http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/ Engadget HD Comments for DISH to have 150 HD channels this year and 1080p VOD in August http://www.engadgethd.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadgethd.com en-us Copyright 2009 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 10:45AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 10:52AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/according to a BusinessWeek report in this week's issue. Losing
market share (while DirectTV gains), with customer defections, and
even more so when at&t stops using Dish TV's service in the next 6
months. I'm a subscriber to the print edition, but here's the online
link...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_31/b4094065678206.htm?chan=search]]>Jul 31st 2008 10:56AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/On another note DISH gives us a free HD DVR when Direct DOES NOT.

Give DISH some love and I think 2009 will be a great year for them. ]]>Jul 31st 2008 11:01AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 11:00AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 4:00PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 2:06PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 6:13PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 11:58AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/
Of course, like the other channels they repeat things all the time, but the quality is superb.]]>Jul 31st 2008 11:09AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 6:22PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 11:17AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Aug 1st 2008 1:36AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 11:31AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 11:44AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 1:00PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/
When you use 3:2 pulldown to convert a 24 frame movie into a 60 interlaced field signal, you're converting the signal into a sub-optimal form. This is fine if the signal doesn't go through a compression stage, but if you compress it as a 1080i60 signal, decompress it, and then reverse the pulldown to turn it into a 1080p24 signal again, you're giving the compression system less consistent information and thus reducing the quality per bit.

On that note, I've always thought it a shame that DVD stores everything as interlaced. DVDs could have slightly more capacity, or better resolution, if they stored movies as p24 instead of i60.

I don't know what Dish are planning here, but if they're just planning to transmit 24fps content as p24, then that's going to result in a net quality improvement. If they're also going to improve the bit-rate (which they'll have to do for "Blu-ray quality") then yeah!

FWIW, I use the external HD add-on feature with my VIP622. It's one of the few times you can get a measure of how large programs are in terms of disk space, which gives you some idea of how much compression is involved. I've seen Dish compress two hour (1080i60) Cinemax movies to 3G, though usually the amount is 4-6G. For comparison's sake, AppleTV supposedly is around 4-6G for a 720p24 (not 1080i60, that's less than half the amount of pixels per second) movie with DD5.1 audio. Both are using MPEG4. And yes, Dish's over-compression is frequently noticeable. DVD is often better quality and more enjoyable to watch, despite the lower resolution.]]>Jul 31st 2008 1:21PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/
If they do the right thing with these 1080p VOD downloads, this could really be nice (and kill off xtremeHD before it literally launches, which is sad but okay if this really delivers via DISH on what xtremeHD has been claiming it will provide).]]>Jul 31st 2008 1:44PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/
I'm on cable, but I'll still look forward to seeing the reviews of the quality of these offerings when they start appearing.]]>Jul 31st 2008 8:15PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/
I know that comment will be controversial, but let me explain it like this: "Lossless" generally means one of two things. One is the definition being used by most TrueHD/DTS HD enthusiasts - something that is either PCM or a perfect representation of PCM. The other is reality, which is an ideal depiction of the input source. The irony is that PCM isn't really "lossless" so it's not possible for PCM to fit the latter depiction.

"Ok", says a TrueHD hyperfan (don't get me wrong, I like the concept), "but who cares? A perfect representation of PCM is still higher quality than a lossy representation, right?"

Well, not necessarily. If you're allowed to use lossy compression, you can start off with a much higher bitrate source (more channels, 24 bit depth, 96kHz sampling, et al), so you can theoretically end up with a higher quality representation of the audio at a much lower transport bitrate. In the weird world of audio compression, an 8 bit 22kHz stereo PCM signal is "lossless" but a FR DTS 5.1 signal based upon a 24 bit 96kHz source isn't.

At this point, most lossless audio fans scoff and point out that generally it's rare for the lossy audio stream provided on a BD or HD DVD to be based upon a better source than the lossless stream. And that's true, I'm just pointing out the principle.

At the end of the day though, what I'm interested in is the best quality audio that doesn't violate the rules of diminishing returns. High bitrate DD/DDEx and full-rate DTS are both extraordinarily good. The issue with current broadcasts is that they use neither. It wouldn't be hard to change from the current poor audio we have to something indistinguishable (to all ears but those of cats and dogs) from good lossless.]]>Aug 3rd 2008 10:31AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 1:17PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 3:26PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Aug 21st 2008 9:44AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 2:36PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Jul 31st 2008 3:03PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/
As I said previously, I have had both. I found Dish to be much better in picture quality, customer service, and no one can touch their dvr's.

Funny story: my father called to install Directv (called Directv directly). They chose a program package and a date for installation. No one showed up. He called at the end of the day, they had no order for service. Giving them a 2nd chance, he tried to make another appointment, but could not get the new customer deal because their computer showed he was a past customer (from the first call he made). He's now a happy Dish subscriber. Plus, add to that the fact that after 30 days he got his first Directv bill, and it was never even installed, lol. Not saying it can't happen with either company, but this was our families experience with Directv.]]>Jul 31st 2008 11:26PMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/Aug 1st 2008 10:47AMhttp://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/31/dish-to-have-150-hd-channels-this-year-and-1080p-vod-in-august/
It's a damn shame. The ViP622/722 are the best DVRs out there, and Dish's track record for keeping their promises is far superior to the carnival barkers at DirecTV. They're the Rodney Dangerfield of programming.]]>Aug 5th 2008 1:27AM