# Joey Image Quality



## farleyville (Jan 8, 2007)

I recently moved into a new home and added the Hopper and Joey to the house, at the same time as a new 120" screen with BenQ W1070 projector.
The problem I am having is the video quality of the HD on the joey, blown up to 120", is lacking at best. My viewing distance is 13'.

Does anyone have any experience with the Joey on picture quality? The Hopper on the upstairs 50" appears to look MUCH better, even when viewing from very close up. I know the larger the image, the more everything is magnified, but I honestly believe the picture quality is different. I havent lugged the TV downstairs yet to verify this, but I am fairly confident something is different. I'm wondering if the Joey could be suffering from a bad connection or something to the Hopper. Its connected via the installer from dish through Coax. Its a long run, probably 100 feet, so not sure if that could degrade the image?? Is there a better way through ethernet? or the wifi adapter? 

The image isn't THAT BAD, but its clearly no where near where I believe it should be? Any thoughts or experience with a difference in quality between the two?


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

There are way too many unknowns here to be sure... How is your Joey connected to your HDTV? Is your Joey set to output 1080i? Is it zoomed in ("*" on the Joey remote) either by the Joey or by the HDTV?

When you say "picture quality is lacking" what does that mean? Is the signal breaking up, which might indicate a cabling issue, or does it just look more blocky?

I don't have any experience with anything larger than around 65" HDTVs... I definitely don't have experience with the specific projector you are talking about. Do you have anything else (a Blu-ray player for example) that is more portable that you could connect to each HDTV and compare results?


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## farleyville (Jan 8, 2007)

Thanks for the response, and sorry for the lack of information in the first post. The Joey is connected with a high speed hdmi cable 25' long. The same cable is used for the ps3 for blurays, and the image is not zoomed.

When I say the image is lacking, I'm referring to pixelation or blocky. The menu system and overlays look perfect, which tell me it's not a cabling or projector issue, but a problem with the signal, compressed or otherwise coming through the Joey. As I said, the same hdmi cable displays flawless bluray movies, so it has something to do with the dish signal. Especially watching sports. Last nights football on fox was very pixeled, especially the grass that constantly blurred and morphed in blobs on the screen, not sure exactly how to describe it, but it looks like lost information in a compressed signal. I have no technical knowledge on this though. For reference, Netflix streaming is very clean with very few artifacts compared to the Joey.


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## acostapimps (Nov 6, 2011)

have you checked the signal levels and a check switch on the Joey? If you have another hdmi cable you can try that to ruled out the cable, Make sure all cables are tightly fitted, I don't think the cable length has anything to do with PQ unless its loose or damaged somehow. After trying what I suggested reboot the Hopper and Joey.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I forgot to ask what channels...

Some channels (like FOX) are 720p and those might look worse blown up on a 120" screen than a 1080i channel... I have a 60" screen myself and find things look a lot better at say 10-12 ft.... so I can only imagine the optimal viewing distance for a 120" screen might be 20 ft or more.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

macro-blocking...

goto H and J menu and check MoCA signal level


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## farleyville (Jan 8, 2007)

I'm looking at the MoCA setting, and it shows 4 green bars, with the one on the left, the shorter one, being a slightly lighter green than the other. It looks like its a strong signal though. I have noticed a difference with abc espn, and fox, all 720p channels i think. I have it set to pass 1080i onto my projector, but am I losing information by doing so? Is there native pass through on the Joey?

It would be nice if it could upscale to 1080p instead of 1080i, but native pass through would be the answer. Did some testing tonight, and I set my joey up to output 720p.. The image of the game tonight on espn appears to be better passed as 720p, but without a side by side comparison, I kept going back and forth questioning myself. Still images and close ups look good, but motion struggles, I guess the difference between the formats.

If native pass through is available, I can't find it. I will say espn looks MUCH better than fox did last night, perhaps an issue with my local network through dish...??


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I didn't pay much attention to the FOX game Sunday night. I had it on, but I wasn't really watching. I will say, though, that ABC, ESPN, and FOX are sometimes iffy with their cameras. By which I mean... some days/nights the games look awesome, and others kind of crappy. It's like they have some substandard cameras or uplink equipment that rotate around the country.

Keep a watch on it and see if it is limited to certain channels (or just your FOX channel) or if other channels look worse to you too.

I have tried 720p sometimes on my HDTV for the 720p channels... and sometimes I think I can tell a difference without the 1080i upscale while other times I'm convinced it is all in my head.

There used to be hints at native passthrough from Dish in the past, but it has been a long time and no such feature has ever shown up on their receivers, though some of us have from time to time expressed an interest in it.


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## farleyville (Jan 8, 2007)

What does everyone do now, just leave it on 1080i? or does anyone leave it as 720p? 
I never cared as much before, but with a 120" image, which will be used mostly for sports, every little small improvement is noticeable.

Thanks guys.


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## dmspen (Dec 1, 2006)

I have my Loeys/Hoppers output set to the native resolution of whatever TV they're attached to. Bedrooms are 720p and Living Room is 1080i (even though TV is 1080p)


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

farleyville said:


> What does everyone do now, just leave it on 1080i? or does anyone leave it as 720p?
> I never cared as much before, but with a 120" image, which will be used mostly for sports, every little small improvement is noticeable.
> 
> Thanks guys.


definitely keep 720p for sport


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## farleyville (Jan 8, 2007)

P Smith said:


> definitely keep 720p for sport


Do you switch back and forth through the settings menu on different formats? Or do you just keep it on 720p for all your viewing? I even wonder if the fox or espn image is really 720p by the time it goes through the satellites compression and then viewed. Perhaps that is dishes reluctance to offering native passthrough, because all channels are switched to some other standard for transmission. I have no idea, I'm just throwing it out there.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

yeah, switching is the downside ... I thought you're mostly view sports what usually in 720p and could _sometimes_ switch to 1080i then return back ...
you're decide for your habits


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

I used to have a 720P TV and left the output on 720 all the time. Replace with a 1080i TV and now I leave it on 1080 all the time.
Not worth the trouble of switching back and forth. I never see a noticeable difference when watching either. Both are really good compared to the old Panasonic 27inch tube TV.

I'm reminded of my ex father-in-law who had bought a new color TV, many moons ago, and the kept the color setting down to almost the point that it was questionable if he was watching a b and w program or a color program. His reasoning was that he didn't want to wear out the color part of the TV. Oh well!

I guess my point is, do what looks good for you. What ever it is! :sure:


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