Digital Satellite on Analog TV

Re: Digital Satellite on Analog TV

The satellite box converts the incoming digital signal to analog because until a few years ago all TVs were analog, and even now most digital sets are also HD sets, and your DirecTV receiver isn't HD, so there's no point in its sending out a purely digital signal. Your outputs are probably limited to coax, s-video and an RCA video jack. If you're lucky you might have a component video output. (Analog.) You will have a digital audio output, but the image is still going to be analog.

Since you're getting a hi-def digital television, you may find your standard def signal looks worse than it did on your analog set. If you were just getting an SD or ED digital set, you probably wouldn't notice much difference. Satellite and cable signals tend to be heavily compressed. Digital does not automatically mean "better". Video CD was "digital". It sucked. Laserdisc, which had analog video, looked infinitely better. DVD is better than either, but it took more than merely being digital to do that.

If you're buying an HD set and eventually upgrade to DirecTV-HD and a new receiver, you'll see a big difference on your HD channels - but the SD channels will either look about the same or worse, depending on the source signal. That's just the nature of HDTV and SD signals, whether from cable, satellite or over the air. (Even SD DVD will look anywhere from stunning to crappy scaled up to HD, all depending on the quality of the original source material.)

Regards,

Joe

Re: Digital Satellite on Analog TV

Yes, you can have a standard def digital signal. NO digital wouldn't automatically "be better than analog." I don't know any other ways to say that.

Despite the industry propaganda, digital does not equal "better quality." A piece of 35mm film is purely analog. A 100 x 100 BMP file is digital. Which do you think can store more picture information? And there is, again, basically no market for purely SD digital signals. The lowest resolution you'll find in digital sets is EDTV, 525 line progressive scan. And your satellite receiver was designed before they existed. People with HDTVs generally want HD signals, so even newly made SD DirecTV receivers don't output digital signals. The TVs they're designed to work with don't accept them, and if you have an HDTV, DirecTV would much rather upgrade you to HD than offer digital SD STBs.

Besides, at least half of the content you're watching on DirecTV doesn't originate as digital in the first place. Most SD broadcast and cable/sat channels are analog. DirecTV converts them to digital purely because digital is more efficient for satellite transmission, not for reasons of quality. (It is true that an analog signal can be broken up, attenuated and distorted under circumstances where a digital signal can be more robust. But it is also the case that you can at least see and hear even a poor qualty analog signal at a point below which a digital signal would cut out entirely. I'm sure you've experienced "rain fade" Is that "better" than ghosts or a fuzzy picture on an analog channel?)

So what you're watching has been converted from analog to digital and back to analog. Why would "keeping" it digital make the picture look better?


Yes. And if your set is a "fixed pixel" design (basically anything other than CRT - LCD or plasma flat panel, LCD RP, DLP, LCoS) it will also scale all incoming signals to its native resolution. If you're getting a 1080p set or a 720p/768p one, that's all it can display. One of the reasons SD tends to look lousy on HD sets is this scaling, which with a marginal incoming signal (like a local UHF station) is basically trying to scrape too little jam over too much bread. A line multiplier can do remarkable things (a good DVD looks almost like HD on my 720p LCoS) but when it has too few pixels to interpolated from, it can look blocky and grainy.

I should have mentioned in my first post that the other thing that makes SDTV look really lousy on an HD set is the way the TV is setup out of the box. Make sure you have a copy of Digital Video Essentials or Avia Guide to Home Theater before you get the set. You'll want to calibrate the brightness, contrast, sharpness, tint and color before you even try watching any program material on the set. Otherwise you'll be as horrified as most HDTV buyers are when they turn on that set for the first time.

Hope this helps,

Joe

Re: Digital Satellite on Analog TV

Can't Joe request a new box from Dish for his HDTV that has an HDMI output (though *its* digital output might not look better than component), or if the HDTV is equipped properly, a cable card, so that digital-to-analog conversion never occurs?

And Joe, if you don't want to spend $$ on a video set up disc right away, you can use what may be in your dvd collection already:

THX Optimizer

This contains a series of fundamental configuration screens that can really help your monitor produce a much more accurate image and it only takes about 10 minutes to use. It also has some audio tests too. It's on my Attack Of The Clones dvd, IIRC in the "Options" submenu and its icon is rather dimly lit so I have to look carefully for it.

Re: Digital Satellite on Analog TV

It might be easier if the Joe requests a new box from DirecTV since that is his TV content provider. But that's not just a request, that's an upgrade since all boxes that have HDMI are also HD boxes. If Joe had done this a few months ago before DirecTV started broadcasting all of the new HD channels, it would have been a simple request. I got a new DVR (HR20-100), a new 5 LNB dish, a new 6x8 multi-switch and installation for $19.95. Now everyone wants the new channels so DirecTV is not giving out the deals. I've seen $99 and $199 upgrades as the more common amounts. And it all depends on how long you have been a customer, how much you pay per month and auto payment setup.

I have 2 different DirecTV DVR's connected with HDMI. I can see no difference in quality when watching standard def material when I compare the picture to my SD DVR connected via S-video. DirecTV's SD picture is optimized for a 32" analog tube TV that has not been calibrated. Upgrading to an HDTV but still watching standard def is like going to the eye doctor and getting glasses only to find out that your wife has been ugly for years. You just didn't notice.

Cable cards don't help in satellite situations. They only work with cable. Hence the name cable card.

-Robert

Re: Digital Satellite on Analog TV

I'm not Robert, but I think I have the answer.

No. Robert is saying that prior to adding a new group of many additional high-def channels, DirecTV would swap out an SD box/DVR for an HD one with relatively little cost or bother. But now that they're offering the extended HD-lineup their HD upgrades include new hardware (needed to get the extra channels) which is much more expensive.

He's talking about two HD upgrade paths, not talking about a digital SD box with an HDMI output.

As far as I know no one has ever offered an SD satellite receiver with HDMI or even DVI outputs. (I don't think there were any SD cable boxes with those connections, either.)

Regards,

Joe

Re: Digital Satellite on Analog TV

And there's only been one SD box that had 480i component video outputs. Basically, with an SD box you are stuck with RF (channel 3/4), composite video or s-video. If you want a digital video path between your satellite receiver and your TV you need a high def box. But that doesn't improve your standard def signals. You must upgrade your programming and watch HD channels to get the full benefit.

-Robert

Re: Digital Satellite on Analog TV

That sounds very odd. These sets seem to basically be computer monitors that have a secondary use as televisions. 900 progressive line screens were common in even CRT-based computer monitors back in the old days. The aspect ratio seems to be about 14:1. Of course nothing is designed to be shown at that ratio, so everything you watched on it would be pillar-boxed or letterboxed (or cropped/zoomed) And it will have to scale all television inputs - upconverting 480i and 720p signals, and downconverting 1080i and 1080p. My instinct would be to stay away from these as they are not true HDTVs, even with 900 lines of picture info.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Digital Satellite on Analog TV

Not really. You can break TVs into roughly the following categories, some of which are close to impossible to find in stores these days:

- old school CRTs, the TVs people have been using for decades. Essentially 480i. (in reality 525i, about 480+ visible, the rest being hidden at the edges of the set, digital video uses 480 lines to store actual picture data).

- HD CRTs, direct view and/or rear projection. Most are 480p/1080i, some are 540p/1080i, they convert 480p to 540p so they can get away using one scanning frequency, simplifying the electronics. There were like a couple model years of Panasonics that also supported 720p scan rate but were discontinued due to the extra cost. 720i is not used, it's not an ATSC format.

- ED plasmas, 480p.

- HD fixed pixel displays, flat panel (LCD, plasma) or microdisplay rear projection / front projection (DLP, LCD, LCOS/SXRD/D-ILA). All of these have an inherent native resolution you should look for, all video is converted to this format for display. 1920x1080p, 1366x768p, 1280x720p are common ratios. The non-1080p models tend to all be lumped together as "720p" sets although some stores very misleadingly call them "1080i" sets. The 16:10 ratio models you see tend to be repurposed computer monitors as that's a common ratio for monitors. I haven't really carefully researched them, I don't know if they display black bars to achieve proper 16:9 video or if the picture gets slightly distorted. Anyone know?

As for the digital/analog thing you were asking about earlier ... it's not the digital->analog conversion that kills your quality (even if multiple D->A, A->D steps), as this is fairly accurate w/ modern DACs/ADCs; most people will confirm little difference between component connections & HDMI/DVI. It's what Joseph tried to explain, that digital is no guarantee of quality. Given a certain amount of bandwidth, a satellite company can choose to use digital technology to either send few high quality, high resolution video channels, or very many low quality, low res channels. For the SD channels, they chose the latter, so they could advertise 100s of channels, and because people on the old sets weren't screaming too much about the quality.

But now people are getting much bigger HD sets, so they have to go the other way. You'll have to get a HD receiver to get those channels though, get the HD-DVR package. Or consider cable/phone company options if they have competitive offerings in your locale.