Tata Sky + HD --Quality sucks

dinkyboy

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just dumped my Sun Hd and got the tata sky hd + (the box that records). the quality as compared to sun hd sucks. the sun picture quality is far superior to tata. but sun service is terrible. also they have large amounts of service disruptions. after a while, the torture became unbearable. so i switched to tata.

in hindsight that may not be a wise decision. the tata picture quality is so bad, my hathway cable set top box may be better. looks like tata uses some outdated technology. has anyone also had similar experience?

any tips on what could be wrong here?
 
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 this :) I have strictly told them to process a refund once the engineer confirms my findings.
 
Notice that they are recompressing all the DD Direct+ FTA channels with TERRIBLE picture and sound quality as they are recompressed by TS.

Dish TV passes them through unadulterated. I really like the quality of DD News, 9X, 9XM, etc which sucks big time on TS due to this recompression. And to top it - they want us to pay for these free channels!!
 
I am convinced that anything with TATA brand name should be avoided like plague. these guys are convinced that any rubbish can be sold by adding the Tata tag to it. be it the Nano (cars flaming up) or their mobile phone or the Tata Sky Hd; all of it junk quality.

OK so i complained on the support number. the first reply i got was that they are having a technical upgrade and the service will improve in two days. so i waited. as expected nothing of the sort happened.

then i complained again. the engineer came home. checked everything. says the signal is absolutely perfect. according to him the box seems to be not OK. a senior will come. he will check and if required they will change the box.

the point is why launch such products. why cant they buy better technology. the sun HD box is made by samsung. this seems to be some chinese import. they can offer customers a choice. those who are very quality concious should have a choice of buying a better box. just like buying a better TV.

i think the problom is not so much with the box. maybe the whole damn technology chain is bad. use of cheap equipment in the whole chain gives this result.

the picture is washed out. the edges seemed to be so porus.

what a waste of money.
 
^^^
Problem i guess lies with Bandwidth. Forget HD even if DVD quality broadcast is achieved it will look 10 times better than the crap we get now.
 
While I have complaints re quality of the Pic - as I never had any other service, I am disgusted with their( TataSky) Customer Service. They even refuse to acknowledge complaints in writing, and this time they have not even bothered to call me: my compalint was aginst unjustifyed billing- charging me for a service ( second box) which I did not request.
Am seriously considering filing a complaint with the local Consumer court as they have not even registered my complaint.
 
After reading the complete thread of TS Launch, looks like i may have to go for DishTV HD. Someone even mentioned that quality of SD contnets of the cable STB is much better than TS HD+

That was a shocker for me! What a blunder Tatas did with what could be a potential winner!
 
^^^
Problem i guess lies with Bandwidth. Forget HD even if DVD quality broadcast is achieved it will look 10 times better than the crap we get now.

I initially thought that was the only issue, however after WASTING about 50 hours investigating (was trying my best to conclude that its mainly bandwidth issue), their "scaling" SUCKS BIG TIME. Even through component output forcing 576i does not "pass through" SD without scaling. I NEVER thought any HD box could scale so badly like TS. Even composite output from the same box looks far superior to 1080i or 720p through HDMI or component.

This is certainly a CHEAPEST box TS could have procured and hence they have priced it accordingly. I still could not believe such price (and now PQ) of this box.

I am convinced that anything with TATA brand name should be avoided like plague. these guys are convinced that any rubbish can be sold by adding the Tata tag to it. be it the Nano (cars flaming up) or their mobile phone or the Tata Sky Hd; all of it junk quality.

OK so i complained on the support number. the first reply i got was that they are having a technical upgrade and the service will improve in two days. so i waited. as expected nothing of the sort happened.

then i complained again. the engineer came home. checked everything. says the signal is absolutely perfect. according to him the box seems to be not OK. a senior will come. he will check and if required they will change the box.

the point is why launch such products. why cant they buy better technology. the sun HD box is made by samsung. this seems to be some chinese import. they can offer customers a choice. those who are very quality concious should have a choice of buying a better box. just like buying a better TV.

i think the problom is not so much with the box. maybe the whole damn technology chain is bad. use of cheap equipment in the whole chain gives this result.

the picture is washed out. the edges seemed to be so porus.

what a waste of money.

In DTH, they are known like GODS in India. Its shocking how could they sell such TERRIBLE quality box on top of their highly compressed channels. Worse is, even if they make the Channel's quality similar to DVD, due to scaling issue, we will never get a good "upscaled" output through HDMI as compared with Dish HD or possibly ANY other STB. Even TS HD box might not be affected by this issue.

While I have complaints re quality of the Pic - as I never had any other service, I am disgusted with their( TataSky) Customer Service. They even refuse to acknowledge complaints in writing, and this time they have not even bothered to call me: my compalint was aginst unjustifyed billing- charging me for a service ( second box) which I did not request.
Am seriously considering filing a complaint with the local Consumer court as they have not even registered my complaint.

We should do it. I thought Dish HD was worse, however now I feel that I never had PQ issues on Dish HD like what I see in TS.

After reading the complete thread of TS Launch, looks like i may have to go for DishTV HD. Someone even mentioned that quality of SD contnets of the cable STB is much better than TS HD+

That was a shocker for me! What a blunder Tatas did with what could be a potential winner!

I completely agree, still can't BELIEVE they have committed such a blunder with otherwise such a beautiful looking, feeling product. With EXTREME pain I have decided to return it as there seems to be no solution to the issues we have reported. Their UI is also good with great EPG. But they have plagued this box with FILTHY scaling engine to make the PQ of SD channels absolutely forgettable (especially after comparison with Dish HD, Sun HD, etc.).

Even MEDIA is praising and RECOMMENDING this box like anything when they could not even evaluate the most basic SCALING feature while observing extremely compressed channels. I doubt they will ever improve on compression as they neither have bandwidth to do so nor they will ever be willing to do so as it would reduce their claimed recording time of 625hrs.

This actually explains how TS+ had such small recording time during launch and after Big HD DVR was launched, they "increased" the recording time by INCREASING COMPRESSION ON all their channels to accommodate more recording time. Hope all have noticed - only thing these boxes do in the name of recording is to copy the downstream to HDD (which is great as it would be of the same quality as original).

Also, they have some issue with scheduled recording start and stop times, its ABSOLUTELY RANDOM. Even after I set it to start 10 mins before and stop 10 mins after for a 30mins programs, it sometimes record only 25 mins of that window of 50mins (about HALF of time I schedule it for!).
 
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^^^
Problem i guess lies with Bandwidth. Forget HD even if DVD quality broadcast is achieved it will look 10 times better than the crap we get now.

Compression , Compression and Compression - thats the name of the game.
They have to pack few hundreds of channels in a limited bandwidth.......
Getting true HD Quality is a distant dream........at present we are not even getting DVD Quality........:ohyeah:
 
Well i am happy with the same, at least something is better than nothing, Dish TV is making lot of noise on 30 HD channels, i am waiting for that to happen, as i believe most of the channels would be upscaled to HD.
 
Compression is not the only issue with TS+HD. Worst is SCALING and DEINTERLACING. I can't emphasize more on this as the difference is 4 to 5 times as compared with Dish HD for similar source!!!

Watching Times Now (which is highly compressed in both Dish and TS), there is a 4 to 5 times difference between TS (you wouldn't notice until you compare) and Dish HD. The small text in the bottom is THICK and BLURRED in TS while it Dish HD its CRISP (about 3 times thinner text and 5 times prominent borders). Same applies to facial details and background blurred image. When comparing with UPSCALED Times Now HD, the difference grows to upto 10 times!!!

Dish HD ENHANCES the image to have 3 to 5 times details than the original SD content and TS blurs it FURTHER than the original thus REDUCING the quality by more than half!!!

So even when they reduce compression, Dish HD will still be flagship in terms of scaling and deinterlacing. That is the major set back for me as otherwise PVR feature itself is VERY IMPORTANT to me, however be ready to compromise on UPTO FIVE TIMES the PICTURE QUALITY LOSS as compared with Dish HD with SIMILARLY COMPRESSED CONTENT.
 
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Thank God, I thought I was the only one experiencing this big difference in the picture quality, until I stumbled upon this forum. I have recently switched from Big TV (SD) to TS HD, and I can confirm from my personal experience that the picture quality for SD contents is pathetic on TS HD. Its so poor that I am currently facing a strong protest even from my mom to get back to Big TV. The reason why I had switched to TS HD was because Big TV sucked big time in its customer service and poor hardware. However, I have started to realise that it may not be the worse of the service providers after you've seen how the TS HD box murders the SD content. The upscaling is so 'brilliant' that I feel like stripping a cable TV wire hanging across my balcony just to be able to watch something I used to watch crisp & clear.
 
The upscaling is so 'brilliant' that I feel like stripping a cable TV wire hanging across my balcony just to be able to watch something I used to watch crisp & clear.

I thought only TS+HD was plagued by terrible upscaling.

Another study: Dish TV uses original Doordarshan Transponders to pass virtually all the channels available through DD Direct+. This also ensures original UNADULTERATED content delivered by Dish TV without WASTING any bandwidth of their own transponders.

However TS is downstreaming those DD D+ broadcasts, RECOMPRESSING them with LOW Bitrate and passing through. This approach has ALL the cons like:

1. Bad PQ and SQ due to recompression and that too at very low bitrate
2. WASTE BANDWIDTH by not RELAYING content of original transponders, this affects quality and quantity of channels possible through currently owned transponders by TS
3. TS had to buy equipment for both downstreaming, processing and than upstreaming these otherwise freely available channels. They want us to pay for all of them because of this and can't provide all available through DD D+

I see this to be a very bad strategy by TS which is both brainless and compromising in every possible ways.:mad:
 
I have recently switched from Big TV (SD) to TS HD, and I can confirm from my personal experience that the picture quality for SD contents is pathetic on TS HD. The reason why I had switched to TS HD was because Big TV sucked big time in its customer service and poor hardware. However, I have started to realise that it may not be the worse of the service providers after you've seen how the TS HD box murders the SD content.
I moved from Bigtv as well and I have exactly the same assessment about SD. I didnt even have any issues with CC. Just changed because of the good offer.
 
Wow , thats terrible to read.

Well just my 2 cents - I have tata sky HD (not plus) , and Dish Tv regular - both installed. IMHO dish TV sucks big time. Tata sky SD channels on my HD box is not great either ... But Its miles ahead of Dish TV SD on the SD box.

I'm probably going to get the Dish Hd box and see if it's better than their SD box this week. Will post my comments and pics.
 
^^
please post your findings, me too was surprised to hear dish having better pq, may be something wrong with the TS hd+ box
 
guys,

am not sure what is the hue and cry abt. Even i have the same TS HD + box. Pls note that the channels in SD format will be the upscaled version [So you wont see any diff as such from your previous TS box and TS HD box]. The diff you will see is with actual Tru HD channels like Nat Geo HD, Discovery HD and Star Crick HD]. Here you will see that actual HD video[1080p] and audio content. Offcourse, i do agree the the SQ is not that great for Tru HD channels in TS HD.

Hope this clarifies.

~Vince.
 
I have both SunHD and TSHD+..

I somehow agree with OP that SunHD STB is superior in upscaling and de-interlacing. The overall PQ is better in Sun.
But Sun is plagued with frequent loss of signal and bad service/support.
TS on the other hand wins hands down on service/support.
 
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