# Dish Network VOD vs. Blu-ray: 1080p shootout



## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10064560-1.html?tag=mncol;title


> Sound & Vision magazine's Brent Butterworth conducted a test comparing the video quality of Dish Network's 1080p video-on-demand service with that of a Blu-ray movie, and found very little difference.


More....


----------



## space86 (May 4, 2007)

I have not upgraded to blu-ray yet but I think blu-ray would have
the better picture.


----------



## William (Oct 28, 2006)

space86 said:


> I have not upgraded to blu-ray yet but I think blu-ray would have
> the better picture.


...and better sound. BD can have video data rates (sans audio) up to 40Mbps and lossless audio to boot (E* is probably <10Mbps or so with lossy audio). Also E* using "on the fly" encoding and BD can have multiple pass encoding. It's really not a fair contest.


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

William said:


> ...and better sound. BD can have video data rates (sans audio) up to 40Mbps and lossless audio to boot (E* is probably <10Mbps or so with lossy audio). Also E* using "on the fly" encoding and BD can have multiple pass encoding. It's really not a fair contest.


Need to compare apples and apples here. Dish's VOD is not the same as their normal streaming PPV or "live" broadcast channels.

VOD is compressed in advance, so we don't know what kind of encoder they use. Certainly they could encode at higher quality and bitrate since it will not be viewed live while downloading.

The VOD is downloaded (typically overnight when the receiver is in standby) to the reserved area of the receiver hard drive. They could very well have a 30-50 GB file for a movie if they wanted. The truth is, no one really knows the file sizes I don't think in order to compare to a Blu ray disc encode for a particular movie.

The only definate "truth" in the blind comparison is related to sound. As far as I know Dish is still using 5.1 DolbyHD so there aren't likely to be lossless or DTS tracks on the VOD... so in that particular area, I would think Blu ray would be a clearer winner.

The video comparison is just a bit murkier because it is entirely possible for Dish to put the same movie on your hard drive via overnight download in non-real-time that could come on a Blu ray disc.


----------



## Bobby H (Mar 23, 2008)

C|Net's comparison is not balanced.

One big problem with their criteria is the choice of _Speed Racer_ as the test disc. It's merely a BD-25 single layer disc with a more severe level of lossy VC-1 video compression.

The video quality is very good (very vivid color), but I don't think it is "reference quality." The movie was shot with HD video cameras so there's next to nothing in terms of grain structure to compress. It also doesn't have the levels of small object detail seen in movies like _Baraka_.

The _Speed Racer_ BD also only has lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 audio rather than the lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats (or uncompressed multichannel Linear PCM audio) found on most Blu-ray titles.


----------



## slowmo (Sep 22, 2006)

Watched Dark Knight yesterday. PQ was very good.

I did have a few problems during the movie where the movie would pause very briefly (video would go black, no audio) and then resume several frames later. 

Not at all like pixelation, motion artifacts, etc. In that respect, the video was very clean. It just seemed that the DVR (622) sometimes struggled with the file size. Anyone else have this issue?


----------



## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Here we go again. Is anybody really going to choose VOD if they have a Blu-ray player and can rent a Blu-ray disk from Netflix or a local store? It's nice that Dish can deliver a 1080p movie in digital format comparable to Blu-ray to fill up space on my ViP722's internal hard drive. But they are pricey.

I would never recommend using a TV channel carrier VOD service like cable or satellite in-lieu of using Blu-ray if you want reliable best quality.


----------



## BlackHitachi (Jan 1, 2004)

phrelin said:


> Here we go again. Is anybody really going to choose VOD if they have a Blu-ray player and can rent a Blu-ray disk from Netflix or a local store? It's nice that Dish can deliver a 1080p movie in digital format comparable to Blu-ray to fill up space on my ViP722's internal hard drive. But they are pricey.
> 
> I would never recommend using a TV channel carrier VOD service like cable or satellite in-lieu of using Blu-ray if you want reliable best quality.


AGREED Blu Ray with out question is much better!


----------



## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Bobby H said:


> One big problem with their criteria is the choice of _Speed Racer_ as the test disc. It's merely a BD-25 single layer disc with a more severe level of lossy VC-1 video compression.


In essence DISH picked the movie since, as the article stated, Speed Racer was the only 1080p choice at the time of the test.

DISH 1080p (or any other forced VOD service) won't replace any service where you can pick the movie and pick multiple movies per month ... but it is a good test of what higher level HD will look like. As long as the quality is close (as it apparently is) BluRay should consider it free advertisement for the real thing.

BTW: This struck me funny in the article -


> Dish overcomes bandwidth constraints by sending each 1080p movie directly to the hard drives of its ViP-series DVRs in the wee hours of the morning, when there's less demand


Is he saying that the data travels faster on satellite when there are less people demanding it?


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

James Long said:


> BTW: This struck me funny in the article -Is he saying that the data travels faster on satellite when there are less people demanding it?


Of course  Everybody knows that we can't all watch satellite TV at the same time because there isn't enough data  Some of us must turn our TVs off so that others can watch, or the tap will run dry!


----------



## jacmyoung (Sep 9, 2006)

phrelin said:


> ...I would never recommend using a TV channel carrier VOD service like cable or satellite in-lieu of using Blu-ray if you want reliable best quality.


The problem is most people simply can not justify another $350 for a player just so they can see how much better Bluray is, and if they have the option of ordering a 1080p movie to have the almost-Bluray experience, it will likely be all they care about, at least for now.

I will not invest in this thing unless the price drops to sub $200, and the Bluray rental selection is as good as the regular DVDs.

Of course if you have paid $500 for a Bluray player and $30/ea for a pile of Bluray DVDs, no one can ever convince you something else is even close to Bluray quality Did I mention you need to have the most state of the art 120hz 1080p/24 large screen (at least 50" and up) HD set to really have your money worth a while?


----------



## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

I don't even have a 1080p TV in my home "theater". But once a unit like the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player, now $269.98 with free shipping at Amazon, gets below $200 I'll have to start considering changes. I'm very patient.


----------



## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> Is he saying that the data travels faster on satellite when there are less people demanding it?


I noticed that too and sort of chuckled on the first read. :lol:


----------



## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The receiver has less demand from the customer in the wee-hours (perhaps allowing more processing to be devoted to the download process) ... but it still struck me the other way since there is bandwidth mentioned.


----------



## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

What always seems to get lost in these kind of articles, is the reviewer is talking about the avg joe user. Not the high end Videophile, or the geek that uses a loop so he can see the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 42"TV. For the AVG Joe, it will be hard to tell the difference, for the fanboy who has spent lots of Money, there will be NO comparison.


----------



## patmurphey (Dec 21, 2006)

phrelin said:


> I don't even have a 1080p TV in my home "theater". But once a unit like the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player, now $269.98 with free shipping at Amazon, gets below $200 I'll have to start considering changes. I'm very patient.


I guess you missed the Amazon $199 Black Friday special.


----------



## koralis (Aug 10, 2005)

patmurphey said:


> I guess you missed the Amazon $199 Black Friday special.


And the Walmart $125 Magnavox BluRay player. I got one... it's actually pretty nice. Not that I've watched any bluray discs yet, but the upconverted DVDs look pretty sharp...

(my DVD player went kablooey... needed a replacement anyway, and the price was right, though the location and time was less than ideal


----------



## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

patmurphey said:


> I guess you missed the Amazon $199 Black Friday special.


I saw it, but at the time I wasn't inspired to seriously start contemplating replacement of my five year old Pany Plasma. But I know it will be "soon" (that's a Dish Network "soon").:sure:


----------



## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

James Long said:


> The receiver has less demand from the customer in the wee-hours (perhaps allowing more processing to be devoted to the download process) ... but it still struck me the other way since there is bandwidth mentioned.


Actually, they are correct - that night bandwidth using for FVOD, really occupied by sport channels daytime , i.e. demanding by fans.


----------



## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The sports channels are either 24/7 that would not release their bandwidth or alternate channels that would not need bandwidth until early afternoon or evening on most days. Not just the "wee hours". Which channel/transponders is the data on now?


----------



## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Didn't check last weeks, but before it was on same tpn of same sat [110].


----------



## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

P Smith said:


> Didn't check last weeks, but before it was on same tpn of same sat [110].


110W tp24 ... do you know the EA transponder?


----------



## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

110W, tp24

```
ALT     	446
ALT     	447
ALT     	448
ALT     	449
ALT     	450
ALT     	451
ALT     	452
SPORT   	454
SPORT   	466
NBA     	561
NBA     	564
NBA     	567
NBA     	569
NBA     	571
NBA     	572
NHL     	628
NHL     	630
NHL     	632
ALT10   	5440
ALT10   	5442
ALT10   	5443
SKDL    	5800
SKDL    	5804
SKDL    	5805
SKDL    	5806
SKDL    	5807
SKDL    	5808
SKDL    	5809
SKDL    	5810
SKDL    	5811
SKDL    	5813
ETC3    	5856
```
Now, check PIDs 0x9NN. Nothing.

If I'll wake up midnight, I'll try to make same snapshots for compare.

EDIT. Added snapshots taken after 2am PDT.


----------



## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Now you can see it.

EDIT. I didn't check when the process started, perhaps around midnight [PDT]; still same way as to 7am PDT.


----------



## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

8:30am - FVOD PID bandwidth reduced to 1/2; it was 20 Mbps thru the night.


----------

