Dish TV launches 30 channels on HD format

[askii2]

vFor the love of god, people need to stop perpetuating and promoting the 'fraud' that Dish TV is commiting by advertising and publicising 'upscaled' SD channels as HD. What is really sad, is to see consumers fall "hook, line and sinker" for this fraud, but to actually further promote the same lies.

A list of similar incidents in India and elsewhere is really long. A few examples -
"DVD player with surround sound" - Absence of Dolby Digital decoding or even prolog uic conveniently missing.
"3D TV" absence of 3D sources conveniently missing. HDTV also was in this category until an year ago.
"speaker with frequency range 30Hz to 30KHz" along with a photo that looks like a high end speaker, THD and frequency response conveniently not mentioned.
"speaker cables with snake oil". what makes them any different from regular ones conveniently absent.

These are obvious sales tactics. There are more difficult to understand and intelligent examples (before someone jumps at me on technical merits, please note I am only talking about how sales tactics make highly inflated or useless claims.) "Bi-wiring", "7.1", "bose speakers".

The point is sales people will always try to make inflated claims. They don't know where the line of "inflated claim" ends and "false claim" starts. We consumers can educate ourselves. Consumer forums can't help us in many cases because consumer law helps only in case of obviously false claims.

 

[prankey]

as for classics - imho - if they play old "analog" content and broadcast it in HD, it would be HD indeed. However, if they use earlier digitized vcds then obviously it would not be HD.
That raises the curiosity - what is the resolution of master prints for movies that are digitized and used by studios?

You are wrong, most of the earlier content (excluding film projector movies) was not even in SD. SD means NTSC, PAL, SECAM, etc standards developed in various parts of the world to IMPROVE the quality of analog transmission (just like HD is doing in comparison with SD). Before SD, there was no standard and the quality was very inferior to SD (SD was like HD at those times )

I agree on one point that it might be best to convert earlier analog directly from source (uncompressed) to HD the first time to get the best quality and less losses during the conversion.

Ha haa...30 Upscaled HD Channels :yahoo:

Is there a mechanism in india to sue these companies with false claims

Or they think that they can fool the people by advertising upscaled channels as HD channels..

350Rs for 15 Upscaled Channels....Joke of the Year :thumbsup:

And they are not paying a paisa as royalty as only thing they are doing is act like a "Jugad Paanwaala" to convert the resolution, compress and broadcast naming them "HD". We should actually work together to file a PIL for everyone's sake. Dish TV is really taking us for a ride. Some of these "HD" channels are FAR WORSE then some SD channels on the same platform, still some of us are "believing" that it actually improve quality when compared to BAD quality SD they want us to compare with.

Not sure what exactly DishTV boffins had in mind when chalking out such tactics.
They are spending on HD Up/downstream bandwidth for programs which are strictly SD.
The only upside I can see is that as and when they have HD source material available for uplink, they need not hunt for bandwidth since it is already reserved and ready. So practically DishTV is capable of distributing 30 HD channels as soon as HD source material is available to their uplink hub.

I agree. However they need to think beyond this "ITI" mentality to actually get us better content. Even SHAHRUKH KHAN is BOOSTING of these 30 HD channels. SHAME ON YOU SHAHRUKH!!! Most of these "HD" channels already have Audio Distortion issue when ORIGINAL SD ones were mastered better. They can not even set the volume right even weeks after reporting. Most of the channels like UTV Action HD, Zee Studio HD, HBO HD and PIX HD are so BLURRED even in HD, we can not even DREAM of calling them "HD".

I wonder where the bottleneck is then. Can someone educate? Is there a restriction in india not to telecast international HD channels?

They will come with time. Main bottleneck seemed to be with available bandwidth with DTH operators (most feasible careers for HD channels in India). Now Dish TV has AMPLE if only they learn to broadcast (they can't even broadcast DD5.1 audio yet).

So, is it confirmed that all the 30 HD channels are actually upscaled ones? Or some of them are actually real HD? Can someone confirm?

Yes only 3 channels are actually HD, again without DD5.1 audio and one of them (Movies Now) actually SCREWED UP DISTORTED Audio. Temporarily we got ESPN HD and Star Cricket HD added. Plus they relay DD HD which only shows test bars most of the time.

 

[prankey]

The point is sales people will always try to make inflated claims. They don't know where the line of "inflated claim" ends and "false claim" starts. We consumers can educate ourselves. Consumer forums can't help us in many cases because consumer law helps only in case of obviously false claims.

I believe Dish TV falls under FALSE CLAIM very well as their claim of HD channels are false as they are not mentioning these channels as upscaled ones and on top asking us to shell out more money for something which they are not doing - HD channels? where are they - converting SD to HD will NOT improve quality, better compression will and does in this context as well.

 

[kamalaravi]

apart form the star cricket hd channel for the icc world cup i see no other hd channel
on dishtv so far.the 30 channels are yet to launch.currently i see only 6 hd channels.
zee tv ,discovery,ngc,moviesnow,star cricket and dd hd.zee tv is only an upsclaed channel.only the other 5 are hd channels

 

[strategy]

So star network channels in the list. ( mother will be sad )

I was waiting for this. I guess more channels will come soon. I am going ahead with the Dish TV upgrade.

 

[garfield]

Does anyone actually have the Dish TruHD yet? I am planning to get it tomorrow.

Airtel does not have Star Cricket HD. Tata Sky is not available and Sun is charging an obscene amount.

G

 

[askii2]

I have been a DishTV HD (I don't find the "TruHD" name correct) for over 9 months .

They keep making changes in their HD channels every day. Today's list is as follows. There are duplicates as well as you can see.

Real HD channels
80 Discovery HD
71 Star Cricket HD
81 Nat Geo HD
91 Movies Now
426 Movies Now
480 Discovery HD
482 Nat Geo HD
646 ESPN HD
648 Star Cricket HD
1100 DD HD

Upscaled SD channels. These are being transmitted in HD format, although the source is SD.
50 Zee TV HD
125 Zee TV HD
128 Colors HD
129 Sony HD
225 Zee Cinema HD
229 UTV Movies HD
231 UTV Action HD
425 Zee Studio HD
427 HBO HD
433 PIX HD
434 WB HD
440 Zee Cafe HD
443 AXN HD
475 TLC HD
483 Animal Planet HD
530 Cartoon Network HD
531 Pogo HD
620 Zee News HD
621 Times Now HD
630 ET Now HD
640 Ten Sports HD
690 MTV HD
693 VH1 HD
775 Zee Talkies HD
780 Zee Balnga HD
960 Zee Kannada HD
965 Zee Telugu HD

 

[rajeshprasath]

hi askii,

could you please tell us the audio quality of Dish HD? whether it is 5.1 or just stereo?

Thanks

 

[garfield]

I believe that Dish HD only has stereo. They don't even claim to have surround sound.

 

[askii2]

DishTV HD channels only have stereo as of now. Dolby Prologic decoding for the stereo works very well for several channels, particularly Movies Now, giving a reasonable surround sound effect.

Some of the SD upscaled HD channels are in experimentation phase resulting in "plastic beads rattling in speaker" kind of sound.

 

[anm]

what you are saying it equivalent to saying mp3 is better than vinyl and cassettes because bit rate standard did not exist earlier.

What I am saying is that from master tapes [analog] of those films (projector reels) digitization can again be done in HD [which is 1024 right now, but will move forward in next couple of years to 4k].

You are wrong, most of the earlier content (excluding film projector movies) was not even in SD. SD means NTSC, PAL, SECAM, etc standards developed in various parts of the world to IMPROVE the quality of analog transmission (just like HD is doing in comparison with SD). Before SD, there was no standard and the quality was very inferior to SD (SD was like HD at those times )

 

[prankey]

what you are saying it equivalent to saying mp3 is better than vinyl and cassettes because bit rate standard did not exist earlier.

What I am saying is that from master tapes [analog] of those films (projector reels) digitization can again be done in HD [which is 1024 right now, but will move forward in next couple of years to 4k].

mp3 can be inferior to Vinyl or cassettes if the bitrate is low. However I can safely say uncompressed or lossless compressed Audio CD are superior to both in terms of THD,Noise and Accuracy.

If you say projector reels, I agree. However I doubt those analog tapes of yesteryears can even match SD or 720p.

 

[anm]

We are on the same page

 

[borg]

can anybody who owns post a review of the upscaled channel's quality, any significant improvement compared their sd counterparts?

 

[sanjay0864]

can anybody who owns post a review of the upscaled channel's quality, any significant improvement compared their sd counterparts?

The upscaled channels are in my opinion slightly better in terms of less compression artifacts. But overall in my opinion they are actually worse than their SD counterpats. The reason being the upscaled channels do not retain the original aspect ratio and thus they totally distort the original picture, making them almost unwatchable, to me atleast. What Dish TV does not understand is that if they were to use superior encoders abd simply provide more bandwith to the regular channel using a higher bitrate for compression, they could provide almost as good if not better quality than these 'upscaled' channels. At the very least, they should atleast maintain the original aspect ratio so that we do not have to watch pictures that make Madhuri Dixit look like TunTun.

 

[borg]

only slightly better and still no dolby 5.1 for the real hd channels right? so not worth it
Aspect ratio i think can be set right locally

 

[sanjay0864]

only slightly better and still no dolby 5.1 for the real hd channels right? so not worth it

Yep, absolutely not worth it. Although TataSky has their own set of issues and they don't even have 'Movies Now' yet, I think they are probably the safest bet for those going in for HD DTH right now. Dish TV as a company are severely technically challenged and thus I seriously doubt they will ever get things technically right. In fact their markleting strategy targets the lower, more mainstream segment of the market. This market segment generally does not care much about DD5.1 audio etc or for that matter even True HD. This segment generally only cares about price and being able to claim that they have something. Quality and actual functionality are least of theri concerns. Thus, I seriously doubt that Dish TV will ever strive to be good, let alone best at anything.

Aspect ratio i think can be set right locally

Unfortunately that is not entirely correct. There are lots of televisions that lock themselves in the 16:9 aspect ratio when they detect a HD signal (720p, 1080i, 1080p). The Philips LCD TV in my mom's room has this limitation and thus she cannot switch to 4:3 or any other aspect ratio mode while connected to the Dish TruHD set-top box. Actually, this is a problem for all SD channels and not just the upscaled channels when watched via the Dish TruHD set-top box. Thhe problem being due to the options in the Dish TruHD set-top box not working correctly or else one could select 'pillar box' for 4:3 material. This way atleast the regular SD channels would display correctly but the problem would still remain for the upscaled channels.

 

[prankey]

The upscaled channels are in my opinion slightly better in terms of less compression artifacts. But overall in my opinion they are actually worse than their SD counterpats. The reason being the upscaled channels do not retain the original aspect ratio and thus they totally distort the original picture, making them almost unwatchable, to me atleast. What Dish TV does not understand is that if they were to use superior encoders abd simply provide more bandwith to the regular channel using a higher bitrate for compression, they could provide almost as good if not better quality than these 'upscaled' channels. At the very least, they should atleast maintain the original aspect ratio so that we do not have to watch pictures that make Madhuri Dixit look like TunTun.

Using the same bitrate and MPEG4 h.264 encoding as these so called HD channels and I am certain we will get far superior quality as the Video will have 5 times less pixels to be compressed. I have tested it myself using the best available software upscalers and encoders.

EDIT: Infact using about 1/4th of bitrate of these Upscaled HD channels we can get the similar PQ using h.264! These people are just cheating the customers by not converting the existing SD channels using h.264 to get better quality SD channels. Done some calculation:

Earlier they had 2 real HD channels - Discovery HD and Nat Geo HD (with 2 reasonably well upscaled channels). We were paying Rs. 100 for them which was fine with me if they promised to get DD5.1 by now (which they haven't yet even after introducing the option in the menu and it seems to be actually working - mutes sound for a sec when you tweak it concluding if it finds DD stream, may switch to it).

NOW, they want us to pay Rs.125 for the same 2 REAL HD channels with more upscaled channels (duplicate of what we already get from MANDATORY Platinum pack at Rs.325). These upscaled channels are HOME GROWN by Dish TV and they still pay the same amount to the content provider as before. So a difference of Rs.25 adds to their revenue and I don't mind paying that as well.

HOWEVER, I love Movies Now HD and was hoping that they include it in the OLD MANDATORY HD Pack of Rs.100 (now Rs.125). BUT - They want us to pay another Rs.100 for Movies Now. Add to that Rs.150 for ESPN/Star Cricket HD for those temporary feeds

Rs.225 for 3 HD Channels?? TS offers similar content for Rs.30 to 50 with DD5.1 with no extra cost for ESPN/Star Cricket HD and possibly better PQ.

 

[venkatcr]

You are wrong, most of the earlier content (excluding film projector movies) was not even in SD. SD means NTSC, PAL, SECAM, etc standards developed in various parts of the world to IMPROVE the quality of analog transmission (just like HD is doing in comparison with SD). Before SD, there was no standard and the quality was very inferior to SD (SD was like HD at those times )

There is lot of confusion here in terms of incorrect usage of terminologies.

SD, HD, etc., are resolution terminologies used for display of a digital image. This is usually decided by the number of pixels on the screen and whether the image is being displayed as interleaved or in progressive mode.

NTSC, PAL/SECAM have actually nothing to do with digital images and thus nothing to do with SD or with HD. NTSC, PAL/SECAM are methodologies to transmit and receive TV images. This is a completely post-production exercise and has nothing to do with the original image quality.

If you go back to the film days, the film reel is the equivalent of an analogue system. So using terminologies such as SD/HD in film reel is not valid. Each frame in a film reel (or what is called film stock) is a photographic snap, and the resolution is measured by grains in the film.

Though the early days consisted of films that did not have enough grains per square inch, companies such as Eastman Kodak, Fuji and others started delivering film stock with extremely dense grains. The film stock of today, is, you will be surprised to learn, the equivalent to 7000P. Since most plastic deteriorates, most of the film stock is being converted to digital frames and stored as single snaps though scanning. Again you will be surprised to learn that the lowliest of the snaps, when properly converted and cleaned, is the equivalent of 2000P.

Digital films have yet a long way to go.

Cheers

 

[indiglo]

Dish TV Is probably the worst DTH service in india!..they should be banned from beaming this jugaad Hd & instead focus in improving their SD channels,which needs drastic improvement in quality...their SD channels even fail to mattch my local cablewallah's digital STB service!....i am an accidental Dish tv HD Subscriber for atleast 45 days which i got with my samsung LCD TV!...now both of them showing how bad they can get & dupe indian consumers for granted!!!....m grossed up with both of them!