Right now I have an HDTV with no TV channels whatsoever, and have decided it is time to subscribe to something. The cheapest Dish Network TurboHD package with local channels gives us pretty much all the channels we used to watch on a regular basis, and is pretty cheap (a major factor, since we are not huge TV people, but do have a few staples).
I recognize and enjoy the better picture quality that HD has to offer, so it is a given that this is important to me. That been said, I used to get local channels in HD in Atlanta, and it happened very often that while the signal was HD, the source TV program was still 4:3, meaning that the picture quality was good but the image had vertical black bars around it.
I’ll feel a little ripped off if this happens most of the time, so for people who have the non-broadcast (for example, CNN, TBS, A&E, TNT, etc) channels on HD, what are your impressions of the quality of service? Are most shows and movies on these channels actually shot in proper 16:9 HD with just a few rare exceptions, or is it the other way round? What are your other impressions of the quality of service?
I’m generally happy with the HD quality of most channels (Comast, Chicago), but I do have to take issue with TNT HD and also A&E HD. TNT specifically butchers HD movies.
Someone at TNT decided that letterboxes won’t be broadcast, so every movie is stretched or somehow cropped to fit the whole tv, even though it trashes the proper aspect ratio - or cuts off a bunch of the video. Their CEO must be of the idiodic school that everything HD must fill the screen, even if you have to butcher the stuff.
A&E HD does the same thing basically. Every program is stretched to fill the whole screen. They don’t show many movies, but most material they show was originally filmed in 4:3 for their non-HD channel, then upconverted and stretched to HD. You can still see the SD softness and artifacts, just stretched bigger. Ick.
I haven’t found any other channels that mess with the aspect ratio, but we only get 30 or so HD channels in my market. I know Dish can have more then that.
Another issue to consider, some companies have been known to apply extra compression to some HD channels, lowering their bandwidth - so they can cram more channels into the same available bandwidth. To be honest, I only notice very occasional macroblock artifacts from the compression of my HD cable channels (with a 42" HDTV). But on the other hand, when I flip to over-the-air broadcast HDTV (typically not extra compressed), the quality does seem better. I hear this type of bandwidth squeezing varies by cable operator. I’ve heard this doesn’t apply as much to the Dish services, because they can easily launch another satellite to increase their available bandwidth (compared to Comast and the other cable providers having to upgrade their whole infrastructure to handle more signal).
Good information here. That page references this page on the AVSForum (video experts) site - some good figures and further examples are shown.
Thanks akrako1 for the good information. The butchering by TNT and A&E is exactly the thing that concerns me, but if it is limited to only a few channels it will not be a deal breaker.
While the compression thing is annoying, I do not exactly have a “power user” setup. My HDTV is only 32" (partly due to a small apartment and partly because I am cheap) so I think this will be difficult to detect. Also, people do seem to complain less about it with Dish.
I have Dish HD, and I agree with akrako1’s comments. Many of the third-tier “HD” channels think HD means 480p. Really bad 480p, compressed all to hell and gone with enormous artifacts, and gray skunky colors. OTOH, its not like they’re any worse than the SD versions of those channels, which are also pathetically poor quality.
Having said all that, there are good HD channels that aren’t ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/yada. Disney’s been broadcasting The Incredibles in HD lately, and it looks um, incredible. My wife is the big TV watcher in the family, so I don’t remember off the top of my head what the other good-looking non-OTA HD channels are, but there’s more than a couple.
ETA, Dish also gives you control over how the aspect is fixed for non-16x9 shows. The remote has a ‘zoom’ or somesuch button, and you have several choices of stretching & black bars.
I think this will come down to it more than anything else - which channels are decent quality and which aren’t?
Between my wife and I we will probably stick with A&E, HGTV, TBS, TLC, USA, Discovery, CNN and the local channels most of the time. Interestingly enough the TurboHD package is about the cheapest way to get these channels even if you don’t care about SD versus HD.
Okay, you got me curious, so I just did an inventory on my own setup. Dish HD. Here’s the channels I looked at and whether they were broadcasting HD at the time I looked. Mind you, this is just whatever programming was on on a Sunday afternoon; its possible that during prime viewing time you’d see different, probably better results.
[ul][li]TNT HD - not HD. Some old movie in gray, crappy 480. Dark, washed out, purple skin tones. Easily the worst channel I looked at. All of which means its about as horrible as the SD version of TNT.[/li][li]Bravo HD – not HD. Crap picture, over-sharpened upsampling. [/li][li]Sci Fi HD – not HD. Some SD movie (Tinman).[/li][li]History HD – not HD. Some SD show about Hitler, what a surprise.[/li][li]A&E HD – not HD.[/li][li]HGTV – HD! Looked very nice; bright, detailed picture, not over-sharp.[/li][li]Food HD – HD! Looked OK, a little too much sharpening.[/li][li]Lifetime Movie Network HD – HD! Nice, sharp. Skin tones were a bit off, a bit magenta.[/li][li]Lifetime HD – HD! Looked just okay, too sharp.[/li][li]USA HD – not HD.[/li][li]TBS HD – not HD.[/li][li]Animal Planet HD – HD! Looked just okay, a bit washed out.[/li][li]TLC HD – not HD.[/li][li]Discovery HD – HD! Very good quality, prob the best I saw in this round.[/li][li]Palladia/PLDA – HD! A John Fogerty concert, looked very, very nice.[/li][li]CNN HD – HD! Well, no… a smaller window of SD footage and talking heads surrounded by mostly static HD graphics taking well over 30% of the screen real estate. WTF?[/li][/ul]
So, there you go. A mix, at best. I’ll try the specific channels you mentioned tonight if I get a chance and tell you if they’re really “HD” during prime time.
ETA: just to clarify, ALL of these stations were technically broadcasting in HD. But quite a few were broadcasting upsampled SD material that looked like crap.
They were old shows that I saw for the most part. I think there’s just a dearth of HD content, and the third-tier networks are doing things on the cheap and saving HD content during for times when more folk are watching. Which I find appalling – they’re either HD or they’re not, and putting HD in thier name and showing SD crap is fraudulent. Anybody care for a class action?
I’ll take a look tonight at those fake HD stations, and see if they show better content.
OK, good news. I checked all those stations that were “not HD”, tonight just after 8pm, and every single one of them were broadcasting HD content. Some better than others – TLC, TBS and esp TNT had pictures that were either soft, flat color, or both. But all of them looked like acceptable, and in some cases very good, HD.
I guess prime-time is HD time on these stations, other times are not. Wankers.
I have a TON of HD channels, something like 50ish. To the point where 95% of what I do, or even could, watch on TV is in HD (the exceptions being Comedy Central, and any sports that end up on the lesser Sports Tier channels, and I really mean lesser because I have about a dozen sports stations in HD).
Once we get past sports (which I have a feeling you aren’t too interested in since you didn’t mention anything sports-related in the OP, when they’re one of the biggest pulls of HD), the stuff I watch at least semi-regularly in HD is:
USA is great in HD, both the syndicated dramas and the original programming.
Food and HGTV are both very good, with most/all of the programming in HD but some of it upscaled if it’s older stuff.
Sci Fi shows a lot of stuff that isn’t HD, but Battlestar and Eureka in HD make it completely worth it. YMMV.
TNT and TBS are the black sheep, as has been mentioned; for whatever reason, the Turner broadcasting family really likes messing around with aspect ratios in particular.
The news stations are sometimes in HD, and sometimes just the SD picture on one side with a bunch of other info/tickers in the margins. This works well for CNBC, not so well for the others when they do it. CNN is the best of the rest for highest portion of ‘real’ HD.
Palladia is really cool if you are lucky enough to stumble on a concert you’re interested in. Many times better than MTV HD.
I don’t watch it much, really, but whenever I flip by Discovery it’s beautiful.
I am very happy with my HD cable in general… my parents went HD a couple of years ago, and they get half as many HD channels as I do while paying more. HD and DVR have changed the “killing time while exhausted after a day at work” portion of my life.
The comment about DVR is an important one for the OP. If some stations are “part time” HD, then DVR everything that’s HD and time-shift it to when you do want to watch programming, and cast off all the SD crap on those stations. I don’t know what Kiros is using, but the HD DVR that Dish provides is very rock-n-roll – 55 hours of HD recording, 350 hours of SD, two tuners. I couldn’t be happier with it.
The only problem with this scheme is being able to tell which programs are “real” HD from the program guide. The only way seems to be recording during prime hours, or crossing your fingers. Wankers.
ETA: Kiros, I second the comment about sports programming in HD – that seems to be the really strong pull in HD programming, and its almost becoming uncommon to even find SD sports lately. But the OP does indeed seem indifferent to sports HD.
The 4:3 window flanked with graphics is really common with news - a lot of our local channels do this. I have no complaints with this. When seen on a standard TV, you see the usual 4:3 video, but on HD, more info appears in those sidebars.
Whether or not a channel’s programming at any particular moment is HD is a crapshoot. For older movies, the network may not have bothered to obtain a 16:9 version, or they may not want to inflict letterboxing on people with SD TVs.
What gets really wierd is when an SD channel runs a movie in letterbox. The result on a 16:9 TV is a wee postage stamp of a movie in a sea of black.
Thanks for all the additional information, it sounds like it will be worthwhile.
As has been pointed out, I am largely indifferent to sports, although I have on occasion watched a bit of a game for no other reason that it looked really good in HD
An update, I signed up for the TurboHD package with DVR and had it installed today.
For the most part it seems impressive enough, as people have said prime time appears to have the most HD, although the quality seems pretty good overall.
I signed up for the DVR thinking it would be useful sometimes but I am instantly a huge fan of it - I already have a ton of things scheduled for recording. The ability to pause live TV is great too.
The hold-up wasn’t DN, it was my apartment management, who needed to provide me with a letter stating it was okay to mount the dish.
As a matter of fact the Dish Network guy was gonna come out on Christmas Day to install it, had I not been able to get an earlier appointment.
Anyway to begin with, I bought the 10.00 a month package, and that’s like 50 channels, many of which I don’t watch, but that’s okay, because February’s coming soon, right?
As far as service, I had a little issue with them about my bill not being set up for auto-pay correctly, and when my bank got sold to Suntrust, it made me go past due twice, but we worked it out.
