# DirecTV HD Quality



## applegbt (Jul 12, 2005)

Hey all,

I recently posted THIS thread in the Dish Network sub-forum regarding some HD quality issues that I have had with Dish since switching from DTV. I thought it might be helpful to post here to see if anyone has moved from Dish to DTV recently using a large display. If so, notice any improvement in picture quality? I'm not sure if I have an issue with my Dish equipment or what. Any input would be appreciated!


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## lgb0250 (Jan 24, 2010)

We moved back a few months ago and the HD quality versus Dish, does indeed seem to be better. IMO it has always been better but not enough to detract from viewing. Just noticeably so. More of a "crispness" to the DTV picture versus the slightly (in my perception) haziness of the DISH pic. Just my two cents.


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## I WANT MORE (Oct 3, 2006)

I have been a D* subscriber for longer than I care to remember.
IMO the PQ on D* on HD channels has improved over time and is currently the best it's ever been.


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## ragweed10 (Jul 10, 2013)

applegbt said:


> Hey all,
> 
> I recently posted THIS thread in the Dish Network sub-forum regarding some HD quality issues that I have had with Dish since switching from DTV. I thought it might be helpful to post here to see if anyone has moved from Dish to DTV recently using a large display. If so, notice any improvement in picture quality? I'm not sure if I have an issue with my Dish equipment or what. Any input would be appreciated!


DirecTV has BETTER Equipment and sends a MUCH BETTER picture than Dish.
I noticed a Big difference when I switched between them when the installers were here.
BOTH companies employees told me DirecTV uses a different technology which produce the better picture.
They also said I was not the only customer to comment on this.


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## camo (Apr 15, 2010)

Or the last. Its all I can do to stomach the ESPN, ABC bowl feeds on Dish. Its so apparent for me but I guess I'm in the minority. I'm reconsidering which service to drop again between the two or just continue with both to fulfill contract with Dish with bowl season almost over and do a suspend on Direct until football starts again. The difference I see is less outside of sports on ESPN, ABC channels so I can live with it. Plus I love the HD Sportsman & Outdoor channels ale-cart on Dish so don't want to give those up.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

I think in general the DirecTV picture quality is outstanding. I've had several cable systems and Uverse (I moved around a bit for a while) over the last 5 years and the quality of DirecTV is by far the best. 
I do find however, that ABC picture quality always is the worst in the HD world. It is almost as if years ago ABC network told its stations that don't need better than 480 picture and they all went that way. Probably wrong but it seems that way. To me some of the ESPN is fine and some isn't.


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## GregLee (Dec 28, 2005)

I can't compare Dish. For some channels, D* quality for picture and sound is excellent, but overall, it's very uneven. Since getting a 4k TV last Spring, I've been able to find more detail in the better channels and to see more flaws in the worse channels. I don't know whether the problems are the fault of D* or program providers.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

CTJon said:


> I do find however, that ABC picture quality always is the worst in the HD world. It is almost as if years ago ABC network told its stations that don't need better than 480 picture and they all went that way. Probably wrong but it seems that way. To me some of the ESPN is fine and some isn't.


Fox and ABC went with 720p for their national feeds (TV networks and cable channels) where CBS and NBC went with 1080i. Most affiliates follow their network's lead but some affiliates convert 720p to 1080i and vice versa.

720p should be better for fast moving video ... more full frame images to cycle through and less pixels per image to process. But stretched to a 70" or above TV one is going to see issues regardless of if the picture is 720p or 1080i (unless one is sitting far enough away that their eyes cannot see the individual pixels).

I do not know how the ABC air chain works, but FOX uses a system where their national feed is kept under the newtork's control. A special switcher that switches between any locally generated content (commercials, news, non-network programming) and the live feed from the network. The FOX switcher handles the graphic overlays for station logos and in recent years local scrolling graphics/EAS alerts. This switcher leads to less local handling of the national feed. If ABC does not use a similar device they are open to adding artifacts as the signal is passed from one device to another.

On a 70" display 720p provides about 20 pixels per inch (~400 per square inch). 1080i is about 30 per inch. Larger displays would have less pixels per inch. On a 126" display the most pristine 720p signal provides about 11 pixels per inch.

EVERY broadcast station and cable network has compression. On a larger screen compression artifacts are going to appear. The native resolution of the display and how each display handles other resolutions also plays a role.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

camo said:


> Or the last. Its all I can do to stomach the ESPN, ABC bowl feeds on Dish. Its so apparent for me but I guess I'm in the minority. I'm reconsidering which service to drop again between the two or just continue with both to fulfill contract with Dish with bowl season almost over and do a suspend on Direct until football starts again. The difference I see is less outside of sports on ESPN, ABC channels so I can live with it. Plus I love the HD Sportsman & Outdoor channels ale-cart on Dish so don't want to give those up.


The PQ on ESPN yesterday on the college football playoffs was pretty shabby. I do have a plasma 1080p TV that I was watching them on this morning and the plasma doesn't upscale. I did go to the bedroom and watch the last game for a bit on the 4K set and the PQ was a lot better, but you'd think ESPN could do a better job with the PQ. At least broadcast in 1080i. I don't have any issues with football or baseball games when they're in 1080i on the plasma, but anything in 720p is severely lacking in PQ.

Rich


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## NR4P (Jan 16, 2007)

My local ABC affiliate changed to 1080i.
My distant ABC affiliate remains at 720p.
I get both OTA so sat variables are removed.

Last week the same syndicated show was on both and in sync. Have to assume same source.
Switching between the two I cannot believe how much better the 1080i picture was. It was so much clearer crisper.
I went back and forth and wow, what a difference.

Over ten years ago when the 720/1080 decisions were first made, we didn't have the tv processing power we have now. The sports reasons made sense, then.
I watch alot of 1080i sports on very good 1080p and 4K sets and don't ever see a problem with 1080i channels.

ABC, FOX and ESPN should give up 720


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Well I must ask either of the channels also have sub channels too?


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Never understood the people who feel 1080i pictures are better for sports. It is only 30 frames per second and that's quite noticeable to me, the difference for fast action is a lot more important to me that a little bit better resolution. I don't care if I see every blade of grass on the field or every face in a distant crowd shot, I'd much rather see smoother motion when things are going fast.

Just goes to show that everyone's perception is different so no one should rely on what others think, but only what they see for themselves. We can argue about Dish's "HD Lite", 1080i versus 720p, 4K upscaling, etc. but should remember that we don't all perceive the same video in identical ways, and if someone doesn't see it the way you do doesn't mean they have inferior eyesight.

The reason video compression works at all is because our brains are filling in a tremendous amount of information - the trick is removing what we won't miss and our brains will imagine is still there. We all have blind spots about 20* off axis in each eye where the optic nerve connects to the retina, but aren't conscious of that in our daily life because our brain fools us into think it isn't there. If you could keep your eyeballs perfectly still, you'd go blind - the involuntarily movements are necessary for your brain to perceive anything at all! Everyone's brain interprets the light falling on their retinas a little bit differently, so it isn't surprising that some people more or less sensitive to different factors as far as resolution, frame rate, compression artifacts, color gradient, etc.


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## joed32 (Jul 27, 2006)

GregLee said:


> I can't compare Dish. For some channels, D* quality for picture and sound is excellent, but overall, it's very uneven. Since getting a 4k TV last Spring, I've been able to find more detail in the better channels and to see more flaws in the worse channels. I don't know whether the problems are the fault of D* or program providers.


4K does that, it makes the good PQ better but shows up the flaws on poor PQ.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

Back to the original topic. No one can make a bad local or national feed really look great but I think, compared to other sources, that DirecTV has the best overall PQ.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

I tried to look up how many HD channels Dish places on a transponder, but unfortunately the information James Long has compiled on his website is rather difficult for me to interpret. Based on what I can see, they are placing a lot more channels per transponder than Directv does but maybe they move channels around between transponders more frequently than Directv does to balance things dynamically. While Dish has a bit more bandwidth from their HD transponders (43 Mbps versus Directv's 39.4 Mbps) it appears they are allocating significantly less bandwidth per HD channel than Directv does. So based on that alone, Directv ought to have better HD quality.


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## camo (Apr 15, 2010)

slice1900 said:


> Never understood the people who feel 1080i pictures are better for sports. It is only 30 frames per second and that's quite noticeable to me, the difference for fast action is a lot more important to me that a little bit better resolution. I don't care if I see every blade of grass on the field or every face in a distant crowd shot, I'd much rather see smoother motion when things are going fast.


We are different for sure. I'll take the blades of grass any day. I have no issue with motion at 30fps. 1080i makes for a wonderful experience vs 720p especially after Dish does it thing and degrades even further.

OP yes, Direct does have a better image especially on the 720p channels vs Dish. (ABC National, and all the affiliated ESPN channels)


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> I tried to look up how many HD channels Dish places on a transponder, but unfortunately the information James Long has compiled on his website is rather difficult for me to interpret.


Please do not blame me for your ignorance. There is a page on my site that summarizes DISH's capacity and how many feeds there are on each transponder (counting once each feed that is mirrored on the same transponder so one can see how many feeds there are regardless of the number of channel numbers assigned to each transponder). Having multiple channel numbers for the same feed (some for residential customers, some for commercial customers, some for Latino package customers, some for select regions) can be confusing - but the channel numbering is DISH's doing, not mine.



slice1900 said:


> Based on what I can see, they are placing a lot more channels per transponder than Directv does but maybe they move channels around between transponders more frequently than Directv does to balance things dynamically.


The only regular moves on DISH are the part time HD sports channels moving each morning to the transponder where that day's feed will be hosted. Moving channels around for load balancing is rare.



slice1900 said:


> While Dish has a bit more bandwidth from their HD transponders (43 Mbps versus Directv's 39.4 Mbps) it appears they are allocating significantly less bandwidth per HD channel than Directv does. So based on that alone, Directv ought to have better HD quality.


Certainly ... but even DIRECTV's rates are lower than most OTA signals. And DIRECTV is compressed. Expecting a pristine 720p picture on a 70" or larger monitor via satellite is not reasonable.

I believe DIRECTV has a "we'll pay your ETF" offer or other deals that would help the OP move back to the DIRECTV service he had years ago. That may help. But the OP began (in the other thread) by comparing DISH to an OTA signal ... so there is a decent chance that he will also be disappointed in DIRECTV's feeds.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Sorry I wasn't blaming you for not being able to understand it, I didn't know about the different channel numbers for different types of customers. That explains why ESPN shows up multiple times etc. Still looks like Dish is cramming quite a few channels per transponder, but aside from saying that Directv has a higher bit rate per channel I won't try to quantify it.

Directv's bit rates are probably pretty comparable to most people's OTA now, when you consider that OTA uses MPEG2 versus Directv/Dish using MPEG4, along with the fact that many are devoting a lot of their bits to multiple subchannels these days. The OTA version of my local CBS & Fox stations used to be far better than what I'd see on Directv, because they had no subchannels so the entire 19.2 Mbps was devoted to a really nice MPEG2 HD picture. Now with two subchannels each they are getting a reduced bit rate and between that, MPEG4's nearly 2x efficiency advantage, and Directv using different modulation to get higher bit rate out of many spot beam transponders, OTA visual quality where I live has dropped to similar what Directv offers. Unfortunately.

Saying "Directv is compressed" is silly. EVERYTHING is compressed. You cannot get any uncompressed content, anywhere, for your HDTV. All cable/satellite is compressed a lot more than Blu Ray is though so anyone expecting Blu Ray quality is going to be disappointed no matter who their provider is. No one can deliver that - the networks don't originate their signals at a bit rate remotely close to that of Blu Ray so no providers could even if they had infinite bandwidth available to deliver to their customers.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

I had Dish for a few years, left them 3 years ago for Uverse, which I kept for a year then switched to DirecTV for about 18 months. My initial reaction when I first got DirecTV was that the HD PQ was amazing, better than any source I'd had before. But after awhile I noticed that the PQ varied quite a bit from channel to channel and even between shows on the same channel. Overall, my impression was that DirecTV had "higher highs" and "lower lows" in HD PQ than Dish. On average, I'd say DirecTV was slightly better than Dish. That said, I did have Uverse for a year in between the two, which made a direct comparison a little more difficult. Uverse absolutely had worse PQ than either DirecTV or Dish.

From having read a lot of this type threads on various sites, there seems to be a general consensus that, among major providers, Verizon FiOS and DirecTV offer the best HD PQ. FiOS was probably the undisputed champ a few years ago but HD PQ has gone down on many of their channels, so maybe DirecTV is now tied or only slightly behind. Consensus seems to be that Dish's HD PQ is not as good as DirecTV's; some seem to think it's a wide margin, others think it's a barely noticeable difference. Google Fiber TV probably has the best PQ of all given the amount of bandwidth in their fiber-to-the-home IP system, although I've read little about their PQ given that it's available to relatively few folks.


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## suzook (Feb 1, 2006)

The quality of HD on DTV has gotten progressively worse. Some channels don't look like HD. Why doesn't DTV drop ALL sd channels? It doesn't make any sense. Its a complete waste of bandwidth.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

suzook said:


> The quality of HD on DTV has gotten progressively worse. Some channels don't look like HD. Why doesn't DTV drop ALL sd channels? It doesn't make any sense. Its a complete waste of bandwidth.


Because believe it or not they still have several million customers who only have SD equipment, plus more HD customers who have some SD equipment. It would cost billions to upgrade them all and every customer would feel the pain because they'd have to raise prices more than they already do to pay for those forced upgrades. Costs much less to wait a few years for those numbers to dwindle down naturally to where the number of SD customers is more manageable.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

In a SS blog post two years ago, they said that there were about 10 million SD only customers. I'm sure it's gone down and they are no longer installing SD only accounts but it's still got to be a significant number.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

dpeters11 said:


> In a SS blog post two years ago, they said that there were about 10 million SD only customers. I'm sure it's gone down and they are no longer installing SD only accounts but it's still got to be a significant number.


It isn't that high. Directv provided a pie chart in their Investor Days presentation at the end of 2013 that showed that a little over a quarter of their customer base (or 5-6 million customers) were SD only. That number would be slowly but surely dropping due to natural attrition since SD customers can leave while new customers are HD only, but is still quite significant.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

suzook said:


> The quality of HD on DTV has gotten progressively worse.


Some of it could be the source that changed. C-Band bandwidth isn't cheap, most of the stations that launched new HD simulcasts in the past few years have done so by converting their master C-Band feeds from MPEG2-HD to MPEG4-HD along with using variable bitrates and stat muxing to jam additional HD feeds on their transponders. I think Fox is the only major one left who still uses MPEG2-HD feeds on C-Band.

Then you have locals, where anytime they add a subchannel, the quality of their main feed drops. It also doesn't help when you have a current trend with companies like Sinclair where they are "selling" stations to remain under the ownership cap, but keeping the programming and network affiliation of the station they sold by moving all that programming to a second HD subchannel on the station they're keeping. Some of those multi-HD subchannel stations also do things like convert the CBS, NBC or CW feed from 1080i to 720p and downmix the audio from 5.1 to stereo.



> Some channels don't look like HD.


Are you sure you're watching a show that's natively HD. Even though many channels now have HD simulcasts, it doesn't mean they dumped every pre-HD show from their schedule. Some channels also air things in SD widescreen if there is no HD version available. (i.e. some of the older music videos on Palladia). Then of course you got Turner who applies distortion to non-HD programming.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

The number of SD only maybe dropping but what about people who have both HD and SD? I would think that would be a lot also . Most of those you could probably offer some incentive to drop the SD. Think we are still a couple of years away from SD gone.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

CTJon said:


> The number of SD only maybe dropping but what about people who have both HD and SD? I would think that would be a lot also . Most of those you could probably offer some incentive to drop the SD. Think we are still a couple of years away from SD gone.


Upgrading SD only customers is the difficult piece of the puzzle, because it requires an installer visit to install a new dish. That's not cheap so they'd rather wait and allow the problem to mostly solve itself via attrition.

Upgrading the mixed HD/SD customers is easy because they could do via mail, giving them H2x/HR2x STBs Directv probably has a surplus of anyway, so it probably costs them very little. However, there's no point in doing anything about those mixed HD/SD customers until they start doing something about the SD only customers.

Some people who complain about certain channels not being carried in HD think Directv should have dumped SD already because they assume it is a bandwidth problem, but it isn't. An aggressive timeline for dropping MPEG2 SD won't speed up the process of going all HD, so I lean towards the view that they will take their time, and it might be more like five years before they shut off MPEG2 SD.

Obviously if they had more bandwidth thanks to retiring MPEG2 SD they could devote more bandwidth per HD channel and get better HD quality (back to the subject of this thread) but the sad truth is it is a small minority of customers who care about that, or could even tell the difference. It would only be worth spending the extra money to force people off SD now if they could make it up by charging more by advertising they have the best HD quality, which they can't.


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## I WANT MORE (Oct 3, 2006)

suzook said:


> The quality of HD on DTV has gotten progressively worse. Some channels don't look like HD. Why doesn't DTV drop ALL sd channels? It doesn't make any sense. Its a complete waste of bandwidth.


I wholeheartedly disagree. I think DirecTV's HD picture quality has improved over the past couple of months.


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## Hoosier205 (Sep 3, 2007)

It has been years since Dish has provided ANY 1080i channels in their full resolution. You get what you pay for with that provider, HD-Lite®.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

I WANT MORE said:


> I think DirecTV's HD picture quality has improved over the past couple of months.


Yeah, one of the more subtle things they did last year was shuffle some channels around so there are no more transponders with 7 HD channels, along with a rebalancing so some of the more bandwidth intense channels only have 5 HD channels on their transponders.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

I WANT MORE said:


> I wholeheartedly disagree. I think DirecTV's HD picture quality has improved over the past couple of months.


I don't see anything wrong with it either.

Rich


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Rich, on 14 Jan 2016 - 11:25 AM, said:
> 
> I don't see anything wrong with it either.
> 
> Rich


Really? With brighter scenes, I'd agree with you. PPV and pay channels are good too. Locals & nationals? Not so much. Ever watch Gold Rush? That's very pixelated and blocky. Anything dark = a hot mess. I was talking to a guy over on AVS who just switched over from DirecTV to GF a few weeks ago. He says its a night and day difference and he's a super picky pro calibrator guy. He said the picture quality on almost all channels is approaching BR quality. You can't say that about DirecTV. The guy above described it best: DirecTV is "HD lite". What do you expect from ~4-5Mbps on average? GF claims 15Mbps and ZERO re-compression. People here can argue all day long that no broadcaster puts out a 15Mbps HD signal ... I dunno... like I said, reports have it being a night and day difference. Same thing with other fiber providers.

I know you have like 15 TVs , are they low / medium range small 720p LCDs? Or are they larger, higher end 1080P plasmas or 4K OLEDs?

If you are watching on a 42" $300 Walmart LCD special, then yeah, the low PQ of the TV hides the low PQ of the signal.

If you are watching on a 65" Kuro Plasma or a 65" 4K OLED, that's a whole different story and those TVs, when properly calibrated show much more crappyness in the signal.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> The guy above described it best: DirecTV is "HD lite".


That person who said HD lite was referring to Dish, who uses 1440x1080i instead of 1920x1080i:


Hoosier205 said:


> It has been years since *Dish* has provided ANY 1080i channels in their full resolution. You get what you pay for with that provider, HD-Lite®.





SledgeHammer said:


> People here can argue all day long that no broadcaster puts out a 15Mbps HD signal


Those are the flat out facts. No station that uses MPEG4 puts out anything even close to 15 Mbps on their C-Band feeds, most of them do half that, if not less. The only way GF is putting out 15 Mbps is if they are using MPEG2, in which case they ARE recompressing it since the transcoding receivers those MPEG4 networks distribute output 18 Mbps MPEG2 HD feeds.

The quality for GF is probably better, but unless that person somehow cracked the encryption of their streams or google has a hidden diagnostic menu on their boxes, they can't confirm if GF is actual delivering the content in MPEG4. The only references to MPEG4 I saw are from people who just guessed they did and admitted that they couldn't confirm, along with severely over estimating what bitrate the master feeds originate.

Unfortunately the bulk of the country will likely never have the option of getting GF since they seem to be focusing on cities that already have a choice between two broadband providers as opposed to areas where the only options are DSL, satellite, or a cable provider who, due to the lack of any real competition, has a rediculously low bandwidth cap that you'll easily reach with one Steam/PS4/Xbone game download unless you want to pay over $100 a month.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Really? With brighter scenes, I'd agree with you. PPV and pay channels are good too. Locals & nationals? Not so much. Ever watch Gold Rush? That's very pixelated and blocky. Anything dark = a hot mess. I was talking to a guy over on AVS who just switched over from DirecTV to GF a few weeks ago. He says its a night and day difference and he's a super picky pro calibrator guy. He said the picture quality on almost all channels is approaching BR quality. You can't say that about DirecTV. The guy above described it best: DirecTV is "HD lite". What do you expect from ~4-5Mbps on average? GF claims 15Mbps and ZERO re-compression. People here can argue all day long that no broadcaster puts out a 15Mbps HD signal ... I dunno... like I said, reports have it being a night and day difference. Same thing with other fiber providers.
> 
> _*I know you have like 15 TVs , are they low / medium range small 720p LCDs? Or are they larger, higher end 1080P plasmas or 4K OLEDs?*_
> 
> ...


This is something that has been bothering me for a couple days now. I thought I had 10 TVs, but I can only find 9. 6 are 720P Panny plasmas, made the same mistake 6 times. The most expensive set I have is a 58" 720p Panny plasma that cost ~ $2400. Big mistake that still haunts me (it does have a really good picture on it, but still...). I do have two 1080p Plasmas, a 42" that I bought the last time the Giants won the Super Bowl, bought it with the winnings from that game, and a 60" 1080p Panny plasma that I bought a couple years ago. And one 4K Samsung 8500.

To be honest, I don't watch D* content unless it's sports, but when my wife and I sit down we do watch a lot of D* content. I'm not kidding when I say the PQ isn't bad, even on Fox and ABC. Not nearly as good as the PQ I get from my Apple TV (newest and biggest) or my Samsung BD player/upscalers, but I'm now comparing 1080p to either 1080i or 720p neither of which is nearly as good as 1080p from my streamers. But, I can watch D* content and not pick the PQ apart while I'm watching (another annoying habit I've developed) it. So, yeah, the PQ is decent and I think it's actually improved.

BTW, D* content looks really good on the 4K set. It's only upscaled, but it looks a lot better than the PQ on the plasmas.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

KyL416 said:


> That person who said HD lite was referring to Dish, who uses 1440x1080i instead of 1920x1080i:
> 
> Those are the flat out facts. No station that uses MPEG4 puts out anything even close to 15 Mbps on their C-Band feeds, most of them do half that, if not less. The only way GF is putting out 15 Mbps is if they are using MPEG2, in which case they ARE recompressing it since the transcoding receivers those MPEG4 networks distribute output 18 Mbps MPEG2 HD feeds.
> 
> ...


I have no idea what or who GF is...let me Google it...could it be Grand Forks in North Dakota? Help...

Rich


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

KyL416 said:


> That person who said HD lite was referring to Dish, who uses 1440x1080i instead of 1920x1080i:
> 
> Those are the flat out facts. No station that uses MPEG4 puts out anything even close to 15 Mbps on their C-Band feeds, most of them do half that, if not less. The only way GF is putting out 15 Mbps is if they are using MPEG2, in which case they ARE recompressing it since the transcoding receivers those MPEG4 networks distribute output 18 Mbps MPEG2 HD feeds.
> 
> ...


The 15Mbps quote came from Google engineers. It's my understanding that Google is MPEG4 and delivers the signal exactly how it comes from the broadcaster, unmolested in any way (no upconversion, scaling, transcoding, etc). I'm not going to argue where Google is getting its 15Mbps number from, because I have no information on that .

I live in Irvine, CA which is a high tech hub and being positioned as the silicon valley of so cal. I have Cox Cable right now (just upgraded to 100Mbps) and we can also get Uverse, but only up to 75Mbps. TV is Cox, AT&T Uverse (the limited version as we canNOT get 1Gbps on whatever they are using) or Sat.

Supposedly, Cox is laying Fiber right now for 1Gbps and GF is "coming"...

When GF is available, I'll drop Cox & DirecTV and do everything through GF since its substantially cheaper and higher quality. Cox 1Gbps is supposed to be $99/mo while GF 1Gbps is only $70. TV is $60/mo compared to $105 for DirecTV.

Whether GF is loosing money on the TV side isn't my concern .



Rich said:


> I have no idea what or who GF is...let me Google it...could it be Grand Forks in North Dakota? Help...
> 
> Rich


Lol.. Google Fiber .


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> The 15Mbps quote came from Google engineers. It's my understanding that Google is MPEG4 and delivers the signal exactly how it comes from the broadcaster, unmolested in any way (no upconversion, scaling, transcoding, etc).


If that's the case, then they would have a mix of MPEG2 and MPEG4 (i.e. Fox and some others still use MPEG2 for their HD feeds)

For the MPEG2 channels they should have close to 15 Mbps

For the MPEG4 channels they wouldn't get anything near 15 Mbps and the bitrates for many of them would vary widely since nearly every MPEG4 channel uses statmuxing to jam as many channels as possible on their C-Band transponders. (i.e. all the Turner HD feeds use variable bitrates that range from 0.5 - 9 Mbps, while CBS uses fixed bitrates of 6 Mbps for Smithsonian, 7 Mbps for the Showtime channels, and 8 Mbps for CBS Sports)


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Lol.. Google Fiber .


Huh. I think Googling GF got me something like 460,000,000 responses. Just read the first couple pages and decided asking for help here was the way to go. Many thanx.

Rich


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

I watch Gold Rush every week and never have any issues with the Picture No macroblocking no nothing looks fine GF does use MPEG 4 Switched IPTV Like others said.. it aint clocking at 15mbps


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> The 15Mbps quote came from Google engineers. It's my understanding that Google is MPEG4 and delivers the signal exactly how it comes from the broadcaster, unmolested in any way (no upconversion, scaling, transcoding, etc). I'm not going to argue where Google is getting its 15Mbps number from, because I have no information on that .
> 
> I live in Irvine, CA which is a high tech hub and being positioned as the silicon valley of so cal. I have Cox Cable right now (just upgraded to 100Mbps) and we can also get Uverse, but only up to 75Mbps. TV is Cox, AT&T Uverse (the limited version as we canNOT get 1Gbps on whatever they are using) or Sat.
> 
> ...


You are in Irvine? I should just stop by someday and see this horrid picture you see. 

I am not going back through and looking... What tv do you have again?


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> You are in Irvine? I should just stop by someday and see this horrid picture you see.
> 
> I am not going back through and looking... What tv do you have again?


LG EF9500, the flat 4K OLED. It's not _universally_ horrible, as I said above, its certain cases where its unwatchable. It's only horrible on the dark scenes on the national (non Pay) channels. When I first got my OLED and it was properly calibrated, there was a free HBO or Cinemax preview or something and it looked jaw dropping amazing.

An "unwatchable" case, was this episode of Scorpion where they were on a sub. I stopped watching the show, but I was doing some chores in the TV area and had it on in the background, the dark sub scenes you could barely recognize a person.

My transponders are all in the high 90s.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

compnurd said:


> I watch Gold Rush every week and never have any issues with the Picture No macroblocking no nothing looks fine GF does use MPEG 4 Switched IPTV Like others said.. it aint clocking at 15mbps


Ok, well, its on tonight, so take a closer look at:

1) when they go on Tony's dredge, its darker in there, very blocky
2) on more well lit outside scenes, take a closer look when they shoot under the equipment (i.e. shadowy places)


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Hhmmm. Well calibrate all you want it's new tech. I'd suggest finding a dark scene again and tweaking it to see if you can make the dark scene better. 

Here's the rub. Oled that I have seen looks awsome in stores. So did Sonys very first wega xbr rptv led tvs with three panels in them. I till you saw a scene with a red drape in the background and a slow pan. It all became one giant block it was so awful. It took a few generations before it even came close to being ok....

Not saying that's the issue here but it's very possible it's part of the issue. The way to find out is tweaking and seeing if you can get good quality with different settings and to take your tv to a gf house and see with their sources. Which is nearly impossible today...

And it's even harder when you consider different sources like blu Ray can't be used to compare. 

By the way att giga is probably coming too....


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

Yeh i was going to say it may be the TV The High End OLED TV's look great with 1080P and 4K content...(and 4K LCD) But they all seem to be hit and miss and 720P and 1080I sources. I had a Samsung 65JU6700 that looked awesome on some shows.. and sucked on others.. Same with my fathers Vizio M series... 

With regards to Gold Rush also.. The problems with those scenes could also be the cameras they are using up there


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> Hhmmm. Well calibrate all you want it's new tech. I'd suggest finding a dark scene again and tweaking it to see if you can make the dark scene better.
> 
> Here's the rub. Oled that I have seen looks awsome in stores. So did Sonys very first wega xbr rptv led tvs with three panels in them. I till you saw a scene with a red drape in the background and a slow pan. It all became one giant block it was so awful. It took a few generations before it even came close to being ok....
> 
> ...


Yeah... GF is coming to LA too.

Not even taking AT&T giga seriously. They charge 2x everybody else. 2x / person / mo on cell vs. TMobile (when I switched a few years ago). I just cancelled my land line with them as it was $42/mo after a recent price hike vs. $16/mo on Cox. The $42/mo AT&T line was not even free in-state or extended locals. The $16/mo Cox line is free nationwide. The best AT&T has now is 75Mbps for $75/mo, I just got a deal with Cox to upgrade to 100Mbps for $72/mo! 25 extra Mb for $3 cheaper over AT&T! My "50"Mbps service was actually getting 65Mbps, so I hope I'll get 110 - 120 on this new plan. Supposed to be turned on, on monday.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> Here's the rub. Oled that I have seen looks awsome in stores. So did Sonys very first wega xbr rptv led tvs with three panels in them. I till you saw a scene with a red drape in the background and a slow pan. It all became one giant block it was so awful. It took a few generations before it even came close to being ok....


As an OLED owner (and fan boy :righton, the TV does have a few minor issues. LG is the only one that makes the panels, so any OLED TV you see will use LG panels. Its only in 2 sizes right now, 55" & 65". The 55" models have vignetting issues in < 5% black. The 65" models are slightly less prone to vignetting, but have yellow and pink "staining". If you throw up a 100% white slide (i.e. like watching hockey), you'll see random faint yellow and pink bands.

Also, with 2.4 gamma, at least, the TV blue shifts when you go off axis.

Hopefully they can improve the issues. Aside from those issues, its an awesome TV. When my mom first saw it, she commented on how bright and vivid the colors where and how everything "popped".


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

CTJon said:


> The number of SD only maybe dropping but what about people who have both HD and SD? I would think that would be a lot also . Most of those you could probably offer some incentive to drop the SD. Think we are still a couple of years away from SD gone.


Bingo! 

There bottom line is $: total and one year costs. Replacing all the SD receivers costs lots of money, so if spread out across many years, the bottom line is maximized. Most of the upgrades can be charged to the customers even. 

Plus an SD only upgrade requires a truck roll to replace the dish. If DIRECTV mandates it, they are less likely to be able to charge for it. So the more customers who request the upgrade offset the costs. 

At some point, the number of SD boxes still active will be low enough to force the issue. When the costs of keeping the SD boxes finally exceeds the costs to replace.

My current, off the cuff guess is there are 10-20 million SD receivers still active. I'm pretty sure they are below 40 million and pretty suspicious they are above 10 million. 

Peace,
Tom


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## I WANT MORE (Oct 3, 2006)

Panny 65vt50 calibrated by Chad B.
Sammy 64f8500 calibrated by Kevin Miller.
Vizio 70" P 4K UHD calibrated by me. 

As I stated I think the HD pq from D* has improved over the past several months. 
ESPN Monday Night Football pregame when they broadcast from the stadium with Kolber, Young, Lewis, et al is nothing short of pristine. :up:


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> Hhmmm. Well calibrate all you want it's new tech. I'd suggest finding a dark scene again and tweaking it to see if you can make the dark scene better.
> 
> Here's the rub. Oled that I have seen looks awsome in stores. So did Sonys very first wega xbr rptv led tvs with three panels in them. I till you saw a scene with a red drape in the background and a slow pan. It all became one giant block it was so awful. It took a few generations before it even came close to being ok....
> 
> ...


After what I went thru with the LG 7690 it would take an awful lot of promises made and kept to get me to try another LG...OLED or not. If they were giving away LG sets at BB, I wouldn't bother wasting the gas to pick one up. Even my son's 55" 1080p LG has that same problem with the way they render the color red. If I was given one, brand new-in-the-box, I wouldn't even try to sell it.

I'd have to have the LG OLED in my house, with a firm in writing promise from the store I bought it from picking it up and taking it back without further cost and instantly refunding my money, so that I could evaluate it properly. The 7690 I bought looked great in the store, but horrible at home. For ~ $1700 they should have done a lot better. I simply don't trust LGs.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Yeah... GF is coming to LA too.


And, I suppose, NJ will get it sometime in the next 50 years? I still haven't got Fios in my town.

Rich


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## trainman (Jan 9, 2008)

SledgeHammer said:


> Yeah... GF is coming to LA too.


This isn't official -- all that's happened so far is that Google announced the city of Los Angeles as a "potential fiber city" (as seen on this map). I'm not holding my breath, given how long it would take to get built out even after they commit to L.A.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

trainman said:


> This isn't official -- all that's happened so far is that Google announced the city of Los Angeles as a "potential fiber city" (as seen on this map). I'm not holding my breath, given how long it would take to get built out even after they commit to L.A.


Even if they do, they will pick and choose the richer neighborhoods as they've done elsewhere. They don't have universal service guarantees or citywide franchise agreements that require them to cover everywhere.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Rich, on 16 Jan 2016 - 10:56 AM, said:
> 
> After what I went thru with the LG 7690 it would take an awful lot of promises made and kept to get me to try another LG...OLED or not. If they were giving away LG sets at BB, I wouldn't bother wasting the gas to pick one up. Even my son's 55" 1080p LG has that same problem with the way they render the color red. If I was given one, brand new-in-the-box, I wouldn't even try to sell it.
> 
> ...


Lol... well, this is the first LG anything I've ever owned and I'm 95% happy with it. I don't have the yellow / pink stains on my set which is one of the issues I mentioned above. It's a "panel lottery" thing and some people on AVS are going through 3 or 4 sets before they find an acceptable one. I think one guy even went through 7 or 8 sets before he settled, but to be fair, he seems *extremely* picky... way more then even a normal picky person . I did knock off 5% because the set does have a vignetting issue, but its not like its 100% of the time, it happens under certain conditions and is annoying / distracting, but probably not enough to hate on the TV.

So in my humble opinion, the LG OLED has 1 potential issue in the 55" model (vignetting) and 2 potential issues in the 65" model (vignetting & pink / yellow).

Why hate on a TV that only has 1 - 2 *potential* issues, but is otherwise perfect? All LCDs have many, many, many issues inherent in the technology: flashlighting, blooming, screen uniformity, haloing, bleeding, off axis viewing, etc.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

trainman said:


> trainman, on 16 Jan 2016 - 12:30 PM, said:
> 
> This isn't official -- all that's happened so far is that Google announced the city of Los Angeles as a "potential fiber city" (as seen on this map). I'm not holding my breath, given how long it would take to get built out even after they commit to L.A.


Well, they say no city has dropped off / out yet after being picked . LA is certainly trickier then my town (Irvine). Either way, they are definitely expanding "rapidly". I'm not holding my breath for GF to be in Irvine any time in 2016 or even 2017. Maybe 2nd half of 2017, they might start.

Google's business model is different from FIOS and AT&T and Cox, etc. They give away the service for free / cheap and make it up (and then some) on the backend by mining the data.

I don't think Google execs are stupid. They certainly know LA conditions. They didn't just throw a dart at the wall.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Att has said they will bring giga to some of Los Angeles as well. I hope they both come everywhere eventually but maybe start by going into opposite areas.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

Man, AVS is brutal - when I bought my Panny plasmas, I was at a point after reading AVS for a couple of months where I thought no one liked ANYTHING - every set had people complaining about various issues. I did learn to buy my own equipment and do my own calibrations from there, though.

The other thing that makes it hard when it comes to PQ - my labs do a LOT of color matching, we have all the X-rite, etc. professional color match systems, looking at differences that most people can't see with the bare eye, and after living in that world, color and tint on TVs are really noticeble to me. A slight red tone on golf greens or football fields, African American skin tones with the slightest green or orange tint, etc. Its interesting too - I have calibrated other people's TV, and a lot of people find a truly neutral, accurate calibration looks "boring" to them.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

fudpucker said:


> fudpucker, on 17 Jan 2016 - 12:08 PM, said:
> 
> Man, AVS is brutal - when I bought my Panny plasmas, I was at a point after reading AVS for a couple of months where I thought no one liked ANYTHING - every set had people complaining about various issues. I did learn to buy my own equipment and do my own calibrations from there, though.
> 
> The other thing that makes it hard when it comes to PQ - my labs do a LOT of color matching, we have all the X-rite, etc. professional color match systems, looking at differences that most people can't see with the bare eye, and after living in that world, color and tint on TVs are really noticeble to me. A slight red tone on golf greens or football fields, African American skin tones with the slightest green or orange tint, etc. Its interesting too - I have calibrated other people's TV, and a lot of people find a truly neutral, accurate calibration looks "boring" to them.


I did calibrate my OLED myself with the Disney WOW BluRay. It may not be 100% perfect since I was doing it by eye, but it was mainly brightness, contrast, OLED light, gamma and some other feature settings. According to the pro calibrators on the thread (the more well known one being Chad B), once you switch the TV to ISF mode and set a few of the basic options, the colors are almost perfect "out of the box". Chad B did say there is some tuning headroom, but not very much at all on this set.

But yeah, AVSers are very enthusiastic about TVs . There's a guy on the owners thread that's been tweaking on his TV for like 4 months now!! I don't even think he watches anything on it. He just tweaks settings and checks test material. It's the same thing on DBStalk in regards to satellite. People on here now crazy stuff about DirecTV.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

fudpucker said:


> I have calibrated other people's TV, and a lot of people find a truly neutral, accurate calibration looks "boring" to them.


Just as most people are fooled into thinking brighter TV = better picture, they also tend to prefer oversaturated colors. That's why all the OLED phones had their calibration deliberately way off. The very latest Samsung phones have newer OLED panels that are finally as color accurate as a good LCD - the iPhone's S-IPS display had consistently ranked at the top for most accurate colors and was the highest rated display overall for years, but in the past year it has been bested by a few OLEDs that have similar color accuracy and (obviously) better black levels.

The thing is though, despite having color accurate displays, most OLED cell phones still ship configured to display oversaturated colors, because the average mope thinks that 'looks better' than accurate colors.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Lol... well, this is the first LG anything I've ever owned and I'm 95% happy with it. I don't have the yellow / pink stains on my set which is one of the issues I mentioned above. It's a "panel lottery" thing and some people on AVS are going through 3 or 4 sets before they find an acceptable one. I think one guy even went through 7 or 8 sets before he settled, but to be fair, he seems *extremely* picky... way more then even a normal picky person . I did knock off 5% because the set does have a vignetting issue, but its not like its 100% of the time, it happens under certain conditions and is annoying / distracting, but probably not enough to hate on the TV.
> 
> So in my humble opinion, the LG OLED has 1 potential issue in the 55" model (vignetting) and 2 potential issues in the 65" model (vignetting & pink / yellow).
> 
> Why hate on a TV that only has 1 - 2 *potential* issues, but is otherwise perfect? All LCDs have many, many, many issues inherent in the technology: flashlighting, blooming, screen uniformity, haloing, bleeding, off axis viewing, etc.


My LG had such a terrible picture...Ahh, why bother, you'd have to go thru it to appreciate it. I didn't buy it without giving what they had in the store a really good look, believe me. When I got it home it turned into a nightmare.

Rich


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Rich, on 18 Jan 2016 - 06:08 AM, said:
> 
> My LG had such a terrible picture...Ahh, why bother, you'd have to go thru it to appreciate it. I didn't buy it without giving what they had in the store a really good look, believe me. When I got it home it turned into a nightmare.
> 
> Rich


I do know some of their TVs are / were garbage . Their better offerings (mid range, high end) of pretty much everything they sell are typically at the top of the CR lists.

Like I said, this is the first LG anything I've owned, so I can only go by that.

But in the sense of full disclosure, I do believe that when you pay $4000 (MSRP) for a 55" TV in Sept 2015, it should be 100% perfect. You shouldn't have vignetting and/or pink / yellow staining on the screen.

Sadly though... that's the trend with most manufacturers these days... releasing flawed products and never fixing them.

DirecTV isn't any different!

1) HR24 internet connected searches rarely work correctly, sat guide works 100% of the time
2) HR24 internet connected searches don't send "Live" flag, sat guide does
3) the older remote doesn't really work in RF mode (quick scroll bug)

Only workaround for #1 & #2 is to kick your box off the net, but then you lose VOD if you care about that. No workaround for #3.


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## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

I have a professionally calibrated (Lion AV) Panny plasma, and the picture is quality is A++.

My ranking of PQ for my own sources:
1. BluRay (duh!)
2. Verizon FIOS
3. DirecTV
4. Other streaming services such as Netflix (I have effective 85 mbs up/down speed)


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## ragweed10 (Jul 10, 2013)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> I have a professionally calibrated (Lion AV) Panny plasma, and the picture is quality is A++.
> 
> My ranking of PQ for my own sources:
> 1. BluRay (duh!)
> ...


How did you get (2) Pay TV Sources ? FIOS & DirecTV


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> wilbur_the_goose, on 18 Jan 2016 - 1:48 PM, said:
> 
> I have a professionally calibrated (Lion AV) Panny plasma, and the picture is quality is A++.
> 
> ...


Just out of curiosity, if you consider BluRay a 10/10, what would you give to FIOS and DirecTV?

For me, if I'm giving BluRay a 10/10, I don't think I could give DirecTV more then a 6 - 6.5 (on the national, non pay channels). For the real HD pay channels like HBO, I would give those a 9+. See, that's what I expect from a TV provider. DirecTV HBO like quality on ALL channels. That's what GF promises.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

OK OK we get that you really like Google Fiber. It is available to well under 1% of the US population. If there was a provider that was better than Google Fiber, but was only available to residents of the eastern half of Wisconsin, would it be worth constantly mentioning?


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> Just out of curiosity, if you consider BluRay a 10/10, what would you give to FIOS and DirecTV?
> 
> For me, if I'm giving BluRay a 10/10, I don't think I could give DirecTV more then a 6 - 6.5 (on the national, non pay channels). For the real HD pay channels like HBO, I would give those a 9+. See, that's what I expect from a TV provider. DirecTV HBO like quality on ALL channels. That's what GF promises.


The biggest issue with what you just said is most stations don't care as much as HBO does and don't provide a signal nearly as good as HBO to anyone....


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> slice1900, on 18 Jan 2016 - 10:16 PM, said:
> 
> OK OK we get that you really like Google Fiber. It is available to well under 1% of the US population. If there was a provider that was better than Google Fiber, but was only available to residents of the eastern half of Wisconsin, would it be worth constantly mentioning?


In this day and age, there should be something better then a "6 - 6.5" and DirecTV ain't it. DirecTV used to be awesome. That's the point of this thread. People say FIOS is better then DirecTV too. I'm not in a FIOS area though .


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> The biggest issue with what you just said is most stations don't care as much as HBO does and don't provide a signal nearly as good as HBO to anyone....


Do you suppose that might have something to do with the cable cutter movement? If you can get BluRays from Netflix for 10% of a cable bitter and a much better PQ and no commercials, why not?


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> I do know some of their TVs are / were garbage . Their better offerings (mid range, high end) of pretty much everything they sell are typically at the top of the CR lists.
> 
> Like I said, this is the first LG anything I've owned, so I can only go by that.
> 
> ...


The OLED I was looking at was the 65" model. For ~ $5,000, I think, might have been $5,900. I could just imagine getting that home, discovering problems with it and trying to return it. I called Crutchfield the other day and asked them about returns...returns because I thought the PQ was horrible. I was told that I would have to pay the shipping for a return like that, with no obvious defects. Asked how much...$100 to $150. Not bad, I think. I can't imagine what I'd have to go thru at BB if I tried to return a 5 or 6 thousand dollar set. For that much money, it should be perfect right out of the box.

BTW, I liked your full disclosures.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> The biggest issue with what you just said is most stations don't care as much as HBO does and don't provide a signal nearly as good as HBO to anyone....


Wasn't that long ago that people were saying digital is digital. Now we're admitting what was obvious all along...if you have a decent TV set.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich, I'm with you!! The very high priced OLED's should be damned near perfect. But reading in AVS Forums lead me away from them as they are too much money and too many issues though most seem relatively minor.

I opted for a 'tweener' to get me by. Going from a 73" DLP 3D set to a Sharp 70UH30 70" 4K set around the $2K mark. I always liked the Sharps though I haven't had one in a very long time. Reading/researching all these blasted sets is so very frustrating though!!


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Do you suppose that might have something to do with the cable cutter movement? If you can get BluRays from Netflix for 10% of a cable bitter and a much better PQ and no commercials, why not?


That's why I dropped all my movie channels.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Rich, I'm with you!! The very high priced OLED's should be damned near perfect. But reading in AVS Forums lead me away from them as they are too much money and too many issues though most seem relatively minor.
> 
> I opted for a 'tweener' to get me by. Going from a 73" DLP 3D set to a Sharp 70UH30 70" 4K set around the $2K mark. I always liked the Sharps though I haven't had one in a very long time. Reading/researching all these blasted sets is so very frustrating though!!


I didn't go the researching/reading route, I bought the sets, tried them in my home and returned them quickly if they had problems. And I'll admit to being very picky about PQ. After all, what else is there to look for? Good PQ is absolutely essential as far as I'm concerned.

Rich


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> In this day and age, there should be something better then a "6 - 6.5" and DirecTV ain't it. DirecTV used to be awesome. That's the point of this thread. People say FIOS is better then DirecTV too. I'm not in a FIOS area though .


I don't think Directv went go down in HD quality, but rather new competitors came who exceeded them. Only recently has Directv added bandwidth, and for whatever reason they aren't taking full advantage of it yet. They have reduced the number of HD channels per transponder on many transponders, which increases quality.

The problem is that anyone who uses MPEG4 to deliver network feeds that originate in MPEG2 will lose quality due to transcoding. Additionally, MPEG4 has internal softening filters enabled by default which accounts for a lot of its advantage over MPEG2 in file size - that's why MPEG2 streams look sharper (when given sufficient bandwidth, obviously) MPEG2 has more artifacting than MPEG4 but when the stream originates in MPEG2 they are already present and can't be eliminated later.

FIOS is mostly MPEG2 for its HD - only certain less popular channels are MPEG4 at this point. Not sure what bit rate they use. It isn't clear with Google Fiber, but if the "15 Mbps MPEG4" thing is true, perhaps it is taking the 18 Mbps C band feed and converting to MPEG4 with the softening filters disabled which would greatly reduce the typical MPEG2->MPEG4 size ratio. Obviously there's no way Directv can devote 15 Mbps per HD channel with their current setup, so doesn't matter how much you wish it otherwise they can never deliver that level of quality, nor can any traditional cable company.


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## MysteryMan (May 17, 2010)

Rich said:


> I didn't go the researching/reading route, I bought the sets, tried them in my home and returned them quickly if they had problems. And I'll admit to being very picky about PQ. After all, what else is there to look for? Good PQ is absolutely essential as far as I'm concerned.
> 
> Rich


Agree. Picture quality trumps bells and whistles any day.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> I didn't go the researching/reading route, I bought the sets, tried them in my home and returned them quickly if they had problems. And I'll admit to being very picky about PQ. After all, what else is there to look for? Good PQ is absolutely essential as far as I'm concerned.
> 
> Rich


I didn't do that as most would have had to be shipped in and returned on my dime. And the local BB has a paucity of sets to look at since they haven't been refreshed since the holidays.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Rich said:


> Wasn't that long ago that people were saying digital is digital. Now we're admitting what was obvious all along...if you have a decent TV set.


Digital is digital. That always has been and always will be true. Unfortunately, so is garbage in, garbage out. No TV can make the input it is given look better than what is provided. It can, however, make it look worse.

The input is digital, but our eyes and brains are analog, and different people are more or less sensitive to different flaws in the image. If the processing a TV does accentuates a flaw I am sensitive to and diminishes a flaw you are sensitive you, you will think it is a better TV than I will.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Do you suppose that might have something to do with the cable cutter movement? If you can get BluRays from Netflix for 10% of a cable bitter and a much better PQ and no commercials, why not?


Netflix is nowhere near Blu Ray quality. It is better than cable/satellite movie channels, but that's not a high bar.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

MysteryMan said:


> Agree. Picture quality trumps bells and whistles any day.


Thank you! It appears that some people don't feel that PQ should be the number one priority when buying TV sets (I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone in particular). I really don't get that.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> I didn't do that as most would have had to be shipped in and returned on my dime. And the local BB has a paucity of sets to look at since they haven't been refreshed since the holidays.


I did my shopping during the late fall and early winter. That worked out well. Really aggravated a Costco manager, but he understood why I returned the sets. Seems as if Costco overlooks premium sets. Bought my Samsung 8500 at BB after buying a Sony 850C from them. They had nothing better than the 850, I would have probably been better off with a better processor, but that's all they had and it was a pretty poor TV. I think. Not a good experience at BB.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

The Sony 850C gets great reviews. I was literally a click away from ordering a Sony 930 65" that I found for $2500 from a reputable seller. That was $500 less than anywhere else. By the time I was ready for that last click, they were sold out and still are. Really superb set, great PQ. Only complaint that was common was about the speakers that are mounted on each side of the set making it about 10" wider than most 65" sets.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> The Sony 850C gets great reviews. I was literally a click away from ordering a Sony 930 65" that I found for $2500 from a reputable seller. That was $500 less than anywhere else. By the time I was ready for that last click, they were sold out and still are. Really superb set, great PQ. Only complaint that was common was about the speakers that are mounted on each side of the set making it about 10" wider than most 65" sets.


The 850C I got was...bad. I tried to convince myself that I could fix the PQ, but nothing I did worked. I haven't changed any settings on the Sammy 8500, good right out of the box. That 850C was priced at about $1,800. The 930 means it has a better processor, but the stores I looked at had nothing above an 850. And I've always been a fan of everything Sony. I thought I was getting a really good set and all I got was sleepless nights.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> _*The Sony 850C gets great reviews.*_ I was literally a click away from ordering a Sony 930 65" that I found for $2500 from a reputable seller. That was $500 less than anywhere else. By the time I was ready for that last click, they were sold out and still are. Really superb set, great PQ. Only complaint that was common was about the speakers that are mounted on each side of the set making it about 10" wider than most 65" sets.


I don't have a whole lot of faith in the reviews I read online or in magazines or newspapers. I think a lot of people are like my father: everything he bought was "top of the line, simply the best", especially cars. Why? Simply because _he _bought them! I think a lot of people buy TV sets and settle on them. Not pointing any fingers at anyone, but I think that's true. I don't mind "settling" on something that costs a few bucks, but when it's a big expenditure I expect to get my money's worth. I didn't get that with the first four 4K sets I bought. I really had no intention of buying that 4K at the price I paid for it, but I'm glad I did.

Rich


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## CraigerM (Apr 15, 2014)

Their is also now 4k with HDR.


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## trparky (Nov 23, 2015)

This is one of the many reasons why I think that 4K *isn't anywhere close* to being ready for prime time. 4K can make 1080 look better, true, but if your 1080 input is crappy then that 4K TV is going to make that crappy 1080 input look like garbage after the up-res is done.

If you ask me, anyone buying a 4K TV today is wasting their money. One, we don't have a decent collection of native 4K content to make a 4K TV worth buying. And two, many pay-TV providers (including DirecTV) compress the **** out of their HDTV feeds so that after the 4K up-res is done it looks like crap. Remember, the 4K up-res will make any and all picture quality imperfections stand out worse than if that same picture is displayed on a 1080p set.

If and when we start getting the kinds of data throughput capacities to the home that we need to do HDTV right, then I will consider getting a 4K TV. Until then, 1080p sets are just as good if not better than the current crop of 4K sets simply because you're not going to be trying to up-res a low-quality input.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> Do you suppose that might have something to do with the cable cutter movement? If you can get BluRays from Netflix for 10% of a cable bitter and a much better PQ and no commercials, why not?


No it's two things. One it's the locas shoving way to many sub channels in. Our CBS sucks now and used to be one of the best. And it's not dtv it's the station. Cable channels cutting corners to now and I have a feeling that's so they can shove all the Hi Definition channels on the satelites for back haul before they even get to dtv. But cable channels have always been varying in quality anyway.

I don't buy that all the gf and giga is that much better. Someday I hope to see it and see but I don't buy it when the source isn't top notch from the broadcaster.

That's not to say there are lots of channels that are excellent.

And something else to consider... When it comes to the artifacting on dark scenes that could be the tv with the specific source as much as anything. I wish hdnet was still broadcasting their color pallets so you could actually adjust for the DIRECTV source. Adjusting a tv via a blu Ray does not do anything for the DIRECTV source or any other source. In fact can make it worse as easily as it could better.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Rich, on 19 Jan 2016 - 09:40 AM, said:
> 
> The OLED I was looking at was the 65" model. For ~ $5,000, I think, might have been $5,900. I could just imagine getting that home, discovering problems with it and trying to return it. I called Crutchfield the other day and asked them about returns...returns because I thought the PQ was horrible. I was told that I would have to pay the shipping for a return like that, with no obvious defects. Asked how much...$100 to $150. Not bad, I think. I can't imagine what I'd have to go thru at BB if I tried to return a 5 or 6 thousand dollar set. For that much money, it should be perfect right out of the box.
> 
> ...


The 65" flat OLED was gettable brand new from Best Buy for around $3500 up until 12/31. I got my 55" for $2300 out the door. There were a few promos going on simultaneously. That's why people were getting them for that price. It was well documented on AVS.

1) there was a $1000 instant rebate from LG
2) no sales tax promo from Fry's
3) 22% cash back Discover / Apple Pay promo

So you'd go to Best Buy, have them match the Fry's no sales tax promo and then pay with Apple Pay to stack all 3 deals. Sadly, the Apple Pay promo is over.

EDIT: Best Buy is no hassle returns. They come pick up the old TV and drop off your new TV. $0 charge. There is a 5 or so return limit though, then you get black balled in the system .


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Rich, on 19 Jan 2016 - 09:47 AM, said:
> 
> I didn't go the researching/reading route, I bought the sets, tried them in my home and returned them quickly if they had problems. And I'll admit to being very picky about PQ. After all, what else is there to look for? Good PQ is absolutely essential as far as I'm concerned.
> 
> Rich


Don't see how any LCD on the market today can compare to OLED. Once you know the short comings of LCD, content is plentiful to abuse the short comings .

OLEDs like LCDs, in the stores are set to store mode, so its completely different then a calibrated TV in your home.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Digital is digital. That always has been and always will be true. Unfortunately, so is garbage in, garbage out. No TV can make the input it is given look better than what is provided. *It can, however, make it look worse*.
> 
> The input is digital, but our eyes and brains are analog, and different people are more or less sensitive to different flaws in the image. If the processing a TV does accentuates a flaw I am sensitive to and diminishes a flaw you are sensitive you, you will think it is a better TV than I will.


Indeed it can. I bought a Denon AVR-X4200 AVR along with my TV and that's not a cheap AVR. Letting the Denon vs. the TV do the scaling to 4K was like night and day. You couldn't even watch the pic with the Denon doing the scaling, it was a hot, pixelated mess. The TV does a much better scaling job.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Indeed it can. I bought a Denon AVR-X4200 AVR along with my TV and that's not a cheap AVR. Letting the Denon vs. the TV do the scaling to 4K was like night and day. You couldn't even watch the pic with the Denon doing the scaling, it was a hot, pixelated mess. The TV does a much better scaling job.


That's pretty surprising, considering the whole reason for AVRs to exist is better video quality than what you get by relying on the TV to process it!


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> Indeed it can. I bought a Denon AVR-X4200 AVR along with my TV and that's not a cheap AVR. Letting the Denon vs. the TV do the scaling to 4K was like night and day. You couldn't even watch the pic with the Denon doing the scaling, it was a hot, pixelated mess. The TV does a much better scaling job.


There you ran into an issue where you have to calibrate for both units on one input but then another source that would need to be set totally differently would also be running through the same tv input. So unless there's adjustments in the avr for each input you have found the big issue with using a audio reciever to change video sources...


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> That's pretty surprising, considering the whole reason for AVRs to exist is better video quality than what you get by relying on the TV to process it!


Quite a few AVRs don't do video scaling at all these days, just switching. That came about as the TVs got better scaling circuitry. I have a Denon S900w and have it set to just pass through, get better video that way.

Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


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## sigma1914 (Sep 5, 2006)

Rich said:


> I haven't changed any settings on the Sammy 8500, good right out of the box. ...
> Rich


I never understood how you don't change settings... and then say PQ is important to you. IMO, every set needs adjusting and never has a preset been decent. It's either torch mode with everything bright as hell or dark and dull. If settings didn't need adjustments, then places like AVS wouldn't have long settings threads with people like Chad tweaking his butt off for suggested settings.

I just have a decent Panny plasma I love... TC-P50ST60. It needed adjustment out of the box because all the presets were horrific, but now the PQ is superb.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

lparsons21 said:


> Quite a few AVRs don't do video scaling at all these days, just switching. That came about as the TVs got better scaling circuitry. I have a Denon S900w and have it set to just pass through, get better video that way.


So you have a $500 HDMI switch? Why not buy a true pass thru switch for a tenth the cost?


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> So you have a $500 HDMI switch? Why not buy a true pass thru switch for a tenth the cost?


For the hidef audio codecs, the superior audio reproduced and convenience. Let me know when you find a tv with decent speakers and that can decode the hidef codecs in a bluray disk. 
You do realize that the benefit of those codecs is as much a part of the "theater" experience as is the video, right?

Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


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## patmurphey (Dec 21, 2006)

trparky said:


> This is one of the many reasons why I think that 4K *isn't anywhere close* to being ready for prime time. 4K can make 1080 look better, true, but if your 1080 input is crappy then that 4K TV is going to make that crappy 1080 input look like garbage after the up-res is done.
> 
> If you ask me, anyone buying a 4K TV today is wasting their money. One, we don't have a decent collection of native 4K content to make a 4K TV worth buying. And two, many pay-TV providers (including DirecTV) compress the **** out of their HDTV feeds so that after the 4K up-res is done it looks like crap. Remember, the 4K up-res will make any and all picture quality imperfections stand out worse than if that same picture is displayed on a 1080p set.
> 
> If and when we start getting the kinds of data throughput capacities to the home that we need to do HDTV right, then I will consider getting a 4K TV. Until then, 1080p sets are just as good if not better than the current crop of 4K sets simply because you're not going to be trying to up-res a low-quality input.


I guess you don't have a 4k TV, because you are dead wrong. I've been enjoying up converted satellite 1080 and 4k content from Netflix, Amazon and YouTube for over a year. My opinion is based on experience. With no exeptions, other than some BluRay, all of your "glorious" 1080 is up converted from compressed content by STBs and/or the TV. It's better on a 4k TV.


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## trparky (Nov 23, 2015)

No I don't have one, until 4K content is more prevalent I won't get one.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> The 65" flat OLED was gettable brand new from Best Buy for around $3500 up until 12/31. I got my 55" for $2300 out the door. There were a few promos going on simultaneously. That's why people were getting them for that price. It was well documented on AVS.
> 
> 1) there was a $1000 instant rebate from LG
> 2) no sales tax promo from Fry's
> ...


I looked at the LG OLED in a PC Richards store. The price was at least 5 grand, but they do some goofy things at those stores. For instance, you can't return a large TV unless you've bought their deplorable extended warranties. I don't think they're a national chain, but if you get the chance to visit one, you should find it interesting. Another bunch of liars.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Quite a few AVRs don't do video scaling at all these days, just switching. That came about as the TVs got better scaling circuitry. I have a Denon S900w and have it set to just pass through, get better video that way.
> 
> Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


My Sony AVRs don't upscale either, just pass thru.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

sigma1914 said:


> I never understood how you don't change settings... and then say PQ is important to you. IMO, every set needs adjusting and never has a preset been decent. It's either torch mode with everything bright as hell or dark and dull. If settings didn't need adjustments, then places like AVS wouldn't have long settings threads with people like Chad tweaking his butt off for suggested settings.
> 
> I just have a decent Panny plasma I love... TC-P50ST60. It needed adjustment out of the box because all the presets were horrific, but now the PQ is superb.


I have the same set in the 60" model and I had to do a lot of adjustments to it. About the Sammy 4K: It's just sitting in the MB, hardly used. The only time I view D* content on it is for sports and I haven't seen the need to adjust anything for sports. When I move it to our prime viewing room (how else to explain that room?) I'll probably have to make some adjustments. Watching NF and AP content on it hasn't bothered me but I'm sure I'll have to do some fine tuning when I move it. Also, really look forward to showing my wife how the 4K set works. I had to buy a remote just so she wouldn't get confused with the remote that came with the set. Might be able to move the sets around this weekend, finally feeling like I can lift again.

Once the move is made, the plasma will be in the MB, hardly what I'd planned on doing with it when I bought it. Kinda sad to think of it just sitting there waiting for baseball season to resume.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

patmurphey said:


> I guess you don't have a 4k TV, because you are dead wrong. I've been enjoying up converted satellite 1080 and 4k content from Netflix, Amazon and YouTube for over a year. My opinion is based on experience. With no exeptions, other than some BluRay, all of your "glorious" 1080 is up converted from compressed content by STBs and/or the TV. It's better on a 4k TV.


We're never gonna win an argument with folks that don't own 4Ks. Yeah, they're wrong, but they're not gonna believe us.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> My Sony AVRs don't upscale either, just pass thru.
> 
> Rich


My Denon will, but even though it is 4K compatible, it isn't up to the latest spec. So I've been thinking about just how and what I will use with my tomorrow delivery 4K tv. I'm thinking about going back to my superior Harman Kardon 3600 and doing some creative cabling to get everything connected the best way for each source. That means some direct to the tv with optical audio back to the AVR, and some connected to the AVR and then to the Tv. When I get a real 4K bluray, I'll get one with dual HDMI out so that I can get both the 4K video and the advanced audio codecs.

Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Might consider getting some powered HDMI splitter so the tv and the reciever can both be direct HDMI connections.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Rich said:


> I looked at the LG OLED in a PC Richards store. The price was at least 5 grand, but they do some goofy things at those stores. For instance, you can't return a large TV unless you've bought their deplorable extended warranties. I don't think they're a national chain, but if you get the chance to visit one, you should find it interesting. Another bunch of liars.
> 
> Rich


That doesn't even sound legal. Yikes. I wonder if anyone has ever sued them about that policy.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

sigma1914 said:


> I never understood how you don't change settings... and then say PQ is important to you. IMO, every set needs adjusting and never has a preset been decent. It's either torch mode with everything bright as hell or dark and dull. If settings didn't need adjustments, then places like AVS wouldn't have long settings threads with people like Chad tweaking his butt off for suggested settings.
> 
> I just have a decent Panny plasma I love... TC-P50ST60. It needed adjustment out of the box because all the presets were horrific, but now the PQ is superb.


I agree. No TV is good out of the box. The LG OLED is considered the best TV on the market right now and I had to change it a few settings. ISF1 mode, brightness, contrast, OLED light, gamma and the motion smoothing to minimize SOE. The more picky people do the full 20 pt color calibration, but you need special gear for that. On the OLED, the calibrators indicated that the colors (once in the proper mode) were the most accurate they've seen out of the box and there is not much left to tweak.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> So you have a $500 HDMI switch? Why not buy a true pass thru switch for a tenth the cost?


I have a much more expensive "HDMI switch" . I don't use the video processing on the AVR because it stinks compared to the TV. I posted about it over on AVS. What I did was pause on a good quality channel then compare the result letting the AVR scale vs. letting the TV scale. The TV did smooth scaling, while the AVR caused peoples hair to get all jagged and a round microphone in the pic became all jagged too. It was night & day.

I have a modest 5.1 setup, so the AVR drives the speakers. The AVR is definitely more convienient for source switching and can do more sources then the TV.

An argument for your argument  is that most of the bells and whistles on an AVR are duplicated on a TV and BluRay player. Those bells and whistles are actually better on the TV and BluRay player because they incorporate video where as on the AVR they don't.

The AVR does allow for a few sophisticated "party tricks" though . Like I keep all my MP3's on my PC, so I can stream them on my phone (DLNA) and output to the AVR via bluetooth. I can stream audio on my AVR directly, but its a PITA scrolling through menus on an AVR, TV, BluRay player, DirecTV DVR, etc. if you have a lot of songs. Much easier flicking through the phone.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> I looked at the LG OLED in a PC Richards store. The price was at least 5 grand, but they do some goofy things at those stores. For instance, you can't return a large TV unless you've bought their deplorable extended warranties. I don't think they're a national chain, but if you get the chance to visit one, you should find it interesting. Another bunch of liars.
> 
> Rich


PcRichards was doing the $1000 rebate since that was from LG. They don't take Apple Pay I'm guessing, so you wouldn't have had that discount... they might have matched the No Sales Tax though. But the Apple Pay promo was a biggie.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> We're never gonna win an argument with folks that don't own 4Ks. Yeah, they're wrong, but they're not gonna believe us.
> 
> Rich


Gotta be honest, but I'd say with a pristine channel (like say HBO) it'll look better on a 4K TV. With the lower quality channels, a 1080P set will "hide" more of the crap because of its lower res and sharpness. BluRay is high quality, so no argument there. HBO most definitely looks way awesomer on my 4K TV. CBS LA depends on the content.


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## ragweed10 (Jul 10, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> I have a much more expensive "HDMI switch" . I don't use the video processing on the AVR because it stinks compared to the TV. I posted about it over on AVS. What I did was pause on a good quality channel then compare the result letting the AVR scale vs. letting the TV scale. The TV did smooth scaling, while the AVR caused peoples hair to get all jagged and a round microphone in the pic became all jagged too. It was night & day.
> 
> I have a modest 5.1 setup, so the AVR drives the speakers. The AVR is definitely more convienient for source switching and can do more sources then the TV.
> 
> ...


Do these K-4 "Splitter Switches" Down Grade the PQ ? I am looking NO Down Grading will they do the trick ?


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## trparky (Nov 23, 2015)

SledgeHammer said:


> Gotta be honest, but I'd say with a pristine channel (like say HBO) it'll look better on a 4K TV. With the lower quality channels, a 1080P set will "hide" more of the crap because of its lower res and sharpness. BluRay is high quality, so no argument there. HBO most definitely looks way awesomer on my 4K TV. CBS LA depends on the content.


Yeah, a perfect HDTV feed is going to look awesome on a 4K TV; I have no doubt about that. But how many HDTV feeds are perfect even on DirecTV? Not that many.

More often than not many of the channels that DirecTV carries are mediocre at best and it's not always DirecTV's fault. If the source signal is mediocre then the output signal is going to be mediocre. Those mediocre channels are going to look like trash on a 4K TV because the 4K TV is going to make the compression artifacts that much more noticeable.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

inkahauts said:


> Might consider getting some powered HDMI splitter so the tv and the reciever can both be direct HDMI connections.


I'm not sure that there are any 4K certified HDMI splitters out there.

I've been laying out how I will do things depending on which AVR I put in place. But overall, I'll take the real protected 4K source, which soon will be the 4K blur ays, and plug it in with dual HDMI. the 'smart tv' 4K sources aren't doing any of the really hidef audio beyond DD+ which the optical will pass, so optical back to whichever AVR. And from what I read the 4K from D* and E* is not going to be the more hairy versions of it so the Denon can deal with it, the HK can't because it won't even pass 4K from what I read.

Just gotta decide which AVR, then getting it connected really isn't all that big a deal. Just will be using more than one HDMI input on the TV which I don't do now if I decide to use the HK.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

trparky said:


> Yeah, a perfect HDTV feed is going to look awesome on a 4K TV; I have no doubt about that. But how many HDTV feeds are perfect even on DirecTV? Not that many.
> 
> More often than not many of the channels that DirecTV carries are mediocre at best and it's not always DirecTV's fault. If the source signal is mediocre then the output signal is going to be mediocre. Those mediocre channels are going to look like trash on a 4K TV because the 4K TV is going to make the compression artifacts that much more noticeable.


It's *entirely*, 100% DirecTVs fault. They recompress / transcode all the channels. In some cases, they compress extremely hard. The only provider in the US that doesn't recompress is Google Fiber. FIOS typically uses less compression then DirecTV as well.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> The only provider in the US that doesn't recompress is Google Fiber


You keep on saying that, yet the evidence you reference claiming so flat out contradicts what the stations actually send out on their C-Band feeds. Those posts claimed it's MPEG4 feeds at 15 Mbps, but no MPEG4 C-Band feed originates that high, most only do half that if not less. Then you got channels like Fox's networks and The Weather Channel who still use MPEG2 on C-Band. So either those numbers are wrong or they're not passing the network feed as is and transcoding if everything is at 15 Mbps.

If you want proof, here's info on what CBS and Turner do:














(If you want some fancy math for Showtime, the entire mux combined is 72.49 Mbps, divide by 9, 8.0544 Mbps per channel. Subtract the main audio feed at 384 kbps and the SAP feed at 192kbs, the video is about 7.5 Mbps per channel.)








I also have yet to see anything concrete that even says they use MPEG4, the link you mentioned before just had someone admitting they can't tell for sure and are just guessing that it's MPEG4. Unless they managed to crack the encryption or find a hidden diagnostic menu that displays the codec of the current channel, they can't know for sure.

If everything is 15 Mbps like they claim, what makes more sense is if they are transcoding, since all the channels that originate in MPEG4 distribute transcoding receivers for cable headends that output 18 Mbps MPEG2 HD feeds.

Google probably has a better picture, but unless they have a mix of MPEG2 and MPEG4 for HD with bitrates that vary widely from channel to channel (or even scene to scene within the same program) depending on if the channel does statmuxing VBR or a constant bitrate, they are not passing the feed as they get it.

Unfortunately 90% of the country will never be able to experience that picture anyway within the next decade with the way they do their rollouts (cherrypicking specific cities where it's easy for them to do a rollout for various physical and bureacratic reasons along with focusing on neighborhoods where enough people committed to signing up and skipping other neighborhoods). Even if Google somehow committed to wiring the entire country, they will never be able to wire the entire country anytime in the near future. By the time they get to the really unserved areas (where the only options are heavily capped satellite or 3 Mbps DSL if you're lucky), SD will be dead, and we'll probably be anticipating linear 8K channels from DirecTV.


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## trparky (Nov 23, 2015)

What's this talk about C-Band? Doesn't DirecTV get their channel feeds directly from the network provider? I thought that DirecTV has multiple mini-VHOs across the country that receives channels and then pipes it to the main VHO for broadcast to the satellite.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

In most cases they get them from C-Band first, although some things come in via fiber like ESPN College Extra's HD feeds and the HD feeds of MSG and MSG+ which are not uplinked to C-Band. (ESPN 3D was also only delivered via fiber)

It's also why we get the effects of sun fade twice, one for when the sun is behind DirecTV's satellites and we get a searching for signal message, and another when the sun is behind the original C-Band satellites and we get the "no need to call us, temporarily unavailable due to sunfade" slate for a few minutes on blocks of channels.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

KyL416 said:


> KyL416, on 20 Jan 2016 - 2:24 PM, said:
> 
> You keep on saying that, yet the evidence you reference claiming so flat out contradicts what the stations actually send out on their C-Band feeds. Those posts claimed it's MPEG4 feeds at 15 Mbps, but no MPEG4 C-Band feed originates that high, most only do half that if not less. Then you got channels like Fox's networks and The Weather Channel who still use MPEG2 on C-Band. So either those numbers are wrong or they're not passing the network feed as is and transcoding if everything is at 15 Mbps.
> 
> ...


The original reference was a Google Engineer in one of their forums. Whether he was spinning the numbers or not, who knows? Also, who knows what they use, how they do it, where they get the sources, etc. Maybe they get it digitally through fiber, etc? Again, no real info available.

I know some people are brand whores and will buy / switch to anything from a certain brand (i.e. Google and Apple) when it doesn't always have an advantage to do so. That's not really a viable strategy as an ISP / TV provider. They've got to have bells and whistles to get people to switch.

GFs advantage is 1) 1Gbps bi-directional service to your house for $70 and a Total Choice+ like TV package for only $60. 2) highest quality video available to your house. Google is Google, and they're likely losing $$$ on the build out / hardware, etc, but making it up on the back-end by mining the data. I think I read somewhere that GF is ALREADY profitable.

Also, remember, Sat vs. wired is no comparison in cost. I bet GF could wire 100% of Los Angeles for a fraction of the cost DirecTV puts out to launch a new bird and maintain it.

Honestly, who cares what they use, how or where they get it or do it as long as the quality is there. Cox can't deliver 1Gbps to my house at any cost. In a few other areas they want $100/mo for it. I think AT&T is offering 1Gbps for $70/mo as well, with the catch that you have to let them monitor everything you do so they can sell the information. If you want more privacy they up the cost to $100/mo.

I'd like to see GF add a phone service though to get a 1 stop shop.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> The original reference was a Google Engineer in one of their forums.


The only thing that person quoted was the 15 Mbps number. The MPEG4 info came from someone else who admitted they were just guessing later in the thread.



> Maybe they get it digitally through fiber, etc?


The sunfade my friend in Kansas City got last fall confirms they get it from C-Band like all other providers, complete with a time that matched the scheduled sunfade for the C-Band satellite the channel originated from.



> I bet GF could wire 100% of Los Angeles for a fraction of the cost DirecTV puts out to launch a new bird and maintain it.


Considering all the skyscrapers, permits, and digging they have to do with the underground infrastructure cities like LA have where if you crack open a street, it's a mess of cable lines, electric lines, telephone lines, gas mains and century old water mains, it's not as easy as you would think. If Google Fiber picks LA, chances are a LOT of areas will be left out of the buildout if it's like all the other cities they launched.


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## trparky (Nov 23, 2015)

With so many VoIP providers like Ooma I don't see why Google Fiber needs to add voice service to their menu of services. The only thing that adding voice service serves is to add more regulations to Google Fiber at a time when more regulations is something we definitely don't need any more of. Besides, with more people deciding to switch to cell-phone only service most people don't need a home land line.

I myself use Ooma, it's much cheaper than anything the big boys charge.


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## Christopher Gould (Jan 14, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> I'm not sure that there are any 4K certified HDMI splitters out there.
> 
> I've been laying out how I will do things depending on which AVR I put in place. But overall, I'll take the real protected 4K source, which soon will be the 4K blur ays, and plug it in with dual HDMI. the 'smart tv' 4K sources aren't doing any of the really hidef audio beyond DD+ which the optical will pass, so optical back to whichever AVR. And from what I read the 4K from D* and E* is not going to be the more hairy versions of it so the Denon can deal with it, the HK can't because it won't even pass 4K from what I read.
> 
> Just gotta decide which AVR, then getting it connected really isn't all that big a deal. Just will be using more than one HDMI input on the TV which I don't do now if I decide to use the HK.


I'd swear I saw some high priced 4k certified hdmi splitters in a Monoprice email a week or so ago.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Yeah, I got to digging around and saw them too. 


Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:



> Honestly, who cares what they use, how or where they get it or do it as long as the quality is there. Cox can't deliver 1Gbps to my house at any cost. In a few other areas they want $100/mo for it. I think AT&T is offering 1Gbps for $70/mo as well, with the catch that you have to let them monitor everything you do so they can sell the information. If you want more privacy they up the cost to $100/mo.


Cox and all the other cable providers will be offering 1 Gbps over the next few years, as they convert to DOCSIS 3.1 (which actually can support up to 10 Gbps, but even 1 Gbps is more than anyone could ever really use at home) I think Comcast is doing some of the early deployments already in Philly and Chicago.

They will also use that to eventually do away with the 6 MHz channels and deliver all their TV via IP using DOCSIS 3.1, but that will take longer since they'd have to swap out subscriber equipment older than a few years that couldn't handle IP delivery.


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## patmurphey (Dec 21, 2006)

trparky said:


> ...Those mediocre channels are going to look like trash on a 4K TV because the 4K TV is going to make the compression artifacts that much more noticeable.


Just not true.


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## mdavej (Jan 31, 2007)

I've seen several 4k TVs in stores. Sure, 4k material looks great. But the way 1080p looks on them does not make me want to buy one. I realize they're in retina burning mode, even so, the picture looks far worse than 1080p on a 1080p set also in retina burning mode. Instead of thinking, wow that looks amazing, I think, my 1080p TV looks a lot better than that. Simplistic, I know, but that's the main thing holding me back. Most material is still going to be 1080i/p for a long time. So if 1080p looks terrible on a 4k set (and it most certainly does), I'm not going to buy one.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Perhaps some of the difference of opinion on this can be put down to Rich's experience. He went through several 4K TVs before he found one he was really happy with. So if you buy a really high end TV, or go through the hassle several in your home watching the content you normally watch and comparing against your current TV, maybe those who say 720/1080i/1080p content looks better on a 4K TV are right. But maybe not right for all 4K TVs, which would still puts things in a buyer beware stage for the majority of people who don't want to spend the money on a really high end set or keep switching TVs at home until they find one they really find to be superior.

I haven't really looked closely at idea of how well HD content looks on 4K because I personally don't care - I don't see the point in buying a 4K set that won't be future proof for HDR and the standards for that (and especially the ability of TVs to actually display a decent chunk of the future color gamut) are still in flux. I recall my impressions from seeing a (at the time very high end, but they all were then) 4K TV three years ago, I was not particularly impressed. I think HDR will be a lot more important than the resolution increase, but we're not quite there yet.

Its pointless to argue on either side, those who are unsure shouldn't read what someone writes on the internet, they should go shopping and see for themselves.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> That doesn't even sound legal. Yikes. I wonder if anyone has ever sued them about that policy.


Most ridiculous store to deal with I've ever been in. Their motto states how dependable they are. You can depend on them to screw you in many ways, number one being those extended warranties. Getting a repair done correctly is a real crapshoot. No, I've never heard of anyone suing them, they've never changed their policies over the years. Still have salesmen on commission willing to tell you anything to get you to buy the extended warranties. That seems to be their main thrust in life.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> I agree. No TV is good out of the box. The LG OLED is considered the best TV on the market right now and I had to change it a few settings. ISF1 mode, brightness, contrast, OLED light, gamma and the motion smoothing to minimize SOE. The more picky people do the full 20 pt color calibration, but you need special gear for that. On the OLED, the calibrators indicated that the colors (once in the proper mode) were the most accurate they've seen out of the box and there is not much left to tweak.


Those six 720p plasmas I bought years ago came out of the box and have never had a setting changed on them. All still have pretty good pictures on them. Still a mistake I wish I'd never made, buying 720ps instead of waiting and buying 1080ps, but I can't complain about the PQ on them. You really should be able to buy a TV and not have to screw around with settings. Or have to calibrate them. I used to buy Sony CRT TVs and never had a problem with them right out of the box, but all 3 of the 1080p plasmas I've purchased had to have a lot of settings changed. At the prices the new TVs cost, why shouldn't you expect a really good picture right out of the box? When I buy a car, I don't have to take it to a service center for a tuneup or have the speedometer calibrated and I think the cars I buy are a bit more complicated than a TV set.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> PcRichards was doing the $1000 rebate since that was from LG. They don't take Apple Pay I'm guessing, so you wouldn't have had that discount... they might have matched the No Sales Tax though. But the Apple Pay promo was a biggie.


To be honest, when I was at the PC Richards store I had just returned the LG 7690 and didn't have any interest in anything LG. I just looked at the set and did no haggling.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Gotta be honest, but I'd say with a pristine channel (like say HBO) it'll look better on a 4K TV. With the lower quality channels, a 1080P set will "hide" more of the crap because of its lower res and sharpness. BluRay is high quality, so no argument there. HBO most definitely looks way awesomer on my 4K TV. CBS LA depends on the content.


What little D* content I've had on the 4K, aside from sports, has looked better than the plasma's picture. I dunno, I think I'll make the switch this weekend and I hope I don't end up having to switch back to the plasma in that room again. I've never had an LCD in use in my home before this (my son does have one, but he just plays games on it) and I'm kinda concerned that I'm just gonna sit there and pick apart the PQ on the 4K in upscaling mode. I already know what my 2160p upscalers can do with NF and AP, but I'm concerned about the D* content and how much complaining my wife is gonna do about the PQ on D* content.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

trparky said:


> Yeah, a perfect HDTV feed is going to look awesome on a 4K TV; I have no doubt about that. But how many HDTV feeds are perfect even on DirecTV? Not that many.
> 
> More often than not many of the channels that DirecTV carries are mediocre at best and it's not always DirecTV's fault. If the source signal is mediocre then the output signal is going to be mediocre. Those mediocre channels are going to look like trash on a 4K TV because the 4K TV is going to make the compression artifacts that much more noticeable.


Doesn't seem to work like that on sports. All the baseball games and football games I've watched using several 4K sets have had great PQ. I can only hope the D* content upscaled works as well. I'll know for sure soon, and I'm always willing to admit I made a mistake.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> I'm not sure that there are any 4K certified HDMI splitters out there.
> 
> I've been laying out how I will do things depending on which AVR I put in place. But overall, I'll take the real protected 4K source, which soon will be the 4K blur ays, and plug it in with dual HDMI. the 'smart tv' 4K sources aren't doing any of the really hidef audio beyond DD+ which the optical will pass, so optical back to whichever AVR. And from what I read the 4K from D* and E* is not going to be the more hairy versions of it so the Denon can deal with it, the HK can't because it won't even pass 4K from what I read.
> 
> Just gotta decide which AVR, then getting it connected really isn't all that big a deal. Just will be using more than one HDMI input on the TV which I don't do now if I decide to use the HK.


I'm just gonna use my good old Sony AVR and optical cables for any 4K sources. I have only one 2160p source and I'll plug that HDMI directly into the TV and use the optical cable for sound. Works well in my bedroom, hope it works as well in the other room.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Perhaps some of the difference of opinion on this can be put down to Rich's experience. He went through several 4K TVs before he found one he was really happy with. So if you buy a really high end TV, or go through the hassle several in your home watching the content you normally watch and comparing against your current TV, maybe those who say 720/1080i/1080p content looks better on a 4K TV are right. _*But maybe not right for all 4K TVs, which would still puts things in a buyer beware stage for the majority of people who don't want to spend the money on a really high end set or keep switching TVs at home until they find one they really find to be superior.*_


You got that right. Buying a cheap 4K simply did not work out well for me. I did not want to spend what I did for a bedroom TV replacement, but I could not put up with what the cheaper sets looked like in my home compared to my 60" plasma. Well said.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> I'm just gonna use my good old Sony AVR and optical cables for any 4K sources. I have only one 2160p source and I'll plug that HDMI directly into the TV and use the optical cable for sound. Works well in my bedroom, hope it works as well in the other room.
> 
> Rich


My one and only setup is a 7.1 speaker arrangement. If/when I get a 4K bluray player, I'll figure out exactly what I will end up doing to get the benefit of them. But these days, since I generally just either watch streams and/or cable/sat which don't have those hidef codecs, I can keep the Denon connected just as it is with 2 additions.
1. Optical from Tv to AVR to get sound from the 4K apps and the he'd do.
2. HDMI from HDDVD to TV, currently that is component and optical to the Denon. But I'm out of easily controllable inputs. I have 9 toys connected. 

Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Cox and all the other cable providers will be offering 1 Gbps over the next few years, as they convert to DOCSIS 3.1 (which actually can support up to 10 Gbps, but even 1 Gbps is more than anyone could ever really use at home) I think Comcast is doing some of the early deployments already in Philly and Chicago.
> 
> They will also use that to eventually do away with the 6 MHz channels and deliver all their TV via IP using DOCSIS 3.1, but that will take longer since they'd have to swap out subscriber equipment older than a few years that couldn't handle IP delivery.


Cox is offering 1Gbps service already and its fiber, not DOCSIS 3.1 (at least in Irvine). They also told me when they fully expand in Irvine, its going to be Fiber, not DOCSIS). AT&T's 1Gbps solution is also fiber. As for 1Gbps being "more then anyone could ever really use at home"? Where'd you get that? . Pretty much every PC or laptop you can buy these days comes equipped with a 1Gbps ethernet port. Most AV equipment is 100Mbps though. Wireless AC isn't going to give you 1Gbps throughput over the air, but I believe AX (or is it AD?) is expected to.

If you just do email and browse, you don't need 1Gbps obviously. If you've got 4 or 5 people in your house playing games, netflix, surfing, torrenting, etc. you'll run out of bandwidth in a hurry.

And don't forget of course, most cable ISP hubs are oversaturated. I live in a relatively new neighborhood (12 yrs old) of 140 homes in the middle of a high tech city and our hub is oversaturated. During off peak hours, I get 130Mbps down. During peak hours, I've seen it go as low as 2 - 3 Mbps (yes, seriously! :bang ). I had a tech out on Tuesday and he was a clueless jr. They've got a supe coming out on Saturday. If that guy blows me off like the jr guy, I'll escalate to the executive resolution team. I'm not going to pay big $$$ for the 100Mbps package and get 3Mbps.

DOCSIS 3.1 would just make the problem worse which is why they are laying down fat fiber pipes instead.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> What little D* content I've had on the 4K, aside from sports, has looked better than the plasma's picture. I dunno, I think I'll make the switch this weekend and I hope I don't end up having to switch back to the plasma in that room again. I've never had an LCD in use in my home before this (my son does have one, but he just plays games on it) and I'm kinda concerned that I'm just gonna sit there and pick apart the PQ on the 4K in upscaling mode. I already know what my 2160p upscalers can do with NF and AP, but I'm concerned about the D* content and how much complaining my wife is gonna do about the PQ on D* content.
> 
> Rich


If you are on a high end 1080P plasma now and are picky about PQ in any way, shape or form, you sure as hell aren't going to be happy with any LCD. They look fine in bright, vivid scenes, but they can't handle dark scenes, shadow scenes, etc.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Rich said:


> Those six 720p plasmas I bought years ago came out of the box and have never had a setting changed on them. All still have pretty good pictures on them. Still a mistake I wish I'd never made, buying 720ps instead of waiting and buying 1080ps, but I can't complain about the PQ on them. You really should be able to buy a TV and not have to screw around with settings. Or have to calibrate them. I used to buy Sony CRT TVs and never had a problem with them right out of the box, but all 3 of the 1080p plasmas I've purchased had to have a lot of settings changed. At the prices the new TVs cost, why shouldn't you expect a really good picture right out of the box? When I buy a car, I don't have to take it to a service center for a tuneup or have the speedometer calibrated and I think the cars I buy are a bit more complicated than a TV set.
> 
> Rich


The problem I've seen with a lot of sets is out of the box they are set to vivid mode or bright big box with fluorescent lights mode with the backlight cranked to high. I've always at least needed to change it to a more reasonable mode, like movie etc..


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> If you are on a high end 1080P plasma now and are picky about PQ in any way, shape or form, you sure as hell aren't going to be happy with any LCD. They look fine in bright, vivid scenes, but they can't handle dark scenes, shadow scenes, etc.


Yeah, I know, but what else could I do? I had a 50" 1080p go south and had to replace it. Nothing out there that compares to a plasma. Let's see what happens after this weekend.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

dpeters11 said:


> The problem I've seen with a lot of sets is out of the box they are set to vivid mode or bright big box with fluorescent lights mode with the backlight cranked to high. I've always at least needed to change it to a more reasonable mode, like movie etc..


I did have to adjust the cheaper 4K sets I bought in that way. Way too bright. The new one seems OK, tho. I know I'll have to futz around with it.

Rich


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> If you just do email and browse, you don't need 1Gbps obviously. If you've got 4 or 5 people in your house playing games, netflix, surfing, torrenting, etc. you'll run out of bandwidth in a hurry.


You still don't come close to needing 1 Gbps. Netflix delivers 4K with a 15.6 Mbps stream, how many 4K streams can 4-5 people watch? Gaming doesn't consume tens let alone hundreds of Mbps, nor does surfing. Now with torrents yeah you can consume an unlimited amount but that's not exactly something ISPs want to support


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Yeah, I know, but what else could I do? I had a 50" 1080p go south and had to replace it. Nothing out there that compares to a plasma. Let's see what happens after this weekend.
> 
> Rich


OLED, of course . OLED destroys plasma. I had a 50" 1080P Panasonic Pro plasma and the OLED blows it away in every department. Fraction of the thickness, fraction of the weight (I lifted my 55" OLED into place by myself with the stand attached, I think the whole thing is like 30lbs), perfect blacks, perfect/vivid colors, its HDMI 2.0a / HDCP 2.2 / HDR capable, so you are all set for UHD BluRay too. LG has WebOS which is ranked as the #1 TV OS, although, tbh, I don't stream from legit sources , so the apps aren't that useful to me, but if you want 4K content, Amazon and Netflix are your only options at this point. Even the remote is very slick and high tech and very ergonomic.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> You still don't come close to needing 1 Gbps. Netflix delivers 4K with a 15.6 Mbps stream, how many 4K streams can 4-5 people watch? Gaming doesn't consume tens let alone hundreds of Mbps, nor does surfing. Now with torrents yeah you can consume an unlimited amount but that's not exactly something ISPs want to support


You're obviously not a Cox customer . Cox <3's torrent users . They are smart and know my grandma doesn't need 100Mbps service, but I do because I'm slamming down 40GB torrents. They even refused to join the 6 strikes consortium. Although, I think somebody is trying to sue them over not going after pirates, but I'm guessing Cox has lawyers and they wouldn't have signed off on Cox's unofficial strategy if they didn't have a loop hole or two in thier pockets .

Cox doesn't own any content, so high speed is thier bread and butter.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> OLED, of course . OLED destroys plasma. I had a 50" 1080P Panasonic Pro plasma and the OLED blows it away in every department. Fraction of the thickness, fraction of the weight (I lifted my 55" OLED into place by myself with the stand attached, I think the whole thing is like 30lbs), perfect blacks, perfect/vivid colors, its HDMI 2.0a / HDCP 2.2 / HDR capable, so you are all set for UHD BluRay too. LG has WebOS which is ranked as the #1 TV OS, although, tbh, I don't stream from legit sources , so the apps aren't that useful to me, but if you want 4K content, Amazon and Netflix are your only options at this point. Even the remote is very slick and high tech and very ergonomic.


If Samsung were to come out with an OLED TV, I might jump on that. That ordeal I went thru with the LG 7690 left me with a bad impression of LG products.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Got my Sharp LC-70UH30 4K TV last night. It is THX certified for whatever that's worth. Got it set on THX Movie Mode for dark room and it is amazingly good. Had to twiddle the motion setting a bit 'cause LED/LCD's just aren't as good with fast motion as are Plasmas and DLPs.

One oddity I noticed is that SD from Dish doesn't get upscaled very well, but SD broadcast looks much, much better. That is one thing that won't matter much as I'm pretty much an HD snob!! 

Sent from my App Runtime for Chrome using Tapatalk


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> If Samsung were to come out with an OLED TV, I might jump on that. That ordeal I went thru with the LG 7690 left me with a bad impression of LG products.
> 
> Rich


Panasonic has an OLED coming out, but I think its curved only and THX, so marked up $$$ wise like a mother....

Anybody with an OLED TV in at least the next 4 to 5 yrs plus is just going to be a rebadged LG panel anyways. The Panny OLED is using the LG panel and has the same issues.

I will say, I would not recommend to anybody to buy it online at this time. There is still a panel lottery with the 2015's, so you want an easy to swap place like BB. Unfortunately, the promos that were in effect to drive xmas sales are all gone . I don't believe it is possible to buy the TV for anywhere near the 4th quarter prices anymore.


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## tomallison24 (Dec 10, 2008)

I'm not saying my DTV HD picture quality is terrible but I have noticed that my new streaming from Netflix is better. I thought that streaming quality was supposed to be iffy in HD.

I guess at this point I would just like to see what forum members are experiencing between these two.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

tomallison24 said:


> I'm not saying my DTV HD picture quality is terrible but I have noticed that my new streaming from Netflix is better. I thought that streaming quality was supposed to be iffy in HD.
> 
> I guess at this point I would just like to see what forum members are experiencing between these two.


What you're seeing on NF is 1080p, it's just better than anything D* has except the PPV movies. NF and Amazon Prime are certainly not "iffy", they pump out a better picture than D* does.

Rich


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## n3vino (Oct 2, 2011)

Rich said:


> I did have to adjust the cheaper 4K sets I bought in that way. Way too bright. The new one seems OK, tho. I know I'll have to futz around with it.


 My daughter has a Samsung and it wasn't cheap, yet D* PQ does not seem to be as good as it is on my cheaper 1080P LCD connected on an HR24. She has a Genie34 DVR and we are conecected via internet using a cck. The PQ is great on Blue Ray movies and 3D blue rays. Haven't tried Netflix of Amazon. I have both. Based on your previous post, it seems to be a D* issue on regular programming, and it should do good on NF and Amazon. I'll certainly have her try them.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

n3vino said:


> My daughter has a Samsung and it wasn't cheap, yet D* PQ does not seem to be as good as it is on my cheaper 1080P LCD connected on an HR24. She has a Genie34 DVR and we are conecected via internet using a cck. The PQ is great on Blue Ray movies and 3D blue rays. Haven't tried Netflix of Amazon. I have both. Based on your previous post, it seems to be a D* issue on regular programming, and it should do good on NF and Amazon. I'll certainly have her try them.


What do I consider a cheap TV? Anything with a refresh rate of 120, if we're talking about Samsungs. About the D* content: I simply have no complaints about the D* content. It plays better on the 4K set than it does on my 1080p plasma.

I do see some differences with a 1080p input vs a 720p/1080i input, but not a whole lot and both play better on the 4K set than they do on my 1080p plasma. And I haven't had to touch any settings on the Sammy 4K. It's just as it was out of the box. Superb PQ.

Rich


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## ejbvt (Aug 14, 2011)

Rich said:


> What you're seeing on NF is 1080p, it's just better than anything D* has except the PPV movies. NF and Amazon Prime are certainly not "iffy", they pump out a better picture than D* does.
> 
> Rich


Very not true. Netflix looks a lot better than it used to, but (at least with Comcast) it's noticeably not as good as Directv.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

ejbvt said:


> Very not true. Netflix looks a lot better than it used to, but (_*at least with Comcast*_) it's noticeably not as good as Directv.


"Very not true"? Well, at least you explained why...

Rich


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Rich said:


> What you're seeing on NF is 1080p, it's just better than anything D* has except the PPV movies. NF and Amazon Prime are certainly not "iffy", they pump out a better picture than D* does.
> 
> Rich


I totally agree. I've never laid eyes on HD channels from Google Fiber or FiOS, so I can't compare those, but I will say that the best quality 1080p streams offered by both Netflix and Amazon Video are superior to what you see on linear HD channels offered by DirecTV (or Dish or Comcast or Uverse). I used to have DirecTV but am now a "cord cobbler," combining OTA linear channels with various streaming services through my TiVo. I'm a big fan of Showtime as it airs a lot of my favorite series the past few years, so I particularly use that as a point of comparison. (As others in this thread have pointed out, there's quite a range in bitrates and HD PQ among the original C-Band feeds for different channels, although Showtime likely ranks toward the top if, as pointed out above, it has a constant MPEG4 bitrate of 7 Mbps for its 1080i channels.)

My experience was that the main Showtime HD channel on DirecTV looked quite good while some of the less popular Showtime multiplex channels (Showtime Beyond, Showtime Next, etc.) were inferior. But I found that downloading programs over the internet using Showtime OnDemand via my DirecTV Genie delivered even better PQ than watching my recordings from the main Showtime channel. So I began watching Nurse Jackie, Homeland, Episodes, etc. via OnDemand.

In the past year, I've subscribed to Showtime as a streaming service, through their own standalone app on my Apple TV, as well as an add-on subscription through both Hulu and Amazon Prime. The Amazon Video app on my TiVo, paired with either AT&T or Comcast internet of at least 18 Mbps, delivers absolutely beautiful 1080p24 (or 1080p30, whichever is native) video with DD 5.1 sound at a total bitrate of about 10 Mbps for MPEG4 encoded video. (Netflix looks amazing as well with a 1080p24 MPEG4 bitrate of about 6 Mbps -- more efficiently encoded than Amazon, apparently.)

I would bet that the only way to get better HD PQ for Showtime programming than through Amazon Video is to wait for it to come out on Bluray. It looks better through Amazon Video than through Showtime's own app or through Hulu (which is limited to 720p), and it most certainly looks better than on DirecTV. Granted, I'm talking about streaming titles on demand rather than a live linear channel. (If you subscribe to Showtime as an add-on to Amazon Prime, you can stream their live linear HD channels but only through certain web browsers and the PQ, while decent, is not as good as most traditional TV providers.) Given that most Showtime shows via Amazon are encoded at 1080p24 (with a few at 1080p30), while the Showtime linear channels are done in 1080i60, I'm betting that Amazon is doing their own superior encoding of all those titles directly from source files rather than relying on the broadcast-ready files produced by Showtime.


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## ericknolls (Aug 18, 2013)

ragweed10 said:


> DirecTV has BETTER Equipment and sends a MUCH BETTER picture than Dish.
> I noticed a Big difference when I switched between them when the installers were here.
> BOTH companies employees told me DirecTV uses a different technology which produce the better picture.
> They also said I was not the only customer to comment on this.


I know my Samsung TV picture quality is great using DIRECTV. Other TV brands have problems from pixelated and their refresh rates. I would say buy the best TV out there and not those unknown or lower quality brands. Always research your HDTV and its ratings before purchasing one.

Sent from my XT1028 using Tapatalk


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

ericknolls said:


> I know my Samsung TV picture quality is great using DIRECTV. Other TV brands have problems from pixelated and their refresh rates. I would say buy the best TV out there and not those unknown or lower quality brands. Always research your HDTV and its ratings before purchasing one.
> 
> Sent from my XT1028 using Tapatalk


Agreed. But even Samsung has a lot of "iffy" models. You really need a set with a 240 refresh rate to ensure a solid picture. Go below that level and you're gonna see juddering, no matter what the salesmen say. Here's a _*link*_ to a site that really explains refresh rates well. You can trust what you see on that site, I did and I'm absolutely thrilled with my 4K Sammy 65" JS8500. Yeah, it was more than I wanted to spend, but I'm glad I did. Note the size of my set, that seems to be a good size for a 4K set. I tried a 55" and a 60" set before I decided the 65" set was the way to go.

Rich


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## mthomas47 (Jan 31, 2012)

Since this thread is specifically about DirecTV picture quality, I have been a little bit surprised that no one has commented on the last two firmware updates. DirecTV has clearly been shifting resources lately to increase bandwidth for some (many?) of the HD channels. I saw a noticeable improvement after the firmware update a couple of weeks ago, and we got another one that helped this week. It still isn't 1080p, of course, but it is probably as good 1080i quality as they have had in several years.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Firmware updates have nothing to do with Directv shifting resources for better HD quality. Directv can move channels around to change their bandwidth allocation whenever they want and it will affect all receivers at once, whether or not they get a firmware update. If you're noticing picture quality changes that you believe are connected with a firmware update something else is going on, though I'm not really sure what that could be.


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## ragweed10 (Jul 10, 2013)

mthomas47 said:


> Since this thread is specifically about DirecTV picture quality, I have been a little bit surprised that no one has commented on the last two firmware updates. DirecTV has clearly been shifting resources lately to increase bandwidth for some (many?) of the HD channels. I saw a noticeable improvement after the firmware update a couple of weeks ago, and we got another one that helped this week. It still isn't 1080p, of course, but it is probably as good 1080i quality as they have had in several years.


I seem to think it (PQ) is improved on some channels.
Which ones do you notice a difference ?


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## turbulence (Feb 22, 2016)

suzook said:


> The quality of HD on DTV has gotten progressively worse. Some channels don't look like HD. Why doesn't DTV drop ALL sd channels? It doesn't make any sense. Its a complete waste of bandwidth.


As crazy as it sounds, half of the service calls and new installs I'm doing is on old CRT TVs with standard receivers or people with CRT TVs (made in the 80s and 90s) ordering HD boxes for their TVs, with only an RCA cable connection or COAX. on the back. I'm not sure what they are thinking or why even bother signing up. DirecTV doesn't care as long as they pay the bills, but the whip snaps on the back of the techs, because they are stuck with people with zero knowledge of their own equipment and zero knowledge what is HD or what they actually sign up for and I have to explain in single terms, that we do not do COAX connections between the TV and the receivers. 
I always carry at least one old SD receiver with me, because at least one person will try to explain to me, that his TV made in 1991 is perfectly fine, just connect that HD client to it. Then I do a work order modification and give him the SD receiver.

p.s. And please people, don't sign up for DirecTV or any TV if you do not have television yet! I know, as unbelivable that sounds, it happens.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

It may be hard for some people here to believe, but not everyone cares about things being in HD, some people watch programming for the content and not the pixel count.

Plus not everyone has the money or the ability to replace all their perfectly working TVs at the same time, so if they do have a HDTV, they probably only have one or two, while the rest of them are older CRTs. Especially if the reason why they're switching providers is because they're trying to save money and got a better deal with DirecTV than what their previous provider offered. Cable providers still have boxes with RF outputs, and many providers (other than Comcast, Charter and Cablevision) still have decent analog lineups with about 70-80 of the most popular channels, so they had no previous need to hook up a box to their TV or use one of those RCA to RF converters on the TVs that did have boxes. And if they're living paycheck to paycheck, spending about $600 just to replace 5 TVs that worked just fine with their previous provider is not an option.

Since DirecTV is no longer doing MPEG2 only installations for new subscribers, it's a situation a lot of installers are going to run into.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Well I guess for customers with CRT TVs so old they only have a coax connection, Directv could provide a cheap NTSC modulator to convert from composite to channel 3 coax. If turbulence's experience isn't that unusual, maybe information like this isn't filtering up through the ranks from the installers to HQ where people in power can make this happen.

When they drop MPEG2 SD and SD receivers that have coax output go away they will need to do something like this, or else tell customers "we don't support TVs that only have a coax input".


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## ejbvt (Aug 14, 2011)

turbulence said:


> As crazy as it sounds, half of the service calls and new installs I'm doing is on old CRT TVs with standard receivers or people with CRT TVs (made in the 80s and 90s) ordering HD boxes for their TVs, with only an RCA cable connection or COAX. on the back. I'm not sure what they are thinking or why even bother signing up. DirecTV doesn't care as long as they pay the bills, but the whip snaps on the back of the techs, because they are stuck with people with zero knowledge of their own equipment and zero knowledge what is HD or what they actually sign up for and I have to explain in single terms, that we do not do COAX connections between the TV and the receivers.
> I always carry at least one old SD receiver with me, because at least one person will try to explain to me, that his TV made in 1991 is perfectly fine, just connect that HD client to it. Then I do a work order modification and give him the SD receiver.
> 
> p.s. And please people, don't sign up for DirecTV or any TV if you do not have television yet! I know, as unbelivable that sounds, it happens.


Yeah, you'd get a complaint from me. I used to have an old CRT in my bedroom. Explain to me how your stupid SD receiver is going to get the Smithsonian Channel in there.


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## Captain Spaulding (Jul 12, 2005)

NashGuy said:


> I totally agree. I've never laid eyes on HD channels from Google Fiber or FiOS, so I can't compare those, but I will say that the best quality 1080p streams offered by both Netflix and Amazon Video are superior to what you see on linear HD channels offered by DirecTV (or Dish or Comcast or Uverse). I used to have DirecTV but am now a "cord cobbler," combining OTA linear channels with various streaming services through my TiVo. I'm a big fan of Showtime as it airs a lot of my favorite series the past few years, so I particularly use that as a point of comparison. (As others in this thread have pointed out, there's quite a range in bitrates and HD PQ among the original C-Band feeds for different channels, although Showtime likely ranks toward the top if, as pointed out above, it has a constant MPEG4 bitrate of 7 Mbps for its 1080i channels.)
> 
> My experience was that the main Showtime HD channel on DirecTV looked quite good while some of the less popular Showtime multiplex channels (Showtime Beyond, Showtime Next, etc.) were inferior. But I found that downloading programs over the internet using Showtime OnDemand via my DirecTV Genie delivered even better PQ than watching my recordings from the main Showtime channel. So I began watching Nurse Jackie, Homeland, Episodes, etc. via OnDemand.
> 
> ...


Thanks, NashGuy, for the great comparison of Showtime video quality. One thing that has made me hesitate to completely cut the satellite cord is the big drop in picture quality I see when comparing the HBO Now steaming app with the DirecTV feed. HBO Now looks pretty bad in comparison. Its great to know, though, that I can get a really good quality Showtime feed via Amazon. That's where I'll get our Showtime subscription when the cable is cut!


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

ejbvt said:


> Yeah, you'd get a complaint from me. I used to have an old CRT in my bedroom. Explain to me how your stupid SD receiver is going to get the Smithsonian Channel in there.


He's talking about using that old SD receiver for customers who have CRT TVs that have ONLY a coax input. I assume your TV either has composite input, or you provided your own RF modulator to connect to the TV. He's being helpful to customers who just assume that a Directv receiver will be able to connect to their old TV via coax, like their cable box could. If he didn't have that backup SD receiver he'd be forced to tell customers that they can't use that TV at all.


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## mthomas47 (Jan 31, 2012)

ragweed10 said:


> I seem to think it (PQ) is improved on some channels.
> Which ones do you notice a difference ?


I see the recent improvement in PQ on all of the premium channels I watch, and on some of the other channels such as CBS and TNT, too. Something else I noticed a while back, which as another poster noted, may not be directly connected to a firmware update, is that SonicTap is less compressed than it used to be. I think that also changed within about the last 30 days. I know that they used to report about 96Kbps with SonicTap. I don't know what it is now, perhaps 128Kbps, but it is audibly less compressed. Like everyone else, I am eagerly awaiting the advent of new HD channels with the two new satellites. But at least it is nice to see that DirecTV is devoting some additional bandwidth to what we already have.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Captain Spaulding said:


> Thanks, NashGuy, for the great comparison of Showtime video quality. One thing that has made me hesitate to completely cut the satellite cord is the big drop in picture quality I see when comparing the HBO Now steaming app with the DirecTV feed. HBO Now looks pretty bad in comparison. Its great to know, though, that I can get a really good quality Showtime feed via Amazon. That's where I'll get our Showtime subscription when the cable is cut!


Glad it was helpful. As for HBO, yeah, it's the weak link in the streaming world, IMO. I've never used HBO NOW but I have used HBO GO on a few different devices and it never looks as good to me as 1080p from Amazon, Netflix, or Showtime (via either their standalone streaming app or as an Amazon add-on). I'm actually not even sure if HBO streams in 1080p (although they definitely offer DD 5.1). Looks like 720p to me, kinda soft. Don't know for sure what bitrate they use, although I read somewhere that somebody measured an average of 4 Mbps bitrate for HBO GO on Apple TV (which looks better to me than HBO GO on other devices I've tried). In comparison, the best quality streams from Amazon and Netflix are about 10 and 6 Mbps, respectively. The Hulu app on my TiVo has a max bitrate of 3.2 Mbps, although Hulu for sure only offers 720p, no 1080p (and only stereo sound, no DD 5.1). Even Hulu looks slightly better to me than HBO GO.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

mthomas47 said:


> I see the recent improvement in PQ on all of the premium channels I watch, and on some of the other channels such as CBS and TNT, too.


TNT is on a transponder with only 5 HD channels, which would explain why it looks better. The premiums vary, although the ones that are on transponders with 6 HD channels are usually grouped with channels that don't tend to have rapid motion or action scenes.

CBS and other locals vary market to market. Like Nashville has it on a transponder with only 5 HD channels, Scranton has it on a transponder with 5 HD channels and one MPEG4 SD channel, while the big 4 for NYC and LA are Conus and mixed with other national HD channels. It also really depends on what else your local affiliate carries.



> Something else I noticed a while back, which as another poster noted, may not be directly connected to a firmware update, is that SonicTap is less compressed than it used to be. I think that also changed within about the last 30 days. I know that they used to report about 96Kbps with SonicTap. I don't know what it is now, perhaps 128Kbps, but it is audibly less compressed.


That has nothing to do with firmware updates, if they make changes to anything like bitrates, it affects all receivers, including all the pre-D1x era SD receivers who's last firmware update was when the daylight savings days changed. They did have some shuffles on the 101 location a while back, but none of them involved Sonic Tap channels.



> Like everyone else, I am eagerly awaiting the advent of new HD channels with the two new satellites. But at least it is nice to see that DirecTV is devoting some additional bandwidth to what we already have.


Actually, every new HD channel we got since last Spring involved bandwidth that became available with the shuffle involving D14. What happened was a bunch of existing channels moved to D14 take advantage of the mirroring abiliites for Puerto Rico and the new channels took up those vacated slots on D12.

D15 isn't really providing bandwidth we don't already have. What it can do is provide more mirroring abilities for Puerto Rico which might help them clear out Spaceway 1 and provide more Conus transponders down the road.


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## turbulence (Feb 22, 2016)

slice1900 said:


> He's talking about using that old SD receiver for customers who have CRT TVs that have ONLY a coax input. I assume your TV either has composite input, or you provided your own RF modulator to connect to the TV. He's being helpful to customers who just assume that a Directv receiver will be able to connect to their old TV via coax, like their cable box could. If he didn't have that backup SD receiver he'd be forced to tell customers that they can't use that TV at all.


Count in the fact, that most of them don't have the original TV remote controller for their TVs. I learned my lesson though.. I'm carrying 2 D12 SD receivers with me all the time and i'm ready to offer my own, older LCD TV for free, just let me close that work order. :bang


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## thyname (May 10, 2015)

Funny you guys mentioned it, but the quality of Showtime app in my 65" Sony x850c is simply amazing! I can't stop watching Billions. The quality rivals, and even better than some of the UHD streams on the Amazon and Netflix apps.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Beerstalker (Feb 9, 2009)

Around here when they did the free MPEG-4 swap for everyone the techs all carried RF modulators and used them to install HD equipment on SD TVs with coax inputs. So obviously DirecTV does know about the issue, and a simple fix. I would think they would be able to do the same thing everywhere, not just in MPEG 4 markets. Turbulence, have you asked to see if you can get cheap RF modulators and carry them with you instead of SD receivers?


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## ragweed10 (Jul 10, 2013)

Beerstalker said:


> Around here when they did the free MPEG-4 swap for everyone the techs all carried RF modulators and used them to install HD equipment on SD TVs with coax inputs. So obviously DirecTV does know about the issue, and a simple fix. I would think they would be able to do the same thing everywhere, not just in MPEG 4 markets. Turbulence, have you asked to see if you can get cheap RF modulators and carry them with you instead of SD receivers?


What Markets are they doing the MPEG-4 Swap ?
What is the Benefit ?


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

ragweed10 said:


> What Markets are they doing the MPEG-4 Swap ?
> What is the Benefit ?


DirecTV has migrated SD locals off of 72.5 and 119 onto mpeg-4 feeds. Those were the "swaps" that were referred to. The benefit (to DirecTV) is getting off 72.5 completely, and being able to go to 3LNB rather than 5LNB for many customers who only needed the 5LNB for SD locals on 119 (and standardize on 3LNB for new installs). The benefit to the customer was essentially nil, the change would have been transparent in most cases.


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## Beerstalker (Feb 9, 2009)

Like Carl6 said, DirecTV was swapping out SD equipment for HD equipment and dropping the SD channels altogether for markets that got their SD channels off the satellite at 72.5° that they were leasing. That allowed DirecTV to end the lease and stop installing seperate dishes aimed at 72.5°. People in MPEG-4 swap markets had all of their SD receivers swapped out for HD receivers, and SD-DVRs swapped for HD-DVRs, because without doing so they would lose their local channels since they were no longer offered in MPEG-2 sd. If you did not subscribe to HD service the receivers/DVRs were locked to only output 480p I believe. If you did subscribe to HD service you could watch any HD channel downscaled on your SD TV.

This was all a few years back, and I don't believe they are doing anything like it anymore.

The benefit to customers was a free upgrade to all HD equipmen, and access to more channels. Like being able to get all the HBO/Showtime channels that were available in HD, but not SD, etc. I still had a couple SD TVs at that time with SD receivers and those got updated to HD receivers for free. So once I updated the TVs I was already set and didn't have to pay a new lease fee or sign a new 2 year agreement to upgrade to HD receivers for them.


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## ejbvt (Aug 14, 2011)

My SV market is like that. All the VT channels are HD-only on Directv and everyone has always had HD equipment since this was done. A traditional SD-only set up in most of Vermont gets you 1 local channel, NH PBS.


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## studechip (Apr 16, 2012)

carl6 said:


> DirecTV has migrated SD locals off of 72.5 and 119 onto mpeg-4 feeds. Those were the "swaps" that were referred to. The benefit (to DirecTV) is getting off 72.5 completely, and being able to go to 3LNB rather than 5LNB for many customers who only needed the 5LNB for SD locals on 119 (and standardize on 3LNB for new installs). The benefit to the customer was essentially nil, the change would have been transparent in most cases.


What market that was on 119 has been moved to 99 or 103?


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

studechip said:


> What market that was on 119 has been moved to 99 or 103?


Actually, I'm not sure there were any. The 72.5 was the biggie.

And my comment the transition for customers would be transparent was incorrect. As Beerstalker noted, the customers would have gotten new mpeg4 capable equipment.


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## fleckrj (Sep 4, 2009)

ragweed10 said:


> What Markets are they doing the MPEG-4 Swap ?
> What is the Benefit ?





carl6 said:


> DirecTV has migrated SD locals off of 72.5 and 119 onto mpeg-4 feeds. Those were the "swaps" that were referred to. The benefit (to DirecTV) is getting off 72.5 completely, and being able to go to 3LNB rather than 5LNB for many customers who only needed the 5LNB for SD locals on 119 (and standardize on 3LNB for new installs). The benefit to the customer was essentially nil, the change would have been transparent in most cases.


Other benefits to the customers are that they could receive the SD only channels that are only transmitted in MPG4, like NASA TV. Also, eliminating 72.5 allowed a single dish installation. When the Raleigh-Durham LiLs were first added, they were on 72.5, but I did not get them until after they were moved off 72.5, because I did not want a second dish.

Eliminating 119 allows those of us on the East Coast who do not have LOS to 119 to get HD. When HD first became available, DirecTV would not install it for me, because I did not have LOS to 119, even though at the time, the only channel on 119 I cared about was ESPNU. The official position was that unless I had LOC to 110 and 119, I could not have HD, even though I would have preferred to be able to get most of the HD channels even though I could not get all of them. Ultimately, I found an independent installer who would install HD with a 5LNB despite not being able to receive 119. Eventually, ESPNU was moved off 119, and when the 3LNB came out, I had it installed to eliminate the problem with the guide not updating.


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## ejbvt (Aug 14, 2011)

fleckrj said:


> Other benefits to the customers are that they could receive the SD only channels that are only transmitted in MPG4, like NASA TV. Also, eliminating 72.5 allowed a single dish installation. When the Raleigh-Durham LiLs were first added, they were on 72.5, but I did not get them until after they were moved off 72.5, because I did not want a second dish.
> 
> Eliminating 119 allows those of us on the East Coast who do not have LOS to 119 to get HD. When HD first became available, DirecTV would not install it for me, because I did not have LOS to 119, even though at the time, the only channel on 119 I cared about was ESPNU. The official position was that unless I had LOC to 110 and 119, I could not have HD, even though I would have preferred to be able to get most of the HD channels even though I could not get all of them. Ultimately, I found an independent installer who would install HD with a 5LNB despite not being able to receive 119. Eventually, ESPNU was moved off 119, and when the 3LNB came out, I had it installed to eliminate the problem with the guide not updating.


Very strange - when I lived in NC, the 119 was the strongest signal. I wanted the SV Roanoke VA channels in the northern Greensboro DMA that need the 119. I still have the 5 LNB and the 119 has the same levels as 101 here in VT.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

The signal strength of 119 isn't the problem, it's the position in the sky, for much of the northeast it's low on the horizon so there was a lot of line of sight issues. In some areas even roof installs are problems if the tree line isn't lower than your house in the direction the dish needs to point.

Until the Slimline 3 was introduced, people with LOS issues for 119 couldn't get HD. Unofficially you could install the 5-LNB dishes anyway, but because of the way the guide data is delivered, if you were watching a channel that's on 103 for an extended ammount of time, you would start getting guide data not available errors since it would expect guide data from 119. For many people here, they would know to turn to a channel on 99 or 101 when it's not in use to get as much guide data as possible to avoid things like missed recordings due to missing guide data or even forced reboots after a few hours, but the average customer has no idea what satellites each channel is on, so DirecTV wouldn't allow installers sent by them to do it.


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## ejbvt (Aug 14, 2011)

KyL416 said:


> The signal strength of 119 isn't the problem, it's the position in the sky, for much of the northeast it's low on the horizon so there was a lot of line of sight issues. In some areas even roof installs are problems if the tree line isn't lower than your house in the direction the dish needs to point.
> 
> Until the Slimline 3 was introduced, people with LOS issues for 119 couldn't get HD. Unofficially you could install the 5-LNB dishes anyway, but because of the way the guide data is delivered, if you were watching a channel that's on 103 for an extended ammount of time, you would start getting guide data not available errors since it would expect guide data from 119. For many people here, they would know to turn to a channel on 99 or 101 when it's not in use to get as much guide data as possible to avoid things like missed recordings due to missing guide data or even forced reboots after a few hours, but the average customer has no idea what satellites each channel is on, so DirecTV wouldn't allow installers sent by them to do it.


I am glad that I missed all that fiasco. Thanks for the detail of the history. I currently have no trees for almost half a mile in the general direction of the satellites, so I guess that explains it. My installer in NC said that if the trees across the complex grew much more, I would not have signal on anything, but an ice storm trimmed them nicely.


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## fleckrj (Sep 4, 2009)

ejbvt said:


> Very strange - when I lived in NC, the 119 was the strongest signal. I wanted the SV Roanoke VA channels in the northern Greensboro DMA that need the 119. I still have the 5 LNB and the 119 has the same levels as 101 here in VT.


It depends on the terrain. If you are in a flat area with no trees, you can get 119. If you live in a forest of loblolly pines or are at the bottom of the hill, you cannot. Even though my house is on the highest point in our neighborhood, loblolly pines in a yard two houses away are blocking 119. Loblollies average 90 to 115 feet, but some are more than 160 feet tall. From my location, a 100 foot loblolly 173 feet away will block 119. A 150 foot loblolly 259 feet away will block 119. Even if I remove all of the trees from my yard, my neighbor's trees will block LOS to 119. Because 103, 101, and 99 are higher of the horizon, even the trees in my own yard do not block them.


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## ejbvt (Aug 14, 2011)

fleckrj said:


> It depends on the terrain. If you are in a flat area with no trees, you can get 119. If you live in a forest of loblolly pines or are at the bottom of the hill, you cannot. Even though my house is on the highest point in our neighborhood, loblolly pines in a yard two houses away are blocking 119. Loblollies average 90 to 115 feet, but some are more than 160 feet tall. From my location, a 100 foot loblolly 173 feet away will block 119. A 150 foot loblolly 259 feet away will block 119. Even if I remove all of the trees from my yard, my neighbor's trees will block LOS to 119. Because 103, 101, and 99 are higher of the horizon, even the trees in my own yard do not block them.


Speaking of Raleigh, isn't this the day that WRAL and WNCN switch affiliations? If I am not mistaken, I believe you have posted before about WRAL and the SEC on CBS vs. ACC Network programming, (your Kentucky avatar rings a bell) but the switch should solve that, right?


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## fleckrj (Sep 4, 2009)

ejbvt said:


> Speaking of Raleigh, isn't this the day that WRAL and WNCN switch affiliations? If I am not mistaken, I believe you have posted before about WRAL and the SEC on CBS vs. ACC Network programming, (your Kentucky avatar rings a bell) but the switch should solve that, right?


Yes. Today is the day, and yes, that will solve the conflict problem. WRAL will still carry the ACC games, but WNCN will carry the CBS games. Now, I have no reason to watch WRAL. There are one or two NBC programs my wife likes, but there has been nothing on NBC that I have watched for many years. WTVD has the best local news, so I see WRAL losing a lot of market share other than the ACC basketball games.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

thyname said:


> Funny you guys mentioned it, but the quality of Showtime app in my 65" Sony x850c is simply amazing! I can't stop watching Billions. The quality rivals, and even better than some of the UHD streams on the Amazon and Netflix apps.


Yes! Billions is SO GOOD! It and 11.22.63 on Hulu are my two "it" shows right now!

I'm curious, are you streaming via the standalone SHOWTIME app or via the SHOWTIME ANYTIME app (with a login through DirecTV or cable)?


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## thyname (May 10, 2015)

NashGuy said:


> Yes! Billions is SO GOOD! It and 11.22.63 on Hulu are my two "it" shows right now!
> 
> I'm curious, are you streaming via the standalone SHOWTIME app or via the SHOWTIME ANYTIME app (with a login through DirecTV or cable)?


Standalone Showtime app (paying directly to Showtime, with no Directv subscription / authentication). This is the built in app my tv (Sony 65" x850c)


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