picture quality

[feelingfine]

When are us big screen tv fans gonna have some picture quality to brag about? Dish Network on a 50" rear projection tv looks WORSE than cable tv! Yea, my 27" tv looks fine but all those compression artifacts on a big screen makes me almost mad enough to switch back to cable tv. If Digital cable starts adding lots of HDTV programming, goodbye Dishnetwork!

[jerryez]

I am just waiting for Cox here in Pensacola to add HD and I am gone back to cable. My analog cable is better than Dish.

[Jacob S]

That is how far behind we are in technology when it comes to tv's. Everything is setup for analog and not digital. I think there should be some kind of adjustment in those tv's to where it can allow the picture quality to be better to compensate for the analog signals.

[Mike123abc]

That is the problem with televisions... They are set up to enhance analog cable (or over the air) they want to sharpen the image, increase contrast, etc. On digital those features highlight the digital compression.

[TerryC]

Getting a calibration DVD is important. My picture before I calibrated it was god awful. Now it is only terrible. :)

[Cheech Marin]

Buying a $3000 HDTV and then hooking it up to a $50 pizza system is like buying a catamarran to sail in your swimming pool.

[feelingfine]

My TV has been optimized with an AVIA dvd and had a calibration by an ISF certified technician who's one of the best. He writes television reviews for CNET.com and explained to me that the bad picture quality is due to the fact that satellite companys were forced by govt. regulation to carry all local channels. Having to provide all these channels takes up bandwith space. The solution is to compress the signal so more channels can be fit on each satellite. This compression leads to "artifacts", which show up as pixelation, posterization, etc. kinda of what you see with poor quality video on your PC. I almost prefer the graniness of analog cable TV to the way dish looks on a big screen. Ask anyone who had satellite service before all the locals came to be and they'll tell ya how good it used to be. Plus having a television with a line doubler will make a bad signal look worse! We need to talk about this matter on Charlie Chat on Dec. 9th.

[scooper]

Good luck - I almost guarantee you won't get through, and IF by some miracle you do, you won't get an answer that you like.

It comes down to that DBS is being sold to the masses, most of whom have smaller (say, 27 inch and smaller), to a standard that these viewers find acceptable. You people with the Large screen HDTV Ready sets are just going to have to suffer. Or if you find the picture unacceptable, switch to something else. I find Dish's picture on my 27 inch analog Sony to be just fine 95%+ of the time.

Also - on the Must Carry - your ISF tech had it about mostly right - DBS could easily recover PQ if they would stop carrying ANY locals, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Both E* and D* have also brought SpotBeams online for most locals.

If you really want the best picture out of your HDTV, use Digital OTA and BUD for your programming sources, not DBS.

[The Gumper]

Scooper has it right -

You want HOME Theatre PQ - need to a BUD +/or OTA

checkout www.satforums.com

[Jacob S]

I think once they get the top 80-100 markets they will concentrate LESS on adding the LIL markets the way they do now and concentrate MORE on adding basic channels and improving picture quality. Charlie did say that the new satellite would improve the picture quality some freeing up some space for more locals. Maybe this is why they are not adding anymore local cities than they are, because of picture quality concerns. Maybe they should just compress the locals a little more and keep the basic channels in a better grade.