# DISH HD vs Off air HD



## brad1138 (Mar 22, 2006)

OK we now have our locals, or some of them, but how do they stack up against off air picture quality. The Sat locals are delayed about 5-7 secs but it takes about 4-5 secs for the picture to come on when you switch to Sat local, so its hard to see the same picture for a few secs when changing. I thought I noticed the E* locals not being as smooth. The edge of a newscasters face (diagonal edge) was a little blocky and the off air was perfectly smooth. 

I realize its brand new and maybe it will improve a bit, but what are you guys noticing?

Brad


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## Allin4greeN (Aug 2, 2005)

HD LiL's are more compressed than my OTA sources... the only reason I am paying for the locals is to have EPG info and NBR, and that's not even working properly!  
Right now, I have to set manual DVR timers to record my OTA...

Anyway, I'd rather set up manual DVR timers for my OTA channels than watch anything from the HD LiL's, especially for any SD programming.

That pretty much sums up how I feel about them :lol:
I'm one software download away from cancelling the locals and saving $5/month.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

In my very brief look at the two, it seemed the E* HD locals seemed a little like a satellite broadcast, the action looked like it might be missing a frame or two here and there. But it is sure an improvement from SD.


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## jamullian (May 7, 2004)

San Diego HD is now up on NBC, ABC and CBS. But definitely the PQ is nowhere near as good as OTA. 

While it's better than nothing, I am more than somewhat disappointed. I was hoping that I would no longer have to rotate my antenna each time I switched between CBS and NBC, and would have more reliable recordings - but I did not buy a 1080p HDTV to watch this.


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## cebbigh (Feb 27, 2005)

OTA has the edge, but for the channels you can't get a solid lock on this is an alternative.


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## DoyleS (Oct 21, 2002)

I didn't really see much difference last night although when I watched Lost, it was from the OTA station. I think I will still mainly watch the OTA stations but when I am up against a scheduling conflict, I will be more than happy to record the SAT HD Locals. Last night wasn't a good night to do comparisons since the NHL playoffs were on OLN and ran into triple overtime. The OLN SD picture there was noticeably poor. 

..Doyle


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## liferules (Aug 14, 2005)

I think most would agree that if you can get OTA with a very solid locked-in signal, its PQ is better than HD LiL.

OTOH, for the many of us that get frequent break-ups in the signal OTA, then HD LiL is a welcome relief. I have personally changed all my local timers to record HD LiL 1st, and if conflicted, then OTA...

If you have OTA with excellent signal, then congrats and enjoy!


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## Virus (Sep 22, 2005)

OTA wins on PQ hands down. Dish local HD channels exhibit alot of compression. If you've never seen OTA then they will look fine, but it's really no comparison.


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## PeggyD (Apr 6, 2006)

cebbigh said:


> OTA has the edge, but for the channels you can't get a solid lock on this is an alternative.


It all depends on what you have to compare it to. When you can't get anything except PAX & 2 shopping channels OTA, satellite HD is fantastic!


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## Paradox-sj (Dec 15, 2004)

Even CBSHD West is better PQ than the LIL HD CBS. This just says that MPEG4 has some maturing to do but we all knew that. 

For the many who cant get anything OTA something even if it is a lil soft and has a fram or two missing and the sound gets out of sync is better than nothing or even SD


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## JimD (Apr 8, 2005)

Allin4greeN said:


> I'm one software download away from cancelling the locals and saving $5/month.


So YOU'RE the one delaying the 622 firmware update!

:lol: :lol:


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## GeeWhiz1 (Dec 6, 2005)

I'll keep watching this thread because I might someday be able to get OTA.

For now, the E* feeds are it. And they are much better than watching the SD versions.


Greg in Santa Rosa, CA ... in the heart of the whine country


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## olgeezer (Dec 5, 2003)

HD OTA is better than sat or cable. There is something about that digital signal traveling from the station to your home that enriches the image. Sounds like nostalgia, but OTA digital SD and HD will beat sat or cable every time. The main improvement, to me is color saturation and accuracy and improved depth of field. It's much easier to stand those 23 minutes of SD commercials every hour. Unfortunately, some of the ad folks are putting out HD ads which completely changes, yet again, my viewing habits and remote control usage.


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## socceteer (Apr 22, 2005)

olgeezer said:


> HD OTA is better than sat or cable. There is something about that digital signal traveling from the station to your home that enriches the image. Sounds like nostalgia, but OTA digital SD and HD will beat sat or cable every time. The main improvement, to me is color saturation and accuracy and improved depth of field. It's much easier to stand those 23 minutes of SD commercials every hour. Unfortunately, some of the ad folks are putting out HD ads which completely changes, yet again, my viewing habits and remote control usage.


It is a simple as the fact that OTA signals are not compressed and SAT signals are.

You will get better results when not compressed. SAT signals have to be compressed to be sent and then un-compressed to view it. anything goes wrong in either and the quality will suffer.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

socceteer said:


> It is a simple as the fact that OTA signals are not compressed and SAT signals are.


_All_ digital broadcast signals are compressed. The problem with satellite (and possibly cable) is that it is compressed and/or scaled again before being sent out.


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## kmcnamara (Jan 30, 2004)

And it's compressed so much in an effort to get more channels on a transponder that the video quality drops quickly.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

OTA HD Locals blow away Sat LIL HD Locals. The compression takes away a lot of the detail you see in an HD picture. Obviously this does not have to be the case, look at HBO HD or Discovery HD. I'm guessing that the compression is turned up higher on LIL HDs than National HDs but that is just a guess. 

Still it blows away any SD picture.

I recorded shows last night on both OTA HD and Sat LiL HD and kept swapping between them. Very noticable difference, especially in darker scenes. In fact while watching Law and Order on a Sat HD channel last night the movement of people in darker rooms almost gave me a headache from the motion bluring. I'm very glad I can get all my local HD's via OTA so I only have to use the Sat ones for conflicts in recording.


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## TechnoCat (Sep 4, 2005)

Folks, you're missing the point. Sure, those of you in the city can get better HD OTA. But you had decent cable options and OTA options without Dish anyhow; Dish competes for city-dwellers solely on non-OTA channels, such as ESPN, CNN/FOX, HBO, Discovery, The Gumby Channel. The Sat HD is for folk like me, who are out of OTA-range but could conceivably choose between cable and Dish.

So if you don't need Sat HD locals, drop them. You weren't the primary market for them anyhow. But for others, they're a huge step up, and if they're a bit below what they could be, they're so far above the SD Sat that I don't really care.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

TechnoCat said:


> Folks, you're missing the point. Sure, those of you in the city can get better HD OTA. But you had decent cable options and OTA options without Dish anyhow; Dish competes for city-dwellers solely on non-OTA channels, such as ESPN, CNN/FOX, HBO, Discovery, The Gumby Channel. The Sat HD is for folk like me, who are out of OTA-range but could conceivably choose between cable and Dish.
> 
> So if you don't need Sat HD locals, drop them. You weren't the primary market for them anyhow. But for others, they're a huge step up, and if they're a bit below what they could be, they're so far above the SD Sat that I don't really care.


I don't believe anyone is missing the point. The original point or question of this thread was to compare OTA HD local channels to DISH provide HD Local and that is what people are doing. I'm glad they are working out for you. Heck I'm glad I have them even though they are inferior to OTA Locals, simply for the fact that I can record 2 or even 3 network shows at the same time.


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## davidxlai (Jan 21, 2006)

I now get local HD from SF (KPIX) and LA (KCBS). Comparing the two, KCBS is far superior. I did the comparison when watching CSI. I think E* still need to work things out with these new MPEG-4 channels. KCBS HD (MPEG-2) has been around for a long time. I sent an e-mail to E* this morning and told them about the problem. Given that there is no formal announcement yet, these new local HDs are still in "beta". At least that is what I am hoping.


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## olgeezer (Dec 5, 2003)

After praising the picture quality of digital and HD digital OTA, I would like to put in a couple of asterisks. When stations multi-cast it can play havoc on the signal. Also, some stations do a poor job of broadcasting SD and I've seen OTA SD look worse than cable.


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## cshaws (Oct 19, 2004)

I'm in Mpls and the difference is very noticeable. The problem I see with the Dish HD is in dark and faraway scenes. It is very blocky, with a shimmering of blocky artifacts. Closeups tend to be OK, but nowhere as good as OTA HD

Pretty disappointed, but only watch the Dish locals when I have to time share. Wish the 622 had 2 OTA tuners like the Direct Tv Tivo unit has, then there would be no problem.

I'm just glad i have OTA, its superb PQ.


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## socceteer (Apr 22, 2005)

As much as I would like to complain about the quality of some of the Dish HD channels, Fact of the matter is that every time I change from HD to SD and back I just say "wow what a difference" even if the compression is not at its ultimate, the difference is great.

Good job to the porgrammer who wrote the compresion routines, it is amazing that the quality is even close to OTA.


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## TechnoCat (Sep 4, 2005)

Dish mapped the new HDs over the previous SDs in the local range (meaning channel 004 is now KOMO HD rather than KOMO SD), which seemed like a nice touch. In switching between the local HD and the (different) local SD channels, I'm happy with the HD improvement.


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## kmcnamara (Jan 30, 2004)

olgeezer said:


> Also, some stations do a poor job of broadcasting SD and I've seen OTA SD look worse than cable.


I'll agree with you here. In the Dallas area, there are a few independent stations that must be using the cheapest encoders available. The picture - although digital - is so soft that I wouldn't put up with it as a satellite SD channel. Terrible! Fortunately I rarely watch any of those stations.


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## kb7oeb (Jun 16, 2004)

Can dish ever equal OTA? They must lose some detail re-encoding in mpeg4


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## davidxlai (Jan 21, 2006)

All HDTV signals are compressed. With Dish, the HBO and Showtime look great. Most of the new national HDs in MPEG-4 also look very good, such as the Universal HD. They do have some problems with the newly added local HDs. I hope they will work out the kinks soon.



kb7oeb said:


> Can dish ever equal OTA? They must lose some detail re-encoding in mpeg4


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

kb7oeb said:


> Can dish ever equal OTA? They must lose some detail re-encoding in mpeg4


NO, because they will not allocate the same bandwidth that is used OTA, and compression gets them a "good enough" picture.


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## dave1234 (Oct 9, 2005)

Jim5506 said:


> NO, because they will not allocate the same bandwidth that is used OTA, and compression gets them a "good enough" picture.


The OTA channels are encoded as MPEG2. These have to be reencoded to MPEG4. Regardless of the bitrate it's reencoded at, the picture will still loose quality due to the reencoding. Naturaly as the bitrate goes lower it will get even worse. The only way to resolve this would be for Dish to provide the MPEG2 OTA channel without reencoding or the broadcast stations provide a seperate MPEG4 channel to Dish. I doubt either is going to happen.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

davidxlai said:


> Most of the new national HDs in MPEG-4 also look very good, such as the Universal HD.


Those are still MPEG-2 but only authorized for viewing on MPEG-4 receivers. Currently only the HD LIL channels are encoded as MPEG-4.


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## jbach (Jul 18, 2005)

For Now: I'll accept some compression to get all locals reliably, though I usually can OTA already - but weather can interfere even more with OTA in my fringe area than with sat. But in the long run, I've seen pictures such as ESPN that look every bit as sharp as my local OTA (and in my area the local news on two stations is HD). So they can deliver the goods, and ultimately, I expect that level of quality from satellite.


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## madbrain (Dec 10, 2004)

kb7oeb said:


> Can dish ever equal OTA? They must lose some detail re-encoding in mpeg4


It depends on a few things .
- what bitrate they have for their MPEG4 HD locals, vs the MPEG2 OTA locals . OTA has a max bitrate of 19 Mbit/s. I don't know what bandwidth Dish has for each MPEG4 HD channel.

- how they are doing the MPEG4 encoding. MPEG4 encoders are still not mature. There could be improvements coming in the future even at the same bitrate

- whether they are decompressing the MPEG2 HD feed from the station, and then re-encoding it in MPEG4; or getting an uncompressed feed from the station, and encoding it directly in MPEG4.
MPEG2 introduces some artifacts . Even on the highest bitrate OTA HD locals like PBS, they are visible during quick motion.
MPEG4 seems to introduce a different set of artifacts. I have seen ghosting on the sat HD locals.
If the video goes through 2 encoders, the picture will suffer much more than it needs to ... I have a strong feeling that is the case right now.

Perhaps if they use a high enough bitrate with MPEG4, they can make it near lossless, and the picture would be equal to that of the MPEG2 OTA locals. I suspect that would negate all the bandwidth savings of MPEG4, though, and just using the original MPEG2 feed would use less bandwidth.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the other HD channels that are currently in MPEG2 but flagged as MPEG4, when they actually get converted in MPEG4. I hope they get the source material encoded in MPEG4 from the stations. Universal HD indeed looks sharp in MPEG2, as good as OTA HD !


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

madbrain said:


> ...
> MPEG4 seems to introduce a different set of artifacts. I have seen ghosting on the sat HD locals.
> ...


Personally this is the biggest issue with the MPEG4 channels, this ghosting makes parts of some shows unwatchable for me.

It can get so bad that in dark scenes faces ghost/smear and start to looks like the disfigured faces from The Ring. In fact it gives me a headache trying to watch it.

I ran a test and recorded a dark scene from an OTA HD station, Sat HD station, and Sat SD station. Obviously the OTA one was the best, nothing came close, no suprise here. However, when viewing the Sat HD vs SD I had to pick the SD, for that specific scene. The reasoning was the ghosting. The MPEG4 ghosting, to me, was worse than the SD MPEG2 artifcats. Now, once back on a lighter scene I preferred the MPEG4 HD station by far to the SD station.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

Most of these issues would disappear if they wouldnt starve the bitrate so bad...although the sat feeds really can never equal a good quality OTA signal, no matter how much bandwidth they give to it....


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

dave1234 said:


> The OTA channels are encoded as MPEG2. These have to be reencoded to MPEG4. Regardless of the bitrate it's reencoded at, the picture will still loose quality due to the reencoding. Naturaly as the bitrate goes lower it will get even worse. The only way to resolve this would be for Dish to provide the MPEG2 OTA channel without reencoding or the broadcast stations provide a seperate MPEG4 channel to Dish. I doubt either is going to happen.


The feed that local stations send to Dish are not necessarily MPEG2.

I don't know exactly what they are, but many are fed via fiberoptic cable which hints of much broader bandwidth, maybe uncompressed??


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## dave1234 (Oct 9, 2005)

Jim5506 said:


> The feed that local stations send to Dish are not necessarily MPEG2.
> 
> I don't know exactly what they are, but many are fed via fiberoptic cable which hints of much broader bandwidth, maybe uncompressed??


Don't know about the local stations locally generated content, but the network feeds to the local stations are all MPEG2...


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