# From 300 Series to VIP211k



## ruralruss (Feb 5, 2010)

I have been living with my 47" HDTV for a year now but just last week upgraded my service to add the Dish HD Gold. It is just me and my wife so we got the VIP211K receiver. I am very satisfied with the HD service. Of course I hate when the channel stretches SD to fill the screen. In fact I refuse to watch it. 

I am not, however, happy with my receiver. When I bought my HDTV I got one that is not the most expensive but one that has accurate colors. I tend to be quite sensitive to proper color and skin tones in particular. While watching Dish SD on my old 300 series receiver I got great images. The color was accurate, not over saturated, and beautiful off the dish, and in HD over the air. People actually looked like real people, not over made up people. With the VIP211K it seems that I can no longer reach color accuracy nirvana. Well lighted scenes look pretty good but darker scenes are very dark and in the dark scenes the color over saturates badly. I can find no middle ground that works at all. What I also find interesting is that I hooked my HD over the air antenna to the 211K and it has even degraded the over the air channels the same way. 

Has anybody else noticed a serious degradation of picture quality (not counting the noticeable improvement in resolution) when switching to the VIP211K?

Russ


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

It's almost impossible for the receiver do be doing what you describe.

On many new HDTVs, each input has it's own settings. What you need to do is start by calibrating the TV itself. I recommend the Digital Video Essentials Blu-Ray (preferred) or DVD. It is virtually impossible to calibrate "by eye" and very easy to get it wrong. Spending the $20 or so on the disc and a half hour calibrating the TV will make a huge difference for you.


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## ruralruss (Feb 5, 2010)

Just wanted to give everybody an update. In addition to my dissatisfaction with color over saturation in dark scenes I was having frequent lockups. It had locked up on me 4 or 5 times in a couple of weeks. I called tech support and I told them the issue and they ask me some questions and they decided it sounded suspicious. They sent me a new one. I got it installed and my over saturation problem is gone! I suspected there was something wrong with the processing engine because my HDTV has never had this condition on any sources or inputs. Now my calibration is back to normal, people don't look like clowns and I am happy. I just had a bum box.

Russ


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