DirecTV Standard Def Quality Poll

Hard to judge, but I don't think it's worse than it used to be, I just have a bigger TV

Stuart Sweet said:

Hard to judge, but I don't think it's worse than it used to be

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It is much worse than it used to be -- way back when, before LIL.

It is worse than it was in the beginning, as bwaldron points out but that ship sailed a long time ago. I find some SD better than cable and some worse.

It concerns me less and less as time goes on.

kcmurphy88 said:

I find SD quality on DirecTV to be worse than ever, even with the massive increase in satellite bandwidth

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There really hasn't been any bandwidth increase for national SD in a long long time.

Maybe its seems worse on your HD receivers..??
I do not have HD yet and been a sub since 1995 and I think SD picture quality is fantastic.
Course I am watching it on a Sammy 1080P receiver. I assume that helps.
I am so pleased I am in no hurry to switch to HD

D*'s SD does kinda suck compared to Dish, but their HD is better and thats all that matters to me.

I think that it has gotten worse, but not by that much. I think that anyone with HD (including myself) is somewhat getting spoiled by HD programming so when you go back and watch standard def programming, it just has to disappoint you. Your mind is just so mesmerised by HD that when you go back and watch standard def, your brain is just saying, "Hey, this isn't right. It doesn't look as good as it did before. It looks terrible." Of course, that's just my theory. There could be many different factors playing into it, but I'll admit, SD does not look like it used to to me.

I agree. Plus, as we get larger tv's, SD is going to look even worse. I generally avoid all SD channels, will be glad when I get more HBO's in HD.

I think part of it is everyone is getting bigger TVs than before. The Premium Movies Channels seem to look pretty good for SD. Some national channels like WGN(307) look pretty bad. Most of my SD locals look bad for SD except CW(which won't have HD or digital till Feb 19 2009). Luckily most channels I watch has an HD version of it and more HD is coming.

As long as i am convinced they look good that's all that matters.Any way next week i an going to get a new pair of glasses and maybe i will see things differently.

I can only compare it to cable, and I rate it as about the same, on average. Except TWC had a few SD channels that were excellent, and better than any SD I've seen on DirecTV. But regardless of how DirecTV's SD compares, I sure would like to see it improve. The best quality SD looks to me better than lots of HD I see (though the best HD is much superior to the best SD). I wish I could foresee some better SD in our future, but I imagine DirecTV and others figure that improvement in SD bandwidth would be pointless in the long run, because it would be overtaken by the conversion of SD to HD. Why bother with an expensive conversion which will soon be superceded?

i guess i am spoiled by HD...but ch. 360 is all i watch in SD
regularly & actually it has been looking better to me lately...

tadtam said:

I am so pleased I am in no hurry to switch to HD

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And the nose says to the face, "I spite you!"

With 100 channels in HD, you are happy to have SD?

Better than the crap that Dish sells. I've seen it recently and it's HORRIBLE - soft and macroblock-ey...

I'll take the softness of DTV any day over that garbage.

Comcast is about the same now as well.

I have dish, my parents have direct. to me, their SD looks MUCH better than mine.

I have an LCD, and they have DLP. not sure how much of a difference that is making, but their TV seems to have a smoother picture.

I have all my SD channels in HD as well, so its not a big deal to me.

SD looks pretty good to me. It doesn't look as good as it used to, but that's mainly because I've upgraded my displays. SD doesn't look as good on an HD set as it did on my SD CRT's.

When I had both analog cable and D*, the SD PQ always looked better on cable. (on both SD and HDTVs)

Thanks to the draw of ST/SF, I bought a HR10-250, for one HDTV, and got hooked on HD OTA DVR.

So, I decided to deal with the lower PQ SD by ditching cable, saving the coin, and waiting for more HD.

I'm happy with D*...but yeah the SD PQ isn't the best.

Mine looks fine, but I had to play with res settings to get it to look good.. TV does a bad job a scaling it up.. not much I watch in SD tho

Charter cable (what I've had forever here in Alabama, until I switched to Directv in June) must have horrible picture quality, because Directv's SD and their HD both look much better than Charter's.

I feel like I've been living in the dark ages!!!