D*HD-Lite vs E* HD screenshot thread *WARNING - LARGE PICTURE FILES TO LOAD*

[Xylon]

***Please no hotlinking!!! Use your own image hosting site.***

This is to help members who just bought their first High-Definition set and want to know which one of the mentioned SAT provider will give the better PQ and make some sense what we AVS members been talking about regarding HD-Lite. And of course to others who already have the subscriptions, finally decide to cancel the one that gives you sub-par PQ.

D* Directv
E* Dish Network
All files are nullstripped.

I'Robot

D* 8.92 gb AVB 9.80 Mbps

E*9.34 gb AVB 11.10




EDIT:

Some screenshots are now gone and I can't recover them anymore or lost.

Since then E* has also become HD-Lite full time with NO CHANNELS AVAILABLE AT 1920x1080 ANYMORE. So updating this thread with new screenshots from recent shows are moot now. IF you are one of the few who invested on HD DVD or Blu-ray then that is the only way you can watch TRUE HIGH QUALITY High Definition picture.

[Xylon]

Elektra

D* 6.20 gb AVB 8.25 Mbps

E* 7.83 gb AVB 9.10 Mbps

[Azanon]

This should be very helpful information for the 5% or so of people who actually have TV's that can do 1920x1080. And of those, most of those dont pump out 60FPS at 1920x1080, so get ready for a lil motion sickness on those pans.

My TV does 1366x768, so i'll just use the first one as reference, regardless of who i subscribe to.

[Xylon]

Just getting started

[GoldenBoy]

I viewed these captures on my Mac going into my 43" Samsung HLN437W DLP (720p) via DVI, and I can't see a difference. What exactly am I supposed to be seeing? Is it even possible to see a difference with a still image like this?

[vurbano]

definite differences in Will Smiths forehead when he is aiming the gun. Fast motion would yield a better comparison though. And for an even more dramatic affect use HDnetmovies. D* is butchering that!

[Erik Garci]

These images are all downconverted to 1536x864 and recompressed as JPEG.

[radius]

xylon
You have way to much time on your hands the little difference I see is not going to sway to many people most would say there pretty close.
And of course everyones equipment and set-up is different, most anyways.
I quess it's all in the eyes of the beholder.

[TheRock]

E* Dish Network looks much sharper to me and also seems to have better color.

But to be fair both look much better than what I was lead to believe. From some of the posts I have read it made it seem like both of those providers(E and D) HD content looked horrible. It probably also helps that I Robot seems to have had an excellent transfer.

With Dish Network's great HD channel lineup I might need to check them out.


I have COX Cable in Orange County.

Motorola 6412 III HD DVR

Sony KV-34XBR910 Television

[goaliebob99]

Originally Posted by Erik Garci

These images are all downconverted to 1536x864 and recompressed as JPEG.

Exactly you can really make a true comparison on downconverted images! NOT! Next, time please post the images in there uncompressed format through file shack or something like that.

[ENDContra]

Off topic, but how did you capture these in full HD? All of the non-broadcast HD channels are encrypted on my system (TWC). Is it something only cool satellite people can do?

[GoldenBoy]

Originally Posted by goaliebob99

Exactly you can really make a true comparison on downconverted images! NOT! Next, time please post the images in there uncompressed format through file shack or something like that.

This is exactly what I was thinking. They're not in their native resolution and in addition they have even more lossy compression applied. How do we know that any differences we are seeing are not the result of : 1) the images native resolutions being changed and 2)Jpeg handling these differently?

I applaud the effort, but this is far from optimal circumstances to judge the differences.

[GoldenBoy]

Originally Posted by TheRock

E* Dish Network looks much sharper to me and also seems to have better color.

But to be fair both look much better than what I was lead to believe. From some of the posts I have read it made it seem like both of those providers(E and D) HD content looked horrible. It probably also helps that I Robot seems to have had an excellent transfer.

Even more impressive when you consider these images have been further reduced in quality bith by being down-scaled from 1080 and by having yet another lossy compression scheme (jpeg) applied to them.

In all honesty though, it is more easy (and more accurate?) to judge overall PQ by watching the original signal in full motion on your television. Without full motion, it is hard to tell if there would be many visible motion artifacts and so on.

[CPanther95]

Who cares about the value of the comparison - his selection of screen shots is fantastic.

If you viewed post #2 and your focus was the text in the first example or the LCD monitor in the second example - you've lost sight of what HDTV is all about.

[GoldenBoy]

Originally Posted by CPanther95

Who cares about the value of the comparison - his selection of screen shots is fantastic.

If you viewed post #2 and your focus was the text in the first example or the LCD monitor in the second example - you've lost sight of what HDTV is all about.

Oh, I didn't lose site of anything, trust me. In fact, I gained two extra files on my hard drive.

[keenan]

I want to know what Dave is doing, is he looking for something he lost down there?

[hall]

So long as the images are compressed equally (hard to know with JPEG) and resized equally, it's not an unreasonable comparison.

[aranganath]

Xylon: If it's not too much trouble, could you take a few more shots and not identify them in a separate thread with a poll asking us to identify which is which. I think that would be a LOT more telling. If there was a way to prevent people from posting replies to the thread, even better.

[cocoon]

Xylon: I think for these to be effective you can not resize images and can not use a lossy image they should be in some lossless format like PNG at full resolution. Maybe even then its not possible to show the full effect because you would be converting from mpeg2 to something else...

I got dish network several weeks ago and have seen with my own eyes on the main HD channels (voom excluded) that E* especially HDnet movies is extremely close to full bandwidth OTA HD nothing at all like like the crap D* sends.

dont know what else to say.

[redmption]

Those only difference I can see is the E* has a little better color in some of the shots than D*. But as long as D* has NFL Sunday Ticket there is no contest

[richall01]

Make them smaller and side by side.

[bgall]

looks the same to me...

[balazer]

Originally Posted by Xylon

D* Directv
E* Dish Network
All files are nullstripped.

What does null stripping have to do with the presentation of still images?

The first two images are not the same frame. I didn't bother to check the others.

[rothgar]

they all look good.

[JMartinko]

Frankly the frogs all look the same to me, or am I missing something?

[RAVEN56706]

those frogs look like blu ray pics...

[talbain]

the frogs are pretty. damn hd has come a long way...

[guffy1]

Originally Posted by Azanon

This should be very helpful information for the 5% or so of people who actually have TV's that can do 1920x1080. And of those, most of those dont pump out 60FPS at 1920x1080, so get ready for a lil motion sickness on those pans.

My TV does 1366x768, so i'll just use the first one as reference, regardless of who i subscribe to.

I see you are still hell bent and totally hung up on this resolution thing

I take it you still dont understand the importance of the bit rates?

Well, Ive got some news for you..All our HDTVS are capable of supporting full bit rate HDTV..

[Azanon]

I see you are still hell bent and totally hung up on this resolution thing

I take it you still dont understand the importance of the bit rates?

I see you failed to realize all he compared was two different resolutions and spoke of nothing else. If there was a problem with that, direct it at the OP. He said nothing of bitrates.

If resolutions aren't the issue, then why do people besides me keep mentioning it. Bit*h at them for a while, and leave me alone.

[diat150]

I just switched from d* to E* yesterday and their is a huge difference with the picture quality. E* is much better. even the downrezzed voom channels look better than D* IMHO. The E* hd dvr also has better ota reception and the menu is about 100 times faster.