Voom MonstersHD possibly back to 1920x1080i, See Inside!!

[Gary Murrell]

Voom MonstersHD back to 1920x1080i !!, See Inside!!

Guys I have a sort of weird finding here to tell and (actually show you), I have been watching MonstersHD over the past few days and it has been looking pretty darn good, well I seriously think that MonstersHD is back at 1920x1080i, so I pulled up a old capture of "The Wicker Man" from MonstersHD when the channel first started on Dish, it is 1920x1080i
The MonstersHD channel is still listed as 1280x1080i in the headers, we all know this is useless info
so this evening at 10:30 I captured some of MonstersHD, from "The Wicker Man"
I would almost be willing to bet that MonstersHD is 1920x1080i and not 1280x1080i
Want Proof, the screenshots below are virtually identical and my display and eyes are agreeing
here is a screenshot to compare:
1280x1080i from this evening from Monsters HD:

1920x1080i from 5 months back on MonstersHD:

Zoomed in area:

if this is in appropriate, mods please delete, I also posted in the Voom thread
I viewed Wicker man a few weeks back after the change to 1280x1080i and it looked like sh*t compared to this evening and months back
-Gary

 

[who_the]

Interesting! You've caught them with some incorrect headers in the past, looks like you've got another one! I hope you're right, and this time the mistake is in our benefit!

 

[Gary Murrell]

1280x1080i from this evening from Monsters HD:

1920x1080i from 5 months back on MonstersHD:

Identical in every aspect

we have 1920x1080i on MonstersHD as of now folks

-Gary

 

[Reefer123]

I've been so disgusted with the whole situation that I haven't been watching much as of late. I hope you are right and I hope it is a sign that things may be going back to what they should be.

 

[Gary Murrell]

I just decided to flip on my favorite channel and watch some last night, my Set was telling me this one Voom channel is not HD-Lite as of right now, it looks like my eyes were correct

-Gary

 

[Gary Murrell]

Full size untouched caps for purists, virtually identical:

1280x1080i from this evening from Monsters HD:

1920x1080i from 5 months back on MonstersHD:

-Gary

 

[BrettTRay]

Thanks gary for the update. I haven't been watching voom at all since they went south. I'll try to catch a few movies on this channels and see whats up.

 

[GeorgeLV]

(if anything seems out of context, it's because I'm pasting my post from AVS)

Gary, don't crop away the black bars. I can't compare them matematically because they're cropped differently (see the boat) and in a lossy format (even at 100% quality jpeg can introduce errors). My final concern is that I'm not sure if it's exactly the same frame since the capture from today appears to have a spec of dust in the upper-right sky and the old recording doesn't. That said...

Visually, the reduced bitrate makes quantization artifacts much more apparant in the capture from today--look at anything red and also see how many dct basis patterns you can spot in the sky. Finally, take a look at the face in the window. You'll see a cyclops in today's capture, but the old recording has distinct features.

I think it's fair to say that the picture has improved from last week, but that it's still being impaired. The differences aren't dramatic, and on some display technologies (crt) may be difficult to notice at all, but they are there.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

To my eyes the 2nd (older) shot looks slightly crisper on all detail, but is very close.

I watched a movie yesterday on Monsters and I noted then that it looked better. But it can be hard to tell given the varying quality of the digital transfers.

Who knows what Dish is really doing. 1920x1080i at 15 mbs is still compressed and you can tweak the compression / multiplexing parameters, which alter the image. So perhaps it is tweaked 1920, tweaked 1440, or even tweaked 1280 - although it looks awfully close to the 1920 image for it to be 1280.

I would not be surprised if on my TV that 1440 @ 16 mbs looked better than 1920 @ 9 mbs. The 1920 might have higher resolution, but would also have more compression artifacts, which would degrade low contrast scenes, motion, and more.

 

[Gary Murrell]

I think I have viewed both the mpeg and DVB headers, Jacob I will try and get a clip your way

I don't know what the heck is going on, but Gosh for these images to be this close why are we even argueing about HD-Lite, 1280x1080i looks like **** and MonstersHD looks much better than it did after the switch was flipped to 1280x1080i

I viewed on MonstersHD "The Wicker Man" around a week after the switch was flipped to 1280x1080i, I also took a bitrate reading during my viewing( this was around 2 days after MonstersHD went HD-Lite) I got 1280x1080i and 15 Mbps video

I wanted to compare Monsters in 1280x1080i to my recording of Wicker from 4/5 weeks after Voom started on Dish, to say the least that first HD-Lite viewing of "The Wicker Man" looked so bad it wasn't even watchable

I sat down tonight to view some Monsters and saw how great Wicker was looking jumped up to get out the recording of Wicker to compare and the grabs are almost identical

tonights viewing(with 1280x1080i headers) totally destroys that viewing from 2 days after Monsters HD went to 1280x1080i and that is the what puzzles me

original 1920x1080i Wicker recording is 17 Mbps Video(from Sept. 05)
1st 1280x1080i Wicker recording was 15 Mbps Video(2 days after Monsters went Lite)
last night viewing of 1280x1080i Wicker was 15.5 Mbps(12/29/05)

as you can see by the screenshots, they(1st and 3rd listed above) are almost identical

this is not a bitrate changing issue as you can see, I am stumped if mpeg headers cannot be wrong

-Gary

 

[M Sparks]

Hmmmm...I think we need a little more proof. Can you post something from Willow's dance scene?

You know, for testing purposes...

 

[hammerdown]

Thanks for finally doing some full screen shots. From previous threads, I thought we decided that when a frame capture is done on a 1280x720 video that the resulting image is indeed 1280x720 with non-square pixels? Also proven by this post of captures: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6647170&&#post6647170
http://img468.imageshack.us/my.php?image=smarttravelsprovence4vt.jpg
http://img525.imageshack.us/my.php?image=smarttravelsparis1bc.jpg

So if you are getting 1920x1080 caps then that is the proof that it is back to full rez? No?

Hammer

 

[HokieEngineer]

Gary, did the Dish engineers come by and slip some you some of their koolaid

1. Even though the screen grabs are high res jpegs, jpeg is still a lossy format. Best way to post screen grabs is a lossless format, such as png. (Dialup user warning, they are close to 2.5Mbytes)

2. Checking the debug information from the mpeg decoder, I still see a pixel ratio of 3:2, and image resolution of 1280x1080. Thus, a pixel is wider than it is tall. Thats why 1280 pixels horizontally are displayed in the proper 16:9 format on your screen.

3. No, the screen grab will be 1920x1080 because the mpeg decoder is using screen aspect ratio, pixel aspect ratio, and resolution of the frame to produce the video you see on the screen.

You cannot "lie" to the mpeg decoder. It uses this information to create the image you see on the screen. If that information was incorrect, it would not display the proper image.

I don't doubt that they have been tweaking to try and maximize the quality of the 1280x1080i signal. If its good enough, then thats fine. However, they are not sending a 1920x1080 resolution frame.

Screen grabs of:
HDNet (true 1920x1080i)
UltraHD (1280x1080i with 3:2 pixel ratio)

Note, if you load those images in Internet Explorer, if you have image resizing turned on, it will resize them to fit your screen.

 

[jsb_hburg]

The older screenshots look better. The new screenshots lack the exact detail on the older screenshots, especially the set with the fellow in the cap and sweater shot up close.

Obviously, Dish is trying to make 1280 x 1080 closely approximate the quality of what was provided before. But is there any bandwidth savings?

 

[hammerdown]

3. No, the screen grab will be 1920x1080 because the mpeg decoder is using screen aspect ratio, pixel aspect ratio, and resolution of the frame to produce the video you see on the screen.
You cannot "lie" to the mpeg decoder. It uses this information to create the image you see on the screen. If that information was incorrect, it would not display the proper image...

How do you explain the links I posted. Someone is in fact doing 1280x1080 screen captures, HOW?

Hammer

 

[HokieEngineer]

How do you explain the links I posted. Someone is in fact doing 1280x1080 screen captures, HOW?
Hammer

I am guessing he told the decoder to ignore the pixel ratio and display the image with square pixels (1:1). I'm at work can't monkey around my captures, but I'll try and reproduce that when I get home.

HDTVFanatic, can you shed some light on how you pulled those 1280x1080 grabs? Thanks.

 

[Kirby Baker]

I dont know if this helps, but if you load a HDlite 1280x1080 TS into DGIndex, it ignores pixel ratio, and will show a narrow image. If a cap can be made from that, or by processing the resulting d2v file in something like vdubmod, then it wouldnt be too difficult.

 

[HookedOnTV]

Nope, still 1280, displaying with square pixels (it's just under 4MB):

Monsters_bmp

 

[Gary Murrell]

confirmed by me also, I was wrong

I demuxed the .TS from last night, and grabed the actual video size screen cap in DGI Index

here it is:

-Gary

 

[digiblur]

I can see the D* engineers smiling now. We fooled them! We won!

I can hear the chief engineer now..."Flip all the 1280X1080i switches after CES boys!"