Should E* customers start calling you as "D* shills" ?
Why? Is 'fanboy' any better? Because I see THAT enough around here.
Updates on the Launch of DIRECTV 10
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Why? Is 'fanboy' any better? Because I see THAT enough around here.
Probably much cheaper than the KA band project at DirecTV
Yes, your right , but missing the point that (I had not made yet !) that Cable (most) do not cover the entire country, therefore there is more area thus a larger cost to D* to do this type of thing.
Jimbo
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I kinda thought that this type of info would have it's own thread, instead of getting buried inside a thread that is a mile long now.
Had this site been a D* instead of an E* site it probably would have been front page news, but thats a whole other subject.
Jimbo
It does.
http://www.satelliteguys.us/showthread.php?t=96215
Now I would not expect it to be front page news until to gets off the ground.
Yup,
Ya know what, I've even been in that thread, don't know what I was thinking
My bad ....
Jimbo
Why would it take so long to get the new HD channels? If the sat goes up 6/20 without a hitch then why would it take two months to get the new HD channels? I'm no techie so I'm just asking an honest and simple question.
Because it will take time to put the satellite into its final orbit and perform the testing that is required prior to turning it on to the customer.
These things have been known to take anywhere from 1 month to 6 months actually. 2-3 months is certainly a reasonable timeframe.
This past weekend I had an HR20 and H20 along with the new Slimline Dish installed.
(Excellent service but that's another story) I was playing dumb and asked about all the new channels and when they would be comming on line and he said in November they should be bringing them out. I asked out exisitng channels D* does not have on and he said September for those. Seems reasonable. By the way the HR20-100 rocks. So far solid and the Mpeg4 locals look just like the OTA Locals in a side by side compairson. At least in Tulsa anyways.
If your mpeg4 locals look as good as OTA HD then you have 1 or more problems.
1. Your HD set is not calibrated proberly. (there is no way a compressed channel can look better that the source) (OTA locals are broadcast in Mpeg2 DirecTV, the RE-compresses the channel in MPEG4)
2. You need to get your eyes checked.
In markets with the newer MPEG4 encoders the MPEG4 version looks very close to the OTA version. This is reported on many forums. Of course OTA is always better but if the MPEG4 is close enough you don't notice it then that's pretty good. If you don't have the newer encoders then it's probably worse.
Yep, they can't make it the same quality, but as close as they can get.
Another thing that effects this big time is how DirecTV gets the HD signal from the local stations:
Fiber or OTA
If via direct Fiber then that is the best of the best direct from the studio and then encoded to MPEG4. Should be very little difference here with OTA.
If OTA then they are taking the same signal that you and I get OTA and then encode to MPEG4. This will of course degrade the signal and now the quality of the encoders really comes to play.
In my market they are all delivered OTA but we have the newer encoders. If I really pay attention I can see the difference but if I just watch my shows I don't really notice it. So it all depends on your tolarance level I guess. I still record all the networks via OTA except CBS which I record MPEG4 via D* because oddly enough it's better via MPEG4 then OTA. But those that know the struggles we have with our CBS won't find any suprise in that statement.
When D* first fired up the locals in Austin we had the old "8MM" problem on the 1080i stations. A few months later they fixed that and things looked very good, except when watching basketball games. The arena's that have the full court strobe lights for the still photographers really played havoc with the picture everything they shot them off. I sent a e-mail to D* letting them know it was only on their signal and not OTA and please pass it onto the broadcast center. Looks like they got that fixed since the Sunday Spurs/Suns game didn't have the problem anymore.
D*'s signal in my local is delivered to them by the locals via fiber, I know because I was there when the company was discussing it at the time.
Jimbo
We can tell a difference between local OTA and D* rebroadcast only if we check our best and biggest set and if we look really close and switch back and forth. If you just turned on a channel and did not know how it was tuned, I doubt you could tell the difference.
D* does pretty well on the HD channels they broadcast. The point of this thread is to get the satellites up and transmit more HD channels. I can see taking D* to task because they do not broadcast enough HD, but I doubt anyone would switch because the quality of HD they DO broadcast was not good enough.
D* does pretty well on the HD channels they broadcast. The point of this thread is to get the satellites up and transmit more HD channels. I can see taking D* to task because they do not broadcast enough HD, but I doubt anyone would switch because the quality of HD they DO broadcast was not good enough.
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