Dish messing with Voom, All are now HD-Lite 1280x1080i [Archive] - Page 2

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Stewart Vernon

12-10-05, 08:53 PM

I think they got so many complaints about the bad resolution that not everyone was seeing... that they are tweaking other things and we are seeing the freezes and audio/video dropouts and pixelation.

But then we are also seeing it on HDNet/HDNet Movies as well...

and I hate to bring it up... but was anyone else watching Codebreakers on ESPNHD? It was VERY grainy to me... ESPN on channel 140 actually looked sharper and less grainy. Other HD (locals for instance OTA) didn't look grainy, so I know my TV isn't out of adjustment... and the Fish channel (Demo 9443) was still sharp.

moman19

12-11-05, 06:31 PM

we have to ask ourselves do we want quality hdtv or quantity hdtv.?? i would like both, but for now untill the systems get up to speed i will settle for more hdtv channels, at lower resolution. dish knows the people want full resolution so lets give them a chance to get things going. i believe next year will be the greatest for hdtv. KEEP ON VOOMIN

Nooooo. It should be just the opposite! With this line of thought, D* would shoehorn enough "HD" channels onto the birds until it's just SD-quality?

I would much rather have fewer HD channels that contained superior PQ and programming. Do we really need to waist precious bandwidth on such things as public-domain, ancient HD cartoons?

JohnH

12-11-05, 06:39 PM

You would seem to be saying only live HD is what you want.

I say if it is a cartoon it should look as good as it did in the theater.

Stewart Vernon

12-11-05, 08:10 PM

You would seem to be saying only live HD is what you want.

I say if it is a cartoon it should look as good as it did in the theater.

I think you probably missed his point... Animania is hardly showing state-of-the-art animation. Mostly repeats of really old stuff (like Dick Tracy or Pink Panther or Mr Magoo) that isn't helped at all by HD... No recent HD cartoon movies that would look spectacular (like Shrek or Toy Story or the Invincibles).

Given the choice between 5 quality channels, and 10 ok channels... I'd rather have 5 quality channels.

Even though I like having the Voom channels, for $5 a month... they really could use 5 channels instead of the current 10 and show exactly the same programming they do now, with less repeats! And the quality of each channel could be higher instead of trying to squeeze and compress them to fit into the limited space they have.

A lot of people confuse quantity with quality... But it is fair to say that since we all have different tastes, don't just knock variety... so if there truly are some "compelling" HD channels out there, I'd like to see them... but not at the expense of having not-really-HD.

SD can look really nice if it wasn't compressed. My SD OTA digital local channels via antenna look amazing when compared to those same compressed channels of SD on Dish... and I do not want to see them go that way with HD.

I'm a little more understanding than some folks have been at this point, and I've even argued against some of the technical statements by people in this thread who I believe are mistaken in their "facts"...

BUT, make no mistake that I 100% agree with everyone on this thread who has complained about the downturn in HD quality recently, and 100% behind people who want Dish to fix things and not overcompress and ruin the HD that until recently they were truly the leader in high quality delivery.

BigDaddy10

12-11-05, 08:36 PM

Man the Voom Channels are almost unwatchable now. I am also getting the pixelation and drop outs. The picture is so soft it looks like they have camera filters on all the channels. If they don't fix this I am definitely gonna try cable. I love Dish but they are losing me now, this is the worst decision they have ever made in my book. I've e-mailed them 5 times over the last couple of days about the poor quality.

BoisePaul

12-11-05, 08:49 PM

...And the quality of each channel could be higher instead of trying to squeeze and compress them to fit into the limited space they have...

Since when is the space available for Voom a problem? According to the Dish Channel Chart, there's nothing on Rainbow 1 other than Voom, and the unavailable channels (the rest of the Voom 21) are on different transponders than those which are currently available. I guess the situation on the 129 bird is a bit different, but I don't see a lack of bandwidth on R1.

I wonder what plans E* has for R1 that might cause them to try to conserve bandwidth by resorting to these measures...

Stewart Vernon

12-12-05, 01:08 AM

Since when is the space available for Voom a problem? According to the Dish Channel Chart, there's nothing on Rainbow 1 other than Voom, and the unavailable channels (the rest of the Voom 21) are on different transponders than those which are currently available. I guess the situation on the 129 bird is a bit different, but I don't see a lack of bandwidth on R1.

I wonder what plans E* has for R1 that might cause them to try to conserve bandwidth by resorting to these measures...

That was sort of the point I was getting at... not so much that they don't have the capacity right now, but that they are anticipating not having capacity and/or as you allude to perhaps they already have plans in mind for the capacity so they are trying to tweak and compress and play with bitrates now to see how low they can go.

I'm not an expert on Dish satellite transponder bandwidth right now, but if what other folks have said is true, it seems they have no reason to be doing all this now unless they are preparing for something else that this kind of tweaking helps them get to.

But I don't think I want to get to that place!

Gary Murrell

12-12-05, 07:06 AM

steelhorse

12-12-05, 07:14 AM

I emailed dish about the problem.
This is what they sent me.

Thank you for expressing your concerns and interest in DISH Network.
Customer input is an important tool in our efforts to continuously
improve the quality of the DISH Network service.

We have confirmed the VOOM issue. We have had meetings over the last
few days regarding this topic. Another one is scheduled tomorrow to
finalize our solution. The coordination involved in achieving these
changes may take awhile. It is our policy not to give out the technical
aspect of our operations, but rest assured we will be working as fast as
possible to resolve it. We thank you for your continued patience and
for pointing out this situation to us. Our HD customers are valuable,
and we hope you are pleased with the result!

At DISH Network we appreciate the time customers take to email their
audio/video quality concerns. Thank you for your patience, information,
and for being a valued customer.

Gary Murrell

12-12-05, 07:16 AM

which problem did you email about Steel??, the HD-Lite bad picture quality on Voom or the breakups that started a few days back??

-Gary

LtMunst

12-12-05, 08:40 AM

which problem did you email about Steel??, the HD-Lite bad picture quality on Voom or the breakups that started a few days back??

-Gary

The breakups started on Monsters back on 12/1. I bet the encoders are having trouble with this new resolution scheme.

steelhorse

12-12-05, 09:03 AM

I emailed about the rave channel breaking up. It was unwatchable. I think it was Saturday night when I emailed them.

jrb531

12-12-05, 09:46 AM

I haven't visited my thread in a few days so I thought I would update the situation

my page has been updated every day for the past week or 2, I updated this morning, so all info is current as of today:

http://home.bigsandybb.com/gmurrell/bitrate.html

to basically put it bluntly, nothing has changed(all HD included) since the night these 4 channels went to 1280x1080i

give Dish a break on Voom right now as they are obviously preparing or are in the process of doing something to these channels

-Gary

LOL I'll give them a break as soon as they give me a break on my bill.

IMHO if they was to "test" some new forms of compression or resolution then let them test this on their stupid demo channel which is eating up bandwidth that could be used for a real channel. As someone else has stated... their demo (hook new customers to the glory of HD) channel still seems to be top quality so this is not an accross the board issue. This is deliberate and not some glitch otherwise their demo channel would also be affected.

After seeing how bad HD "can" be I would much rather DIsh dump all forms of HD and put up less compressed SD channels. "Good" SD beats the !@#$% out of this over compressed HD crap Dish has put out.

Remember.... it's not better just because someone else "says" it is. At it's best, SD is DVD quality and few people seem to complain about the excellent quality of DVD's when done right.

Hey.... I'm all for HD.... it is the future but as long as Dish (and DTV) put more stock into using half their birds to broadcast hugely duplicated local channels they will have little room for "true" HD so if you cannot give me "real" HD then give me quality SD

If I had to pick between the two that is.

-JB

Gary Murrell

12-12-05, 12:49 PM

JB, you do know you can call and get a refund for this month for Voom ??

like I said no reason to complain as something is "up" with the Voom's

-Gary

Stewart Vernon

12-12-05, 04:43 PM

A $5 refund wouldn't help most of us too much... so I've just been waiting to see if they say anything on the Chat tonight and/or what happens by the end of the year.

If the channels keep breaking up like they have been recently, then saving $5 every month would be significant and I'd consider dropping them... but in the meantime I'm being patient and waiting to see what happens.

saweetnesstrev

12-13-05, 02:22 AM

Gary nice site,, im getting HD soon :)

jrb531

12-13-05, 03:53 AM

JB, you do know you can call and get a refund for this month for Voom ??

like I said no reason to complain as something is "up" with the Voom's

-Gary

I cancelled all my HD channels.

I did so for the following reasons:

1. I really only watched Discovery, Rave, Equador and Monsters
2. I have only 1 HD set, 2 SD sets with DVR's
3. The $15 for the 4 channels on 1 set did not make alot of sense to me. I also could not record on the HD set.

I really only kept the HD because of the superior quality. I put up with the relatively high cost (I care about the channels I watch and not some channel count LOL - what good is 200 channels of HD if I only watch 4?)

When the quality went to pot it was the straw that broke the camels back. I took that saved $15 and got HBO/Max for $17 - $2 more than I could watch on all 3 of my sets. Gained the HBO HD channel and at least I feel I am getting more value for my $$$.

I understand that others may feel differently than I and I respect that but as I said before, HD cartoons? Give me a break. And as long as I'm on the subject of content I also wonder how many people truly watch that HD fashion channel. I imagine that to some it's a wonderfull channel but in my narrow eyes LOL, it's nothing but rich people looking for an excuse to buy overpriced clothing that looks ugly as sin *smiles* and programs that showcase art galleries.

I imagine there are some people who watch that cartoon channel as well as people who watch the other channels but I have yet to see "anyone" here or elsewhere list any of those channels as "must have" HD and when they lower quality on what "I" consider the "must have" channels to keep that crap going then I move on.

This has nothing to do with hardware. Dish uplinks the programming to whatever bird they want. If there was a hardware issue they could move stuff around. I find it utterly amazing that Dish "wastes" a "ton" of bandwidth with a demo channel in good times but now that some "real" programming is suffering they keep the demo channel going 100% and crap up the real stuff? They must have lost their minds LOL.

-JB

kstevens

12-13-05, 03:53 AM

I was watching a couple of the voom channels last night and didn't notice any drop outs at all.

Ken

LtMunst

12-13-05, 06:23 AM

I was watching a couple of the voom channels last night and didn't notice any drop outs at all.

Ken

Same here. Monsters was clean.

dsanbo

12-13-05, 06:40 AM

Gotta agree...Watched MonstersHD last night....and Elvira'a set never looked better.....(TEETH....I'm talking TEETH....:lol: )

LtMunst

12-13-05, 10:53 AM

Gotta agree...Watched MonstersHD last night....and Elvira'a set never looked better.....(TEETH....I'm talking TEETH....:lol: )

Elvira's set ... That's what HD is all about. :D And I'm not talking teeth.

JohnH

12-13-05, 11:48 AM

Elvira's set ... That's what HD is all about. :D And I'm not talking teeth.

I guess you are saying the host with most from Florida was on MonstersHD. :)

LtMunst

12-13-05, 12:03 PM

I guess you are saying the host with most from Florida was on MonstersHD. :)

Almost everyday as the host of Monsterama.

Stewart Vernon

12-13-05, 02:34 PM

I understand that others may feel differently than I and I respect that but as I said before, HD cartoons? Give me a break. And as long as I'm on the subject of content I also wonder how many people truly watch that HD fashion channel. I imagine that to some it's a wonderfull channel but in my narrow eyes LOL, it's nothing but rich people looking for an excuse to buy overpriced clothing that looks ugly as sin *smiles* and programs that showcase art galleries.

I agree, Animania is such a waste of what it could be... There are plenty of cartoons that would benefit from the HD treatment, and instead they are showing stuff that really could be presented just fine on Cartoon Network.

I'm also perplexed about Ultra. Does anyone in the real world ever wear stuff from those fashion shows anyway?

P Smith

12-13-05, 03:09 PM

you don't need to wear those stuff - just watch it with a pleasure :)

Stewart Vernon

12-13-05, 06:37 PM

you don't need to wear those stuff - just watch it with a pleasure :)

But you can't watch people in real life wear them if they don't wear them :)

jrb531

12-14-05, 08:26 AM

Stewart Vernon

12-14-05, 01:51 PM

Am I the only one who does "not" find those walking bones of women attractive? I almost want to yell out to the TV - "Eat a cheeseburger" LOL

If these were supermodels wearing ugly clothes then maybe worth watching but walking bones wearing ugly clothes does nothing for me :)

-JB

I try not to be insulting because everyone has his or her own idea of attractiveness... and I find my opinion varies from other people's... plus calling people "ugly" isn't a terribly nice thing to do.

BUT, having said that... I often see some of the women in magazines or on TV as models and think they are being forced or at least pressured to under-eat and it doesn't look healthy to me. Ignoring attractiveness for the moment, people are meant to eat to survive, and some of these girls look like they are just barely eating enough to survive.

jrb531

12-15-05, 01:04 PM

I try not to be insulting because everyone has his or her own idea of attractiveness... and I find my opinion varies from other people's... plus calling people "ugly" isn't a terribly nice thing to do.

BUT, having said that... I often see some of the women in magazines or on TV as models and think they are being forced or at least pressured to under-eat and it doesn't look healthy to me. Ignoring attractiveness for the moment, people are meant to eat to survive, and some of these girls look like they are just barely eating enough to survive.

Minor point.... I called the clothes ugly.... I used the more polictically correct "unattractive" in reference to the women :)

-JB

KingLoop

12-15-05, 02:44 PM

Minor point.... I called the clothes ugly.... I used the more polictically correct "unattractive" in reference to the women :)

-JB
I'm with you JB, Reubenesque girls are where it's at.

Stewart Vernon

12-15-05, 02:54 PM

Minor point.... I called the clothes ugly.... I used the more polictically correct "unattractive" in reference to the women :)

-JB

Sorry about that... I noticed you were talking about the clothes, I just didn't clarify that in my reply. I agree though, about the clothes, that I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to wear some of that stuff other than on those runway shows.

jrb531

12-15-05, 03:19 PM

Sorry about that... I noticed you were talking about the clothes, I just didn't clarify that in my reply. I agree though, about the clothes, that I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to wear some of that stuff other than on those runway shows.

:)

Just messin with ya.... no worries

-JB

Rogueone

12-18-05, 07:14 AM

anyone heard of SED TV before? I just read this news article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051216/tc_nm/column_pluggedin_dc) and it sounds like this could be the "holy grail" of HD :) hahaha

A flat panel that operates on a CRT principal! :) sound impossible? It has an electron emitter per pixel, so 1920x1080 will not be hard as long as the technology really works :) definitely going to need to keep an eye out for these next spring

dsanbo

12-18-05, 07:55 AM

Rogueone.....
SED does sound interesting.....It remains to be seen what the end price point will be...
In the Jan. '06 "WIDESCREEN" magazine, there was an article (Part 3 of 3) comparing the various HDTV screen formulations- CRT, DLP, Plasma, LCD, LCoS - and it "proclaimeed" LCoS to be "the new reference standard", replacing CRT.....But, from what I've read about SED....This COULD be the "next big thing" for HDTV....(crosses fingers....)

kckucera

12-21-05, 06:50 PM

Yes Mike that is what E* is hoping for. I would like to know if there is any email address and or phone number to complain directly about deteriorating PQ. I am almost sure there is and that someone has it handy.

Agree, my VOOM PQ now sucks, I tried both 1080i and 720p on my (Panny AE900 projector with 94 inch screen) and the quality in both is worse than before. I wonder if DISH is purposely downgrading to make MPEG4 look better. I either event they are within an inch of losing this $115 per month sucker.

Antknee

12-29-05, 08:30 AM