Any DirecTV users out there?

[randycat99]

Being this is a computer graphics-oriented website, I imagine that you guys are fairly more conscious of video-related artifacts than the general populace. Given that, how many of you here are DirecTV customers? How many of you are happy DirecTV customers? Does anybody see an awful lot of "needless" compression artifacts on their video setup? Does anybody liken their DirecTV service as "DVD-quality" or something lesser to that? Responses from Dish owners are welcome, as well of course. We're all pretty much in the same boat, AFAIC.

 

[PC-Engine]

My sister has a Dish Networks setup and I can see compression artifacts on her FPTV that only uses a composite hookup. When watching DVDs on the same FPTV, I can't see any compression artifacts.

 

[RussSchultz]

BOth directtv and dish have to overly compress their bitstreams because everybody demands more channels and not better channels.

I was all for the Dish/Directv merger, since it would (basically) double the bandwidth available for channels.

Also, getting rid of locals, or finding some smart method of interleaving local programming with the national feed, would make the quality sky rocket.

Unless dish/directv can solve the bandwidth problem, they're going to get murdered by the cable companies, who have recently decided on a standard for the cable boxes, which means that tv's and other 3rd party's will start making cable boxes that are better than the crap scientific atlanta puts out. (And that's my major beef with cable).

 

[randycat99]

Actually, that's why I finally jumped aboard- because local channels were available (and to save $10/mon). Ironically, it's the local channels that look/sound the worse, which leads me to believe they are being the most aggressively clamped down on for datarate. The actual movie and sports channels may be what looks half-way decent (but still not enough to be considered "good"), but from there on out, quality gets pretty dicey, IMO.

I didn't think of it before, but my better option probably would have been to stick with analog cable (which is actually quite good in my area) for the local channels for $10/mon and go with the DirecTV package that is $31.95 or so w/o local channels. That way I could at least count on decent broadcasts for local channels and not have to pay Time Warner a stiff $50 every month just for basic + extended service.

I'm just curious what people here think about the video quality. If you ask just any guy on the street, often times they are none the wiser that there is anything wrong with the video quality. I've heard some tell me that it looks just fine on their 60" projection TV. That I'll never understand how that can pass.

So maybe I am just being picky (in which it seems I am just barking over nothing at all)? Maybe I've seen good video and badly compressed digital video, and have become too accustomed to good video and can easily discern the difference. It's just frustrating to see these DirecTV guys get away with what they do because they can, all the while I know and they know that they are capable of so much more.

 

[ERP]

Until I moved recently I was a happy Direct TV customer.

Personally I made the choice for two reasons,

The NFL pakage (which I'll miss come football season)
amd
The SAT T60 dual tuner Tivo, which I miss already.

To me the Tivo fuctionality was a bonus feature when I went to satelite, but to be honest it's probably the primary reason I'd go back. The dual tuner units are much better than the single tuner stand alones (and they're worth the investment IMO).

In terms of cost and picture quality it's a wash when compared to digital cable here in Ca at least.

 

[8ender]

Here in Canada the Bell ExpressVU, while offering decent quality is totally destroyed in quality by Rogers Digital.

Rogers recently upgraded something like 60% of households to Digital Cable infastructure and I have to say, the quality is at least DVD, perhaps better.

Guess theres some nice things associated with canada having a handful of giant monopolys running the infastructure. We got High Speed Internet back in '95 and Digital Cable just last year.

 

[covermye]

I've got DirecTV with (4) receivers in our house, two of which are HD receivers. When watching any DirecTV programming on the two standard definition sets (1 is 19" and the other is 32"), the compression isn't necessarily noticeable. It's actually hard to tell the difference at times between it and over-the-air digital feeds (well, you can tell on the 32" most of the time).

The third receiver (1st HD) is on a 32" HD monitor, and it's obvious. It just plain looks like you're watching through a fuzzy lense or screen door at times. Over the air digital stations are night-and-day different here.

The 4th receiver (2nd HD receiver) is on my projector (Sony 11HT) lighting up a 120" screen. Family and friends visiting usually comment on how terrible standard definition satellite signals look on here (it's hard not to!). I've literally got better looking VHS tapes (Star Wars remastered in THX comes to mind) on the big screen that DirecTV channels.

Why do I keep it? I live wayyyyyy out in the boonies and can't reliably reach all local OTA stations. Digital OTA reception depends on the weather at times. Also, I'm a die-hard Steelers fan and I live in NW Indiana. DirecTV Sunday Ticket (which I see they upped the rates on again for next year) is my only hope for following the best team in the NFL. *Shrug*

I'd personally do away with all the crappy PPV channels and locals for one good set of HD network feeds from the East and/or Left coast, along with HD feeds of other channels as they become available (Discovery, ESPN, etc... etc...)

No way that'll happen though...

 

[vrecan]

atleast here in colorado digital cable looks horrid and 1/4th the channels have such horrible distortion it's almost unwatchable plus it takes 20 min just to go through all the channels, the browse feature is that slow. Plus to top it off all the digital cable channels have really bad artifacts in them anytime there is smoke or fog in the picture... So I made the move to direct tv and I love it every channel including the local ones is clean and clear I dont have a single problem with it.

 

[randycat99]

That's what boggles my mind- as "questionable" as DirecTV quality is, I can't imagine how much worse digital cable could be, and yet the precedence is there. I imagine a lot of people are coming from really, really bad analog cable and dodgy digital cable services, so DirecTV ends up seeming like a godsend. It may well be to them, as it does manage to deliver on its primary purpose and do it better. However, it also scares me that this is what will become "accepted" as acceptable quality for the future of television. One would think as technology progresses, so will the quality of video in television, but what we are now seeing is how deftly can these service providers skirt the bounds of "passable" using the flexibilities inherent to a digital medium (which begs the question as to what purpose all of these high resolution TV's and high performance connections are really for when the state of video is moving more towards VHS than HDTV with regard to network broadcasts). There is no strive to achieve newer/higher standards in video, just be better than the worst.

You don't have to look hard, but indeed, all of those artifacts you mention in your prior setup are still present in DirecTV- just on a more subtle level. Just like you mention, scenes with rolling fog/smoke will trip up a low data rate MPEG2 video feed. Additionally, there's pans over grassy areas, noisy dark scenes, gradations from bright colors to black, fades between scenes, chronically soft looking picture on any scene that literally isn't a still frame, lack of color saturation, and many, many more. All of these things cause problems with aggresively compressed digital. It may be on the edge of perceptibility, but why not (I ask) make it a good safety factor on the side of imperceptibility? It just goes to show (to me) how borderline the precedence is right now- not very promising for the future of video. All of this screams to me that the motives have become "what can I get away with" rather than "how much can I get out of the given medium". It's a sad state of affairs, but I have found that most people are just not that concerned about it as long as they can get a solid picture w/o snow and ringing.

If it means getting only 60 channels with true, industry-leading digital quality vs. 200 channels (most of which are shameless duplications of what amounts to be the same programming) in mediocre "Quicktime" quality, so be it. I'll take the 60 in a second. My mantra is don't accept the current state of video quality simply because it was better than what you had before. Consider what the medium is capable of delivering given the technology, and then challenge the current state. Believe it or not, a decent, modern analog cable system walks all over DirecTV in video and sound. True, not everyone has access to a better analog cable service. However, that should not mean that you don't demand at least that level of quality from your chosen satellite TV service.

Don't even get me started on the quality of basic stereo sound...

 

[PC-Engine]

Well HD broadcasts are the wave of the future and that seems like a good solution.

 

[covermye]

HD is a GREAT solution. But not for DirecTV. Problem: they just don't have the bandwidth on their satellites to offer any more HD channels. I read somewhere that an HD channel uses the bandwidth of 9-10 of DirecTV's crapalicious "super compressed standard def" channels. It just won't happen...

I don't know what the breakdown is, but you've gotta think that DirecTV is making a killing off the pay-per-view channels. They're not gonna give them up (or limit choices) to offer fewer channels in HD when it's not going to do anything to their revenue stream.

 

[randycat99]

Take a look at an HD feed in your favorite Best Buy and you'll find that, despite it looking better, even then it is riding the threshold at keeping artifacts at bay (essentially a wider screen with better overall resolution, but all the same artifacts that we "enjoy" today). Now consider a broadcast system where all the major channels are streaming HD squeezed into a poor, little satellite... We might well end up with "DirecTV quality" all over again even though the package you pay for is called "HD". If attention to quality is questionable as of now, I don't hold out much hope for them finally discovering the art when they make the major move to HD. If today is any precedence, they will just make it look just good enough to be "better" than standard DTV, but far, far short of what is truly possible with the system (but we will have 10 HBO channels instead of 4 to "make up for it"). From a pragmatic business standpoint, I would go so far to expect them to gradually make DTV look worse and worse over time so as to make HDTV look like the obvious improvement for better video quality (which would end up only being squarely mediocre by absolute standards). It just may end up that a lowly progressive scan DVD player from year 2000 might be enough to blow away anything that future satellite HDTV could offer. Sounds crazy? Sure! ...but not impossible at all.

 

[PC-Engine]

What are the chances that the satellite cable companies come up with a system like ISDN for dialup. For example instead of two modems and two phone lines have two receivers and a dual receiver dish which they already have? Double the bandwidth for more HDTV channels.

 

[covermye]

I don't think so... the bandwidth problem is at the satellite, not the receiver. The satellites don't have enough transponders, or the transponers themselves don't have enough bandwidth, to allow for more HD channels. Considering the fact that you need to lose 8-10 standard definition satellite channels as they're broadcast today to get enough bandwidth for one good HD channel feed, I don't see that they'll be going tihs way any time soon.

I can think of about 40 channels real fast that I'd do away with, not even considering the local networks, to get 4 or 5 more good HD feeds, preferably HD network feeds from the East or West coast. But this won't happen as there must be too many DirecTV customers that like to watch Home Shopping network, etc...

 

[Nagorak]

DirecTV has some compression artifacts. Usually it isn't too bad, but sometimes it can be (often artifacts seem to be linked to a poor signal, like when it's raining).

That said it STILL looks better than analog cable. Customer service is STILL better than your cable company's (most of whom just treat you like garbage and expect you to take it, knowing you have no alternative for service). Their service is cheaper than local cable companies who generally try to rip you off since you have no other alternatives. I wouldn't touch my local cable company's "digital cable" with a 10 foot pole thanks entirely to their rip-off cost structure and customer diservice department (responsible for the policy that when they come to hook you up, even when all they have to do is flip the switch because you ALREADY have a physical cable connection, they can just go ahead and cut every cable line on their property).

 

[covermye]

DirecTV has some compression artifacts. Usually it isn't too bad, but sometimes it can be (often artifacts seem to be linked to a poor signal, like when it's raining).

That said it STILL looks better than analog cable.

Yeah, I agree... However, it DOESN'T look better than over-the-air digital, and it ISN'T as cheap as over-the-air digital (free). Also, over-the-air digital doesn't compress their signals NEARLY as much... especially on high-def material.

My only problem is that I live out in the middle of nowhere and my signal strength is sometimes marginal. This should be taken care of, though, in 2005 (or thereabouts) when the stations are forced to go full-power on their digital transmissions (most in my area are only 30%-75%)...

-Chris