Just got Dish - very grainy.. (1 Viewer)

[DmitriP]

I've had my 42" Toshiba HDTV WS for a couple months now using broadcast(!), mostly for DVD movies.

Two days ago I took the plunge and signed up with dish.

First thing I noticed is that the mpeg decompression is pretty bad. Somewhere inbetween mpeg1 and mpeg2. I see artifacting around hard lines words, and in action scenes. My friend sat down and noticed immediately.

The only way to get rid of this is to turn sharpness down to 5 (default is 50) which makes for a soft picture.

Switching back to regular airwaves, the picture is cleaner. Do all sat providers look this bad on high end TVs, or just Dish network? Am I stuck with regular fuzzy broadcasts and a couple HDTV stations?

Thanks,

-Dmitri

 

[Jim A. Banville]

Do all sat providers look this bad on high end TVs

It's not "high end" TV's, it's the large screen. I had DirecTV on my 53" Sony and it too looked like a poorly mastered DVD. I went back to non-digital cable. Non-digital cable has no MPEG "grainy/swimmy" artifacts , but has occasional ghosting/multipath artifacts. I prefer the later as the image looks more realistic to me DirecTV's picture simply LOOKS "digital". Yuck!

 

[PaulKH]

If your sharpness is at default level it's probably WAY too high. Softer picture probably means more accurate picture. Use Avia or Video Essentials to calibrate your TV.

Having said all that, satelite sucks because they've been forced to jam 10 pounds of, er, stuff, into a 5 pound bag by having to transmit ALL the 'local' stations for all major U.S. markets from the same limited satelite bandwidth, which meant they had to compress everything even more.

If you can, try over the air (FREE - FREE - FREE) HDTV broadcasts with a tuner - it's breathtaking, and free. Did I say FREE?

 

[Andrew_Ballew]

If your sharpness is at default level it's probably WAY too high. Softer picture probably means more accurate picture. Use Avia or Video Essentials to calibrate your TV.

agreed- turn sharpness as low as possible before you lose detail.

I have digital cable, and yes- I can see the MPEG compression artifacts. Our cable system also seems to have the chroma bug in its MPEG encoder, as I see a lot of streaks on reds and other saturated colors. BUT- I prefer the digital cable channels to analog channels because on our system (Charter) they simply look better. The analog channels are VERY noisy, and seem to carry less vertical resolution.

Andrew B.

 

[Matt Stryker]

Having said all that, satelite sucks because they've been forced to jam 10 pounds of, er, stuff, into a 5 pound bag by having to transmit ALL the 'local' stations for all major U.S. markets from the same limited satelite bandwidth, which meant they had to compress everything even more.

I think a lot of it also is the tremendous amount of pay-per-view/sports coverage they are stuffing in the tiny satellite "pipe", because if you ever look at those channels, they are crystal clear. Dmitri, if you live in an area served by Time Warner, you could always try their HDTV-over-cable service.

 

[Larry Schneider]

You definitely need to calibrate your set; you most likely need to reduce the brightness and contrast also, and adjust to a darker and much better looking picture.

 

[Steve Sz]

Ya OTA local HD is the best; even better than HBO HD directv for me here south of Boston.

 

[DmitriP]

I've owned video essential for about 5 years now.
The only way to get rid of the artifacts is to turn the sharpness down to 10, which results in a very soft, blurry looking picture.
I wish I could change cable, but I'm locked into dish because of where I live. I also get totally sucky broadcast because of where I live, so HDTV broadcast is out. Time to move!
I switched back to regular cable and it's now a bit better. I can have a sharper picture without as much noise. Solids have a tiny bit more grain, but worth the tradeoff.
Thanks everyone for the replies!
-Dmitri

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Your experience is typical. Unless your analog cable carrier sucks, it will be the best broadcast picture quality.

 

[NickSo]

You think thats bad???
I can clearly see Compression Artifacts on DVDS on my TV (14 yr old Mitsubishi 37" DirectView)

 

[Brad_V]

Switching back to regular airwaves, the picture is cleaner. Do all sat providers look this bad on high end TVs, or just Dish network? Am I stuck with regular fuzzy broadcasts and a couple HDTV stations?

I know a number of people who bought HDTV big-screens and their DirecTV/Dish picture was so bad they returned the TV for an analog one and pocketed the leftover thousand bucks with a smile. The line-doublers of HD sets are good when they are doubling a good source, but as people say, "garbage in, garbage out," and now the HD line-doubler is doubling that garbage.

Some people get good satellite reception and say the picture on an HD set looks great. Others, possibly such as yourself, aren't so lucky.