Picture Quality DISH vs Cox Digital

4844 Views 8 Replies 5 Participants Last post by gjrhine, Dec 27, 2006

DCabrera

Discussion Starter · Dec 23, 2006

I was a long time (7 years) Dish customer. I recently decided to make a change from DISH to Cox Digital cable. The HD DVR provided by Cox is a Motorola 6412 which is hooked up to my 37 inch Sharp Aquos via Component cables. The HD picture quality is incredible. However, all non-HD channels are just plain lousy. The picture seems fuzzy and out of focus most of the time and no amount of adjustment seems to help. To my eyes, the picture quality that I got from my DISH non-HD receiver hooked up via s-video was superior to what I now have. Has anyone else observed this or is it just my imagination? Is there a fix to this issue or should I just go back to DISH?

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bderouen

· #2 · Dec 25, 2006

DCabrera said:
I was a long time (7 years) Dish customer. I recently decided to make a change from DISH to Cox Digital cable. The HD DVR provided by Cox is a Motorola 6412 which is hooked up to my 37 inch Sharp Aquos via Component cables. The HD picture quality is incredible. However, all non-HD channels are just plain lousy. The picture seems fuzzy and out of focus most of the time and no amount of adjustment seems to help. To my eyes, the picture quality that I got from my DISH non-HD receiver hooked up via s-video was superior to what I now have. Has anyone else observed this or is it just my imagination? Is there a fix to this issue or should I just go back to DISH?

Hi!
I can tell you I left Cox HD/Digital Cable about 3 or 4 years ago and I know I'll never look back. There's just no comparison between the quality you can get on satellite versus cable.

I originally signed up for DirecTV, but being very sceptical of the whole satellite thing (you know the propoganda put out by cable...'every time it rains, you'll lose signal'...BAH!) I had only gone with the most basic non HD service I could get. I was on Cox's HD service. the DirecTV man came out and asked me to look at an HD channel first on Cox. i did. He then hooked me up on their basic service. I kid you know when I say their SD service beat the he** out of Cox's HD service! I'm on Dish now since when I moved and bought a house, Direct made me wait 3 weeks for an install date, sent a tech out taht showed up at 9PM mind you and then claimed no line of site and went home. when i called them back to try and get someone else out there, I was going to have to wait antoher 3 weeks! I said no way, called Dish and was hooked up and MUCH happier within 4 days! Dish's picture, not to mention customer service and HD service, has beat Direct, from my experience.

So...all that to say...yeah, if you want a good picture quality, go back to Dish and dump Cox! You'll be much happier!

Good luck!
Bruce

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kb7oeb

· #3 · Dec 25, 2006

I had a chance to compare cox digital simulcast (in Phoenix) to dish on the same tv and I'd give local channel PQ to cox and national PQ to dish but in the end difference was only slight.

DCabrera said:
The HD picture quality is incredible. However, all non-HD channels are just plain lousy. The picture seems fuzzy and out of focus most of the time and no amount of adjustment seems to help. To my eyes, the picture quality that I got from my DISH non-HD receiver hooked up via s-video was superior to what I now have. Has anyone else observed this or is it just my imagination? Is there a fix to this issue or should I just go back to DISH?

This could be due to where the upscaling is taking place. Your cable box was probably doing the conversion instead of the TV. When you use s-video your tv is forced to upconvert the channel. You could try seeing if you can configure the cable box to use native pass through or if that option is not available you could try connecting an s-video cable to the cable box and then switching inputs depending on if you are watching an HD channel or not.

bderouen said:
DirecTV man came out and asked me to look at an HD channel first on Cox. i did. He then hooked me up on their basic service. I kid you know when I say their SD service beat the he** out of Cox's HD service!

I find that hard to believe, either the channel was not broadcasting HD, your cable box was not configured correctly or cox is exceptionally bad in your area. I have Dish HD and have compared TNT-HD and HBO-HD to the cox versions at others homes and thought the quality was about the same.

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bderouen

· #4 · Dec 25, 2006

kb7oeb said:
I find that hard to believe, either the channel was not broadcasting HD, your cable box was not configured correctly or cox is exceptionally bad in your area. I have Dish HD and have compared TNT-HD and HBO-HD to the cox versions at others homes and thought the quality was about the same.

I'm telling ya...I was, and had been watching the specific HD channel range for whatever channel it was at the time. And this had been the 2nd box I had from them, as sometihng had gone wrong with the first one...I can't remember what. So I'm certain the box was configured normally...well...normally for cox at least. I can't remember exactly what channel it was right now as that was a few years ago, but it was so much better, I couldn't believe it. Now, Cox's HD was better than their digital...oh yeah, but Direct's (and now Dish's) digital was even better than Cox's HD.

And on the subject of the SD channels, I just had the chance to remind myself of how much better SD is on satellite. When i bought my townhome recently, it had Cox through the HOA. I got in, made a few phone calls and a few friends and we got cable taken off of our HOA bill, so some of us could go to satellite. During that transition time, i was stuck with Cox Digital. Man...you couldn't get me off of that fast enough!

I know it sounds strange, and I probably wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself, but the difference was astounding.

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mikec73

· #5 · Dec 25, 2006

I have noticed the same here with twc. I recently started installing cable service and the few I have done with the SA 8300HD using component or HDMI cables, the picture quality is worse or about the same as my Dish 625 (SD) box.

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DCabrera

Discussion Starter · #6 · Dec 26, 2006

Thanks to all of you for your replies. KB - I think you may be right about the upscaling. My DVR as an RF output that I connected to an older non-digital TV and found that te PQ for SD was as good as that older set able to display. It actually looked better than the PQ on my new set. I've seen HD on a few different systems and found the PQ to be great on all of them. It seems that HD is more of an all or nothing type thing - either a great picture or none at all if the signal isn't strong enough.

Mike- funny you should mention the SA 8300HD. I was watching TV on a 42" plasma hooked up to an 8300 earlier tonight and I agree with you 100%. The PQ was no better than my old Dish 301.

Bruce - You've talked me into it. I gonna eat some crow and go back to Dish.

Thanks
Dario

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kb7oeb

· #7 · Dec 26, 2006

My parents have a 8300HD and it looks fine,if you don't go through the somehwat hidden setup procedure where you define what resolutions your set supports it will only output 480i

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mikec73

· #8 · Dec 27, 2006

we always go thru that setup routine on the 8300s and set to 1080i. The picture that comes out is about same as dish sd quality. Needless to say, I may install this stuff but I dont subscribe to it. I'll keep the dish!

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gjrhine

· #9 · Dec 27, 2006

If you let the box do the conversion SD will be equal or better than satellite. And HD will be far better than overly compressed satellite. The bigger the display the more the difference.

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