HD Quality via On Demand and HD Channels on Satellite Receiver

[Tom Saurus]

I am coming to the conclusion that because my DSL is just the bare minimum to get the HD Options to play that the picture has less quality than if I watched the exact same thing on HD Channel that wasn't streaming through the Internet. My DSL is ranging between 5 and 6 Mbps. If my Internet download speed was faster I suspect a better quality picture would result on the HD On Demand. Am I correct in these assumptions or am I wrong? It is nice to have these On Demand HD options though. Thanks in advance for any information on this matter. We have a Shaw Direct Receiver.

[Brad]

I am coming to the conclusion that because my DSL is just the bare minimum to get the HD Options to play that the picture has less quality than if I watched the exact same thing on HD Channel that wasn't streaming through the Internet.

The Internet version of the video won't have gone through the multiple levels of hardware video encoders that a network channel on satellite has, so they aren't directly comparable even if they use the same bitrate and codec (which they probably don't).

Regardless, you aren't getting the max quality available on the streaming: the "Manage your Bandwidth" section of their "How to Connect" page indicates that they have different encoding levels, up to 8Mbps for HD.