What causes the poor ESPNHD/ESPN2HD quality?

kpeercy

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Jan 19, 2004
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These two channels are so compress that the grass moves during football games and artifacts are all over the place. Is this an ESPN problem or is Dish not giving the channels enough bandwidth? In comparision, I turned it over to Universal HD last night and US Open tennis looked much better than MNF.
 
These two channels are so compress that the grass moves during football games and artifacts are all over the place. Is this an ESPN problem or is Dish not giving the channels enough bandwidth? In comparision, I turned it over to Universal HD last night and US Open tennis looked much better than MNF.

Man, I've got to disagree. Was watching it last night, and the race Saturday night and I've got to say that I have not seen it better. I think it was stunning.
 
A lot of stuff is coming into ESPN at 1080i. ESPN then takes the 1080i sinal and downconverts it to 720p, for some reason a lot is being lost in this down conversion.

ESPN is seeing this at their Bristol CT uplink center, and I am told they are working on it.
 
Man, I've got to disagree. Was watching it last night, and the race Saturday night and I've got to say that I have not seen it better. I think it was stunning.
I have to agree. The picture that I was receiving was great for both of these. No swimming grass on my end. Please provide some more details. What type of display, 622 output, 1080i or 720p?
 
I agree also that the PQ has been lacking on ESPN-HD lately. I've particularly noticed it with the NFL preseason games. Every shot that isn't up close seems out of focus/blurry. I hope this issue is corrected soon as I used to feel that ESPN had some of the best HD football PQ out there.
 
I do agree also that both ESPN hd have been a little fuzzy. I think a lot has to do where the cameras are located in the stadium. I have seen this on other networks also. I wonder when these new stadiums are built, do they even think about where to place these new hd cameras? Sometimes the camera angle has a lot to do with feeling you are right there at the game.
 
I have a 61" Samsung 720p DLP & a 40" Sony 1080p LCD. Output 720p or 1080i . Both exhibit the grass swim, pulse, blurryiness, whatever you want to call it. Be glad if you don't notice it. Because once you do, it's painful to watch .
 
This is really nothing new with ESPN, it has been this way for a couple years now. There PQ is just not up to par with say CBS. I think it has been going on so long now that people just quit complaining about it. Back when I had Charter cable it was the same way. But both Charter and Dish bit starve the channel making it worse. This year NFL games look slightly better than I recall last year on ESPN. ESPN2 tends to be a bit better and my guess is this is due to the MPEG4 vs MPEG2 issue.
 
I have to agree with the lack of PQ on ESPN lately. I was really afraid that it was my display. Mine is a 43 inch Hitachi RPTV that has over 6 years of viewing on it. I had noticed that ESPN just wasn't really looking too sharp lately. It looked a little better last night, but it has been better in past years.
 
ESPN2HD in MPEG4 looks pretty good. However I have to agree that ESPNHD is not as good as it used to be. I receive both on Cox cable here where they are full bandwith. There is no swimming grass or any artifacts at all. Any PQ problems are coming from E*. It has nothing to do with sideconversion from 1080i to 720p.
 
Since I have a RP CRT I've been thinking part of the issue may be the 622's poor conversion of 720p to 1080i. So for those of you with 720p and 1080p sets, do you see any difference in PQ when setting the output to 720p vs 1080i on ESPN?
 
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