[EMoMoney]

Who's responsibility is it to improve the MP4 quality, D* or the local affiliates? WMAR here in Baltimore was terrible during the Penn State game. Close up shots looked better, but wide views of the field, I could see the screen refreshing. I don't see this on ESPN HD during one of it's football games at all. I chose to upgrade to the HR20 because of the audio dropouts on my HR10. Please somebody convince me that the MP4 channels D* will be launching in the future will be better quality than what they are showing right now.

 

[mtnagel]

I don't know, but I assumed it was the local channel. Our local CBS sucks. By far the worst of the 4. I sent them an e-mail about it, but didn't hear anything, not surprisingly.

 

[PoitNarf]

Almost sounds like the encoding bugs that exist on some of the MPEG4 locals. Does motion look choppy? If so, then this is a problem with D* (seems to be specific to 1080i channels). They have been upgrading their encoding equipment to solve this problem, but only seem to be doing 1 city at a time. This was a problem in the NYC area, but they fixed it several weeks ago here.

 

[gator5000e]

I am having this same problem in Orlando. The Tennessee-LSU game looks pixilated and some shots look like the game is in slow motion/choppy. There is splochiness (is that a word?) and macro blocking. The game on ESPN2HD looks much better. This seems to be a significant step down in quality from the HR10-250, especially the OTA HD channels. I got the HR20 because of all the trouble I had picking up local HD channels. Right now the trouble was worth the better HD picture. Hopefully D* will get this rectified soon.

 

[btmoore]

I have not seen the choppyness, but I have seen bitstarved MPEG4 artifacts. It is not consistent. I have seen the same station be any thing from bad, fair to good. It would be nice if there was some way to report to D* about quality problems. If you call the csr they will want you to turn your box off and reset the card in the STB.

 

[gator5000e]

To me though, even ESPNHD and ESPN2HD doesn't look as good as it did/does on the TiVo. Hopefully this is tweakable with some software and firmware upgrades.

 

[325xia]

To me though, even ESPNHD and ESPN2HD doesn't look as good as it did/does on the TiVo. Hopefully this is tweakable with some software and firmware upgrades.

ESPNHD and ESPN2HD looks awesome on the HR20. 720p looks better than 1080i. That's what I have noticed on my Samsung LN-24695D, HDMI, HR20. No complaints here.

 

[Jobu]

To me though, even ESPNHD and ESPN2HD doesn't look as good as it did/does on the TiVo. Hopefully this is tweakable with some software and firmware upgrades.

I'm in orlando too, my cbs looks fine, but my abc is grainy and no dolby digi. ESPN looks horrible though on panned out shots. Up close the picture is great. I was watching the cavs-spurs game last night and the picture looked horrible when panned out.

 

[caimakale]

I believe ESPN and ABC (at least the sports) are broadcast in 720P, if you turn native off and set the resolution on your receiver to 1080i then naturally the picture won't look as good as it should. Some people on some TV's may not notice a difference at all, but I guarantee you others will.

 

[325xia]

I believe ESPN and ABC (at least the sports) are broadcast in 720P, if you turn native off and set the resolution on your receiver to 1080i then naturally the picture won't look as good as it should. Some people on some TV's may not notice a difference at all, but I guarantee you others will.

I recommend just leaving Native On and stop jacking with the TV's resolution. It will all come out of the HR20 correctly. It's a no brainer then. Just my opinion and it works for me.

 

[EMoMoney]

I recommend just leaving Native On and stop jacking with the TV's resolution. It will all come out of the HR20 correctly. It's a no brainer then. Just my opinion and it works for me.

Not everybody has the latest and greatest HDTVs either. I have a 4 year old rear projection that only has 480p, 480i and 1080i.

 

[LameLefty]

Surprisingly, the CBS broadcast of LSU-Tennessee looked pretty good here, with just a couple instances of pixelation and none of the macro-blocking I noticed two weeks ago during the Alabama-Tennessee game. Perhaps my local has tweaked their encoding or perhaps D* has bumped up the bit-rate a little. ESPN HD is just incredible, however. For that matter, even my local Fox HD channel is noticeably better than CBS at handling fast transitions, pans and zooms.

For what it's worth, I'm running with Native "Off", the HR20 set to 1080i only.

 

[hdtvfan0001]

Surprisingly, the CBS broadcast of LSU-Tennessee looked pretty good here, with just a couple instances of pixelation and none of the macro-blocking I noticed two weeks ago during the Alabama-Tennessee game. Perhaps my local has tweaked their encoding or perhaps D* has bumped up the bit-rate a little. ESPN HD is just incredible, however. For that matter, even my local Fox HD channel is noticeably better than CBS at handling fast transitions, pans and zooms.

For what it's worth, I'm running with Native "Off", the HR20 set to 1080i only.

Ditto, with same setup on 2 HR20s. Recordings were clean. with no pixelation noticed. What a game.

 

[hasan]

To me though, even ESPNHD and ESPN2HD doesn't look as good as it did/does on the TiVo. Hopefully this is tweakable with some software and firmware upgrades.

Neither of them are MPEG-4....and I doubt it has anything to do with the TiVo/HR20 hardware. They are both plainly bit starved and no hardware box can make up for that. Both channels have gotten worse over time. When first introduced ESPN-HD was outstanding (but still not equal to OTA). It no longer could be considered outstanding, by any stretch. Vastly superior to SD, yes! Again, this is where the term "HD-lite" comes from when discussing D*'s HD channels (non-MPEG-4). Highly variable at times, but mostly bit starved.

 

[iceman2a]

Who's responsibility is it to improve the MP4 quality, D* or the local affiliates? WMAR here in Baltimore was terrible during the Penn State game. Close up shots looked better, but wide views of the field, I could see the screen refreshing. I don't see this on ESPN HD during one of it's football games at all. I chose to upgrade to the HR20 because of the audio dropouts on my HR10. Please somebody convince me that the MP4 channels D* will be launching in the future will be better quality than what they are showing right now.

If OTA was active on the HR20 and you were able to compare OTA to MPEG4 you would see that D* is the problem! My OTA, via the H20 look great, it's only the MPEG4 (not all) that look like ****!

 

[joejhawk]

Neither of them are MPEG-4....and I doubt it has anything to do with the TiVo/HR20 hardware. They are both plainly bit starved and no hardware box can make up for that. Both channels have gotten worse over time. When first introduced ESPN-HD was outstanding (but still not equal to OTA). It no longer could be considered outstanding, by any stretch. Vastly superior to SD, yes! Again, this is where the term "HD-lite" comes from when discussing D*'s HD channels (non-MPEG-4). Highly variable at times, but mostly bit starved.

ESPN-HD looks better on my BrightHouse HD DVR than it does on D*. The studio shots and close-ups look great, but the panned out shots look crappy.