satellite dish video problems

Last week I had a satellite dish installed and the quality of the video is not what I was expecting. I am using a Sony satellite receiver that has an S-video output that is connected to a 40” Mitsubishi TV.

The first problem is that the video image is not sharp, it looks like it is in “soft-focus”. The second problem is that instead of a smooth gradation between shades of the same color, the video image experiences “posterization” (posterization is not the same as pixalization).

Is this normal? I was expecting the video to be as good as watching DVD. Does satallite use a different MPEG compression than DVD?

 

It is the same compression standard, but a different (lower) bitrate, hence the quality is lower than on DVD. Cannot say anything meaningful about posterization.

Pixel-shaped noise can be a result of poor reception because of weather conditions or many other factors. It is curious that analog sat receivers were usually not as susceptible to those things.

 

My DirecTV signal is not as sharp as I'd like either but it's generally as good or better then the cable signal. I'm not sure where the fault lies. Is it the actual signal or the receiver? I have an older (3 years) RCA receiver and I was thinking of going to a Sony but now I'm not so sure that would help. I suppose we could all start complaining to DirecTV.

 

David,

I think the SVL is correct regarding low bit rate. Some folks on the Internet have said that the video quality dropped when DirectTV started broadcasting local stations. They may have had to reduce bit rate in order to add the local stations.

Did you ever try digital cable? I did read that it suffers from "soft images" just like DirectTV.

John

 

DirecTV and DVD

Both DVD and DTV use MPEG 2 for video and audio. However, a major selling feature for DirecTV or Dish Network is the number of channels carried - not absolute picture quality, therefore more compression is used than DVD. This along with less than fabulous source picture quality and the concatonation of different video compression systems in the distribution chain to DirecTV mean that artefacts can show up in addition to the softness of picture that results from having lots of video compression.

I can think of one way to improve the situation. If you have a HD monitor, purchas the Hughes HD set-top box and the 3 LNB dish to access the HD networks on DirecTV. This box line doubles 480i and 720p into 1080i and presents 1080i native. The result with SD looks pretty good. At least a big improvement over the standard boxes. The HD feeds look superb in general. Also the Hughes box can be hooked up to a normal TV antenna where it willl decode terrestrial HDTV and so give you NBC,CBS, Fox, ABC and PBS in HD.

Changing from your old RCA to a Sony will make little difference by comparison.

Also local channels are on a new satellite so do not have an effect on the other channel's quality which are on the old satellite.

 

Re: DirecTV and DVD

Martin,

Thanks for the info. I do not have a HD monitor, so I guess that I am stuck for thr moment. Do you know if digital cable has the same video problem as Direct TV?

Johnas

 

"Do you know if digital cable has the same video problem as Direct TV? "

In my experience, its even worse. Even more compression.


PS
The HD box looks a bit better on standard monitors too. The decoder required for HD is higher spec than for SD (obviously) and this reflects in the general picture quality - a bit sharper and cleaner. The real improvement comes with the HD monitor though.

 

Martin,

Thanks. I'll see if I can return my Sony box for an HD box.

John

 

HD box

It will improve the situation, but don't expect dramatic improvements until you get a HD monitor. Good luck.

 

I bought an RCA satellite system in 1994, and I can tell you without hesitation that the video signal has degraded a bit since then. Part of the reason is probably a result of compression, but also due to added channels and options on the whole. This is especially true now that local channels are being offered: apparently the transponders holding the signals are well at capacity, and the processing done on earth to get this to us is making things worse. But, as some of you have pointed out, even this slightly fuzzy image we're stuck with is usually about on par(maybe even a little better)than current digital cable, and certainly much, much better than standard cable, where grain is still rampant. I also wish some of these network shows were filmed better: the pair of CSI's come off pretty good overall, but others--BUFFY, WEST WING, ANGEL--are filmed so darkly that when you add the soft sat image they come off almost unwatchably murky.
Still, given the fact my local channels on cable looked like laserdiscs with loads of rot, at least the image on sat is clean for the most part, if not sharp. Does make me wish, though, that I had spent the extra bucks for a big analog dish.


ED

 

Martin is correct. I have both. I HAVE to have digital cable to get the cable modem option from my cable company and I've had DTV since inception.

There is no comparision. DTV's picture is far better than digital cable.

mud-

 

I got my Direct TV system in 1994 and can echo the fact that somewhere around 1996/early '97 things took a sharp turn downward -- the result of having to increase the amount of compression and low-bitrate encoding to accommodate more channels without any new bandwith space. Direct TV, through surveys, found that people were more interested in having extra channels than picture quality. I sold my house in '98 and moved into an apartment, my buddy got my dish, thus I still get to watch quite a bit of DTV over there. There were supposed to be some new satellites launched around then, but things certainly didn't get much better from what I've seen.

However, all things aren't linear in the DTV world. The pay-per-view channels still suffer the least, artifact-wise (as they should, considering that they're a premium service), while some of the "lower-rent" channels have so much compression that it's like watching a bad AVI clip on a computer --any fast motion, water/explosions, dissolve transitions and dark scenes become unbearable on anything larger than a 13 inch TV...lol!

What sucks even more, is how bad the stereo audio has become on some of the channels -- like a low bitrate encoded MP3 -- swishy, swirly, flanging artifact city.


Also with DTV, contrary to an above post, signal strength has nothing to do with picture quality in the digital world. Once the signal level is below the the needed threshold (or rain-fade occurs), the signal simply disappears. There's no gradual degradation -- pixelization and block artifacting are simply the result of the MPEG compression scheme. Also, lowering the overall resolution of the picture (i.e. the soft picture) is a way they try and cheat their compression scheme. Both suck.



(Though call DTV -- and they'll claim how wonderful their picture looks and audio sounds!)

 

One thing I forgot to mention during my initial post was sound quality(thanks for the reminder). Although most stereo broadcasts turn out okay, I've noticed an infuriating, absolutely random anomaly: sometimes what should be stereo will wind up in mono. I've had this happen with virtually every show I've ever taped, from X-FILES through CSI. Most times the Dolby Surround mix is there, but once in a while--and I never know when it's gonna happen--the show will turn out to be mono even though, of course, on another feed it could be the correct Dolby. Having checked with cable feeds of the same show and night, this is a DirecTV anomaly. Why it happens so randomly and erratically is the mystery two me. The season premiere of ANGEL came out mono! CSI two weeks ago! I know it isn't my system, either.

ED

 

Also DirecTv is now owned by the DISH Network people. It was sold last year, I believe.

 

Hmm? How timely!


EchoStar-Hughes shot down at FCC
Decision opens door to News Corp. to resume bidding

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/yho...o&guid={7AECCD68-F4C2-41D5-8CD6-5D7C0FE9716F}

Echostar owns DISH

 

As I installed these things for a living perhaps I could comment a bit. My comments will reflect the others however. The bottom line is that if you were sold on the fact that the small dish was going to have PQ equal to a dvd then you were lied to, that's the bottom line. The small dish do tend to have soft pictures and you will see pixilations some times. These are the nature of the technology and the level of compression they are using. It's no competition as dvd will the majority of the time have a far superior picture to satellite. That being said the picture on the small dish can vary from channel to channel as they use adaptive encoding for all the different stations. As other's stated your HBO or pay per view get a better picture then some of the crappy shopping channels. There is no rhyme or reason to it either and quite frankly i have seen it change from day to day and from the period of the day, so don't think something is wrong with your eyes, its the small dish system. Now the areas where small dish is better, and it is always a lot better in my opinion then cable, digital or analog, is the areas of color saturation, color bleeding, color smearing, purity of colors, and overall detail to the picture. It can make a big difference on the larger your set is and the better its resolution is, you of course have to have the trade off of the softness. You can get away with adding more sharpness to the TV beyond what you would for your dvd, and that will help. That is up to a point, to much and then you really start seeing pixilation problems. You also want to be sure to turn off any video noise reduction or notch filters on the TV, as that will soften the picture up also.

Now as someone stated once your past a certain signal level the picture will look as good as its going to look. However, the matter of pixilation is tied to signal strength, and perhaps some of that your seeing could be because at that particular moment your signal strength is dropping below whatever number. That can happen and I have seen it happen, but its extremely rare.

The HD boxes do look slightly better then the analog only boxes, however with a sd(standard definition or non high definition) this will be a small increase. Though its dramatic when its hooked up to a HD TV and with the HD stations.

All that said, cable is going to be wayyyyy worse then the PQ of the small dish system. They suffer from all the same things on the true digital stations such as pixilation, softness, lack of detail, etc. On the analog stations they are even worse as they have to be converted to digital and then back to analog, most times your analog stations will look superior on a straight cable feed into he TV, using the TV tuner. Cable is just bad news. Fortunately some providers are carrying HD signals and that is at least some kind of improvement.

If you want to get really excellent PQ you have to go to the big dish or of the air analog antenna too. Both varying degrees of PIA but that's what you gotta do if you want the PQ. Hope your not turned off by the PQ to try and go to cable. Just say no to cable bad bad bad.

 

As it was explained to me once, individual channels are multiplexed by sat service providers, and while there is a certain total bandwidth, some channels are given more priority in the multiplex than others, i.e. they would be able to "borrow" additional bandwidth from the channels that are lower in the priority ranking. The lower priority channels are not necessarily able to do the same, so when the bandwidth capacity is reached, picture quality of low-priority channels can suffer.

I know this is not a good technical explanation.

 

I've heard that DISH Network's picture is higher quality than Direct TV.

 

Re: Re: satellite dish video problems

notinear,

Thanks for the detailed post. I have had Direct TV for a number of months, and I have become used to the soft picture and the pixelization. I really don't notice either unless I think about it. I have no intention of going back to cable.

John

 

Digital cable might have one advantage--but only one--over DirecTV. I noticed at a friend's apartment that their music channels come in real clear and without dropouts, interference, or other sonic bugaboos that creep up when I play them on my sat. I don't do this often--I find them just as tedious as mainstream radio--but when I'm lazy and, say, posting like this, sometimes I'll put on one of the blues, jazz or oldies channels for background. Sound quality isn't on par with digital CD audio, either, despite the claims, but would be more than tolerable without those infernal glitches that I keep getting. Guess that's the price paid for compression and so many channels clogging things.

ED

 

I'm no expert on this, I could be wrong; but isn't it true that as the signal became marginal you would get data losses that could become visible (and audible) before the signal became unuseable?

 

By the time the signal gets down into the "danger zone" (e.g. between, say, a signal strength of 30-45 for most locations) during cloud cover (also known as rainfade), the picture would start dropping video and audio frames, eventually freezing or digitally rearranging itself (hardly pixelization...more like total chaos!), before ultimately completely unlocking the signal and the dreaded "searching for signal" black menu appearing.

With DBS, as long as the receiver remains LOCKED to the signal, all having a higher signal strength does is buy the end user more leeway from the above scenario. That is, make them less susceptible to rain-fade. With the signal locked, a strength of, say, 60 or 95 won't change the picture quality one whit. Unlike an analog C-band sytem, the usual terrestrial nasties don't infect the DBS end-user. It's basically "on or off".

What the initial poster was describing was, simply, the... ahemmm... "benefits" of the lossy data stream-- MPEG artifacts. Now, there are certainly things that can make the artifacts all the more visible -- cranking the sharpness control up for one, or lessen/mask the effects -- lowering the resolution or contrast ratio...but that's a whole different ballpark.

Welcome to the world of digital data compression....lol!


Dave "worked for Cablevision of Ohio for 8 years" Modny

 

Dave,

I'll try lowering the sharpness and contrast, but both of those settings are pretty low. Since I posted my initial message, I have become used to the compression and really don't notice it unless I concentrate. I must admit that the compression is very noticeable during low-light scenes.

John

 

That is similar to the old projectionist trick - when you have a bad film copy, scratched or otherwise, you show it slighly out of focus, and no one needs to know

 

I use light compression on my digital cable which is especially useful for my setup.