C-Band HD Superior?
 

Have my C-Band dish for 9-years with the GI 650 receiver. What do I need to
go full blown HD? The Motorola HDD-200? Who do I go for HD programming?
Turnervision? How can I get Leno in HD????

I have DISH HD now. Is C-Band superior to DISH? I know it is with SD. But
with HD???

Which satellites are HD?

"Stan" wrote in message ink.net...
... I have DISH HD now. Is C-Band superior to DISH? I know it is with SD. But
with HD???

I was going to say your uncertainty about HD is well founded because
the transport is digital and C-Band will deliver exactly the same bits
as any other path. Then I recalled the claim that local stations
receive a pristine compressed stream (we hope); in order to insert
their utterly annoying station 'bug' in the corner of the screen they
have to decompress the stream, deface the picture, and recompress to
send it to the viewer. So you might be able to avoid at least one
superfluous decompress-compress cycle. Local stations certainly
degrade the signal during the credits at the end of shows by taking
over half or more of the screen. Squishing the network content (making
the credits unreadable) in order to add their own messages. In
Minnesota and other states that have weather readers (comically
identified as meterologists) who are obsessed with being on camera you
might avoid the annoying border on the screen that inform you of
weather conditions in locations that couldn't receive the station
under any circumstance.

For "cable" content like HBO on satellite I don't think this rant has
any relevance. But if you could get direct network feed, I guess I've
convinced myself C-band might be a better opotion for HD on the
networks. Of course that would cost more than the $50 ChannelMaster I
have in my attic.

Sorry...no network or local HD feeds on C-band/4dtv.

But, being first generation signal, it will always be better than Dish,
Dirtv, or your cable company for HBO, Showtime, etc.

HBO, Showtime, PBS and Discovery all have HD programming you can get on C
band. You will need the Hdd200 (now out of production). Starz is getting
ready to put their channels in HD, along with a number of others. Discovery
is the only one that charges extra for their HD feed...the others you get
free with your normal subscription.


"Steve Bryan" wrote in message
om...
"Stan" wrote in message
ink.net...
... I have DISH HD now. Is C-Band superior to DISH? I know it is with
SD. But
with HD???

I was going to say your uncertainty about HD is well founded because
the transport is digital and C-Band will deliver exactly the same bits
as any other path. Then I recalled the claim that local stations
receive a pristine compressed stream (we hope); in order to insert
their utterly annoying station 'bug' in the corner of the screen they
have to decompress the stream, deface the picture, and recompress to
send it to the viewer. So you might be able to avoid at least one
superfluous decompress-compress cycle. Local stations certainly
degrade the signal during the credits at the end of shows by taking
over half or more of the screen. Squishing the network content (making
the credits unreadable) in order to add their own messages. In
Minnesota and other states that have weather readers (comically
identified as meterologists) who are obsessed with being on camera you
might avoid the annoying border on the screen that inform you of
weather conditions in locations that couldn't receive the station
under any circumstance.

For "cable" content like HBO on satellite I don't think this rant has
any relevance. But if you could get direct network feed, I guess I've
convinced myself C-band might be a better opotion for HD on the
networks. Of course that would cost more than the $50 ChannelMaster I
have in my attic.

"Curmudgeon" wrote in message .. .
Sorry...no network or local HD feeds on C-band/4dtv.
Ah, well then ... never mind.

I was going to say your uncertainty about HD is well founded because
the transport is digital and C-Band will deliver exactly the same bits
as any other path. Then I recalled the claim that local stations
receive a pristine compressed stream (we hope); in order to insert
their utterly annoying station 'bug' in the corner of the screen they
have to decompress the stream, deface the picture, and recompress to
send it to the viewer. So you might be able to avoid at least one
superfluous decompress-compress cycle.

I thought I read somewhere (maybe in www.avsforum.com) that a few
of the TV-networks (ABC, CBS) broadcast their regional feed (east,
central, west-coast) at a maximum bitrate of 45MBps. If you could
receive and decode the national-feed, the picture-quality should be
much better than any OTA ATSC (max 19.2MBps) HDTV broadcast.

Unfortunately, I have no clue how do to that, and what kind of exotic
expensive special equipment it may require...(and I'm pretty sure
most of those satellite distribution feeds are encrypted.)

I thought I read somewhere (maybe in www.avsforum.com) that a few
of the TV-networks (ABC, CBS) broadcast their regional feed (east,
central, west-coast) at a maximum bitrate of 45MBps. If you could
receive and decode the national-feed, the picture-quality should be
much better than any OTA ATSC

That may not be true. Losing all those bits may not effect the final product in
the way you think. If you look at D-Theater, the bit rate is much higher than
the same movie being broadcast on DirecTV or Dish. However, some people (myself
included) have synched up a D-Theater movie with the same movie being broadcast
as the lower satellite bit rate. There was surprisingly litte, and in many
cases, any difference between the two. So it's not all about bit rate.

The only thing the 50Mbps feeds buys us end-viewers is that the local
stations aren't re-compressing a signal that might be close to "barely
enough".

Actually the original poster of this was wrong. The networks don't broadcast
their HD @ 50Mps, it's actually 19.2Mps.

Vidguy7 ) wrote in alt.tv.tech.hdtv:
Actually the original poster of this was wrong. The networks don't broadcast
their HD @ 50Mps, it's actually 19.2Mps.

Where'd you get that?

The guys at AVS Forum that work at stations (like foxeng, etc.) all say
the source feeds are in the 40-60Mbps range.

--
Jeff Rife |
For address harvesters: | http://www.nabs.net/Cartoons/Dilbert/DoomedProject.jpg
|
|
|

Where'd you get that?


Nope, it's 19.2 mps. It's been widely publicized and often repeated on AVS. In
fact the only thing higher is that of D-Theater and that's only marginally
higher.

Vidguy7 ) wrote in alt.tv.tech.hdtv:
Nope, it's 19.2 mps. It's been widely publicized and often repeated on AVS. In
fact the only thing higher is that of D-Theater and that's only marginally
higher.

I'm not talking about the final OTA broadcast, but the feeds to the
affiliates.

--
Jeff Rife | "It's amazing the advances the Swedes have made
For address harvesters: | in the science of furniture...especially
| considering they have only one known tool."
| -- Tommy Solomon, "3rd Rock from the Sun"
|