Need some reassurance on PQ !

[Ozwaldo]

With my D install a week away I am getting a little nervous. I am with E now and the PQ on HD is great and SD is pretty darn good for SD. I have a Panasonic 50" 1080p plasma set. I am not leaving E because of PQ. I am leaving because the monthly cost of D with promos is substantially lower than I am paying E now and D has more HD. Anyone out there been able to compare the PQ between D and E lately. I am just hoping that the PQ of D is not worse than E. Thanks !

[dshu82]

Have the same set as you and I think the PQ is great for HD channels. You will notice some differences, but a lot of that is the station's feed. Example: watching a football game on Fox versus the Sunday Night game on NBC. NBC's PQ is notoriously worse than other football broadcasts.

As for SD, most channels are good. I watch all SD with pillar box on, as SD stretched that large and on that quality of TV is not very good.

[M5Guy]

I just made the switch a month ago. I also have a Panny 50" plasma. You won't notice much difference on either to be honest. Both are good to excellent on HD and fair to poor on SD.

I found, however, that the native format feature on the D* units does help the SD quality if you let it pass through the 480i signal rather than upconverting it to 1080i. Give it a try & see what your eyes tell you.

You will be as happy or most probably happier with D*, so don't sweat it.

[itguy05]

I've seen the picture on a "Dish" (FTA) setup and the PQ on Dish SD is HORRIBLE - I can't imagine people paying for that. Blockiness and artifacting on text, pixellation on motion, etc.

That being said, if you're OK with Dish's SD PQ DTV will be fine - it's a little soft, but without the nastiness of Dish.

[JeffBowser]

I've seen D, E, and Comcast all recently. The HD looked quite similar on all, the SD between D and E similar, and Comcast looking butt-ugly on SD, and even more mind-boggling was their fuzzy analog feeds.

[MIAMI1683]

If it's all about HD and thats what you watch you won't be dissapointed with the mpeg 4 channels, and selection. The sd is ok at best but I don't watch sd any longer mainly because what I do watch is in hd now.

[bt-rtp]

Be sure to go with HDMI for the video connection to your Panasonic. On mine, the picture quality is way better via HDMI vesus Component.

With my D install a week away I am getting a little nervous. I am with E now and the PQ on HD is great and SD is pretty darn good for SD. I have a Panasonic 50" 1080p plasma set. I am not leaving E because of PQ. I am leaving because the monthly cost of D with promos is substantially lower than I am paying E now and D has more HD. Anyone out there been able to compare the PQ between D and E lately. I am just hoping that the PQ of D is not worse than E. Thanks !

[bwaldron]

Be sure to go with HDMI for the video connection to your Panasonic. On mine, the picture quality is way better via HDMI vesus Component.

Huh. I've got a couple of Panny plasmas (not 1080p, though), and don't find any apparent PQ difference between component and HDMI.

[sharksfan]

Be sure to go with HDMI for the video connection to your Panasonic. On mine, the picture quality is way better via HDMI vesus Component.

I noticed an improvement moving from HDMI to component as far as my HR21 is concerned.

[bt-rtp]

The most apparent differences are visable when accessing the guide and menus.

With a component video connection, the edges on the fonts and graphic images are blurry or fuzzy looking.

With a HDMI video connection, the edges in all of the fonts and graphic images are very crisp and sharp.

[bwaldron]

The most apparent differences are visable when accessing the guide and menus.

With a component video connection, the edges on the fonts and graphic images are blurry or fuzzy looking.

This just isn't true at all on my systems. HDMI looks great. Component looks great. No differences like what you're describing, nor should there be (unless a bad set of component cables are used).

But of course, people should use what works best for them.

[bt-rtp]

It is related to the fact that the resolution of the guides and menu graphics are not rendered in a standard HD display format such as 720p or 1080i, but something less like 640x480.... I can't remember. It was another DBStalk poster that provided this information to me.

We discovered it when using a component video connection and by setting the HR20 to 480p format, then the display of fonts and the guide graphics was fantastic.

When using component, all other programming sources such as live sports and prime time HD shoes looked 100% perfect as you describe.

Give it a try.

This just isn't true at all on my systems. HDMI looks great. Component looks great. No differences like what you're describing, nor should there be (unless a bad set of component cables are used).

But of course, people should use what works best for them.