SD resolutions dropping on 110W

I've been told that at least one of the pay-per-view channels on 110W has also dropped from 544x480 to 480x480. I'm not about to go purchasing movies one-by-one to try to verify this, but if it's true it just further emphasizes the huge lack of integrity at Dish.

If anyone knows what the e-mail address is that TheKrell was mentioning, that might be helpful. :)
 
Well the current HD limit for Dish is 16 transponders on 129 and what they can squeeze on 110 (3 TPs I think right now 7 13 17). This gives them 19 TPs or 7x19 = 133 HD channels max at one time. If they sqeeze 119/110 for 2 more TPs that would give them close to the magic 150 advertizing point.
 
Well the current HD limit for Dish is 16 transponders on 129 and what they can squeeze on 110 (3 TPs I think right now 7 13 17). This gives them 19 TPs or 7x19 = 133 HD channels max at one time. If they sqeeze 119/110 for 2 more TPs that would give them close to the magic 150 advertizing point.

8 HD per transponder is not uncommon on 61.5W. Not saying that's good or even acceptable, but they seem to think it's just fine. There's also at least one TP with only like two or three HD channels on it, which is just silly in comparison.

Anyway, if their rock-bottom standards have them feeling that 8 per TP on EA is fine, then they'd probably feel the same way when it comes to WA. Using your transponder count, that would give 8x19 = 152 HD on WA without trying to kill all of the poor SD channels that don't have HD equivalents. Again, not saying it's any good, but eventually they're sure to push to at least 8 HD per TP on some WA transponders, so they may as well do it now to kill off any false hopes people had of maintaining the current standards of quality going forward. They aren't even near the point of needing to do that yet though since they apparently have a bunch TMP slots waiting to be filled on WA before they would even reach that point. I just can't believe that lobbing another chunk of resolution off of certain SD channels that need their resolution most could possibly be necessary or appropriate at this point in time.
 
What remains most sad about this in my mind is that Dish Network, DIRECTV, and Bell TV all use similar bitrates and numbers of channels per transponder, yet every bit of every sample I've seen from Bell TV looks absolutely fantastic compared to the US sat providers. All of the SD video on Bell seems to be full-res (704x480) and comparable to DVD quality in appearance, much like FiOS SD quality supposedly is in the US (although FiOS uses significantly higher bitrates than Bell).

A lot of quality can easily be squeezed out MPEG-2 video at fairly low bitrates if it's handled properly. However, some companies prefer to ignore this fact in favor of pretending the standard was just introduced (even over 15 years later), the only encoders that exist only work well at high bitrates, and the only way to use lower bitrates is to resize and excessively filter the video prior to transcoding it. They're living outside of the reality of improved technology that is available today and has been for several years now. Digiblur's avatar sort of says it all. I'm sure someone around here has a similar one for DIRECTV. ;)

Just about everything in this quote is factually wrong and keeps perpertuating the "Lite" myth:

1 - At an equal and low bitrate, the lower resolution version of the same video stream will look better, not worse. It's simple math. Each frame of 704x480 uses more bits than a frame of 480x480. So, if both streams have the same total bitrate, then the lower resolution "Lite" stream will have better PQ, because it has a higher effective bitrate. This is in situations like Satellite and Cable, where the bitrate per channel is less than sufficient to produce good PQ at full resolution. This applies to SD or HD.

Everyone who thought that HD-Lite looked bad because of the lower resolution was wrong - for years. HD-Lite looked bad because of the lower bitrate and the lower resolution was a small way to make the crap look slightly better.

2 - Dish Network gets the latest versions of professional encoding software costing quite a lot of money. It makes the PQ look better than what it would look like if they were still using older encoder versions.

3 - In summary, the problem is not resolution, it is not encoding, it is insufficient bandwidth. This is due to competitive pressures, such as the constant screaming in this Forum of "Where are the new channels ?".
 
Just about everything in this quote is factually wrong and keeps perpertuating the "Lite" myth:

1 - At an equal and low bitrate, the lower resolution version of the same video stream will look better, not worse. It's simple math. Each frame of 704x480 uses more bits than a frame of 480x480. So, if both streams have the same total bitrate, then the lower resolution "Lite" stream will have better PQ, because it has a higher effective bitrate. This is in situations like Satellite and Cable, where the bitrate per channel is less than sufficient to produce good PQ at full resolution. This applies to SD or HD.

You are making assumptions that neglect certain critical facts. It's late though so I'm not going into too much detail. One is that you're assuming that all encoders are created equal when they are not. Using a low-quality encoder (or a good encoder that is misused) at a reduced resolution such as 544x480 can yield a worse result than an excellent encoder at 704x480. Another thing you are assuming is that the source hasn't been tampered with excessively. Tons of the SD channels on Dish, mostly those on 119W, have had excessive softening and edge enhancement applied to them. The rest seem to just have varying degrees of softening applied. Bitrate and resolution become almost irrelevant regarding the picture quality when heavy, irreversible filtering causes more of the "Lite" appearance than any other factor.

Everyone who thought that HD-Lite looked bad because of the lower resolution was wrong - for years. HD-Lite looked bad because of the lower bitrate and the lower resolution was a small way to make the crap look slightly better.

HD-Lite as we know it doesn't look like "real" HD because of bitrate (especially since lower bitrates can't support action well) which you mentioned, filtering (softening, which is applied constantly regardless of the level of activity even though it is generally only needed when a certain amount of activity is present), and reduced resolution (25% reduction on Dish, 33% reduction on DIRECTV). Not all PQ problems come down to just bitrate as you seem to be assuming, or just resolution as you say some other people might have assumed.

2 - Dish Network gets the latest versions of professional encoding software costing quite a lot of money. It makes the PQ look better than what it would look like if they were still using older encoder versions.

Any proof of this? If they are using the latest and greatest encoders, then they are misusing them rather badly by destroying most of the SD video before it even has a chance to be encoded.

3 - In summary, the problem is not resolution, it is not encoding, it is insufficient bandwidth. This is due to competitive pressures, such as the constant screaming in this Forum of "Where are the new channels ?".

I'm tried to emphasize in this and other threads that not everything boils down to "insufficient bandwidth," yet there never seems to be a shortage of people who see it as the only factor that can ultimately impact picture quality. I started this thread due to an observation of resolution reductions. Knowing Dish as we do, this will inevitably lead to a reduction in allocated bandwidth if it hasn't already. When you reduce bandwidth and resolution, you are guaranteed a certain level of reduction in picture quality. You don't ditch another 64 lines of resolution and lose nothing, although what the bitrate is certainly can play a role in what the appearance of the video looks like with and without those lines.

In a previous thread, I posted comparison screenshots relating to the bitrate vs. resolution vs. PQ issue to try to prove my points, but maybe I can get some new ones tomorrow for fun. :)
 
3 - In summary, the problem is not resolution, it is not encoding, it is insufficient bandwidth. This is due to competitive pressures, such as the constant screaming in this Forum of "Where are the new channels ?".

While I agree both providers need more bandwidth, I doubt this is the route cause. They seem highly reluctant to even try to max themselves out. Even if Viacom launched today, there would be plenty of space for 20 or so more channels.
 
Dish will probably have to go full time RSNs (at least most of the major ones) some day. This will use up some of the spares. 20 more channels is barely anything considering it could be many years before Dish finds new capacity. Quite frankly unless Dish gets 2 more satellite slots (matching east/west) they are out of capacity. Eliminating SD some day will probably be the next solution.

Dish of course is sitting on some licenses, but they are years away from having a satellite built and launched. Right now the next satellites are all going to existing slots to replace the current rag tag fleet Dish is struggling to maintain service with. The new satellites will help fill in LiL requirements. They are required by law to get LiL HD market fill out, they are working on that as a top priority. They need to fill in the 4 TPs at 61.5 that are out, allowing more spots to be activated on R12, 77 will go for LiL too, 1/2 of 129 is LiL only, etc.

When you look at a 3 year gap of no more capacity on the national front, 20 spare channels looks like nothing when you are already juggling RSNs.
 
Dish will probably have to go full time RSNs (at least most of the major ones) some day. This will use up some of the spares. 20 more channels is barely anything considering it could be many years before Dish finds new capacity. Quite frankly unless Dish gets 2 more satellite slots (matching east/west) they are out of capacity. Eliminating SD some day will probably be the next solution.

The slots are fine. Next thing they need to get going on is Reverse DBS AKA BSS. This can use the same slots. Just reuse the uplink frequencies as downlink.

The should also get going on MPEG-4. The should stop issuing MPEG2 receivers yesterday.
 
...it could be many years before Dish finds new capacity.

This is probably most true for WA. If Dish still plans to replace E7 at 119W within a year, that should buy them a bit of capacity but not much. After E11 launched at 110W, the QPSK national TPs on it moved up from 5/6 and 3/4 to 7/8 mode, at least in part due to the satellite's high output power, so the same seems likely for an E7 replacement.

There are 16 national TPs on E7, 14 of which are operating on 5/6 mode, 1 in 7/8 mode, and 1 in 3/4 mode. If the 15 TPs not using 7/8 mode already make the switch, they can gain about 27.5Mbps for 119W. Definitely useful for something, but not useful for a whole lot.
 
Next thing they need to get going on is Reverse DBS AKA BSS. This can use the same slots. Just reuse the uplink frequencies as downlink.

Do you know if they have any clever rigging planned to allow Reverse DBS to work with existing IRDs, or would a complete Dish+IRD swapout be necessary? Also, would any of the birds currently in orbit be able to support it? I've been excited by the idea of Reverse DBS lately, but it sounds like adding support for it would be prohibitively expensive. Hopefully I'm wrong about that.
 
I don't think I need to get into comparing tons of different screenshots under different conditions, so I decided to do a quick Dish vs. Itself comparison to show that more bandwidth does not automatically mean quality is better.


Note that since my first attempt at doing SD comparisons in another thread, I’ve learned a bit about what Dish is doing to the video they receive before re-encoding it, so I hope my comments on the images here are a bit more meaningful and accurate. The images here have not been rescaled, so they're 544x480.




This first image is from a Starz channel on 119W. This is an I-frame using 20,976 bytes. It most noticeably suffers from softening and significant horizontal edge enhancement.




This second image is from an Encore channel on 110W. This is an I-frame using 17,528 bytes. It most noticeably suffers from softening.


The image from Starz uses more bits and the frame generally uses quantizer values that are 2-4 lower on each macroblock than the Encore image. From a technical standpoint in terms of the MPEG-2 standard, which is largely what kstuart's thinking seems to be based on, the quality should be universally superior to the Encore image. At a glance, the Starz image may look sharper and a possibly even more detailed. On closer inspection, this is almost entirely due to the edge enhancement (EE) artifacts. The Starz image is actually loaded with noise and out-of-proportion edges. The EE used by Dish has the visible effects of expanding horizontal edges, merging fine lines, and introducing noise where small points of contrast are misinterpreted as edges.
One example is that the frilly things towards the bottom of the shirt have artificially thick light and dark outlines in the Starz image whereas in the Encore image they are presented more naturally. If you're wondering how much the thickness can get exaggerated, look at the top of the Starz image where the the entire top edge is glowing.
Another example is that the woman’s face, hair, and surrounding areas are full of unnatural noise in the Starz image, whereas in the Encore image these areas are more clean, more natural, and have levels of detail equivalent to the Starz image if you can see past the artificial changes made by the EE. For help seeing past the artificial changes, look at the next image:




This third image is what the Starz channel looks like after a bit of post-processing is done to reduce (but not eliminate) the horizontal edge enhancement. The image makes clearer which “details” in the image are actually details retained from the source and not EE-related gunk. It looks much more similar to the Encore image now, as it should have in the first place. If it hadn’t been for the EE applied to the Starz channel, Dish probably could have used those extra bits to re-encode the source video with a bit less softening than was applied to the Encore channel without sacrificing the need for a certain minimum amount of filtering to prevent visible compression artifacts. This would allow the Starz channel to have a picture that is actually slightly sharper and actually slightly more detailed than the Encore channel instead of opting to produce a soft image that is full of artificial noise and unnaturally thickened dark and light lines around horizontal edges in a poor attempt to imitate details.

The set of images compared in this other post includes an EE-filtered image from HBO on Dish with higher-quality sources for comparison. Those should help to make clear how much damage Dish’s questionable encoding and inappropriate filtering can do to picture quality if the examples given here don’t seem entirely convincing.


If the resolution-reducing business that started this thread is really all about maximizing effective use of bandwidth, why would bandwidth be wasted in such a careless and off-putting manner on the SD channels with heavy EE filtering applied to them? SD bitrates on Dish are generally higher for channels that have far more filtering applied to the source material. This can be verified easily, so I’m not going to bother proving it here. Isn’t the point of heavily filtering video prior to recompression supposed to be to maximize compressibility, thus reducing the bitrate while retaining a reasonable representation of the source material? Why then would the bitrates of the less-filtered channels be lower, making those channels more susceptible to compression artifacts than if the allocated bitrates were reversed? It all seems to defy some of the most basic principles of proper video encoding.
 
The slots are fine. Next thing they need to get going on is Reverse DBS AKA BSS. This can use the same slots. Just reuse the uplink frequencies as downlink.

The should also get going on MPEG-4. The should stop issuing MPEG2 receivers yesterday.

Yes there is the possibility of more slots in the future. But, it is at least 3 more years before this becomes a reality. Dish has all the satellites for the next 3 years pretty much announced with launches. It is not like they can announce a new satellite next month and launch it. There will be an FCC approval of the design announced first, then the satellite will have to be contracted for build, then a launch date.

Reverse DBS and Ka for Dish is just pie in the sky now. Sure they may have licenses, but until they actually get around to building a satellite and arranging an 1 - 2 year launch wait they just look pretty on paper. They are in the satellite design phase. And as we see from the loss of a Ka license a few months ago from inaction on the design, Dish may not even be designing satellites for them.

Do you really think the HD mob at the wait will take 2013-2015 as a "soon" date? The only real tricks Dish has up its sleave right now is compressing the SD more, decreasing error correction rates, etc. More powerful satellites will help some with the error rates. This also assumes they manage to have all satellites get into orbit and deploy successfully. 2 birds (AMC-14 and E4) failed that. Considering Dish is running about 15 satellites that is a pretty high failure chance.

This is why Dish is not just adding HD channels right and left. They know they have an extreamly limited resource and have to be very selective about which channels get HD. I expect them to squeeze another couple TPs of SD out using compression and error correction tricks, perhaps even 8 HD/TP eventually.
 
"perhaps even 8 HD/TP eventually" - I wouldn't name it as HD after that ! :(

What shall we name the channels on here then? ;)



The 8 HD Channels on that TP are:
- A&E
- Universal
- National Geographic
- Cinemax
- History
- TBS
- NBA TV
- Showtime Showcase

The 1.59Mbps not being used for anything is also rather cute.
 
Back on the subject of SD, I found that Dish would have to reduce the resolution of at least 100 SD channels by 11.8% (from 544x480 to 480x480) and reduce the bitrate for each channel by the same amount in order to free up a single transponder. This is assuming 12 SD channels per transponder, which should be close to the average on 110W. Further mess up over 100 SD channels, many of which are SD-only, in order to add a mere 7-8 HD channels? What a frightening thought. :(
 
I consider myself pretty normal, and that's not being conservative. I have a 37" TV (not 58"), I sit 10 feet away from it (not 6 feet), and I watch it in my living room with lots of natural light during the day and decidedly artificial light in the evening (not a THX certified media room). I do subscribe to high-def programming for my high-def TV (a LOT of people don't), and I am smart enough to use high-def, especially digital, transport from the receiver to the display (a LOT of people aren't).

Honestly, I would have used my 625 DVR indefinitely, except that the MPEG-2 streams I was getting from WA, "enhanced" by the fact that my particular TV HATES SD via Composite (even S-Video), made all of the stuff I was watching look like somebody smeared Vaseline on my new TV.

That said, I don't know what all of the fuss is about. Two things are clear: MPEG-4 is the way of the future, as is "High Def" programming. I can name over 50 SD channels that don't need to take up room on transponders if Dish could figure out a way to get the receiver to "enable" full-resolution, 720p/1080i output on the receiver if the subscription is right, or alternatively downres to 480i. There's no need for Discovery and History if every receiver deployed groks the MPEG4 DiscoveryHD and HistoryHD stream.

Seriously, Dish only cares about people who are putting eyeballs on screens, not ripping satellite streams to DVD archives. The bottom line is that this "overcompression" and "downresing" of which you speak doesn't impact people watching Lifetime or Encore on a 10-year-old 27" CRT, using their actual eyeballs.
 
Seriously, Dish only cares about people who are putting eyeballs on screens, not ripping satellite streams to DVD archives. The bottom line is that this "overcompression" and "downresing" of which you speak doesn't impact people watching Lifetime or Encore on a 10-year-old 27" CRT, using their actual eyeballs.

The problem is that all these old 27" CRTs are slowly breaking or being otherwise replaced with flat panel displays. Most probably small cheap off brand LCDs. These LCDs have the cheapest possible scaler in them. This makes the Dish SD feed unwatchable on them. Dish of course has an answer... pay $10 and get the HD version that will look good on your new spiffy screen. At least the scaler in the Dish boxes is fairly good and will take some of the SD pain away.

The problem is then that you are still missing half the channels in HD and you still have to watch the SD version. As you are probably well aware everyone has their one favorite channel that they cannot live without and will complain until it is in HD. Dish is probably looking at a 4-6 billion dollar investment to convert all the SD boxes to HD. It is going to be a long slow painful process. Until then they will probably compress the heck out of everything to get as much HD as possible.
 

Which barrel connector for HD?

can I do TV1 and TV2 with 2 different UHF remotes?

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