dish channels heavily compressed

so i just purchased a highly touted hd lcd tv. only to find that non hd channels are so heavily compressed by dish that this new tv's image looks horrible. certainly hd signals and other higher def sources look amazing. but we are all paying dish almost a hundred dollars a month to send us a horrible signal by way of massive compression.

i hear cable companies suffer from and practice much less compression on thier channels.

what say you?

We switched a few years ago from Dtv because of compression on HD channel. Have not noticed any changes here on Dish. My Sd looks great. Try and calibrate your display.

so i just purchased a highly touted hd lcd tv. only to find that non hd channels are so heavily compressed by dish that this new tv's image looks horrible. certainly hd signals and other higher def sources look amazing. but we are all paying dish almost a hundred dollars a month to send us a horrible signal by way of massive compression.

i hear cable companies suffer from and practice much less compression on thier channels.

what say you?
Wow, do you have the wrong information. Cable companies suffer from a smaller available bandwidth than Satellite. How could they have less compression? If anything, cable companies compress even more. But remember, ALL HDtv is compressed somehow. It simply isn't possoble to have a 1.5Gb/s available to any channel even OTA. ALL HDtv is compressed somehow. But there is a reason why both satellite providers offer more HD than cable. Until all cable providers swap out the coax with fiber optic, they will not have the capacity to match satellite.

but our dishes have coax between them and the reciever? who's dish is sending the receiver data via a fiber optic line in the house? when i shopped the tv this site in many locations noted that coax from the dish to the receiver is more than adequate. with that logic how is coax not able to handle as much data?

but our dishes have coax between them and the reciever? who's dish is sending the receiver data via a fiber optic line in the house? when i shopped the tv this site in many locations noted that coax from the dish to the receiver is more than adequate. with that logic how is coax not able to handle as much data?

Clarification, the coax from the dish to the receiver is not the bottle neck. It is the infrastructure of the entire cable network and the fact that cable systems rely on coax from origination to end point that causes the problem. Further, you have to add that cable shares it's bandwidth with its internet services and that you are sharing your bandwidth with every cable subscriber around you. Etc. Added together, cable bandwidth is not as large as satellite. When I mentione swapping out coax, I meant from the point or origin to the house. But that would also require that they swap out all of their switches and cable boxes and every other piece along the way. It's not just the cable from the box to your TV.

Of course, you have to remember that all HD is compressed, so yes even satellite images are compressed. The main advantage to satellite is that to add more bandwidth, they only need to add a new satellite. Granted that's a major undertaking, but it's a lot easier than digging up the entire cable intfrastructure and replacing it with fiber.

I have a 46" Sony Bravia LCD (KDL 46S2000) using a VIP722.
My non hd channels look very good. When I with Comcast before the picture was no where close to how good they look with Dish Network.

My 722 is connected with HDMI.

understood. good clarification.

so, here's what i know. a few years back i went to satelite with these things you mentioned in mind. thinking, shoot they want to give me this great deal and i would get more lines or resolution delivered to my tv than cable (no thought of bandwidth issues, just more lines delivered). so i went with dish. immediately i noticed much more (i had never actually seen any via my cable), compression artifacting on the edge of images. like an overly compressed .jpg image you see on a web page. i was bummed but it wasn't too bad. well now with this new tv i'm seeing the artifacting more than if i were to hook up my old tube. i'm assuming the tv is that much better and thus i'm seeing more of the bad.

why are we all buying these new tvs with awesome pictures but it doesn't seem to matter cause the signal we're getting from sat providers is so bad.

so my tv just got a million times better but my picture is now worse.

Why do you keep insisting the sat signal is the problem, when others are trying to tell you they don 't have problems with the sat signal? Isn't it possible your picture settings are causing the dismay? Have you had your monitor calibrated by a qualified pro?

understood. good clarification.

so, here's what i know. a few years back i went to satelite with these things you mentioned in mind. thinking, shoot they want to give me this great deal and i would get more lines or resolution delivered to my tv than cable (no thought of bandwidth issues, just more lines delivered). so i went with dish. immediately i noticed much more (i had never actually seen any via my cable), compression artifacting on the edge of images. like an overly compressed .jpg image you see on a web page. i was bummed but it wasn't too bad. well now with this new tv i'm seeing the artifacting more than if i were to hook up my old tube. i'm assuming the tv is that much better and thus i'm seeing more of the bad.

why are we all buying these new tvs with awesome pictures but it doesn't seem to matter cause the signal we're getting from sat providers is so bad.

so my tv just got a million times better but my picture is now worse.

Ok, that's a little different issue. The thing is, SD (non-HD) channels will pretty much always "look" worse on an HDtv than HD channels will. The reason is because of the difference between the number of actual pixels in the material. Remember that SD tv was basically 640X480. Meaning that there are 640 vertical lines and 480 horizontal line of resolution. HDtv is either 1280X720 or 1920X1080. If you do some simple math, a 640X480 image has 307,200 individual pixels of information. But you tv has either 1,049,088 pixels on a 1366X768 TV or 2,073,600 pixels on a 1920X1080 TV. So the tv has (or the set-top box) has to take those 307,200 pixels and expand that up to at least 1,049,088 pixels on the screen. It has to use video processing to get there and that means artifacts. The poor picture on SD channels is not the fault of cable or satellite.

If you want to use the computer world as an analogy, take a picture that is 640X480 and rescale it up 3 times. You'll see the exact same thing happen. Now rescale it up 7 times and you'll see what happens when it has to be shown on a 1920X1080 screen. It is a sad fact that SD channels will not look as good on an HD tv, but there isn't much that the content providers can do to change that. Only as HDtv becomes more popular and replaces the SD channels.

i'm a web developer and designer so that all makes sense. thanks. this is the answer i thought i might get, in that for a number of reasons non hd signals look bad on these nice new tvs. hadn't thought about the upsizing/resampling issue. makes total sense. it's too bad. so the bottom line is when i watch an alternate input (dvd or what not) or hd signal it's gona look incredible. but 80% of my viewing will be bad news.

thanks again. very good info.

whitney

Check your signal strength.

Did you run new cable for your satellite? Or are you using your great great grandfathers antenna coax to run your satellite?

A guy here at the office was having similar problems with his dish quality, and it actually ended up being the coax itself, which was under-spec for the length of the run he was using.

i'll have to look into that. dish ran the coax a few year ago. don't know if length could be an issue.

thanks.

i'm a web developer and designer so that all makes sense. thanks. this is the answer i thought i might get, in that for a number of reasons non hd signals look bad on these nice new tvs. hadn't thought about the upsizing/resampling issue. makes total sense. it's too bad. so the bottom line is when i watch an alternate input (dvd or what not) or hd signal it's gona look incredible. but 80% of my viewing will be bad news.

thanks again. very good info.

whitney

For a long time this was the #1 reason people returned the expensive HDtv's right away. SD does not look as good on their brand new TV's.

I thought of an analogy to help explain the bandwidth. Imagine that you have a garden hose. You are trying to get water from point A to point B. The problem is that you cannot increase the size of the hose in anyway. Now you have to get not just water, but 13 different colors of water down that same hose. Eventually you run out of ways to keep adding new colors and are limited by the hose itself. That is cables limitation. Now imagine that you are holding only one end of the hose, but it has a funnel on the top. above you are 75 different colored streams of water spilling down to the ground. You can put your funnel under which ever color you choose. So now you get to use the entire hose to transport blue water without having to transport all the other colors along with it. That is satellite. It's a crude analogy, but it's basically why the coax is not a problem in the satellite, but it is on cable.

i'll have to look into that. dish ran the coax a few year ago. don't know if length could be an issue.

thanks.

Only with Dish Legacy hardware. With the latest components being used (ProPlus?) I believe cable length limitation is on the order of 200' for the longest run.
I may be wrong about that exact number, and perhaps Yes616, mobi, et al could enlighten me.
Cable length 'can' be an issue, but 'should not' be if the installation is within Dish requirements for the hardware being used.

Local cable company is currently running ads here telling this exact story. They say thet Dish and DTV compress their signals and that they (cable co.) only send out what is already compressed when they receive the signal, no further compression is done.

My picture is great in HD, much better OTA, but still great on cable.

Totally agree! I had NewWave Communications and the SD was horrible. The HD was good, but couldn't bare to watch any SD. Once I got hooked up with E* the SD channels looks so much better...along with my HD channels..I only had like 18 HD channels through NewWave and now have 3-4 times more on Dish.

Local cable company is currently running ads here telling this exact story. They say thet Dish and DTV compress their signals and that they (cable co.) only send out what is already compressed when they receive the signal, no further compression is done.

My picture is great in HD, much better OTA, but still great on cable.

At least they are not misleading anyone.... cough, cough...

That is very misleading. The assumption you are supposed to make is that the cable company is do nothing while satellite is "bad." Do they mention how compressed the signals are they receive? Do the mention how Dish and DirecTV receiver their signals? Do they mention the fact that they have a much more limited bandwidth than Satellite? What if the satellite providers start with an uncompressed signal, then compress it to a smaller extent than what cable receives?* Then the cable compression would still be greater, wouldn't it? The fact is, cable has a limited bandwidth that has to encompass analog cable, internet, digital cable and now HDtv and Phone service as well in some cases. There is only so much you can pump down that cable. Satellite only suffers from the number of satellites orbitting the earth. More satellites = greater bandwidth. Cable only has two choices. They can limit the number of HD channels or they can compress them even more. That's it.

*The information I have read indicates that satellite providers start with uncompressed sources and compress them. If that compression is less than the original compressed source cable starts with, well you do the math. I cannot confirm this other than articles I've read so maybe someone else knows for sure.

mob,

i think your explanations today of bandwith are quality ones. so let's agree that sat has more width. can we conlcude from that they don't compress sd signals at all? or perhaps they do to some extent? someone pointed out that as a sat company only has so much bandwidth and hardware a loft that as more hd signals come on board they are having to compress the sd material more.

thanks for the great input.

mob,

i think your explanations today of bandwith are quality ones. so let's agree that sat has more width. can we conlcude from that they don't compress sd signals at all? or perhaps they do to some extent? someone pointed out that as a sat company only has so much bandwidth and hardware a loft that as more hd signals come on board they are having to compress the sd material more.

thanks for the great input.

I don't think you can conclude that they "don't" compress SD signals, but that the need to is much less since an SD signal is much less of a bandwidth hog than an HD signal is. I believe that they do compress SD, but not as much. Probably comparable to cable or OTA SD channels. But you wouldn't even notice since the real issue isn't compression, it screen size.

As for the second part, it's a combination of three things. Compression, adding new satellites, and, as we have seen recently, dropping channels that they feel are not popular. Dish was all set to add a new satellite to the mix, but it did not acheive proper orbit and was considered a total loss. So now that they have plans to add HD channels a decision needed to be made. It appears that the loser is the VOOM channels. They added 22 new HD channels, but are dropping 10 Voom channels. The real benefit to satellite technology over cable is the flexibility to add bandwidth at all. Cable is stuck where they are until they revamp the infrustructure at a cost of billions. The bright spot though is FIOS. Different topic, but of all the technologies currently used, FIOS has the greatest possibilities in the future.

different topic. i'll be looking into dish sending me a hd reciever. should i consider which one in terms of quality of signal handling? or the better ones just have more bells and whistles?

Only with Dish Legacy hardware. With the latest components being used (ProPlus?) I believe cable length limitation is on the order of 200' for the longest run.
I may be wrong about that exact number, and perhaps Yes616, mobi, et al could enlighten me.
Cable length 'can' be an issue, but 'should not' be if the installation is within Dish requirements for the hardware being used.

I wouldn't run it longer than 200 feet. That cable MUST BE RG-6! No RG-59.

different topic. i'll be looking into dish sending me a hd reciever. should i consider which one in terms of quality of signal handling? or the better ones just have more bells and whistles?

Basically, yeah. the 211 is one tuner for one tv. the 222 is 2 tuners for 1 or 2 tvs, which also allows you to have a PiP. 612 is the 211 with DVR function. 622 is the 222 with DVR. 722 is the 622 with a larger hard drive. that way you can pick which set-up works best for your usage.

I have 2 622's. A total of 4 tv's. 2 of the tv's are HD, so a 622 at each. The others are all SD, so they get the combined output of both 622's. That makes for a total of 4 possible different shows being watched at the same time. Each tv could be showing a different program at any time. The most I've even done was 3 different shows, since the kids typically all watch the same thing. Wife watching one show, me watching something else.

As for PQ, I can't really speak to that, but I would assume there is no difference across the spectrum.

very good. i was sent an hdmi cable, rated to 1080i. my tv is 1080p. i'm assuming i should get ahold of a 1080p rated hdmi cable?

:thumbsup: very good. i was sent an hdmi cable, rated to 1080i. my tv is 1080p. i'm assuming i should get ahold of a 1080p rated hdmi cable?

Don't bother. The Dish receiver is only capable of 1080i and there is no broadcast television at 1080p. Besides, the cable being "rated" to 1080p is a bit misleading. Cables are the most overblown over-hyped thing in the entire HD industry. Whatever you do, don't spend the money on an HDMI cable if it costs more than $30. Many articles have been written that the "benefits" of high dollar HDMI cables are non-existent. If you want a better quality cable, you could order then from either bluejeanscable.com or monoprice.com. Blue Jeans is a great company and makes a top cable. Their best cable costs $17.25 for a 6 foot cable and is fully HDMI1.3 certified. Some of the really expensive brands (we all know the one in particular) cannot even claim certification and yet you'll pay $150+ for the same length.

Odds are you will not even see a PQ difference between the cable you have and even the blue jeans cable. However, build quality is better on the blue jeans cable.

One thing you may want to be aware of though. If that cable is like the one I got (HDMI to DVI to DVI to HDMI) with an adapter in it, you may see some HDCP handshake issues and you will not be able to get the audio out of the HDMI cable. DVI is not capable of audio transmission. If that's the case, and you want the audio, get a new HDMI to HDMI cable. But like I said, no need to spend more than $30 on the cable.

Here's a good article about 1080p "certification":

http://bluejeanscable.com/articles/certified-hdmi-cables.htm?hdmiinfo

so i get 1080p from other sources like dvd player and what not?

so i get 1080p from other sources like dvd player and what not?

The only commercially available 1080p source is Blu-Ray. Some upconverting DVD players are "1080p" but it's just resizing a 720X480 picture up to 1920X1080. Granted it looks better than SDtv, but that's because the DVD source is a better source than SDtv to start with. And for the money, your TV will upconvert a normal DVD player just as well as an upconvering DVD player unless you buy one of the Oppo's or another high end player.

Blu-ray material is mastered in 1080p, so it is native 1920X1080. Its the only real source of 1080p material.

I wouldn't run it longer than 200 feet. That cable MUST BE RG-6! No RG-59.

I agree, 200' is really pushing it.. and of course with RG-6.

thanks for all the help. this will get me pointed in the right direction. amazing how getting your tv set up well now a days is as technical as it is. long way from connect copper to antenna on top of house.

whitney