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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Julian Nam @ Feb 6th 2008 12:28PM
I'm actually very grateful to Directv for all the efforts they put in for HD. Over 90% of the shows I watch are now in HD. Plus, I love that they work with the customers through DBSTalk.com Forums. They have made numerous feature enhacements on their DVRs from the feedback given by the customers. 2 thumbs up.
Student Driver @ Feb 6th 2008 12:39PM
DTV FTW. I left Dish Network for DTV a couple of weeks ago when my Samsung 4671 HDTV came in, and I love it. Dish didn't have Nick HD, Speed HD, Versus HD, and a couple of other channels along with locals in HD. This, along with the lower cost up front AND monthly to switch to DTV than to keep Dish and get an HD DVR made the choice easy.
joel Corral @ Feb 6th 2008 1:22PM
ok great but who has the best quality, who is running the highest bitrate of mpeg4? Cable? uverse? DTV? Dish? Fioz? can we get a real comparison in terms of quality not quanity? cuz i'd rather have less channels and a high bitrare then a gazillion hd channels and a crappy bitrate?
Shape @ Feb 6th 2008 1:59PM
The new MPEG4 channels on DirecTV look phenomenal. Stargate Atlantis on SciFi HD on DirecTV is some of the best broadcast HD I have EVER SEEN! Absolutely gorgeous. Zero macro blocking. Amazing color.
I have some pictures here:
http://flickr.com/photos/shapegsx/page2/
Jeff @ Feb 7th 2008 7:48AM
The problem is no network (that I know of) is actually broadcasting in MPEG-4, so all of those channels are being recompressed somewhere down the line. You'd do better with an unmolested OTA MPEG-2 signal, which is as pure as it gets.
Some of the cable companies - and I don't know which ones at this point - pass the original unmolested MPEG-2 stream as well on both the local networks that broadcast OTA and the cable channels.
I'm sure DTV's MPEG-4 channels look better than what most DTV customers are used to, because DTV's HDTV used to be the absolute worst out there. But it doesn't seem like it would be possible for it to be *better* than the original ATSC signal that's being broadcast.
DTV's switch to MPEG-4 was for bandwidth reasons, not picture quality reasons. If they really cared about picture quality, they'd just go full-res, full-bandwidth MPEG-2 with no recompression.
Jeremy W @ Feb 7th 2008 8:08AM
Jeff,
Some of the newest channels actualy are broadcasting in MPEG4. The ones I know for a fact are Smithsonian HD and all of the Starz HD channels. HBO is also going to be switching their entire lineup to MPEG4 this year. It's the future, and the satellite companies are embracing it.
Andrew @ Feb 7th 2008 8:28AM
Agreed with first poster. I was an early adopter of DirecTV (I want to say '96?) as well as HD ('99) and haven't looked back. Although I remember when the only channels were HDNET and HBO, I appreciate almost every channel they've added to their lineup.
r00 @ Feb 7th 2008 9:10PM
@Shape..
Your pictures don't convey how great your TV resolution OR the signal is.. Your largest picture size is 1024x685 or something like that, while the signal itself could be 720p or 1080p.