Not happy with StarzHD quality

[1080psf]

I got a reply from dish on this too. Says they are working to fix the problem. Hopefuly they will have the problem resolved soon.

 

[BFG]

real easy fix, switch them to mpeg2

Wouldn't make any difference TP wise...

 

[shanewalker]

I'm having flashbacks to the final days of Voom...the MPEG-4 quality got quite spotty, and someone was always "aware of the problem, and working on it". That was a well over a year ago...you'd think that the MPEG-4 encoder issues would've been worked out by now (I know E* may be using different hardware, but still, they didn't just start working on this when the new recievers were released--did they?). Hmmm.

 

[BFG]

voom never used mpeg4

 

[shanewalker]

Really? I thought that was all the discussion on the tail end (last couple of months of Voom sat service), that the compression/encoding was being 'played with' and it was because they were testing their MPEG-4...?

 

[KyDave]

I think that had more to do with some new 'dynamic encoder' technology - similar to what E* already does - sharing bandwidth across a transponder dynamically across all channels on that transponder.

 

[gdarwin]

I just checked Judge Dredd off of 61.5 and it seems to look alright on my 65" Rear Projection through component.

I switched to 129 last night and Dredd looked pretty good. Been watching some today and picture seems to be smoother.

Had to go back to 61.5 because my level was heading down again.... It was 50 when I went back to 61.5 it was 89.

 

[smooth28la]

Thankyou ,I feel the same way as I get a headache and feel almost sea sick when I watch some of the shows on Starz hd. Please send your emails and complain ,complain, complain to :

dishquality@echostar.com


\Keep the emails coming !!!

Also send the complaints to ceo@echostar.com

 

[1080psf]

If this a sign of things to come when they switch over to MPeg4. We should let them know that this type of encoding sceme is not accectable. Mpeg4 is uses predictable compression. Thusly the blured and jumpy frames. Dont wait till they have racks and racks of bad equipment and force all the channels to use this authoring device. Speak up now> dishquality@echostar.com if your seeing this as a problem.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

They never addressed the 129 issue at all. Not a word.

Dear Valued Echostar Customer,

We appreciate hearing from you and are sorry that you are experiencing difficulties with reception from the 129 satellite location. However we are not the least bit surprised to hear of your problems, as we know we have a dying, low-grade satellite at that location, one that we normally would have never pressed into action in a primary satellite location. However as HD customers make up such a small portion of our subscriber base, and as the all-important East Coast markets don't use 129, we decided it was "good enough" for the time being.

We'd like to say that the situation will be fixed in the near future. And maybe it will, if we can find another good deal on a used satellite, as we did from Rainbow Media. In the meantime we urge you to remain confident in our ability to address the problem, although we cannot commit to our eventual solution being at the 129 location or any other location that your present dish configuration is set up to recieve. Should you lose signal from a 129-based channel, then there are plenty of other channels to watch from our more reliable satellites at the 110 and 119 locations.

Sincerely,

Dish Management

 

[bookwalk]

This reply doesn't seem very professional -- looks like it's time to switch to "free preview" mode until this gets "fixed"!

 

[BlackHitachi]

This reply doesn't seem very professional -- looks like it's time to switch to "free preview" mode until this gets "fixed"!

There you go that sounds right!

 

[Mark Strube]

I actually thought Tom made that up as a joke. Was that a real email from DISH?

 

[MikeD-C05]

I got the same email about we have identified and confirmed the problem and we are working on a fix but please be patient, yada yada yada.

I am sorry but I suggested to them untill they get this mpeg 4 crap down they need to put the STarz channel up in mpeg 2 with a mpeg 4 tag , so we can enjoy the channel now while they monkey with the testing. That is another thing. They have had a whole lot of testing channels for months now and they still haven't figured out how to do this?

The mpeg 4 locals in hd look great on Abc and Fox but the Cbs looks like the STarz hd channel. It is unwatchable. I don't understand why they can do 720 p channels just fine but the 1080i channels look like a jerky mess. I actually get ill from trying to watch these channels.!sadroll

Thank God , I am not epileptic or I would have swallowed my tongue by now .

 

[Tom Bombadil]

I actually thought Tom made that up as a joke. Was that a real email from DISH?

I usually post the obvious satires without a smiley, but this time I included one.

 

[RandallA]

Dear Valued Echostar Customer,

We appreciate hearing from you and are sorry that you are experiencing difficulties with reception from the 129 satellite location. However we are not the least bit surprised to hear of your problems, as we know we have a dying, low-grade satellite at that location, one that we normally would have never pressed into action in a primary satellite location. However as HD customers make up such a small portion of our subscriber base, and as the all-important East Coast markets don't use 129, we decided it was "good enough" for the time being.

We'd like to say that the situation will be fixed in the near future. And maybe it will, if we can find another good deal on a used satellite, as we did from Rainbow Media. In the meantime we urge you to remain confident in our ability to address the problem, although we cannot commit to our eventual solution being at the 129 location or any other location that your present dish configuration is set up to recieve. Should you lose signal from a 129-based channel, then there are plenty of other channels to watch from our more reliable satellites at the 110 and 119 locations.

Sincerely,

Dish Management

Nice one, Tom.

Starz HD is unwatchable. It's unbelievable that they can release these new channels with that type of quality. Since I couldn't watch Starz HD last night, I switched to our local FOX (KTVU) to watch the Giants game, got just audio no video. OK, so then I tried ABC (KGO), unwatchable. Pixelations all over the place and picture lock ups.

WTF? And we are paying for this product? Might as well cancel the damn package, if you can't even watch the HD channels.

 

[Friend]

Nice one, Tom.

Starz HD is unwatchable. It's unbelievable that they can release these new channels with that type of quality. Since I couldn't watch Starz HD last night, I switched to our local FOX (KTVU) to watch the Giants game, got just audio no video. OK, so then I tried ABC (KGO), unwatchable. Pixelations all over the place and picture lock ups.

WTF? And we are paying for this product? Might as well cancel the damn package, if you can't even watch the HD channels.

I am not really having too many issues with STARZ except the jerky motion on horizontal camera motion which I start having feeling is more due to MPEG4 reason. Other issue is smiring of picture. I have seen improvement on second issue. What is the receiver you are using? I am using 622.

 

[RandallA]

211 here. I couldn't watch it at all last night, all other SD channels and most of the HD channels were fine.

 

[MikeD-C05]

Yes it is totally unwatchable in its present state. Now why can't they just go ahead and put the Starz hd channel in true mpeg 2 and use a mpeg 4 header? Why just THIS channel in mpeg 4 while the other channels they just added this week are in mpeg 2? They need to rectify this . Then they can test all they want for mpeg 4 on the TEST channels that they have all over the other satellties.

 

[gdarwin]

FWIW... Valiant looks pretty good off 61.5 right now.. On the 622.