no1lives4ever
Active Member
Just wondering how come so many issues are there with the HD+ box, as i am using the HD box and pretty happy with the same.
Frankly, I am extremely happy with the TS+ HD box. The overall experience and the SD picture quality for me are significantly better than what I had with the Dish TruHD service. I would recommend getting a TS HD connection over Dish TruHD any day.
I had a Dish TruHD service around 7-8 months back. The last thing I saw on that was Wimbledon and after that I never bothered to renew that service.
When I see channels like NatGeo HD or Discovery HD, there are clear quality differences between what I remember seeing on Dish TruHD and what I see on the TS+ HD box. There are simple ways in which I can compare the quality differnce. e.g. There is a program on Discovery HD that shows a sky shot from a helicopter of Rio. And I remember very clearly about being wowed by the smooth motion and quality of the scene on the Dish TruHD service. When I see the same on the TS+HD box, those very same scenes look nowhere near as smooth. The only thing that has changed is the STB and no other part of the setup. I can see similar artifacts on the HD broadcasts of the world cup matches too. e.g. see when the camera pans while a player is getting back to pavilion.
Now I am sure that if someone can do a side by side test of the Dish TruHD & TS HD service, they will find tons of finer quality differences. I am only using 8 month old memory to see some major quality differences here.
These quality differences are not related to the STB. They are clearly there due to lower bit rates used to compress the channel content. The STBs that we use are not advanced enough to actually introduce these kind of compression artifacts.
I am certain that these would also be present in the regular TS HD service also. Here are some things you can check out:
1. On cricket matches, try observing the quality of the background around the areas where a player moves. You will see compression artifacts, etc.
2. See scenes with a lot of panning motion. You will notice that the scene turns blurry for a while. This is very clear on the Discovery programs where they take sweeping aerial sky shots.
-- no1lives4ever