channels and just give me about 6 more wanted HD channels and I am very happy ... while keeping, in my opinion, a far superior DVR with, for me, better pricing.

I just switched and Dish's PQ on the mpeg2 channels does not cut it, sorry. 622/722 is a better dvr, but the Hr20 worked reliably for me, never missed a recording AND has TWO OTA tuners.

 

[gopherscot]

My problem with Direct TV is:

New receiver has NO OTA tuners
I need two dish system
Sports pack is 12.00 vs. 5.99 from Dish (I get Fox North, Comcast Chicago and Fox Midwest)
Remote really cheap (replaced twice in the two years with Direct)
Slow receiver
Overall costs are 10.00 more from Direct
No Voom (really like Equator, Rave, HD News, Filmfest and Monsters)

Direct advantage
Currently more HD (a year ago they had 8 HD channels)
Sports packages (way overpriced but if I need to see a certain team it is the only way)

Really, for me, the only current advantage is HD ... but by the end of this summer the 6 or so channels I actually care about will be on .... at least I hope so! I found very little difference in SD channels ... though a couple others have. Anyway I am staying put and feel at least for me Dish is the better service!

 

[gadgtfreek]

My problem with Direct TV is:

New receiver has NO OTA tuners
I need two dish system
Sports pack is 12.00 vs. 5.99 from Dish (I get Fox North, Comcast Chicago and Fox Midwest)
Remote really cheap (replaced twice in the two years with Direct)
Slow receiver
Overall costs are 10.00 more from Direct
No Voom (really like Equator, Rave, HD News, Filmfest and Monsters)

Direct advantage
Currently more HD (a year ago they had 8 HD channels)
Sports packages (way overpriced but if I need to see a certain team it is the only way)

Really, for me, the only current advantage is HD ... but by the end of this summer the 6 or so channels I actually care about will be on .... at least I hope so! I found very little difference in SD channels ... though a couple others have. Anyway I am staying put and feel at least for me Dish is the better service!

I do agree with you on the new rcvr (HR21). The lack of OTA is complete BS(no matter how Earl spins it)

 

[ncted]

Here are the problems dish has:

*) PQ thats off the mark compared to D* and even cable now

*) HD channel list thats on par with cable (quite embarrasing seeing the lead they had)

I don't think there is any comparison to cable right now. Even D* concedes that Dish has much more HD than cable. Plus, have you seen what cable is doing to their PQ? They don't have the luxury of MPEG4 to get around bandwidth limitations, so they get low bitrate MPEG2.

Ted

 

[Stacy A]

Just a quick question: What's on USA HD that everyone's so excited about? I'm not trying to put down those who like the channel, but I've never really watched it and see a lot of comments from people who are eager to get it. I know people want SciFi for BSG, but am curious what compelling programming is on USA HD.

Thanks.

Burn Notice :up

 

[gadgtfreek]

I don't think there is any comparison to cable right now. Even D* concedes that Dish has much more HD than cable. Plus, have you seen what cable is doing to their PQ? They don't have the luxury of MPEG4 to get around bandwidth limitations, so they get low bitrate MPEG2.

Ted

I agree that their offering is better in terms of quantity, I do not agree however that their mpeg2 HD is better(is actually worse) than the cable Ive seen lately. The Dish mpeg4 stuff is pretty nice, not quite D* nice though.

 

[ncted]

I agree that their offering is better in terms of quantity, I do not agree however that their mpeg2 HD is better(is actually worse) than the cable Ive seen lately. The Dish mpeg4 stuff is pretty nice, not quite D* nice though.

Before I left TWC had bit starved every HD channel save CBS, and they have added more since then, so it can have only gotten worse. Comcast made the news a couple of weeks ago with their similar activities.

Comcast HD Quality Reduction: Details, Screenshots - AVS Forum

Most of the HD I watch on Dish is MPEG4 which looks much better than the few MPEG2 channels that are left.

Ted

 

[gadgtfreek]

Sounds like Cable has gotten worse then.

 

[nsps]

Thanks for the info on USA HD. I knew about Monk, but forgot about the WWE stuff. Is it mainly the wrestling that gives the network such high ratings, or do they do pretty well on all the original programming people mentioned too?

So would any new HD nationals be up by now if they were coming?

 

[aperry]

Monk, Psych, and the other original programs on USA pull in some pretty good ratings for them. Definitely a big draw. Plus, moving one of the Law & Order's to USA this past year probably didn't hurt their bottom line...

 

[8bitbytes]

Monk, Psych, and the other original programs on USA pull in some pretty good ratings for them. Definitely a big draw. Plus, moving one of the Law & Order's to USA this past year probably didn't hurt their bottom line...

Monk and Psych have been moved to NBC now.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Well, hopefully Dest Truth and Ghost hunters arent very interesting this season