Horrible VOD quality

[rking5150]

I queued up the VOD version of "Bedtime Stories," but when I played it, the movie was unwatchable. And that's not only because of Adam Sandler.:) The movements were jerky; there was shadowing; just horrible. I cancelled the download and tried again, and had the same results. I then tried WALL-E, and it was also bad quality. I tried the other 2 HD-DVRs I have in the house, and none of them rendered a watchable movie.

What's the point of having VOD if you can't watch the content?:confused:

Anyone else have these issues?

[Scott Kocourek]

Did you give the download time for the progress bar to turn green? It is possible to have jerky playback if your download speed is not fast enough to watch immediatley, this happens very often when watching something in HD.

[eandras]

I queued up the VOD version of "Bedtime Stories," but when I played it, the movie was unwatchable. And that's not only because of Adam Sandler.:) The movements were jerky; there was shadowing; just horrible. I cancelled the download and tried again, and had the same results. I then tried WALL-E, and it was also bad quality. I tried the other 2 HD-DVRs I have in the house, and none of them rendered a watchable movie.

What's the point of having VOD if you can't watch the content?:confused:

Anyone else have these issues?

Are you trying to watch the download as the progress bar is in red? If so that is the problem. Another ssue my be your network. What is your download connection? DSL, (1.5 or 3.0), Fios, or Cable?

I have a 30 down cable internet connection and can start a movie right after it starts recording. When I had a DSL Connection it would take a while at 3.0 to be watchable. VOD from Directv is not the same as cable and never meant to be like cable

[harsh]

VOD from Directv is not the same as cable and never meant to be like cableAt the same time, they've done nothing to dissuade anyone from thinking that they were functionally the same.

[hilmar2k]

At the same time, they've done nothing to dissuade anyone from thinking that they were functionally the same.

I am not sure I agree with you 100% on that one. It is pretty clear that you need a high speed internet connection. While I agree they don't go out of their way to point out the differences, I don't think they really hide them either.

[jpl]

For what it's worth, the issue isn't with Starz. I've watched both of those movies via Starz VOD on FiOS, and the PQ was excellent.

[rking5150]

Did you give the download time for the progress bar to turn green? It is possible to have jerky playback if your download speed is not fast enough to watch immediatley, this happens very often when watching something in HD.

I actually had downloaded the movie completely the day before, and this was jerky. So then I tried to download it and watch it after 1-2 mins.

It was not a HD movie, which could account for the poor quality. But I would still expect it to be watchable.

[Tom Servo]

I think what the OP is referring to isn't jerky as in the picture stops and starts, but that it jitters badly during motion scenes. I've noticed this too on SD VOD content. It's most noticeable on animated programs or other scenes with vivid colors, because the two flickering colors where movement occurs is very obvious.

It's not like interlacing jitter where every other line lags, but the entire picture almost has a flicker to it.

It's not visible on all SD VOD I've watched, but a good bit of it. And it's not noticeable at all on the smattering of HD I've seen. There, the colors depth is just terrible. :rolleyes:

I think DirecTV is just overcompressing the files so they download faster; I can get 30 minutes of SD VOD a heck of a lot faster than 30 minutes of YouTube HQ video, and the DirecTV downloads always max out a lot slower than other downloads for some reason.

What really troubles me is I've seen the same effect crop up on a few SD channels, WGN being one of the more recent and memorable, during the first break of an episode of Barney Miller. After the first block of commercials, the video smoothed out for the rest of the show.

Unfortunately I don't think there's anything we can do about it unless we wanna wait even longer for VOD content to "turn green" and be watchable. (Which I wouldn't mind doing if the PQ wasn't so bad.)

[gitarzan]

I would really like VOD. I've tried to watch a few programs but they are such low quality and over compressed I don't even look any more.

[Dazed & Confused]

I need to check out this VOD picture quality thing you speak of. However, the first priority is to find something even worth watching.:D