Tata Sky + HD --Quality sucks

Hi Bro,
I am a Tata Sky HD subscriber from past 4 months . I am very happy about the performance and response time between channel changing is also very quick. All you need is a good LCD tv. I have 40 inch Toshiba TV. There is not pixelation issues as well when compared to other service provider.


Dont spread out false reviews !

We are talking of blurring issue and NOT pixelation issue. This has nothing to do with TS HD or an LCD TV. We didn't invite you to put salt to our wounds and would appreciate a healthy participation instead of these negative comments which do not help our cause!
 
That's the issue I am also pointing out here. In Dish HD, same channels look like HD due to excellent upscaling. In TS+HD its the reverse! Part of it has to do with aggressive deblocking and conversion to YCbCr (which is the native color space for HD only). So unless TS do proper conversion and upscaling, its actually making the SD channels look worse due to these unnecessary processing coupled with bad deinterlacing and upscaling (deblocking and conversion of RGB to YCbCr in SD channels).

Tru, might be i will try to find a Dish STB and later come and comment on this...cheers!
 
Adding one more "Quality" issue. Has anyone noticed the "series link" issue.
When I put a show on series link, I do not get all the episodes of the same. Previous TS+ Box used to do a fantastic job of tracking episodes.
I lost some good MasterChef US episodes and Roadies Audition episodes due to this.
Another issue is that, at times TS+HD Box starts recoding couple of minutes late into the show.
 
Well prankey , probably if i had a Dish TV STB i would be able to tell the diff. Coz prev i owned a normal TS STB and now own the TS HD +. I dont see any diff as such w.r.t the SD channels.

which is the reason why you are not able to see how poor the quality is on SD. the box was installed when i was in office. my 10 year old could spot the difference between sun hd and tata and called me in office to complain how poor the tata quality was.

the quality is such a rip off that even a 10 year old can spot it.
 
there are problems with the recording as well. the timing is off. does not start at the designated time etc. also the recordings are in patches with some parts of the show missing.
 
Adding one more "Quality" issue. Has anyone noticed the "series link" issue.
When I put a show on series link, I do not get all the episodes of the same. Previous TS+ Box used to do a fantastic job of tracking episodes.
I lost some good MasterChef US episodes and Roadies Audition episodes due to this.
Another issue is that, at times TS+HD Box starts recoding couple of minutes late into the show.

And the issue with start and stop time when scheduled. Its quite random in nature and I loose important part of the programs. Like if I have scheduled for a 30 mins program, taking additional buffer of 15 mins to start before and 15 mins to stop after the schedule, I still get about 29 mins of total recording with starting time about 5 mins before the schedule.
 
I had a Dish TruHD STB set up during the FIFA world cup. The quality of the STB was so poor that i decided to not consider Dish TV after the initial 2 free months were over.

Today I got TS+ HD installed and I can say that the quality of the Nat Geo & Discovery HD channels are significantly worse than what I remember them on Dish TV. On Dish TV, there were minor compression artifacts, but overall the picture did look like a true 1080i picture compressed a bit agressively. The TS HD signal otoh looks like it is a 720p or 480p picture upscaled to 1080i. Even downloaded heavily compressed 720p rips look better than what I see on TS+ HD. My Dish HD subscription got over sometime after FIFA WC and watching TS+HD for 20 mins tells me that the quality is way off. The Star cricket HD broadcast seems to be in much higher bit rate and so it looks much better. Any one of you with TS+ HD can compare the quality of Nat Geo HD/Discovery HD World and the ICC World Cup broadcast and see for yourself.

As far as SD picture quality is concerned, I found the quality of SD channels to be pretty bad on the Dish HD box. At that time I had my TS SD STB connected to my AVR and using the upscaler of the AVR it gave better picture quality than Dish HD STB. The Dish HD STB also would not properly pillarbox SD content. This is one area where the TS+ HD stb is better than the Dish STB, at least it allows me to watch SD content in 4:3 aspect ratio. To me the TS+ HD output over HDMI for SD channels does look a bit worse than what the regular SD STB showed when fed through my AVR's upscaler which upscaled it to 1080i 4:3 pillarbox format.

Tomorrow I plan to do the wiring properly for the TS+ HD STB. The plan is to take a HDMI + Coax connection along with a RCA composite + RCA Audio into my AVR and then see if SD content is better upscaled by my AVRs upscaler than the TS+ HD box's upscaler.

I will be posting my further comments once I wire the setup properly.

BTW.. I do not intend to go back to Dish TV in any case. Dish TV might have better PQ & SQ, but the Dish HD STB was so bad that I am not even interested in selling it to someone else. I would not want another person to be frustrated with that crap.

-- no1lives4ever
 
which is the reason why you are not able to see how poor the quality is on SD. the box was installed when i was in office. my 10 year old could spot the difference between sun hd and tata and called me in office to complain how poor the tata quality was.

the quality is such a rip off that even a 10 year old can spot it.

Well, I had Big TV SD box earlier, and from that experience I can confirm that there's something seriously wrong with the way these TS HD boxes are behaving. By the way, I've TS HD and not HD+ but the issue is same, i.e. the picture quality of SD content. I have now started thinking of preparing for a refund from Tata Sky. And to get back to analog reception fed through an unlocked Set-Top box that were available in market til some time back, for less than 1000 bucks as a result of CAS implementation failure. I had read somewhere that these boxes were then being sold to improve the cable TV signals.
 
I had a Dish TruHD STB set up during the FIFA world cup. The quality of the STB was so poor that i decided to not consider Dish TV after the initial 2 free months were over.

Today I got TS+ HD installed and I can say that the quality of the Nat Geo & Discovery HD channels are significantly worse than what I remember them on Dish TV. On Dish TV, there were minor compression artifacts, but overall the picture did look like a true 1080i picture compressed a bit agressively. The TS HD signal otoh looks like it is a 720p or 480p picture upscaled to 1080i. Even downloaded heavily compressed 720p rips look better than what I see on TS+ HD. My Dish HD subscription got over sometime after FIFA WC and watching TS+HD for 20 mins tells me that the quality is way off. The Star cricket HD broadcast seems to be in much higher bit rate and so it looks much better. Any one of you with TS+ HD can compare the quality of Nat Geo HD/Discovery HD World and the ICC World Cup broadcast and see for yourself.

As far as SD picture quality is concerned, I found the quality of SD channels to be pretty bad on the Dish HD box. At that time I had my TS SD STB connected to my AVR and using the upscaler of the AVR it gave better picture quality than Dish HD STB. The Dish HD STB also would not properly pillarbox SD content. This is one area where the TS+ HD stb is better than the Dish STB, at least it allows me to watch SD content in 4:3 aspect ratio. To me the TS+ HD output over HDMI for SD channels does look a bit worse than what the regular SD STB showed when fed through my AVR's upscaler which upscaled it to 1080i 4:3 pillarbox format.

Tomorrow I plan to do the wiring properly for the TS+ HD STB. The plan is to take a HDMI + Coax connection along with a RCA composite + RCA Audio into my AVR and then see if SD content is better upscaled by my AVRs upscaler than the TS+ HD box's upscaler.

I will be posting my further comments once I wire the setup properly.

BTW.. I do not intend to go back to Dish TV in any case. Dish TV might have better PQ & SQ, but the Dish HD STB was so bad that I am not even interested in selling it to someone else. I would not want another person to be frustrated with that crap.

-- no1lives4ever

Yes, I also had to get 2 Dish HD boxes replaced. However the latest one is doing fine now. Though TS+HD is FAST in every aspects and seems very reliable and stable (except at times it chooses to ignore my request of coming out of standby through remote and I have to use the power button on the STB to power it - did any one else notice it?).

I think that could be a workaround for you to use the lowest quality composite (RCA) video, upscale thru AVR and feed to TV. However this would be the lowest end connection from the STB which may not be affected by the terrible upscaler. Having said that, if you found upscaling from AVR to be superior to Dish HD (which I find to be very good), I am positive that the contrast in quality through AVR should be overwhelming.

I agree on Discovery HD and Nat Geo HD, BIG difference in PQ (and infact SQ as well compared to Dish HD). Infact their new feed through the new transponders are even superior than what you saw earlier!

I also agree that ESPN/Star Cric HD are not as heavily compressed, however again, Dish HD gives even superior picture. And when I scale down to 720p through Dish HD, I get even more details on my TV (as it does better scaling from 720p than 1080i). Unfortunately, again that is not an option for me on TS+HD as I see the pixel size grow (sort of blurring the picture) and I do see interlacing artifact which is hardly visible when my TV is deinterlacing.

I agree that on Dish HD, it upscales the artifacts as well, which I feel might be actually giving that additional detailing with well defined edges and reduced pixel size which TS is eliminating. This makes Dish HD more pixellated, but very detailed and TS+HD images smooth and blurred with almost no sharp edges in most of the SD channels (more compressed than Dish TV).

While the Dish STB is just a regular STB, overall looking at the PQ and SQ, I still find it to be better.

Hence I have now ended up (after several hours of testing in each resolution) setting the TS+HD to 1080i and Dish HD to 720p.

While you post your finding, please also suggest the AVR and TV you are using.
 
IS this an issue with the DVR model...I have the regular TS HD stb, and it's pretty decent.

Some of the TS HD users have reported similar issues in this thread. Actually its more to do with what competitors are offering.

TS SD picture quality of similar to what I was getting on Dish TV about 4 years back (and I was happy with it at that time!). Now Dish TV SD PQ and SQ has evolved to be more than twice as good as before on the same platform. Sound is almost CD quality on several channels and Picture is almost HD quality due to very good scaling to HD on Dish HD box. TS+HD is lacking on both of these quality measures including upscaling on the STB.
 
I have raised a complaint on the PQ of SD Channels. CC guy told me that Engineer will come to the place and inspect the same.
When he comes to my place, Could you please let me know how do I go about describing the issue. I am sure he will say that the picture is coming on the TV . I need to defend with some technical stuff.

Please elaborate on the issue so that I can explain to him better.

Thanks,
Gajjala
 
I have raised a complaint on the PQ of SD Channels. CC guy told me that Engineer will come to the place and inspect the same.
When he comes to my place, Could you please let me know how do I go about describing the issue. I am sure he will say that the picture is coming on the TV . I need to defend with some technical stuff.

Please elaborate on the issue so that I can explain to him better.

Thanks,
Gajjala

Its going to be tuff to convince them that quality is poor unless you have Sun Set Top to prove them.
 
I think the regulator should make it mandatory for the DTH service providers to publish some of quality of service parameters like bit-rate, compression method and resolution for each channel on a regular basis.

Though Tata Sky has been claiming DVD quality, like all others, I always had doubts whether it even had PAL resolution. The way the older Tata Sky STB used to zoom out the image in a flash on channel change (maybe others would noticed this), I thought that it was more like VCD resolution.
 
Unfortunately the resolution should always be either PAL or 1080i as transmitted from the TS or any other vendor!

However, I completely agree that the audio and video bitrate should be published. They can't say DVD quality or "HD" without talking of bitrate which is most important to understand the ACTUAL quality.
 
I have raised a complaint on the PQ of SD Channels. CC guy told me that Engineer will come to the place and inspect the same.
When he comes to my place, Could you please let me know how do I go about describing the issue. I am sure he will say that the picture is coming on the TV . I need to defend with some technical stuff.

Please elaborate on the issue so that I can explain to him better.

Thanks,
Gajjala

To make the engineer understand, talk about the washed faces and background which look "floating". Also, some channels like Sony keep loosing "Entertainment Television" writing due to excess compression.

To demonstrate bad upscaling on this box, you could talk of frequent blurring of faces, text and background which should otherwise be sharpened through upscaling. Also the small "foot prints" in Investment Ads like in Bajaj Allianz which you could read in Dish HD due to good upscaling as it sharpens and reduces the pixel size by filling appropriate pixels after analyzing the images.

Zee TV has almost MONO sound when Dish HD has near CD Quality wide stereo sound.

You could also point to this thread and many others in various forums to make him understand that you are not the only one facing this issue. Also, if you have 5.1 setup, you could point to Nat Geo HD's vocals from Left Channel instead of Center. Hope this helps.
 
Or Dish TV or Big TV :)

I had the CC guy looked on what I was getting out of BIG TV SD. He however was convinced about the picture quality, yet remained clueless. Guess what, he offered me to get the set-top box changed, which I agreed even though I knew it would be no useful exercise.
 
Unfortunately the resolution should always be either PAL or 1080i as transmitted from the TS or any other vendor!

I don't know much about this field, but googling tells me that a common resolution used in dth is 544x576, which against 720x576 (PAL DVD) has 24% lesser resolution:sad: So is this what Tata Sky is dishing out to us?
 
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