The HD-lite war is over

[Sean Mota]

Man I could have swore they were 1440 x 1080.

I got an idea, how about they lower the bitrate on Animania and raise up the resolution on another channel or two.

Animania would look just fine in 480p

Believe it or not but Animania was at 1920x1080i on Dish when the transfer from Voom DBS to Echostar happened!!!!!!! but it was then taking down to 1280x1080i

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

The reason I say that the cartoons will look great at 480p is because I recently watched a few Cartoon DVD's with my 3 year old on my Progressive scan DVD player.

The picture looked as good if not better then most of the cartoons I have seen on Anamania.

Dont get me wrong I love the cartoons on Animania (especialy the Classics) but I dont think they need to be 1080i to look good.

 

[kokomogator]

And might I suggest that you shouldnt bother to come into, let alone read and post in HD-Lite threads! Nothing wrong with my TV or my eyes. Is HD Lite better than SD? Sure. Do we all have to be pleased with mediocrity like you? Thank God, the answer is no. The biggest problem is there is no alternative, and Dish knows it.

Well said....

 

[wtb955]

I think the picture on the HD channels is far superior to anything else out there. I am sick and tired of this HD lite BS. In stead of voicing your negative opinion, you have a choice, cancel your subscription and quit bothering all of us who are satisfied with the picture and variety we now receive! I had the chance to watch the little league games on comcast cable systems in HD and the picture was sad compaired to Satellite! Maby you need a better tv and a new pair of glasses!

You can live in your "Mediocre" world if you like but I choose not to visit it! Simply put, HD-Lite is not full HD and I at least deserve to be told that it isn't instead of being told Dish is the "HD" leader!

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I tire of the irrational "you need a better TV and better eyes" argument. I've read that in these forums many times.

The truth is that if one had an inferior TV and poor eyesight, then they would probably be satisfied with HD-lite as they couldn't see the difference.

The better one's TV, and the better one's eyesight, then the more likely that they will see and be dissatisfied with HD-lite.

HD-lite proponents can buy low-end HDTVs as there is less need to utilize the higher quality of a top notch HDTV on HD-lite programming. Indeed, this is very much part of E*'s and D*'s strategy. They are counting on many people having smaller and/or lower-end HDTVs and therefore not noticing the lower quality HD being served up. Someone with a Sylvania 23" LCD HDTV is likely to be pretty happy with HD-lite.

Of course someone could be in favor of having as many HD-lite channels as possible and be perfectly happy watching them on a 60" SXRD or 65+" true 1080p DLP set. There are still people buying these high-end sets solely to watch DVDs, so there is no accounting for source quality for many buyers.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

The other part of the "HD-lite War is Over" acceptance is that you have to come to grips that neither E* or D* is going to admit that they are serving up an inferior product. They are going to promote HD-lite channels as unqualified HD material. The only thing that would stop them is a federal regulation that would prohibit such.

I think they will continue to lower the quality and still call it HD. After all, if you can transmit a channel in 1280x1080i at 9Mbps and call it HD, then why not try 1120x1080i at 8Mbps and see if you can call that HD too? Or 960x1080i and 960x720p at 7Mbps?

No one seems to be regulating this, so squeeze, squeeze, squeeze away.

 

[Sean Mota]

Tom,

you hit the nail right on the head. The acceptance of HD Lite means that they could give you any horizontal resolution as long as they keep the vertical resolution constant at 720p or 1080i. Basically, they will be able to do anything they want. This is the danger of accepting HD Lite as the "Standard HD" when it should be labeled as "inferior HD".

I believe your thread says it all. It is over and the best days of Full HD are behind us. Do not believe that either DirecT or Dish Network will fix it in 2007 or 2008 or 2009 or whenever they get their MPEG-4 working. It is not going to happen. They have the ability to do fix now and they have systematically chosen not to do it. Enough of the blaming game and "Lame" excuses. They are responsible for what they are doing. They are not innocent at all. They know what the are doing and deceiving the subs to watch an inferior product.

It is over... just like the war for SD Lite was over a long time ago. Nobody made a complaint ever and subs just got used to whatever compression was given on the SD channels.

I for one have a plan. I plan to keep Dish until HD DVD gets cheaper and more library of movies are out. Once this is done, my subscription will go down to the most basic. Lots of us are stuck right now and Dish Network has all the cards but it will not be this way. We only can hope that the IPTV companies make it and give us a product that HD Enthusiasts want. The basic thing is that if such product does exists we need to support it.

 

[wyattg]

The other part of the "HD-lite War is Over" acceptance is that you have to come to grips that neither E* or D* is going to admit that they are serving up an inferior product. They are going to promote HD-lite channels as unqualified HD material. The only thing that would stop them is a federal regulation that would prohibit such.

I think they will continue to lower the quality and still call it HD. After all, if you can transmit a channel in 1280x1080i at 9Mbps and call it HD, then why not try 1120x1080i at 8Mbps and see if you can call that HD too? Or 960x1080i and 960x720p at 7Mbps?

No one seems to be regulating this, so squeeze, squeeze, squeeze away.

Speaking of not admitting that they serve up an inferior product. I just got another response back from technical support. They first told me to switch my Tv setup from 720p to 1080i depending on the programming and when I said that is horse crap they wrote back and said that they have done nothing to the programming to cause the pixelation and degragation to the programming and instructed me to reset my box to fix my issue. It is sad that the will not admit to what is blatently obvious.

 

[abricko]

I still think we need to create a HD-Lite sub forum so all HD-Lite posts can go there.
I'm really tired of the whining and complaining... YES I want more channels, YES I'd love them full resolution, Yes it sucks we can't have both...

Still, I'd rather have more channels (choices) at a slightly less than full (1080I) resolution as long as they keep the 720P stuff at full resolution. Progressive images are so much easier to watch than Interlaced (even at *sharper* resolutions).

 

[richiephx]

Maybe we should refer to programming as ED (enhanced digital)? I'm also wondering if, the 18 month committment can be canceled early, if a person chooses, because of the reduced picture quality? People who upgraded to the new metal packages are paying a premium for HD programming. Since E* downgraded picture quality to something less than true HD, maybe that is an out to get out of the committment?

 

[riffjim4069]

I wonder if the folks at EchoStar would appreciate our paying only 66%-75% of our monthly Dish Network bill..after all, Payment-Lite in exchange for DishHD-Lite only seems fair. Maybe we should pay in Candian dollars!

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I was calling it ED+ and Super-ED at times last year. An EDTV typically has a resolution of around 840x480 and can display a 480p image. A good implemention of an EDTV, such as a Panasonic 42" ED plasma, can produce a very nice image, if you sit 8' or more from the TV.

At 1280x1080 and 1440x1080, HD-lite is closer to HD than ED. Many HD cameras record in resolutions like 1440x1080i and even 960x720p. And many TVs have been sold as HD when they can't display the full HD standard. So it is a murky definition.

Consider that many of the lower-end DLP sets have a Texas Instruments DLP chip that has only 640x720 mirrors. They wobble the chip to produce 1280x720 overlapping pixels, and then have to downconvert all 1920x1080i material to 1280x720. That's shaky ground to claim a set is a true HD TV, but at least it can produce a true 1280x720 test pattern.

However even if a program was originally recorded in 1440x1080i and then upconverted to 1920x1080i for storage, when it is downconverted back to 1440x1080i, there is no guarantee that it will be exactly the same as it was originally. Those conversions are likely to degrade the image and then the bit-starving degrades it further.

I'd like to see a federal regulation that only allowed one to label content as being in HD when it met the HD standard of 1920x1080i or 1280x720p. Afterall, those standards were argued about for years before agreed upon. But then I can't see how it could be applied to HD cameras or HDTV sets.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Speaking of Payment-lite. Last summer I was only paying $9.95 a month for both the HD Pack and VOOM (getting $5/mon off for a year on a promotion). So I was only paying half as much for HD, yet I was getting better quality.

Too bad there is no way for them to offer HD-lite Pack and True HD Pack. But I suspect so few would sign up for the True HD Pack that it wouldn't be sustaining. HD-lite pack would be "good enough" for most and would have more channels.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I just caught an ad on UNIHD that made me laugh. It was their own ad for all of the big movies they have coming up this fall. They loudly proclaimed having their channel was like having a movie theater in your home ... that it was in High Definition, at the highest quality video and audio available anywhere.

What made me laugh was how many of the action scenes shown in the ad displayed terrible blocking and pixelization. It was like a demo for how compression can negatively impact a HD picture.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

And on the dying plus side of things. The Little League World Series on ESPN is very good. Sharp, very few motion artifacts, and great color. I believe ESPN is one of the few remaining true HD channels getting good bandwidth.

 

[Gary Murrell]

Still, I'd rather have more channels (choices) at a slightly less than full (1080I) resolution as long as they keep the 720P stuff at full resolution. Progressive images are so much easier to watch than Interlaced (even at *sharper* resolutions).

this right here is the very reason why we have HD-Lite, plain and simple

the best thing to do guys is to cancel the crap you are paying a HD premium for, I loved HDTV so very much, enjoyed it for years on Dish and every so often things would go downhill, downhill and then downhill, to eventually what we have now

I cancelled all HD from Dish, I sub'd to every HD channel available, I currently have no HD coming into my home for my 4 HDTV's, I do not pay for mediocrity and 2/3 HD offerings

Dish does not care and if it is possible Directv cares even less, why should they, the AVS forum( a audio/video phile type community) is overrun with HD-Lite is better than nothing turds that are obsessed with football and the HD-Lite garbage from Directv

to change Dish's HD viewpoint would take a massive cancellation and no one is willing to do that, I did my part and there is nothing more that I can do, I am happy with HD-DVD, D-VHS D-Theater and will be checking out Blu-Ray soon

-Gary

 

[abricko]

You're right

He's right, if you don't like what you're paying for... cancel! Plain and simple.

this right here is the very reason why we have HD-Lite, plain and simple

the best thing to do guys is to cancel the crap you are paying a HD premium for, I loved HDTV so very much, enjoyed it for years on Dish and every so often things would go downhill, downhill and then downhill, to eventually what we have now

I cancelled all HD from Dish, I sub'd to every HD channel available, I currently have no HD coming into my home for my 4 HDTV's, I do not pay for mediocrity and 2/3 HD offerings

Dish does not care and if it is possible Directv cares even less, why should they, the AVS forum( a audio/video phile type community) is overrun with HD-Lite is better than nothing turds that are obsessed with football and the HD-Lite garbage from Directv

to change Dish's HD viewpoint would take a massive cancellation and no one is willing to do that, I did my part and there is nothing more that I can do, I am happy with HD-DVD, D-VHS D-Theater and will be checking out Blu-Ray soon

-Gary

 

[Tom Bombadil]

But it is also okay to lobby for change.

Ultimately, one might be looking at the cancelation option.

Unfortunately for me, the recent HD-litelization occured just after I upgraded to a 622 and an 18 month commitment. HDNET and HDNMV went "lite" just 5-6 days after my upgrade.

 

[abricko]

I don't mind people lobbying for a change... what I can't stand is how nearly EVERY post ends up littered with the some discussion/complaining of HD-Lite and that is not lobbying! Which is why we almost need a sub forum in the HD for quality/HD-Lite discussion.

Yes I can see how it can be viewed as a *Bait and Switch* by Dish and I'll bet if you email the CEO address and explain that you are not satisfied with their HD offering and feel trapped... theyd probably easily get out of your 18 month contract!

Again, I'd love nothing more than to see E* broadcast 1080i and 720p channels at their full resolution and with high bitrates (fat chance look at all the fuzzy SD stuff!)... but not if it means they can't add MHD, CinemaxHD or any new upcoming HD channels... I'm with E* because they offer the largest amount of HD(ish 16x9 framed) programming and they'll continue to keep me as a customer because of this.

But it is also okay to lobby for change.

Ultimately, one might be looking at the cancelation option.

Unfortunately for me, the recent HD-litelization occured just after I upgraded to a 622 and an 18 month commitment. HDNET and HDNMV went "lite" just 5-6 days after my upgrade.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Well, you are in an HD-lite discussion thread, so it shouldn't be a surprise that most of the posts are about HD-lite.

I took a look at the other threads in the HD forum and the vast majority that are not about picture quality do not have much in them about HD-lite.