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| " Digital Quality": It's inconceivable that these small dish companies know what this phrase means. How have DirecTV and Dish Network gotten away with the phrase "Digital Quality" for so long? I know that when I've compared picture quality on C-Band to the same channels on DirecTV or Dish Network, the C-Band picture has far more information and bandwidth like a DVD, whereas the small dishes showing the same channels (standard digital, not HD) seemed to have all kinds of pixel motion and tiling in the background. It's as if there was some kind of alien virus eating the characters faces and the walls in the background. This is due to heavy compression schemes that allow these small dish companies to cram as many channels as possible into the satellite transmissions and they are quite proud of their result (the bottom line). On a basic TV set, not too many customers even see this lack of bandwidth and they are content to not have a "snowy" picture. However, for folks with larger screens, like HD TV sets and projection screens, the basic digital signals provided by these small dishes is horrendous, yet the advertising campaigns continue as if "Digital" really did equate to "studio quality" which is a phrase that long belonged to C-Band. These little dish companies treat the word "Digital" as if it had something to do with "quality". Digital is a transmission method and a way of preserving signal integrity. If these companies would limit the amount of channels and just send up to satellite what they originally brought down from C-Band in the first place (without ruining it by compressing it far too much), then we could say "digital quality" without choking or laughing. Let's hope that as these two companies move from MPEG2 to MPEG4, that they make picture quality a priority. That all being said, I have a 12' dish and a 4DTV which I no longer hold subscriptions for. Instead, I watch programming on a Dish Network ViP 622 HD DVR. The main reasoning is due to convenience and the ability to find a reasonable amount of HD programming (including channels that used to belong to Voom HD) that I can record on the DVR and watch when I want. If there is nothing on HD and I settle for a standard digital movie, I have to force myself to ignore picture quality and try to enjoy the content of the movie regardless of the alien virus eating away the scenery and the characters. |
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