# Bitrate on SD programming?



## IDRick (Feb 16, 2007)

In one of today's threads, a poster stated that SD programming typically averages a 0.5 to 2 bitrate (Mpeg 2 file). Yikes, is this really true? I've not seen Dish SD but I do know that my results from my DVD recorder are horrendous at that bitrate. My normal recordings are typically have a bit rate of 4.5 to 6.0. If the posted bit rate is correct, then SD must be really bad on a large screen.


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## LinkNuc (Jul 4, 2007)

It's certainly not the best, I have a 60" screen and itts by far the worst SD PQ I have ever seen (I have had D*, Comcast and TW)


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## ICBM99 (Apr 4, 2007)

I've got a 60" screen and don't think SD looks too bad. Sure its soft and "fuzzy" sometimes. My locals are the worst, but I think its the broadcasters not E*.

Keep in mind that all I've ever had has been Dish, so I have nothing to compare to. YMMV


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## Mr.72 (Feb 2, 2007)

well, if DVDs are "SD", then the "SD" we get on dish is abysmal compared with the quality of "SD" on a DVD.

it's different for different channels. The RSNs are among the worst. Many channels just look so bad on dish I cannot even tolerate watching them. They look sort of OK on our old direct-view 25" SDTV and my kids watch them without complaining but they are really horrible on our main TV.


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## mattfast1 (Mar 26, 2008)

Hmmm... since DVDs are 720p, and SD TV is 480i, I would say a DVD would be a little better than SD, wouldn't you?


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## IDRick (Feb 16, 2007)

mattfast1 said:


> Hmmm... since DVDs are 720p, and SD TV is 480i, I would say a DVD would be a little better than SD, wouldn't you?


Hmm, aren't dvd's 480i? My dvd recordings are 720 by 480 and my DVD player displays them with 480p. Newer dvd players with HDMI outputs upscale to near HD but I'm not sure of their specs. Also, I use Video Redo to downconvert 1080i clear QAM recordings down to 480i and then burn to DVD for archival purposes.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

IDRick said:


> Hmm, aren't dvd's 480i? My dvd recordings are 720 by 480 and my DVD player displays them with 480p. Newer dvd players with HDMI outputs upscale to near HD but I'm not sure of their specs.


In some cases the source material is 480P (or higher), although encoded on DVD's as 480i. A simple process can than return it to 480P. Others, particularly those done with SD Video, are truly 480i.

Note that for 480P material it is possible for DISH to do better encoding and reduce the bit rate if they actually send it out as 480P. I Don't think they have started to do this yet for MPEG2, but they probably will be doing it for MPEG4.


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## IDRick (Feb 16, 2007)

Mr.72 said:


> well, if DVDs are "SD", then the "SD" we get on dish is abysmal compared with the quality of "SD" on a DVD.
> 
> it's different for different channels. The RSNs are among the worst. Many channels just look so bad on dish I cannot even tolerate watching them. They look sort of OK on our old direct-view 25" SDTV and my kids watch them without complaining but they are really horrible on our main TV.


Yikes! One of my primary motivations for considering a switch to dish is the potential to watch more college hockey on FSN North and BTN. PQ from my cableco on this SD material is above average (compared to other SD programming). If the PQ is poor on RSN's, then I really need to stay with cable. I don't want to sign up for a two year commitment and then lose the ability to watch college hockey due to low PQ....

As an aside, this winter I went over to CC and happened to stop by the D* display. I was able to try out the D* HD DVR and check out searches, etc. I found a college hockey game in progress on a midwestern RSN. Yikes, horrible quality. In fairness to D*, I need to point out that the SD was stretched to fill a 32" widescreen and it wasn't a name brand TV. But, HBO HD looked awesome on this same tv...


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## IDRick (Feb 16, 2007)

tnsprin said:


> In some cases the source material is 480P (or higher), although encoded on DVD's as 480i. A simple process can than return it to 480P. Others, particularly those done with SD Video, are truly 480i.
> 
> Note that for 480P material it is possible for DISH to do better encoding and reduce the bit rate if they actually send it out as 480P. I Don't think they have started to do this yet for MPEG2, but they probably will be doing it for MPEG4.


Thanks for info tnsprin! I must admit that I'm leery about making a change. On one hand, I like the potential programming that is available from Dish but I don't have first hand experience with evaluating Dish's PQ on both HD and SD. Any suggestions on how I could do a comparison? One of my hunting buddies has a basic dish package and the 625 DVR. Would SD PQ be the same with a 625 versus a 722 DVR?


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## Bichon (Jun 5, 2003)

IDRick said:


> Hmm, aren't dvd's 480i? My dvd recordings are 720 by 480 and my DVD player displays them with 480p.


Yes, DVDs are 480i, 60 interlaced fields per second. If the original material was shot at 24 frames per second, a progressive scan player can use 3:2 pulldown to de-interlace it to 480p with no artifacts or loss of quality.

But that's not the end of the "trickery" use to get better quality. Many widescreen films are put on DVD in anamorphic mode. That means that rather than wasting some of the 720x480 frame for the black bars above and below the picture, the content is stretched vertically to fill the entire 4:3 frame. Upon playback, the TV vertically squashes the picture back to the correct aspect ratio, but with much higher vertical resolution than it would have had if it were broadcast without the anamorphic process.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Nowadays SD channels came from sat providers in 480x480 or 504x480 format ( numbers taken from real stream ).


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## HDlover (Jul 28, 2006)

I really doubt the bit rate is that low. The SD on my 73" isn't DVD quality but isn't "That" bad. Definitly watchable and much better than analog.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

HDlover said:


> I really doubt the bit rate is that low. The SD on my 73" isn't DVD quality but isn't "That" bad. Definitly watchable and much better than analog.


Give me sat/tpn/ch# and I'll tell you the rates.


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## tvjay (Sep 26, 2007)

P Smith said:


> Give me sat/tpn/ch# and I'll tell you the rates.


How do you get them?


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## TP715 (Jan 15, 2007)

tvjay said:


> How do you get them?


There are ways to read the data stream which I'm sure P Smith will explain.

However, if you have an external hard drive you can easily estimate the bit rate of any show you record (and move to the HD) as it shows the MBytes the show uses up. Here are some random examples from my hard drive (in mega bits per second):

HD Jeopardy about 6 Mbps
HD Movies from various channels: about 5.0 to 8.3 Mbps
SD Movies and TV shows, about 1.7 to 2.0 MBps
SD show from second tier NPR station, 1.4 Mbps

As you can see even the HD usually doesn't surpass what an SD DVD is encoded at and the SD is far, far below that rate.

Doing these calculations gave a nice quantitative background to what I already saw with my eyes: the SD quality from Dish stinks and the HD quality is about that of good SD.

(I'm sure someone is going to chime in that Mpeg 4 is much better at compression than Mpeg 2. Perhaps. Image quality still looks stinky to me though.)


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

It's named as 'HD-Lite' .


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## HDlover (Jul 28, 2006)

2mbs, hmm, however these are converts of analog quality shows- stinks to begin with. Not convert of film like on DVD. It makes a big difference. I, myself, subscripe to the HD only package. All SD looks not very good in comparison and I avoid it as much as possible. Directv may be better, I don't know but it is still SD so who cares. This is the HD thread isn't it?

I've had Comcast. Their analog is worse and their SD digital is worse than that. Now they are overcompressing their HD so they have nothing going for them.

OP are you thinking of going to Dish? What do you have now? What size is your TY and is it HD?


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## LinkNuc (Jul 4, 2007)

HD-Lite is really just the sats sending out 1440x1080i or 1280x1080i..then upconverted at the box which is the major reason cable (although they are starting too compress as well) FiOS and OTA have a better PQ...altough like I said Companies that offer the most HD like Comcast(On-demand etc) are starting to compress as well...


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

HD-Lite doesn't limit a distortion of original source just by cropping , but by reducing bandwidth, overcompessing, etc.


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## Slipshod (Oct 30, 2006)

One thing to keep in mind is that the encoders used by the Satellite providers are *very* good at squeezing the highest possible picture quality out of the lowest possible bitrate. While it's fair to say SD PQ sucks, it is not fair to compare the bitrates they use against consumer-grade encoders you are used to. The PQ will be different at any given bitrate.

Dish uses 544x480i (not 504) for most SD channels, but some of the locals are only 480x480i. Most of the shows I record seem to be about 2 Mbps (1 gigabyte for 1 hour), the exception being the 480x480i local PBS channels which are less.

For HD, Dish sends it at 1440x1080 resolution for both MPEG4 and MPEG2 channels. They are flagged as progressive for the MPEG4 channels, but I haven't actually examined the video stream to verify it. For MPEG4 they seem to be in the neighborhood of 6-7Mbps for movies on MAX and Showtime, including the audio stream. I haven't checked MPEG2 as there isn't a whole lot left. I think HDNet Movies is still MPEG2.

I've heard that DirectTV uses 480x480i for all SD, and 1280x1080 for HD. I don't know what bitrates it would be at, or if this is even correct as I don't subscribe to them.

Cheers,
Slipshod


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## Slipshod (Oct 30, 2006)

TP715 said:


> Doing these calculations gave a nice quantitative background to what I already saw with my eyes: the SD quality from Dish stinks and the HD quality is about that of good SD.
> 
> (I'm sure someone is going to chime in that Mpeg 4 is much better at compression than Mpeg 2. Perhaps. Image quality still looks stinky to me though.)


Sure, I'll bite. I did a comparison of the DVD version of "V for Vendetta" with the MPEG4 version off Dish, and the Dish version was better. I could more easily make out background details that were blurry on the DVD. I'd say it was noticeably better, but not extremely better. I'll be playing with Blu-ray in a bit and see how much of a difference there is there.


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## mworks (Oct 8, 2007)

SD can be pretty bad on a big screen. 
I have a 51" and its truly awful on locals.

Locals are blurry, low defenition, even though the local stations her have said on the news that they are feeding dish with a HD signal, dish just hasn't broadcasted it yet.

Some of the SD channels are better than others.
Dish is of course giving some channels preference on the bandwidth.

To give Mpeg2 and MPeg4 a fair comparison, use your pc to encode a dvd and compare the difference.
Just because Mpeg4 can produce a great picture with less bandwidth than Mpeg2 does not mean that Dish is giving it all the 
bandwidth it requires to be a great picture.
I use xvid to encode quite a bit and the picture quality is every bit as good as mpeg2 with less space.
2 hours Mpeg2 - 4.5GB , 2hours Xvid Mpeg4 - 1.8GB

A comparison of the codecs:
http://www.doom9.org/codecs-quali-105-2.htm

The VSS samples on that page are what I see way too much with Dish.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

It is the result that counts ... there is absolutely no way you're going to get an uncompressed signal via DBS on any system. All providers must figure out how to put more channels in less space.

Just don't get hung up on the numbers ... compression is improving ... it is quite possible that 8PSK/MPEG4 seven channels per transponder could look just as good on consumer TVs as QPSK/MPEG2 two channels per transponder if it is set up right.

I've also seen "full bandwidth" OTA 1080i look lousy because it wasn't set up right. Having more bandwidth to use helps ... but not when it isn't used right.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

SD locals depends on your area. I find MY SD locals on Dish to approach OTA analog in picture quality.

However - I MUCH prefer to watch my locals in HDTV when possible - WRAL/WRAZ local news in HD is SPECTACULAR.


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## neowaxworks (Apr 2, 2008)

I was the one that posted .5 to 2 and I was Meaning total I.E GB..I am pretty sure I did say Gigs... the posters findings from HD line up pretty well with my research...

I have to DISAGREE with the poster that says Dish uses HIGH quality encoders [email protected] 2gb for a movie.. I can get near dvd quality encoding it to SVCD...
Dish has WAY to many artifacts for an average 2Mbps stream..
My guess is the encoders can't handle fast moving scenes AND the way dish has the channels allocated...there system will take away bitrate from channels they have flagged as less important, if a MORE important channel on the TP needs a little more bandwidth..
Works a lot like cable internet..if all the programs have slow motion and easy encodable sources, then they all look better, but if even one has a lot of fast motion, the others will decrease in quality...

I am hoping Mpeg4 will allievate some of it, but to tell you the truth, what I have heard so far about some of the channels they are testing on 61.5 (Espn for example) the mpeg 4 looks as bad if not worse....guess we shall have to wait and see, eventually...


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## mworks (Oct 8, 2007)

neowaxworks said:


> I am hoping Mpeg4 will allievate some of it, but to tell you the truth, what I have heard so far about some of the channels they are testing on 61.5 (Espn for example) the mpeg 4 looks as bad if not worse....guess we shall have to wait and see, eventually...


That was my concern when I first heard about mpeg4 support on satellite tv.
mpeg4 has the potential to make picture quality better over mpeg2 because it can provide the same quality with less bandwidth.

But that is only if the providers use it that way.
If they use it so that they can put even more channels on a transponder and keeping the picture quality at a sub par mpeg2, then we lose again.

We get more channels, but quality doesn't improve.


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## Mr.72 (Feb 2, 2007)

so are you saying that Dish sends a channel (such as ESPN) which is intentionally encoded at 720p to us at 1080i?

Just curious. If they are re-encoding everything to 1440x1080 (interlaced or progressive) then there is never any reason to set the system to output 720p, and this whole clamoring for "native pass-thru" is meaningless.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

No, those 720p channels still in same resolution, just recompressed to MPEG-2.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

James Long said:


> It is the result that counts ... there is absolutely no way you're going to get an uncompressed signal via DBS on any system. All providers must figure out how to put more channels in less space.
> 
> Just don't get hung up on the numbers ... compression is improving ... it is quite possible that 8PSK/MPEG4 seven channels per transponder could look just as good on consumer TVs as QPSK/MPEG2 two channels per transponder if it is set up right.
> 
> I've also seen "full bandwidth" OTA 1080i look lousy because it wasn't set up right. Having more bandwidth to use helps ... but not when it isn't used right.


That's exactly what ppl concern - picture PQ what they seen on their screens. And most of posts telling that.

Numbers cames as a metric - you can't run gadgets without metrics/standards/etc.


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