I have the Hitachi 36", and DVD pictures are fantastic. We have the Dish network, and I'm not going to get the hi-def decoder until more content is offered, so I'm not expecting real high quality images on the TV. But a lot of the times, especially if the image on the screen is moving fast, it's almost like watching an MPEG-1 video on a 486...a little blockiness, but a lot of lines, and fuzzy, sorta sparkly-shimmering areas among somewhat jagged lettering on occasion. Why would this happen? You would think that the image would at least be a little better than that. And you can REALLY see when local people use really cheap equipment to make their commercials. Thanks!
Darren late last year Dish had to comply with the "must carry laws" they had to squeeze more channels into the already limited bandwith. They had to lower the compression quality of there core programming to do so. This is probably a good part of what you're seeing(Dish did launch a new sat to help this problem and another new one is going up late summer) Also you didn't mention what type of video connection you had. A F-connection and composite connection are more likely to create video artifacts.
Well, I can understand how cramming more content in would necessitate a lower resolution... I'm using an S-Video connection from the EchoStar box (4000 series, maybe? I'm at work)into a Yamaha 5240, then an S-Video from the Yamaha into the TV. The RCA connection gave the same look, so I went with the S-Video. I even tried bypassing the Yamaha with both S and RCA connections, but the quality still looked the same. The only thing I haven't done was a coaxial connection. I figured the other two connections gave a better signal. Maybe it would work better? It would have to go in through the "antennea" connection. But even if I got the HD box, the non-HD chanels would look just as skimpy, right?
