poor video quality on directv, is it compression?

[1 FMF]

Over maybe the past year, watching directv on quite a few movies dark scenes come through terrible. I see a lot of blockiness in the shading, sort of like a halo affect. And last night I was watching stargate atlantis on sci-fi channel and the whole setting was in a forest at night. The video quality was so bad I could not make out the main character at some times, really really bad.
another time, on some other channel can't remember which I was watching red october and whenever the scene was of a sub underwater (dark) the image was all grainy. It's like there's no resolution to the image on the screen. But as soon as a commercial comes on the screen, it's crystal clear and fine.
What is this exactly, is it video compression? is it maybe a sampling rate regarding the video? I want to be correct with my vocabulary when I call directv, because the video quality in some movies are worse than 1980's cable tv.
And I have a 27" sanyo tv, about 10 years old but the picture is fine.

 

[ThirdeYe]

It could be compression or it could be some pixelation/shadowing issues... does it depend on the station at all?

 

[Bill in Utah]

When you get one of those poor pixel screens, go to setup and see what your signal is from the sat.

The lower it is, the less data the DAC has to make a picture and some artifacts happen.

They also do have more compression on certain channels (WGN is the worst) that will get a worst picture.

I've been with DirectV for 10 years and Dish before that. My 2
tvs are a 12 year old 36" Toshiba and 27" Sharp.

Both look great still. My Mom and Dad are using brand new LCD tvs with their DirecTV and it looks good.

Our worst signal here is 88% and most are around 95%.

Take care, Bill

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

What Bill said.

We've had DTV for 10 years now. During the summer & winter solstice periods, fuzzy things happens to the signals but only at times. Outside of those few weeks, no problems at all.

There are a couple of execptions to all that though. WGN ch 307 & Fox news 360 have the worst picture quality on DTV. Even watching them on anything but plain standard-def TV's produces less than wonderful picture quality. I think they're both severly compressed signals.

HD pixellation is often most noticeable when places will upscale the content from SD or lower-level HD to "1080" HD. Upscaled HD isn't all that great as it produces a blocky, grainy picture. Sure it beats watching the event on a Zenith TV from 1961, but we are in the 21st century now.

 

[JustinH]

Here with time warner cable, they compress the heck out of some of their HD content.

You can tell one channel from another for sure. If they are showing something with a lot of motion, and its compressed too much it will look blocky in instances of a lot of motion.

There is a big thread on consumerist that talked about comcast using compression..

Your right, sometimes it looks downright terrible on my new lcd hdtv, but its a bandwidth savings measure.

 

[1 FMF]

my satellite signal is 95+, it is not a dish reception problem.
I just got the info from guys at work that know all about it. With all the HD channels directv is trying to cram in to a finite bandwidth signal, they have to compress other channels and sacrfice picture quality. The word I was looking for is compression artifacts, and it's most noticable in high speed and it dark scenes. What [censored] me off are the garbage channels like home shopping network probably have no compression and are perfect whereas movies on USA, TNT, sci-fi are compressed and suck. This whole digital TV thing is b.s ! what a freaking scam.

 

[1 FMF]

the censor filter on this site sucks also.

 

[Hermann]

Was a very happy DirecTv camper for 10 years and then went Hi-DEF. Have had several major problems in 8 months. Just recently had to replace the HD DVR. When it works the pic is STUNNING but since the new DVR was installed, one evening last week I could not tune any SD channels for about 2 hours. The seasonal problems are just now reaching their peak. Mine happens between 3 and 4PM for a few weeks, then goes away. Although I notice this less with the HD signals. Since going HD I have not paid full price for services, because they keep giving me Customer satisfaction credits to keep a long term subscriber happy. All HD signals on Directv use MPEG-4 compression.

 

[ThirdeYe]

What I really hate about AT&T U-Verse digital TV is they have these "Weekly Tests" in the middle of the night, and they're EXTREMELY LOUD. I usually keep the volume low enough to just barely be able to hear it so as to not wake people up, then all of a sudden it sounds like a fire alarm going off in my room...

 

[oilyriser]

That digital TV stuff makes everyone look like a manequin, with plastic skin. It's a couple of steps away from a cartoon, sometimes.

 

[eljefino]

For real satellite reception one cannot beat a BUD (Big Ugly Dish). It is a relative secret but with a C-band or linear KU (1-meter and up) dish one can get the same reception quality the cable headends and satellite companies get.

HBO etc are on a digital service called 4DTV and you can buy channels a la carte, so you're not subsidizing services like home shopping networks and the rap channels etc you're not interested in .

Yes you need a little mechanical/electroinic know-how for a moving dish but the dishes are free for the taking from people for whom TV is something they write a check for, and forget about.

http://www.callnps.com/