Is it worth leaving Dish in my case? (image posted)

[EAO]

I have only SD TV's right now but I am always looking to improve my SD (and soon HD) capture quality.

I am with Dish for years and if I were to switch to Dish HD it would cost me about 300.00 for 2 HD reciever's. I went to Direct TV's site and it would cost me 100.00 for 2 HD mpeg4 reciever's. (And HD channels and showtime, etc... and my bill goes down 5.00 month vs Dish)

I am curious:

1. Do the SD channels on the new HD mpeg4 reciever look better than they did vs the SD reciever's?

2. How would you describe the SD picture quality of Direct vs Dish?

I realize that Direct has far fewer HD channels at this time than Dish but that is not the concern. Cost is. And the possibility to record higher resolution or better quality captures using HD reciever's would be a consideration.

I will be getting a Fusion HD card to capture the unencrypted HD (if any) from Direct

And then.... Over the last 3 years (of 5) I have never been happy with Dish's SD reception I have had 6 moron tech visits over the years I give up. (Moron Tech = " Yeah... I see your problem but I've never seen that before. I don't know what to do" then I call to request a seasoned tech to come out (never happens) and in the meantime I've been solicitated by half the techs to buy FTA equipment from them rather than fix my reception problem. I reported this to Dish but they never called me back about it.)

So... I'm really considering leaving Dish and with HD being so important I want to 'make the jump' if the price is right. This price looks good. (I have no desire - none. zip. ziltch. nada - to get Comcast cable. I don't want to start spending hours on hold with a cable company ever again.)

[oldandinthe way]

Given what you say, why shouldn't you leave Dish.

If you have reception problems it really doesn't matter whose technology gives a better picture, you aren't getting a quality picture and they haven't fixed it.

[TBoneit]

I hope you are not looking at the HR-20.....

www.dbstalk.com

HR-20 forum

I see many comments, some have good luck and others, forget about it. Evidently the HR-20 has a very low Wife Satisfaction level. When I see comments such as backup timers on a second unit just to be sure to get the show.....

I'm thinking if a MPEG4 DVR for DirecTV then it would be a hr-20.

FWIW the Echostar VIP622 is a more mature product and is supposedly coming soon a unit with a bigger drive. And the ability to feed SD video to other sets via coax whether the source is HDTV or SDTV is neat. Plus 2 Sat tuners and 1 OTA Digital tuner that can all be recorded from at the same time VS the HR-20 2 recording at a time.

Anyway, other coments fro those that jumped from DirecTV to Dish say better PQ on dish..... YMMV

[EAO]

That is true. I have been comfortably lazy and the reception issues are primarily (but not exclusively) limited to several of my locals. So I have lived with it. Then there is the issue of the rest of the family being used to it and not caring. Some battles are not worth fighting. Know what I mean? I believe it may be time. (we are having a 'meeting' to decide what channels we truely watch and then make certain they are available on Direct tomorrow.)

I'm also concerned that the reception issue may be wiring related (but the house does use... RG/6 (?)) and not related to Dish itself - but they are simply too stupid to figure it out.

I really don't want to hijack my own thread and discuss the reception issue. Anyone want to comment on my questions.

[EAO]

I hope you are not looking at the HR-20.....

www.dbstalk.com

HR-20 forum

.... Anyway, other coments fro those that jumped from DirecTV to Dish say better PQ on dish..... YMMV

I'm not certain what the HD Receiver is but I am not getting the DVR. I would rather use my PC and capture cards.

[Des]

I have Direct Tv and I can tell you that the SD looks like crap on my 37inch HD LCD. Bright scenes on screen look pretty good but darker scenes really show a lot of marco blocking.

I haven't upgraded to the HD satellite tuner yet for a few reasons: I'm not happy thay I have to pay a $100 upgrade fee plus an extra few dollars a month for the service. Also, my area is do to be upgraded for Verizon FIOS TV and I want to see what the costs/channel line ups are.

My wife has no compaints about the picture so it is somewhat subjective.

My 2 cents (or am I just venting...)

--dES

[EAO]

Very helpful. FWIW I have the macro blocking with dark scenes on Dish. I would like to know if it's different using the new HD reciever's.

[TBoneit]

I can't say whether or not you would see maro-blocking. I am guessing when you say that you mean little squares in the image. If you mean that a gradient from black to gray will not be smooth then that is another thing and will be present in any type of compression. From what I've seen Mpeg2 is not perfect in that regards and all the SD channels are Mpeg2.

I am happy on my 32" LCD even when I zoom a LB SD broadcast to fill the screen using the 622's built-in zoom functions. It isn't as clear as HD of course but it is watchable, and content is king and PQ is Queen.

If I don't like the content I'm not watching HD. The gradient thing I've seen on both services.

[yoda313]

I've been solicitated by half the techs to buy FTA equipment from them rather than fix my reception problem. I reported this to Dish but they never called me back about it.)

By fta do you mean "free-to-air"? What exactly is that and is it legal anywhere in the us??? How does it work?

Sorry for going a bit off topic - just curious.

[kosekjm]

Hey there,

I too am suffering from the Dish macro block effect. I switched to dish about a year ago and have been very unhappy ever since. I have Dish SD service through the Dish DVR-625 (Non-HD DVR) Most screens (Except of course for the dish advertisements they look phenomenal ) look like they've been encoded at the lowest allowable MPEG settings. I have three more months left on the Dish contract and will not be renewing.

As for Direct, the only comments that I can add are my brother-in-law has the Direct HD service. My wife and I were both underwhelmed with everything we saw on his service. The EPG, was clumsy and non-intuitive, slow remote response times, slow EPG update (ie paging between epg screens took a noticeable few seconds to update), and last but not least the PQ (SD at least) didn't appear to be that much better than what we can see on our Dish. I still saw some of the black macro blocking while faidng out to commercial, but it did not appear to be as bad as dish, but still there.

We were there during the college bowls and while the HD feeds looked very good, when we would swap back to the SD signal to see the difference all of the same problems that I have with Dish were evident there as well (Motion artifacts, macro-blocks, etc). This was visible on his 50 something inch RPTV and his 21 inch crt in the living room. BTW, his setup includes two receivers the HD one connected to his big screen and a non-hd receiver attached to the living room tv.

When I'm done with my Dish contract, I think I'll be done with all satellite servcie at least for now.

[TBoneit]

Just to add, now that I have a free moment DirecTV uses some of the same satellite locations as Dishnetwork does. They are licensed for some of the same orbital location, not the same Transponders, and both use their own satellites.

As for your locals problems have you tried the ceo@dishnetwork.com email route? More info at www.dbstalk.com

As I was saying when the customers came in.... I don't see blocking on the 32" HDTV's screen. On SD or HD. I sit 5 to 7 feet away. When I'm 5 feet away it is to use the TV for TV and Computer monitor w/Wireless Keyboard and mouse. I still don't see it when I blow up the Letterboxed Sd broadcasts so they fill the TV screen.

These are my results using the 2 Sat + 1 OTA tuner VIP622 HD DVR connected via HDMI cable to the TV and set to 1080i. I also don't see them on the S-Video connectio to my DVD recorder. Maybe the 622 does a good job of upscaling to 1080i for me. Or maybe my eyes are dead?

What location are your locals coming from? 61.5, 110, 119, 148 or one of the others? For example are you using one dish, two dishes.

Missing channels can be many things, bad LNB, Bad switch, signal blocked by tree or other obstruction, bad dish alignment, bad wiring, I've seen reports where wiring can do weird things.

Where I am I could get cablevision (bad!) Fios or keep Dishnetwork....

Having three DVRs changing would be tough and I really don't want to hear "I was used to that, why did you change it?"

[TBoneit]

Just a addendum: How are you hooking up to this new video capture card? Component or HDMI? If testing shows that it works I might be interested in getting one.

[EAO]

While I am leaning toward the Fusion I have not decided on a particular card yet. Torn between every aspect. Pci-e vs. Pci-x vs. USB 2.0. QAM support vs. it's a useless feature currently on Satalite. HW encode vs. SW encode. Capping HD is much more restricted than SD and I'm waffling with the dec about needing anything more than OTA HD capping if everything else worthwhile (to me) will have an encryption tag on it - like movie channels, etc.

FTA: Yeah. Free to air. Opinions make this sound like grey area... but when the techs say you'll be getting all the premium Dish channels and more... even a newb like me knows that this is illegal in the U.S.

Thank you for the ceo email addy. I am willing to try that because (compared to cable) I have been happy with Dish. It was not a happy consesus at the home this week-end.

[neomaine]

EAO,

I've been with Dish for about 5 years now. Originally, I was completely frustrated in the same way with my cable company, the reason for the move to Dish. My local channels were absolutely abysmal and that was with replacing wiring, increasing the signal from the pole, you name it. It came down to the cable company simply getting a crap signal from the locals (really, only 2 of the five, but they were bad...).

Then we got dish and even my wife noticed what a difference it was. Yes, there was the occasional macro blocking in dark scenes, the nature of MPEG2, but the overall picture was so much better. This was all on a 35" Sony Trinitron. Most friends that came over thought we had high def, but is was simply a good signal on a good TV.

Last August I picked up a Sceptre 42" 1080p TV. The 1080 was used for Xbox360 (phenomenal, especially since the November upgrade that allowed 1080p from the 360) and PC input via VGA (gorgeous at 1920x1200, not sure why it didn't like 1920x080, possible because of VESA specs). But as far as TV is concerned, at this point we still had the good old trusty standard def 511 (508 maybe?) w/ DVR and with some tweaking of the TV ended up with an acceptable picture. The digital signal made quite the difference over the analog cable signal. With no snow or banding to deal with, it handles the picture fairly well.

Then, I finally got around to getting the Dish HD package after some research. And VERY glad I stayed with Dish, though with a compromise: no locals for me yet. But with a clean, no cleanER, SD signal, this is less of an issue for right now.

Dish HD Pros:
- More high def channels. And good ones... (I've got the silver package, plus locals)
- SD channels are actually better with the 622(?) mpeg2/4 DVR receivers. It DOES make a difference. Not sure if it’s the receiver or just using HDMI (allows 480p) versus composite/s-video cables. Probably both…
- True HD bandwidth. (Read up on DirecTV supposedly HD signal, there's a reason the forums refer to the Dish HD channels as HD and the DirecTV channels as HD-lite. Just like DVDs, you need the bandwidth to support the resolution. DirecTV simply doesn't.)
- Dual tuner/dual TV DVR. We can now record two channels at once or watch one while recording...on either TV hooked up)

Cons:
- No locals for me yet. Though again, with such a clean signal now at 480p, the picture is fine even on an LCD panel.

For all that's said and done, the $5.00US more a month is worth its weight in gold for great signal quality you get from Dish.

[EAO]

neomaine: That's what I was wondering about. Do the HD recievers end up outputting the SD picture in better quality than the old SD reciever? Thanks for the input

TBoneit: I've sent an email off to the ceo... so I'll be patient and see.

[neomaine]

EAO,

We noticed a definite up-tick in quality with the new receiver. As I mentioned in the post, not sure if its the new receiver or that its now hooked up via HDMI versus S-video. Its a little of both I think. The HDMI is a cleaner connection and I believe its now at 480p. I'll have to verify the 480p vs 480i when I get home tonight...

[EAO]

Tried to take TBoneit's advice and got a fast reply from Dish.

The Good News:

Actually dealing with someone that understands compression and I was able to send picture capture and mpeg capture to. They acknowledged my problem and assured me that a high level tech would come out and thoroughly go over the system.... properly. (Having experienced their tech support I admit I was hestiant to waste time on a 7th visit but I made the appt.)

The Bad News:

Tech called four times in the space of 15 minutes for the exact same directions to my house. When he got there he had no clue what my problem was or why he was there. He did let me know that he had gotten a incomplete fax that morning. Ever had to deal with someone who thought they knew everything, didn't want to listen, didn't care to hear what was wrong and... did not have time to grasp the concept of intertmittent - as in the problems I have are intermittent and occur mostly in the evening? A complete turd to deal with. He did check the signal strength (was great) and looked at the outside connections. (They looked fine.) He did see some pixelation but he refused to look at my TV captures for better examples of my ghosting and other reception issues. He said ghosting he saw was normal. Then he tried to blame it on the TV's. And then I got a lecture about it being a completely sealed system and all the problems were not related to the equipment. (I would understand if it was one TV - but both exhibit the same ghosted and severe pixelization issues when they occur. And if it was the TV's why is the problem intermittent to boot? He had no answer except to suggest I maybe consider going to Direct or to Cable.)

Where Am I Now:

Spoke to my 'contact' at Dish afterwards. They were not pleased and wanted to make some calls. A while later when they called back they wanted to let me know if they could schedule another visit. I was still pretty pissed with the time I had wasted and I said I'd call tomorrow to let them know.

I am somewhat hesitant to consider Direct at this time due to their reciever issues - so I am in a holding pattern at this moment... and plenty frustrated by it.

[TBoneit]

It sounds like you have reached the right level at Dish....

If I were that "Tech" I'd be sweating about now as I wondered how I'll pay my bills.

I usually end with a Dish service (DNSC?) that has everything on the truck as well as spares as versus their contractors who may not even have what they should have had.

The last service call they replaced a DP34 with a DPP44 and the tech left an extra seperator for my 721 so I know have a 622 and 721 each on one cable and a 7100 on another Plus a free feed into the house for future use.The DPP44 is nice as it allowed me to rehook my legacy 7100. With the 40Gig laptop drive it is quiet and cool running. For those wondering the 7x00 series have one nice feature. You can pause live TV for the time remaining on the drive. This if I had a empty 120Gig drive in it I could pause live TV for approx 120 hours and then FF through it.

The problem has to be something they can fix. If what you see was the norm everybody would have scarpered back to cable or OTA.

Anyway Overall I've had good service. I did take their monthly fee extended warranty plan as I use DVR exclusively and drives do die. So far over the years they've replaced the Sw44 with a SW64 then replaced that several times, replaced it with a Dp34 and now a DPP44.

I have talked to their executive offices a couple of times over problems and they have always been courteous and resolved it quickly. I've had them since the 2700 was a new model and overlapped them with DirecTV which I had back when they still had USSB for premiums. I always had better treatment with Dishnetwork. However YMMV.

Good Luck

[Marvingj]

Well, I did go with the HD DirecTivo, but having spent a year with a Dish Network DVR, I can say that I wasn't unhappy with the picture quality at all on my 64-inch RPTV. I also have a non-DVR Dish receiver on a 35-inch CRT in my bedroom, and I have been pleased with the picture there as well. (And yes, I'm picky enough that I have my sets ISF calibrated).

But, a friend of mine has a 57-inch with a different model of Dish receiver (I don't recall which), and his picture quality is similar to what you describe.

I'm not sure what the big variable here is, but I'm betting it's the processor speed of the receiver. MPEG-2 is just a data stream. A slow decoder may only have time to resolve the picture to 85% of its potential quality before it's time to throw the frame on the screen, where a faster decoder could resolve the full picture quality. Granted, a more highly compressed signal only has so much sharpness to resolve, but when my picture is great while my neighbor complains that the exact same channel and show are unwatchable, it pretty much has to come down to the speed of the receiver.

[jeet49]

I am with dish for almost 5 yrs now and very happy with picture quality (SD & HD). Before making the switch, see if you can talk to a manager and provide him with your experience & the deal you are getting from Direct TV. If you are a very old customer, they will try to keep you, else you have options :)

Cheers!

[Seeker47]

So far, I've had Adelphia and then Time Warner digital cable (in two cities), plus have seen a fair amount of DirecTV SD service. No HD yet. But, for future reference, I'm interested in the comments in threads like this one.

I too am suffering from the Dish macro block effect. I switched to dish about a year ago and have been very unhappy ever since. I have Dish SD service through the Dish DVR-625 (Non-HD DVR) Most screens (Except of course for the dish advertisements they look phenomenal ) look like they've been encoded at the lowest allowable MPEG settings. I have three more months left on the Dish contract and will not be renewing.

As for Direct, the only comments that I can add are my brother-in-law has the Direct HD service. My wife and I were both underwhelmed with everything we saw on his service. The EPG, was clumsy and non-intuitive, slow remote response times, slow EPG update (ie paging between epg screens took a noticeable few seconds to update)

Yes, you're exactly right.

all of the same problems that I have with Dish were evident there as well (Motion artifacts, macro-blocks, etc).

And no one seems to be mentioning the blotchy, mottled effect evident on dark scenes. That really looks like CRAP. Maybe the compression is just so inherently compromising on these services that it almost doesn't matter what equipment, cables, etc. you have connected ?

When I'm done with my Dish contract, I think I'll be done with all satellite servcie at least for now.

If there are no better alternatives available -- regardless of cost ? -- that is really disappointing to hear.

[edDV]

neomaine: That's what I was wondering about. Do the HD recievers end up outputting the SD picture in better quality than the old SD reciever? Thanks for the input

TBoneit: I've sent an email off to the ceo... so I'll be patient and see.

That is the key issue. You need to evaluate user reviews for SD performance with the various "HD" boxes.

First, Dish SD is only 480x480 interlace MPeg2 and highly compressed. I can't tell you the average bitrate. Maybe others would know but my best guess is 2-3Mb/s. This was desiged to look adequate on a typical 27-36" interlace TV but is clearly inadequate for large progressive screens.

A fancy HDTV with higher end Faroudja DcDi / Wega deinterlace processing may be able to deal with low bit rate 480x480 interlace MPeg2. For the rest of us the "HD" box output to 480p or upscaled to 720p is the potential answer. So pay attention to SD performance reports. HD will take care of itself by comparison.

Someday Dish and Direct TV will convert SD to 704x480p MPeg4 (maybe they will stay with 480i). Until then, you have to live with their crap 480x480i MPeg2.

[TBoneit]

edDV: Last time I looked dish was 640 by 480 for premiums and 544 by 480 for SD. It may have changed recently. I'll be taking another look one of these days. Last time I looked it was running around 1 gig disc space for an hour of video on non premiums. Premiums were using more... And of course the bitrate isn't a CBR type of thing as the encoders are set up with statmuxing so that the bandwidth for the channels per transponder changes with needs. Slow moving scenes will get less bandwidth and fast action will get more allocated on the fly.

Marvingj: It is a hardware decoder.

Blotchy black seems to me to be a fact of life with mpeg2 and mpeg4 encoding. Both services are upgrading their encoders constantly as I understand it. when they went to stamuxing they were able to add more channels per transponder as I remember it. Will they ever go to convert Sd to DVD resolution as per edDv's speculation? My guess not until their are no SD sets in use in the far future.

I myself find that the Dish VIP 622 delivers a pleasing picture. Others with large screen Tvs may have other opinions. I have a 32" HDTV. And some things may not bother someone until someone says look at that... Then what never botherd them will bother them, Human nature.

[edDV]

edDV: Last time I looked dish was 640 by 480 for premiums and 544 by 480 for SD. It may have changed recently. I'll be taking another look one of these days. Last time I looked it was running around 1 gig disc space for an hour of video on non premiums. Premiums were using more... And of course the bitrate isn't a CBR type of thing as the encoders are set up with statmuxing so that the bandwidth for the channels per transponder changes with needs. Slow moving scenes will get less bandwidth and fast action will get more allocated on the fly.

Interesting. I admit being at least a year out of date for Dish. Maybe they upped the horizontal resolution when they added statistical multiplexing.

[EAO]

This is the ghosting from my 622 that the tech said was normal. Look about a half inch off the bridge of her nose and you'll see it.

And what's worse is that this is processed from my 250. The actual screen image on the TV has a much sharper line.

[lordsmurf]

Some people expect too much from satellite or cable (or even HD). The HD tech is really nothing more than adding extra pixels to make it look a bit sharper on really large tv sets. Most of that benefit is pissed away, however, when you compress the snot out of the video signal (like optical HD discs, satellite HD, broadcast HD, etc). It's basically a DVD with more pixels. This is nothing new, in other words.

Satellite reception can vary due to many reasons. If you get bad reception with on carrier, it may not change with another. Your physical location might be the real problem. Even with clear line-of-site, weird stuff can happen. I've seen it many times in years past.

Resolutions of standard signals vary and change a lot in past years, but they run the full spectrum from 352x480 to 704x480 (especially the 480x480 and 544x480 and 640x480), and with both mainstream providers. Neither is better than the other in this area.

Equipment is a big issue. Dish Network receivers largely sucked from 2000-2004 when I last paid attention. DirecTV had a better selection (especially the RCA units). Equipment can determine the image/audio quality as much as anything else. Crap receivers usually have noisy images.

There is pretty much nothing in the FTA spectrum for those of us in North America. Europe, Australia, Asia, and South America are different, they have some good stuff. FTA seems to shrink all the time, however. Why give it for free when people may pay? FTA is expensive and a pain in the ass, too!

That's really the truth to HD and satellite. It looks much better than antenna and analog cable, or at least it can, but it's not studio quality or anything.

Don't expect too much.

[EAO]

Lordsmurf:

Don't know if your comment was directed at me: "Satellite reception can vary due to many reasons. If you get bad reception with on carrier, it may not change with another. Your physical location might be the real problem. Even with clear line-of-site, weird stuff can happen. I've seen it many times in years past. "

I will happily conceed that it may be my physical location if someone would explain to me why the ghosting occurs only about 25% of the time, mostly in the evening ( but not every evening)and not on every channel when it does happen. I don't believe these factors are consistent with a strictly environmental explanation

And then there is the added confusion that my reception was positively excellent for the first two to three years of service. If it was environmental I don't know what could have changed. There are no new cell towers or electrical poles near me. This is an established neighborhood. And these are my original recievers.

If not directed at me... nevermind

[TBoneit]

Doesn't look like ghosting from that picture.
Was that a HD signal or a SD channel?

Next thing to look at.... What type of connection to the TV? Composite, S-Video, Component or HDMI?
Third thing to check what does your TV support, 720P, 1080i, 1080P?
Next goto the settings in the 622. I'm at work or I could do the keypresses and list them. Is the 622 set to match the TV? Or did it get left at 480i, 480p or 720P ? Is the set type set properly? 4:3 #1, 4:3 #2, 16:9?
Is the 622 well ventilated? It runs hot and a enclosed cabinet will cause problems.

Going beyond this then check the 622 support forum over at www.dbstalk.com including the hints and tips.

Good Luck

[lordsmurf]

EAO, the last time I saw weird stuff with signal (certain times of day better than others, etc), nobody could explain it. Even an equipment swap did nothing. The satellite company suggested switching to cable.