The Dish on Viacom

[Mark Laurence]

On Thursday, March 11, 2004, at 04:36  PM, Matthew Osborne wrote:

> Silly sidenote to this: Has anyone on this list ever
> compared the picture quality of a standard NTSC signal
> from DirecTV to that of Dish Network?  I have, and it
> appears that Dish Network's picture quality is worse
> than that of DirecTV.  Not sure which digital
> compression systems/ratios each may be using, but if
> you compare the two there's a marked difference
> between them, I've found.  Dish Network appears to be
> nothing more than a higher resolution version of
> streaming video that you would find on the internet.

Both services use mpg streams, so they are similar in that way to 
Internet streaming video.  Picture quality varies widely depending on 
the channel and the time of day.  For prime time sporting events and 
premium movie channels, they crank up the picture quality to its 
highest level, but if you're watching a less-watched show on an obscure 
network, you can see plenty of compression artifacts.   Both services 
are stretching their capabilities to the max in order to provide local 
channels as well as every shopping channel known to mankind.  :)

I have DirecTV at home and see Dish Network at work, and I've never 
noticed a significant picture quality difference.  Both are better than 
any cable system I've had.

Mark