Tata Sky + HD --Quality sucks
- Thread starter dinkyboy
- Start date
I think this has more to do with compression. The resolution is always 576i. But due to compression the quality drops. As they try to squeeze bandwidth out of each channels, they compress more and more ... it even becomes unwatchable on bigger screens. Also TS STB does a bad job at up scaling and so is many HDTVs . The ratio change in HDTVs contributes more artifacts to the picture.
sgajjala
Member
Thanks Prankey for the suggestion. I will try to make him understand that picture is blurr and the faces shown are not clear. Infact I also observed that if the picture shown in a large room with many people around, I could not see the faces of anyone clearly. Single person to some extent comes clear.
As someone suggested Component Cable connection for SD viewing, I hardly see any noticeable difference betweeen HDMI and Component except the fact that with component pictire shows brighter. Look like my TV is changing to some other picture mode as soon as I select the component.
BTW I have Samsung LA40C650 model. Could anyone suggest the best calibration settings for TS HD+ STB??
As someone suggested Component Cable connection for SD viewing, I hardly see any noticeable difference betweeen HDMI and Component except the fact that with component pictire shows brighter. Look like my TV is changing to some other picture mode as soon as I select the component.
BTW I have Samsung LA40C650 model. Could anyone suggest the best calibration settings for TS HD+ STB??
Try connecting Composite Video connection. Component is not helpful as it sends the same upscaled output as HDMI. All your input will have different picture settings, so changing them will definitely change the calibration.
Google calibration settings for 40C650 and you may find many of them. You could keep the ones you like the most. It should for TS+HD as well.
sgajjala
Member
Yesterday engineer came to my house. He doesn't know english . Other than "Tatasky" and "clear" he is not even uttering any other word. He keeps on insisting picture is clear. I showed some channels like Zemini, Sony etc..
He could not talk to me much so he left and told me that he is going to send his Manager today. lets see what his manager says...
Prankey,
As you suggest , will try connecting composite cable and check if there is any improvement.
He could not talk to me much so he left and told me that he is going to send his Manager today. lets see what his manager says...
Prankey,
As you suggest , will try connecting composite cable and check if there is any improvement.
I too completely agree that the SD channels on Tatasky+HD box is terrible. I was wondering why my older Tatasky+ SD pictures looked so good and this new HD box SD signals are so washed out. I use a 40" Sony Bravia LCD and the signals are routed through an Onkyo SR705 reciever via HDMI and stereo cables for audio. Is there a way to take the uncscaled SD output from the settop box.Yes, check several of my posts in http://www.hifivision.com/digital-c...y-launches-tata-sky-hd-just-rs-3999-a-39.html
Its MUCH worse than Dish HD as well. I remember its like Dish TV was 5 years back! Terrible SD picture and sound quality paired with terrible HDMI upscaling makes picture absolutely uninteresting. None of the SD channels can be termed as have "razor" sharp images due to TERRIBLE upscaling when most SD channels get great treatment through HDMI on Dish HD.
I was also dumping Dish HD for similar service issues, however it now seems Dish HD is far superior in REST of the areas and a clear winner as of now.
PITY that such a great looking box with excellent software, remote, interface backed by TS is coming to such fate. I just don't feel like watching anything on it. Have recorded several great content, however the DULL image and usually bad sound quality turns me off big time.
I am told that an "engineer" would come today to fix quality issues... Hope he really does MAGIC to fix thisI have strictly told them to process a refund once the engineer confirms my findings.
As suggested earlier, you could try composite unscaled output. Component is also scaled.
no1lives4ever
Active Member
A followup from my side..
I did try to use my AVR's upscaler and did a A-B comparision between the TS+ HD box up scaling to 4:3 pillarbox mode in HDMI and the AVR up scaling to 4:3 pillarbox mode using its upscaler and i hardly saw any difference in PQ.
I did try various types of content and also checked out paused recorded content. The output from both are similar.
But overall, I find this much better than what i used to get out of the Zenega Dish TruHD STB that I used in past. The quality from the TS+HD box + its internal upscaler is virtually the same as that of the regular old TS STB + my AVR's upscaler.
Overall the problem with TS to me is not about upscaling but about bit rates used to encode the channels. When I originally got the TS box a few years back, channels did have a very crisp DVD like quality. In those days, the output from the Dish TV STB was significantly worse and same was the case with the local cablewalah's STB.
Today, it seems that TS has reduced the bit rate and done a lot of optimization. Maybe this can be of some help: Ericsson enables Tata Sky HD | Broadband TV News
-- no1lives4ever
I did try to use my AVR's upscaler and did a A-B comparision between the TS+ HD box up scaling to 4:3 pillarbox mode in HDMI and the AVR up scaling to 4:3 pillarbox mode using its upscaler and i hardly saw any difference in PQ.
I did try various types of content and also checked out paused recorded content. The output from both are similar.
But overall, I find this much better than what i used to get out of the Zenega Dish TruHD STB that I used in past. The quality from the TS+HD box + its internal upscaler is virtually the same as that of the regular old TS STB + my AVR's upscaler.
Overall the problem with TS to me is not about upscaling but about bit rates used to encode the channels. When I originally got the TS box a few years back, channels did have a very crisp DVD like quality. In those days, the output from the Dish TV STB was significantly worse and same was the case with the local cablewalah's STB.
Today, it seems that TS has reduced the bit rate and done a lot of optimization. Maybe this can be of some help: Ericsson enables Tata Sky HD | Broadband TV News
-- no1lives4ever
Please suggest the AVR and TV you are using. On my Samsung 32R81, Zenega gives far superior upscaling with no issue on 720p when TS+HD worsens the picture with terrible deinterlacing on 720p which is the best setting for my TV to scale properly when not getting the native 1360x768 resolution.
Probably at the time you used Zenega Dish HD box, it was not optimized as I see some software updates (might be better for us as then we could expect TS to release an update to fix upscaling).
On a side note, if you are talking of deblocking which avoids pixellation on TS+HD or your AVR, I agree TS+HD does better job with that which is actually reducing the details on a scene big time by BLURRING the images instead of sharpening them like the Zenega box.
I agree on the compression, they either need to switch to MPEG4 ASAP or add more transponders like Dish HD as even HD channels show compression artifacts in complex scenes on which Dish HD is far superior.
They have progressively increased the compression on these channels and BOOSTED on more recording time on TS+ and TS+HD boxes which users think their box is doing. Only thing these PVRs do is to RIP or COPY the downstream as broadcasted by TS and store in the Hard drive (which is excellent as we do not loose any quality during ripping). However that means if TS increase the bandwidth allocation on these heavily compressed channels, it can significantly reduce the recording time on these PVRs.
TS+HD's recording time can reduce from their claimed 625hrs to less than 200hrs when they improve the quality of these channels.
Also, another SCAM TS is doing is the claim about 7.1 DD+ when they do not claim the same for their TS HD box which means that like on SD channels they are not switching to MPEG4 to keep compatibility with older STBs, they will do the same for HD channels by NOT broadcasting in 7.1 if their regular HD box do not support it (it might as it seems similar to Airtel's which seems to support 7.1).
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I dont really think compression would have to play a significant role in picture quality. I think it may have to do with the users TV type & the TV settings. Compression just allows DTH companies to pack more content in less bandwidth. The hardware is designed to decode this effectively, be it Tata Sky or any other. Also Since TataSky + HD has MPEG4 DVB-S2 compression technology hence there shouldnt be any issue with compression of channels also the channels are at a promising 1080i resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio which also facilitates bigger screens, as most of the channels are true HD it also provides real HD. I have been using Tata Sky+ HD now (mainly for the world cup, what a match Ireland England was!) and I have had an amazing experience with my TV (Sony BRAVIA High Definition! thanks to my Dad
Few People commented in this post have following TVs, I dont think it is the problem with their setting or quality of their TVs
LG 42LE5300 - LED TV
Samsung PS50c550 - Plasma
Panasonic PV8 - Plasma
Panasonic V20D - Plasma
LG 42PQ60
Samsung 50" PS50C6500
panasonic AX200U projector
sanjay0864
Well-Known Member
Compression has 'EVERYTHING' to do with picture quality. The fact is that due to the very high level of compression used by Indian DTH companies, the picture quality delivered is absolutely crap compared to what DTH is capable of and I am not even referring to HD. The fact is that DTH is capable of delivering as good if not better than DVD quality whereas the picture quality delivered by Indian DTH companies is actually at t imes worse than VCD and in fact even worse than VHS. The only reason the picture quality of the new HD channels is looking good to us, is because our standards of SD have become so low since the advent of digital and DTH in India. Bottom line is that the HD in India is also not anywhere as good as the HD that exists in other countries.
no1lives4ever
Active Member
My setup is a Denon 1910 AVR with a LG 47SL90 47" Edge Lit LED display. I set up the TV to be in JustScan mode, where the TV does no resizing, etc. It displays a full 1920x1080 image from the source in this scenario. This setup is in my bedroom and was not used for a whole lot of TV watching by myself or my brother. I use this setup primarily with the PS3 or one of my laptops which have HDMI output. The SD TS box was used on rare occasions when I wanted to watch TV. This TV has a horrible SD upscale, so I would rather let my STB or AVR do the upscaling. I also have a 23" LG Monitor TV which seems to share the upscaler engine with this TV.
As far as quality differences between what I remember from my now 8 or 9 month older Dish TruHD connection and what I see on TS+ HD box with HD channels, it clearly looks like a compression issues related to use of lower bit rates. On Nat Geo HD or Discovery HD World, you can see the inferior quality of the TS+ HD box whenever there is a scene with a lot of motion. On the Dish TruHD box, the scenes with a lot of motion were rendered very smoothly, whereas on TS+HD, scenes with a lot of motion shows a lot of compression artifacts on these 2 channels. The problem also exists on the cricket match broadcasts, but not to the same level.
There is another very annoying issue on the TS+ HD service. On Discovery HD World, there are tons of audio dropouts. This does not seem to happen always. I have seen it on most programs I have recorded on this channel, but not all.
As far as capacity addition by TS is concerned, it seems like that they have no way to actually boost capacity on their existing platform. There should be another INSAT satellite close to TS's current satellite by end of this year, so hopefully then TS will have better capacity.
-- no1lives4ever
Dude, you are absolutely mistaken. "MPEG4 h.264" is a SUPPORTED compression technology on TS+, TS+HD and TS HD. That does not mean that technology is used by TS especially on SD (SD channels use the ancient MPEG 2 DVB S - same with Dish TV, but Dish TV has much higher bandwidth allocation on most of the channels). MPEG4 DVB S (NOT S2 AFAIK) is used only for HD channels (though HD channels are also not as superior as in Dish HD due to higher bitrate and DVB S2 on new Asia 5 satellite on Dish HD).I dont really think compression would have to play a significant role in picture quality. I think it may have to do with the users TV type & the TV settings. Compression just allows DTH companies to pack more content in less bandwidth. The hardware is designed to decode this effectively, be it Tata Sky or any other. Also Since TataSky + HD has MPEG4 DVB-S2 compression technology hence there shouldnt be any issue with compression of channels also the channels are at a promising 1080i resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio which also facilitates bigger screens, as most of the channels are true HD it also provides real HD. I have been using Tata Sky+ HD now (mainly for the world cup, what a match Ireland England was!) and I have had an amazing experience with my TV (Sony BRAVIA High Definition! thanks to my Dad
Rest Sanjay has already clarified, compression is the ONLY difference which makes SD channels on TS one of the worse. To top it the upscaling and deinterlacing on TS+HD makes it worst.
Thanks for the revert. Yes we should always try to use Just Scan as much as possible for 1080i to avoid pixel scaling on the TV. However this still do not eliminate picture processing which may cause some scaling of pixels. Also, TS+HD sends 4:4:4 (component) color through HDMI (instead of regular RGB). I have seen typically SD channels are encoded in RGB (in MPEG2 compression), hence TS+HD instead of sending RGB for SD channels, sends in component color format which might be another issue with upscaling on HDMI which I am witnessing. I have seen most of Samsung TVs do not work well with 4:4:4 inputs (converts to RGB for internal processing). So this might be causing the color space to be converted twice. If you see now, Zenega does far superior upscaling especially on 720p (which might cause pixellation on your Full HD TV).
I agree on motion artifacts on TS HD channels.
I have not observed Audio Dropouts on Discovery HD World and instead have seen it continuously in Nat Geo HD.
Also, to talk on DD5.1 issues, I have seen some of the Discovery HD content to have the similar panning of Center Channel like we observe in Star Cricket HD! So its definitely not perfect as some of us claim hear.
On Nat Geo HD, I witness random audio dropouts quite frequently. And Audio channel mapping of 5.1 on this channel is very bizarre to say the least. Voice comes usually from Main L channel and is also mixed on Rear L R. There is usually NO audio on Main R and Center channels contain surround sound which should normally come from Rear. Seems rear L R content should ideally come from Main L R, Current Main L R should get mixed as center (as some vocals seems to come from Main R!). and Rear should have the Center's voice (probably making it 4 channel or 4.1 channel sound).
Hope this helps.
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no1lives4ever
Active Member
I think those who find the quality of HD broadcast on TS HD service to be acceptable to do a side by side comparison between Dish TruHD & TS HD showing the same channel on similar sized panels. The quality difference is big enough for me with 8 month old memory of the Dish HD service.
Here are 2 main reasons I can think about why I preffer the TS SD upscaling to the Zenega box's upscaling:
1. There was no option on the Zenega box to show SD content in 4:3 pillarbox mode while HD content is shown in 16:9 native resolution.
2. The upscaler on the Zenega box seemed to work exactly like my TV's upscaler, which did preserve information, but showed way too many compression artifacts and blocking for my comfort. Both my AVR's upscaler and the TS+HD upscaler seem to do a bit of smoothening, but to me there is hardly any detail lost when I compare it to a 21" Sony WEGA CRT television that is there in the other room. I had also tried to compare the SD channels using my 23" LG Monitor TV that is pretty close to the 21" CRT and I found the same issues there also.
Looks like we have the same problems with the opposite channels. On Nat Geo HD, I very rarely face audio dropouts. Also the Audio tracks are mixed so that the presenter's voice comes from the back. This seems to be a consistent scheme of audio on NatGeo HD across various programs. I personally prefer this scheme when watching documentaries. To me it feels like a presenter sitting somewhere behind me describing the scenes.
On Discovery HD World, I see tons of audio dropouts. And more irritatingly, sometimes the audio seems to change volume between 2 levels around these dropouts. This is extremely irritating when you are trying to watch a program at night and you need to fight with the remote to get the audio working. I have also noticed that Discovery HD shows more compression artifacts than Nat Geo HD.
Currently TS has a big problem with transponder capacity. Their current satellite has no additional available capacity, so the only way TS can add channels is by using higher rates of compression. TS does have a large number of transponders on its current satellite, but because they are on MPEG2 platform, they can only have roughly half the channels per transponder as compared to those service providers with MPEG4 compression technology. I hope that with the new INSAT satellite to be launched this year next to TS's current satellite, TS should be in a position to lease more transponders and increase the bitrate used for the compression and end up giving us better quality.
I really doubt if TS would switch to MPEG4 anytime in the near future.
Having said all the above, whenever I show any of the HD channels to others on this service, everyone only says good things about the quality. I have had friends come over to watch cricket on multiple occasions and none of them are anything but praise for the "quality" of the HD service. For the average customer who is not looking at compression artifacts or those who can not do a side by side comparision, the increased quality of HD channels over SD is still something that they are very happy with.
Overall, I am still extremely satisfied with the TS+HD box. For around 400 rupee more than what I paid for the stupid Zenega box + Dish HD dish and cabling I have a DVR with 500gb, twin tuners. This is a box that works very nicely and has one of the best user interfaces I have seen on a STB. There are some minor bugs, etc. The main thing with this box is that I do not need to fight with the box to watch TV. Also I do not need to pay anything extra for the TS service, as I already had a SD box with Mega pack that this STB replaced. If you have a HD TV and if you are a existing non TS+ SD subscriber with the Mega Pack, then this box is a very very good upgrade. Just that the quality of the HD channels need to get better.
-- no1lives4ever
Broadcasted through DVB S2 capable Asia Sat 5 on Dish HD, HD channels are EVEN BETTER now
I agree on deblocking and smoothing that Zenega do not do that aggressively. Also, TS SD channels (probably after the Ericsson's optimization) seems to be broadcasted with less of those effect. The quality loss is more visible on a HDTV than a CRT. As in Zenega I do see more lines of resolution for SD channels which is not possible to be supported on a CRT. The loss is majorly on the EDGE's of graphics (I keep EDGE ENHANCEMENT OFF on my TV as it introduce more "ringing" effect which do not come from Zenega box even if it does edge enhancement). So objects like Facial scars, thin line or small text and overall OPTICAL FOCUS of an image gets compromised when we do deblocking of a source. The upscaled channels usually look terribly out of focus and infact STRAIN my eyes (have tried it several times, switching to Dish TV to watch the same SD channel REALLY RELIEVE my EYES big time! no more straining to try to focus on images and text). You could see this difference switching between HD and SD channels! This blurring effect is much more bothering me than the compression artifacts seen on most of the SD channels on Dish HD. I never have to strain my eyes watching SD channels on Dish HD and now most of them are upscaled giving even better PQ and SQ eliminating those artifiacts almost completely (zagginess is still there somehow on upscaled channels). Zee TV and WB almost look HD on Dish HD and major issue on those channels is aspect ratio. Also, that blurring really destroy subtle details and is similar to what we loose with more compression of video. Yesterday I saw some graffiti being washed out frequently (like "Entertainment Television" beneath Sony TV logo) while watching "Kismat" on Sony TV.
I personally prefer 4:3 to be controlled by my TV (option may not be available on your LG) as it retain the upscaled resolution of 1080i or 720p while squeezing the picture in a letterbox mode.
I hear most of the Voice from Main Left on Nat Geo HD. It is subtly mixed on the rear channels. I don't like it when seeing those demos as all the sound comes from rear speakers which some how do not sound as good as my Main speakers through my 8 year old Yamaha AVR.
I agree TS+HD is more flexible, fast, superior in terms of feature set and maturity of software and interface. And yes, twin tuner is a BIG bonus as we could rip (lets not call it a recorder as its not really recording) 2 channels simultaneously. Its like having 2 PVRs with 2 independent connections.
They can easily release bandwidth they are currently allocating for the DD Direct+ channels by following Dish TV's strategy of directly relaying those channels!
Also, I think the latest TS SD box supports MPEG4, so they should work towards swapping their SD STBs with the latest ones as the revenue it may just cost them about 1 month's revenue which should easily be recovered through additional subscriber base they may get after the MPEG4's superior quality.
If only we ALL complain about their SD quality, they may not be convinced to change their technology especially if we keep boosting about additional recording time on these PVRs at the cost of media quality.
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Read wikipedia
All the compression formats used by DTH in India( everywhere ) lossy, meaning you lose information when they are uncompressed. So unlike zip when you decompress them you don't get the original file, but something that looks like the original.
lossy compression always affects your quality ... you can compress using more aggressive parameters ... but the more you compress the more data you lose and the more artifacts are introduced. Some compression algorithms are better than others ... but you can still do more aggressive compression and make the picture worse.
All these DTH providers should start advertising bit rates rather than their algorithms. You can get a better looking picture using mpeg-4 or h.264 than mpeg-2, if you use the same band width. But if you use half the bandwidth for mpeg-4 it will look worse than mpeg-2.
A footnote : I can agree HD content is just about OK ... but not even close to optimum ... you need to watch a blue ray of the same content to see what is real HD. Anyone who finds SD content dished out by DTH good enough ... on a 40 inch HD screen ... you have just got one of worlds best screens ...
sgajjala
Member
Few days back engineer came to my place. He suggested to change the setting to 720p to improve the quality on SD channels. I could not check it as I was in office that time and told him to check when I come home.. The other option he suggested to go for component cables which I tried and did not help..
After checking the setting, I called him and informed that there is no improvement in picture quality..
As per him, they started receiving complaints in all the areas like picture quality, audio etc.. These issues have been escalated to their Eng. group and till now they haven't got back on those..
Before him, 2 more guys came and never accepted that there is some issue.
I asked 3rd guy to come on Saturday. I feel there is no solution to this.
After checking the setting, I called him and informed that there is no improvement in picture quality..
As per him, they started receiving complaints in all the areas like picture quality, audio etc.. These issues have been escalated to their Eng. group and till now they haven't got back on those..
Before him, 2 more guys came and never accepted that there is some issue.
I asked 3rd guy to come on Saturday. I feel there is no solution to this.
Hi guys,
I just got Tata Sky HD+ installed at home (upgraded from DishTV, which I have been using for many years), and the reception of both HD and SD channels is VERY good. I was wary as I had heard of poor reception of SD channels, but that does not seem to be the case. Just wanted all of you to know.
Cheers!
I just got Tata Sky HD+ installed at home (upgraded from DishTV, which I have been using for many years), and the reception of both HD and SD channels is VERY good. I was wary as I had heard of poor reception of SD channels, but that does not seem to be the case. Just wanted all of you to know.
Cheers!
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