# OTA vs. satellite....sorry!



## Friendswood (Jan 17, 2008)

I'm new to the board....new to high definition tv....pretty much a novice and more than a little techno-challenged!
I know this subject has probably been discussed ad-nauseam on the board...
I have a dish network vip622 receiver and dvr with the hd package to go with it. I have my tv connected to my rooftop antenna also and I get three of our local channels in high def as well as analog. The ota signal in comparison to my satellite high def signal is quite a contrast...the ota signal is much sharper that satellite! The difference is such that I have a hard time watching satellite hd after watching something ota.
Is there anything I can do to improve my satellite high def experience...it's pretty disappointing?!!
Thanks


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

First off.. are you comparing apples with apples? Do you have your OTA connected to your 622? If not, I would do this and it will allow you to also compare OTA through your 622 compared to OTA through your TV. Here is a my impression of OTA compared to my 622/722. I am in SoCal so since we are talking different locals and also different viewing technologies so experiences will differ. 

1) I will assume you get HD locals through Dish? If not.. well that explains the wide difference and I suggest hooking your OTA into your 622. 

2) I have done some A/B with LA locals on my Sony 60" LCD RP TV and though the OTA is a bit sharper it is not a drastic difference. I can watch either comfortable. 

3) What connection are you using? Some TVs have different setting per input. Check if yours does. If it does, I suggest using a DVD calibration at a minimum and calibrate your inputs. Ofcourse you cant do this with your direct tuner connection but that will help your Sat.

4) Make sure your 622 output is set to 1080i or 720p at 16x9 (if you have a 16x9 set). It come default to 480p and that might be a reason. 

5) Might be that your Dish HD locals (if you have them) might not be fully tuned yet.... If you have done your homework and feel confident that it is not a configuration issue, email quality at Dish with the issue. 

From my experience.. OTA is better but I would not say it is night and day.


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## zeekle (Jun 18, 2005)

normally OTA looks better than the HD locals to me but I do not have an outside antenna and the rabbit ears in the home theater room are a bit old school to me so I have dumped them for the most part. 

Its better to me but not good enough to put up an outside antenna or keep rabbit ears in from of the window to get a signal.


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## mikeinaustin (May 20, 2004)

i have a large antenna in the attic, i feed it both to my dish 622 dvr and my tv. when i compare the two, i notice very little difference between ota directly sent to the tv and ota sent to the dvr (which then feeds it to the tv via hdmi). 

tv is a 1080p plasma.


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## jgurley (Feb 1, 2005)

Have you changed the contrast, brightness, sharpness, color and maybe even the tint settings on your TV? If not, calm everything down. Take a look on the AVS forum to see if you can find your TV and see what others are doing. You can (should?) try using a calibration disc for settings which would work best with DVDs.

Like many others here, I check with this forum daily and can't recall anyone who said they improved their picture from Dish other than changing the 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i settings. Mmmmm, take a look there in the setup menu. I believe the default is 480i on the 622.

Regardless of what you may be able to do with the settings, OTA is going to give you the best picture...maybe with a rare exception.


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## RASCAL01 (Aug 2, 2006)

My OTA picture looks the same going through the 622 or DVD player.


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## bartendress (Oct 8, 2007)

jgurley said:


> Have you changed the contrast, brightness, sharpness, color and maybe even the tint settings on your TV? If not, calm everything down. Take a look on the AVS forum to see if you can find your TV and see what others are doing. You can (should?) try using a calibration disc for settings which would work best with DVDs.
> 
> Like many others here, I check with this forum daily and can't recall anyone who said they improved their picture from Dish other than changing the 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i settings. Mmmmm, take a look there in the setup menu. I believe the default is 480i on the 622.
> 
> Regardless of what you may be able to do with the settings, OTA is going to give you the best picture...maybe with a rare exception.


This is not a bad idea. Set a manual tuner for HDNet, Saturday @ 5:20-5:30am (confirm the time first) to record their test patterns. It really helped me dial-in my Westy.


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## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

What I find is that the audio quality is much better with OTA. You can really tell a difference on my home theater system.


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## digital223 (Dec 19, 2002)

would the distance from the networks have anything to do with the pq, of ota vs E* locals ?
I am in the nyc area and have no atsc on my early fp. My roof antenna is connected to my 722. The ota pq is much better than e* locals.
Could it be low dish signal strength. S/S for 110, 119 and 61.5 are in the 60's.
My 508 which is now retired, almost peaked the signal scale for all sats.

Anyone ?


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## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

With a digital signal you pretty much have a best picture that is available or you don't have a picture at all. Weak signals will cause major picture blocking, breakup and freezes... basically an unwatchable picture. Digital signals to not degrade gracefully like analog signals do.


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## slowmo (Sep 22, 2006)

For a given HD local channel, I don't notice a PQ difference when comparing:
1. OTA signal fed directly to my plasma's ATSC tuner
2. OTA signal fed thru my 622
3. Satellite signal fed thru my 622

I live within 2 miles of the OTA broadcast towers and use an attic-mounted 8-bay antenna.

HD LiL service for our market was just added by Dish this summer. We have had some issues with the re-broadcast of certain channels but I view that as a separate and resolvable issue.


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## TP715 (Jan 15, 2007)

I thought OTA was always better than Dish (or DirecTV). OTA is encoded at 19 Mbps (unless there are subchannels) while Dish gives you HD locals compressed down to 6 to 9 Mbps and downrezed to 1440. Am I wrong? I just assumed the unimpressive picture quality I get from Dish (both HD and SD) is because of overcompression to fit into limited bandwidth.


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## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

I would be surprised if many broadcasters are transmitting at 19Mbps. Most transmit at half that and have 2 or 3 subchannels. Also remember that broadcasters use MPG2 while dish uses MPEG4 so the quality of the picture is better at a given bandwidth.


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## Friendswood (Jan 17, 2008)

HobbyTalk said:


> I would be surprised if many broadcasters are transmitting at 19Mbps. Most transmit at half that and have 2 or 3 subchannels. Also remember that broadcasters use MPG2 while dish uses MPEG4 so the quality of the picture is better at a given bandwidth.


Thanks for the input everyone.
It seems the simplest answer is often the correct one. Ron Barry was right, I never reset the receiver output from 480p to 1080i....that's embarrassing! :blush:


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## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

Easy mistake to do  Glad to see you got it figured out.


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## Ressurrector (Jan 1, 2008)

It all goes back to compression man................ Whats gonna look better a DVD or a Xvid???????? 
there ya go...........


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## rey_1178 (Dec 12, 2007)

Friendswood said:


> I'm new to the board....new to high definition tv....pretty much a novice and more than a little techno-challenged!
> I know this subject has probably been discussed ad-nauseam on the board...
> I have a dish network vip622 receiver and dvr with the hd package to go with it. I have my tv connected to my rooftop antenna also and I get three of our local channels in high def as well as analog. The ota signal in comparison to my satellite high def signal is quite a contrast...the ota signal is much sharper that satellite! The difference is such that I have a hard time watching satellite hd after watching something ota.
> Is there anything I can do to improve my satellite high def experience...it's pretty disappointing?!!
> Thanks


in my opinion which of course some will not agree with is that ota for locals does have a better picture more sharper than the locals for E*. plus you'll get some locals that E doesn't carry, an additional tuner for your DVR and cahnnels like The CW in HD that E doesn't care for. Also Pbs in Hd.


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## Jeff_DML (Feb 12, 2008)

bump…

thinking of signing up for the dish HD package. I currently get HD via OTA. I was at fry's electronic store last weekend at they had their tv hooked up to Dish(at least according to the signs). Ice age was playing and it looks bad compared to OTA. The picture was soft and any bit of quick movement or scene transition would cause macroblocking, a lot worse then I experience OTA. Is this expected with Dish HD? I am not expecting perfect blueray HD but figured it should be close/equal to OTA. Was thinking maybe the shop had component cables daisy chained together so that might cause the soft picture but that shouldn’t cause macroblocking. Even my wife commented how bad it looked.

thanks
Jeff


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## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

I would suspect that their setup was not correct. Could be they were even showing SD.


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## ZBoomer (Feb 21, 2008)

Jeff, on true HD channels on Dish, it's very close to OTA. I've watched hours and hours of both, and both CAN look great, but it depends on the source.


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## Jeff_DML (Feb 12, 2008)

thanks for the replies.


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## smackman (Sep 19, 2006)

Friendswood said:


> Thanks for the input everyone.
> It seems the simplest answer is often the correct one. Ron Barry was right, I never reset the receiver output from 480p to 1080i....that's embarrassing! :blush:


My Brother had a 622 installed 2 months ago by Dish. He called me saying his HD pictures were OKAY and that his RPTV was having to "stretch" his pictures on the VOOM Channels. After thinking about it, I had him go and look at this setting. GUESS WHAT? The Installer had left the 622 on 480p! We changed the setting to 1080i and a BIG SMILE came across his face as he saw what his 61" Sony was capable of. 
I did not know this was a default setting. Great information!


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