Turbo PQ

hammerdown

SatelliteGuys Pro
Dec 14, 2005
324
0
Northern California
Please provide links to prove that Dish has not released an improved version of the 8PSK-TC modulation....

Fiction needs no proof. Neither side can provide a link. People are being mislead by the marketting term TurboHD that 8psktc has never been seen before. The fact is 8psktc has been around for years.
 

KAB

SatelliteGuys Master
Pub Member / Supporter
Lifetime Supporter
Sep 20, 2005
21,743
5,230
Fishers, IN
Fiction needs no proof. Neither side can provide a link. People are being mislead by the marketting term TurboHD that 8psktc has never been seen before. The fact is 8psktc has been around for years.
I wouldn't say they are being misled. I think some are willingly reading too much in to it.
 

wetz73

SatelliteGuys Pro
Dec 7, 2007
605
0
Eureka, IL
Only things I have noticed is the new screen saver, the new logo design at the top of the guide and DVR sections, and it takes longer to delete DVR programs and flash the program guide on the screen after hitting "guide".
 

8bitbytes

SatelliteGuys Pro
Sep 8, 2003
3,239
0
NoVA
Fiction needs no proof. Neither side can provide a link. People are being mislead by the marketting term TurboHD that 8psktc has never been seen before. The fact is 8psktc has been around for years.
The fact is, Dish has released a software update that among other things enables a 1080i chipset to render 1080p24. I would speculate that this software improvement could also affect live signals as well. This much is not fiction.

Your declaration that this is fiction needs proof. All software receives improvements from time to time. This is no exception.

Opinions are fine as is - Arbitrary declarations that imply fraud, slander, or other improprieties require documentation.

I reserve my final opinions until we see what Dish has actually done.
 

Grandude

SatelliteGuys Pro
Lifetime Supporter
Dec 13, 2003
740
85
Santa Rosa, CA
My opinion is that Dish has improved picture quality now. I am still on 5.20 and my opinion is based on my wife's exclamation last night that the picture looked really good. I have to agree with her as she is always right. (ESPN last night looked really good)
 

long_time_DNC

Politically Incorrect
Lifetime Supporter
Apr 24, 2004
14,005
2,764
Pacific Northwest, where it rains a lot...
I'm watching a movie on Cinemax West right now that I've also got DVR'd. However, since I've still got L5.12 on my 622, I guess I'm in no position to say anything, because it looks no different than my DVR'd version... If/when I get 610, then I'll look at it again and see if it looks any better...
 

jacmyoung

SatelliteGuys Pro
Jun 30, 2007
3,009
0
Sacramento, CA
Just got some time to do another side by side MPEG4 HD PQ comparison between E* and D*. I have done two previously so I will not waste time to describe the equipment used in my tests:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-ne.../144153-my-second-impression-e-hd-v-d-hd.html

This time I have good news and bad news for E* HD subs. E*'s MPEG4 HDs are now clearly downrezzed. I know there were claims that the downrezz of E* MPEG4 HD had been going on for some time, but I did not notice any resolution difference between E* and D* until now. In the two previous tests I could not see resolution difference even in very close inspections.

On the flip side, the over-compression related motion artifacts and dark background depth issue are now much less visible, to the extent that sometimes they can even be a little less than D*'s. Not that D* looked bad on the motion related issues.

Now with less resolution, motion artifacts can be less visible as a result. But that is not the ideal treatment to people with 1080p large screen panels. For those with 720p panels, the end result could be an improvement, because the downrezz will be almost non-detectable.

I said "almost" because when I closely inspected (looking from less than two feet away) one MPEG4 720p native channel (The History Channel HD), the E* resolution seemed even minutely less than the same channel on D*.

The bad news is this time the downrezz is not limited to just the standard national HDs, but to all premium movie HDs.

Since I do watch movies sitting about 7' from the TV to get the theater effect, the lowered resolution, while still not visible to untold eyes, is now noticeable to me since I already know it is there. In that context I am disappointed because I have just added the $29.99 E* HD pack a week ago with three months of free HBO/SHO and $0.01/year Cinemax.

As bad as it may sound, keep in mind that my tests had always been done sitting 5' from the 50" 1080p plasma panel. My causal viewing from this penal is about 12', at that distance I still cannot detect any real difference between E* and D*.

I am not entirely surprised though, because we knew E* had little bandwith left to add more new HDs. If the latest downrezz is an indication they are trying to squeeze out more room to add more new HDs, I have no problem with that, because we need E* to continue to put pressure on D*.

I hope though in the future when E* finally has more BW to spare, they will bring back the native HD resolutions, which was exactly what D* had done.
 

StonesCat

SatelliteGuys Pro
Mar 7, 2008
304
5
Cedar Rapids, IA
My scientific test w/the premiums involved me saying "That looks pretty good". So it passed with flying colors, and I didn't wasted another minute disecting it. With perfect technical everything, certain movies and shows will always look better than others, anyway.
 

primetimeguy

SatelliteGuys Pro
Oct 4, 2006
1,003
39
St. Paul, MN
Yea , Since we just got Encore HD its hard say the PQ improved, when we've never had Encore HD up untill a week ago.

I recorded Apocaplyto on Encore today and compared to my recorderd version from HD PPV way back when. Both looked pretty much the same, with tons of macroblocking in the high action scenes.
 
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EricBskiVT

SatelliteGuys Pro
Aug 25, 2007
252
0
My opinion is that Dish has improved picture quality now. I am still on 5.20 and my opinion is based on my wife's exclamation last night that the picture looked really good. I have to agree with her as she is always right. (ESPN last night looked really good)
My wife is always right too, whether she is or not. :D
 

jacmyoung

SatelliteGuys Pro
Jun 30, 2007
3,009
0
Sacramento, CA
The test I did above made me believe after the turbo charge E* had downrezzed the HD channels, it turned out that was because my 722 switched from its 1080i output to 480p on its own somehow. And this problem has been verified with many people who have 722s, and a few who have 622s.

Anyway, I did my 4th test and it appeared the E* MPEG4 HD PQ remains the same, not getting any worse than when I did my second test, nor much better. A few 1080i channels did seem to have improved a little in the form of less visible motion artifacts than D*'s, but over all still somewhat more compressed than the D* HDs, though certainly not noticeable from a normal viewing distance. The second test can be found below, it also provides a link to my 1st test which described my test method on detail:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-ne.../144153-my-second-impression-e-hd-v-d-hd.html

I will add though after using the 722 for three weeks, I can really appreciate the fast and more user freindly 722 interface. The D*'s HR21's UI is both clunky and slow but does have some nice features.
 

mike123abc

Too many cables
Supporting Founder
Sep 25, 2003
25,364
4,607
Norman, OK
Two things could have happened.

1. Dish may have updated encoders at the uplinks now. They are constantly working on the encoders and they will continue to get better and better. Perhaps the encoder vendor released new firmware to improve the MPEG-4 compression.

2. Dish may have changed the settings on the scaler in the receivers. There is a decoder and scaler in the receiver and they may have tweaked the firmware on the box.

Perhaps there was a combination of changing the settings on the encoder at the uplink and a change on the receiever to better handle the change.

Then again it could just be marketing. But, I really think they are constantly updating the MPEG-4 encoders and the PQ will get better and better. Remember when Dish first launched MPEG-2 service, the encoders improved constantly for about 6 years.
 

DishSubLA

SatelliteGuys Master
Apr 9, 2006
5,450
1,416
From the Broadcom website:

BCM4500
8PSK/TC Advanced Modulation Satellite Receiver
The BCM4500 is a single chip digital satellite receiver supporting QPSK, 8PSK and 16QAM modulations with iteratively (turbo) decoded error correction coding. It represents an industry milestone in terms of satellite system throughput and operating points. The BCM4500 also receives DVB, DIRECTV and Digichiper II (DCII) QPSK signals to support legacy system operation.

The BCM4500 contains dual 7-bit A/D converters, an all-digital variable rate BPSK / QPSK / 8PSK / 16QAM receiver, an advanced modulation turbo FEC decoder, and a DVB / DIRECTV / DCII compliant FEC decoder. All required RAM is integrated and all required clocks are generated on chip from a single reference crystal. Baseband I/Q analog waveforms are sampled by the integrated 7-bit A/D converters, resampled by integrated interpolative digital filter banks, and filtered by dual square-root Nyquist filters. Optimized soft decisions are then fed into either a DVB / DIRECTV / DCII compliant FEC decoder, or an advanced modulation turbo decoder. The final error-corrected output is delivered in MPEG-2 or DIRECTV transport format. The output clock is generated by an on-chip PLL for low jitter operation and glueless integration with Broadcom's BCM7020 HD graphics and video subsystem.The BCM4500 contains a microcontroller which implements a high level language interface for easy host software development. It also contains an integrated DiSEqCTM controller for two way communication with LNB.


Features
- QPSK, 8PSK and 16 QAM Modulation with turbo code FEC
- Backwards compatable with existing DVB-S, DIRECTV and Digipher II QPSK systems
- MPEG-2 or DIRECTV output interface with output clock PLL
- On-chip Microcontroller for Acquisition & Tracking

Thank you for taking the time to post this. Dish has, indeed, claimed to now use the the latest and enhanced turbo-coding on its HD--now all MPEG4--steams. In fact, turbo-coding was used with Dish's previous MPEG2 HD steams. Furthermore, all STB from the 311, 322 and on up have hardware to support turbo-coding for the MPEG2 SD streams should Dish decide to send the software upgrade and activate it . Of course, all legacy STB's would have to be replaced as they don't have the hardware to support turbo-coding.

The confusion comes from the fact that Dish's marketing department was inspired by the very real technical turbo-coding upgrade and use the term "Turbo" in its marketing of the new HD packages. It is an effective way of communicating a new implementation (turbo-coding has been around a while) of the latest efficiencies as well as providing a "cool" name to the HD packages. We just had too many people skeptical of Dish hype (I understand those feelings) and others who don't know about turbo-coding as something very real in the realm of data transmission.

Again, thanks for the post.
 

J. Allen Head

SatelliteGuys Pro
Nov 23, 2003
195
3
Dahlonega, GA 30533
from Turbo to Super

Hey, *I* giggled. :)

Come on guys. It is Turbo! Turbo has to be better. Other wise it would just be... normall aspirated or something. That's never as good as turbo.

Yeah but Super Charged is a whole lot better than Turbo Charged - so i think Dish should add 871 Wipple Super Chargers to the new receivers for one hell of a boost
 

jacmyoung

SatelliteGuys Pro
Jun 30, 2007
3,009
0
Sacramento, CA
Thank you for taking the time to post this. Dish has, indeed, claimed to now use the the latest and enhanced turbo-coding on its HD--now all MPEG4--steams. In fact, turbo-coding was used with Dish's previous MPEG2 HD steams. Furthermore, all STB from the 311, 322 and on up have hardware to support turbo-coding for the MPEG2 SD streams should Dish decide to send the software upgrade and activate it . Of course, all legacy STB's would have to be replaced as they don't have the hardware to support turbo-coding.

The confusion comes from the fact that Dish's marketing department was inspired by the very real technical turbo-coding upgrade and use the term "Turbo" in its marketing of the new HD packages. It is an effective way of communicating a new implementation (turbo-coding has been around a while) of the latest efficiencies as well as providing a "cool" name to the HD packages. We just had too many people skeptical of Dish hype (I understand those feelings) and others who don't know about turbo-coding as something very real in the realm of data transmission.

Again, thanks for the post.

Well then E* most certainly has done a good job by cornering the use of the "Turbo HD" term.
 

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