TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and COO!

[prankey]

I got a call from the Top Management contact I was working with that TS can not resolve the audio glitches as I had reported:

1. Random drops, spikes and jitters on almost all the SD and HD channels. After "working" on it for several months, they claim there is no issue as they are not processing audio and hence there is no such issue (not sure about the logic they are trying to give)

2. PSEUDO 5.1 on Discovery HD and Max HD... no update - they don't want to comment on this

3. MONO Audio in Zee TV - Initially claimed its STEREO... When persuaded and confirmed its MONO (they don't even know its MONO or STEREO???), they came up with an explanation that as they are taking "Analog" feed of this channel, that is how they can present it digitally as "Zee TV do not give High Quality Feeds to other DTH providers". I confirmed that D2H has stereo audio, this is another lie from them when this concept of "Analog (WHY?) audio hence mono" do not make any sense either

4. PQ of SD and some HD channels like Nat Geo HD and Discovery HD World - They "claim" that they provide "highest" quality among all DTH operators...

5. DYNAMIC RANGE COMPRESSION - Almost all the SD channels have this implemented making audio quite unnatural like "AM Radio"... All the loud sounds gets muffled and sound like coming from background (like percussion, loud vocals and screams, high volume music sounds). High volume noise like bangles and falling of utensils actually get suppressed instead of sounding loud ("compression" effect which suppress loud voices). Similarly low volume background sounds get enhanced by "expansion" effect making everything sound very dull and lifeless... Sometimes foreground voices get muffled in background noise and music!!!

These issues were confirmed and ACKNOWLEDGED by the TS Senior Engineers and Quality Analyst who visited my premises.

Particularly the DRC on SD channels kills the audio effects completely as everything sound pathetic and there is absolutely no high or low volume ambient sounds and high frequency components get completely rolled across low frequency components making it sound very low fidelity than it can without DRC.. TS calls this "high end" processing which also "exist in Dolby Digital" sound.. They fail to understand that DRC control happens in Dolby Digital to compress the original maximum dynamic range sound track to your choice if needed... Digital Audio is useful due to this enhanced dynamic range which did not exist in most of the analog components due to the noise floor being very high in them (like in Turntables, Cassettes)... For these components DRC was introduced to restrict the audible voices in a narrow range of 20 to 50 dB.. 16bit 44.1kHz or 48kHz audio offers more than 90dB of dynamic range, however for some reason, TS wants us to listen to only about 20dB of dynamic range on most of these channels!!! Let me know how do you feel about this...

 

[Imrahn]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

IMHO, u are asking too much out of them.I cannot believe u complained to them on the DRC factor and all,sorry if i sounded ignorant there.Their first priority would be to cater to the mass with 'as less problems as possible' before setting out to satisfy someone who felt bangles and utensils sounded muffled Hell, they might even be circulating ur call among the employees under 'service jokes'.

Being an indian service provider, its a dog's tail bro....don't waste pipes.

 

[hifijay]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

IMHO, u are asking too much out of them.I cannot believe u complained to them on the DRC factor and all,sorry if i sounded ignorant there.Their first priority would be to cater to the mass with 'as less problems as possible' before setting out to satisfy someone who felt bangles and utensils sounded muffled Hell, they might even be circulating ur call among the employees under 'service jokes'.

Being an indian service provider, its a dog's tail bro....don't waste pipes.

It is a good sarcasm, but I do not wish to discourage this professional and very valued customer feedback to DTH.

All customer feedback is heavy impact. Please make no mistake about it.

Last week, I read an article on the Net about how HD customers in US are complaining about the poor quality of satellite TV HD feed and that is having an impact on the highly competitive scenerio.

In this hyper competitive scenerio, I think such feedbacks are very easy to make an impact - however high-end and niche you are thinking this complaint is.

We need many many more such feedbacks to the higher management of DTH providers and not less.

If you feel they will laugh at this, Yes they will do it in the first instance. But, slowly they will become worrried, very worried if more and more join.

In this case, the first person, who throws the stone, is welcome...

 

[borg]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

Problem 1 and 2 mentioned in prankey's post is verymuch annoying and i had reported to tatasky through "my query" option. It is still showing as "open" . if more userscomplain they will be forced to look into it. I dont watch sd and defenitely not in TS ( only bought TS for the "asli HD", ) so dont know about other 3 issues. NG HD look similar to rdtv hd dvr in my setup. May be there is some minor differences but not very obvious to me

 

[Imrahn]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

It is a good sarcasm, but I do not wish to discourage this professional and very valued customer feedback to DTH.

All customer feedback is heavy impact. Please make no mistake about it.

Last week, I read an article on the Net about how HD customers in US are complaining about the poor quality of satellite TV HD feed and that is having an impact on the highly competitive scenerio.

In this hyper competitive scenerio, I think such feedbacks are very easy to make an impact - however high-end and niche you are thinking this complaint is.

We need many many more such feedbacks to the higher management of DTH providers and not less.

If you feel they will laugh at this, Yes they will do it in the first instance. But, slowly they will become worrried, very worried if more and more join.

In this case, the first person, who throws the stone, is welcome...

Hey,well said man....i totally agree with all that the OP claims except point 5, which might be necessary for them to accomodate more channels.This won't change unless THEY REALIZE that the HD customers are looking for quality rather than quantity alone and i am sure, the OP's complaints were a throw in the right direction.We cannot go for 'clinical' assessment of the services yet IMHO.They are improving faster than i thought compared to the launch quality and though i don't think bluray quality is achievable anywhere in near future, they can get close somewhere in another year or so hopefully with the competition springing.

What undue complaints can cause is another problem - a consensus among all these companies to adopt pseudo names : see the "HD LIKE' terminology adopted by companies to get around any legal obligations??? Hopefully, they realize the mistakes soon enough and comeup with better services.

 

[prankey]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

Hey,well said man....i totally agree with all that the OP claims except point 5, which might be necessary for them to accomodate more channels.This won't change unless THEY REALIZE that the HD customers are looking for quality rather than quantity alone and i am sure, the OP's complaints were a throw in the right direction.We cannot go for 'clinical' assessment of the services yet IMHO.They are improving faster than i thought compared to the launch quality and though i don't think bluray quality is achievable anywhere in near future, they can get close somewhere in another year or so hopefully with the competition springing.

What undue complaints can cause is another problem - a consensus among all these companies to adopt pseudo names : see the "HD LIKE' terminology adopted by companies to get around any legal obligations??? Hopefully, they realize the mistakes soon enough and comeup with better services.

DRC does not essentially contribute to bandwidth saving and thats the worse part... Only major thing it does is to control the input volume automatically for any type of source... This saves TS broadcasting technicians to calibrate volume of each channel and SLEEP PEACEFULLY

Dish TV used to do DRC few years back on almost all channels, however have stopped it completely particularly on those upscaled channels..

I agree that BR quality is highly uncertain in the near future as the current bandwidth allocation is not even that of a DVD for the h.264 HD videos.

HD like thing started due to Dish Fraud HD propagating the lie of 35 HD channels and started CHARGING for the same.. They still have not started calling those upscaled channels as HD "like".. However, I would have to say that this issue of DRC is almost non-existent there and pixellation of HD channels like Nat Geo and Discovery HD World is not an issue due to higher bandwidth allocation during high complexity scenes...

Audio Drops, spikes and jitters is something I have noticed ONLY on TS! This needs to be fixed urgently including Zee TV's feed.. If they claim, Zee TV is giving them poor feed, they should pass the complaint to them to get it sorted... They can't come back with SILLY explanations..

We should join hands in COMPLAINING to TS to fix these issues as its nothing to do with "HD like" things other broadcasters are propagating... Honestly if such upscaling somehow improves the situation, I would not mind it if its provided FOC in h.264 (MPEG4) hyeah:

 

[prankey]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

Problem 1 and 2 mentioned in prankey's post is verymuch annoying and i had reported to tatasky through "my query" option. It is still showing as "open" . if more userscomplain they will be forced to look into it. I dont watch sd and defenitely not in TS ( only bought TS for the "asli HD", ) so dont know about other 3 issues. NG HD look similar to rdtv hd dvr in my setup. May be there is some minor differences but not very obvious to me

Dude, can you please confirm if you are getting Zee TV in Stereo and better quality audio? I believe TS is trying to run from the issue by blaming on Zee TV. Zee TV, Sony and BBC Entertainment are the SD channels I see regularly even after the launch of Asli HD.. Honestly I don't want to see SD either if Asli HD start bringing more quality programming in REAL HD...

 

[borg]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

since i dont watch any sd i asked them to put me on the minimum pack with which i can take the HD pack, so in that i dont get zee and many sd channels, i have kept the 7 hd in favorites and that is all i watch. i am sure there are many ts hd subscribers here who can check this for you. i dont want to change the pack just for this

 

[prankey]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

since i dont watch any sd i asked them to put me on the minimum pack with which i can take the HD pack, so in that i dont get zee and many sd channels, i have kept the 7 hd in favorites and that is all i watch. i am sure there are many ts hd subscribers here who can check this for you. i dont want to change the pack just for this

I actually wanted you to check on RDTV as I am aware of what is offered in TS Let me know if you have subscribed to it and can check the same... Best is to try on a headphone which will also tell us prominently if DRC is done on RDTV as well (if you observe unnatural volume leveling of various voices).

 

[borg]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

yes, i just saw a music /dance programme in zee in rdtv and audio quality is quite poor , no treble at all.
I never watch this channel so compared to next channels like sony /colors and there is clear difference in quality

 

[gkrishn]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

I am sorry if this has been discussed already.

Just recently brought a yamaha 567 from US. after connecting to the tata sky hd set top box, rcvr audio i/p is showing up as 2 channel. Checked the tata sky audio setting and it shows up as DD. They are connected thru hdmi cable.

I don't think it is a rcvr issue. rcvr shows correct audio setting when i switch to the dvd player connected thru optical cable.

 

[Kittu]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

Try the same optical/coaxial cable from your tatasky stb to receiver , it will show dolby digital. Either the current software or hardware of tatasky stb are not supporting DD via hdmi.

 

[prankey]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

I am sorry if this has been discussed already.

Just recently brought a yamaha 567 from US. after connecting to the tata sky hd set top box, rcvr audio i/p is showing up as 2 channel. Checked the tata sky audio setting and it shows up as DD. They are connected thru hdmi cable.

I don't think it is a rcvr issue. rcvr shows correct audio setting when i switch to the dvd player connected thru optical cable.

Its an issue in the latest firmware on TS HD box.. You need to escalate to nodal officers to push them for a fix..

In the mean time please use a spare RCA cable (any spare AV/component/audio coaxial RCA connector cable) to connect thru digital coaxial output to your AVR and assign that digital input to the HDMI input port you use for HDMI connection between TS and AVR... Check your AVR manual to understand how to assign digital audio ports to an inputs especially HDMI (hope the AVR supports overriding HDMI audio with coaxial). Else you could connect HDMI directly to the TV and assign coaxial input to any input on your AVR for audio only switching.

 

[prankey]

Re: TS - No resolution to Audio issues (including DRC) despite escalation to CEO and

Tatasky has resumed butchering HD channel audio in the name of converting to DD+ even when original sound is DD and in between they are playing with audio as before. They almost stopped this last year but are gradually picking pace!