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| Title of Complaint | MNET / DSTV Picture Quality |
| Date of Complaint | 15 February 2006 |
| Company | DSTV |
| Complaint | One of the features promoted by DSTV is the digital quality of the picture and audio, supposedly due to the improved technology behind their infrastructure as opposed to legacy (SABC) analog broadcasts.
This has long ago ceased to be true for many of the channels on display. The picture quality of video shown on many channels is absolutely shocking and far inferior to existing analog broadcasts. Watching most science fiction programmes lack the "gloss"/ wow factor which makes these special effects laden programmes look like washed out old vhs copies. The encoding of shows such as Stargate SG1 are so bad that the distortions caused by compression, etc are clearly visible and detract from the viewing experience. Its reached the point where you are literally distracted by the little square blocks of the mpeg encoding whenever fire or explosions are shown. There's no excuse for this shoddy picture when other channels are fine. The stereo sound is also affected of course, but we have no easy way of proving this. When I had access to hardware which was capable of displaying this info, it was clear that certain channels were definately getting priority over others. I'm sure there's no shortage of cash at the DSTV offices so why can't they deliver on their promise of a superior picture? Lastly, the so called "interactive" functionality that keeps creeping into channels such as Discovery / Sports, etc cause more irritation than anything else as they make navigation a pain on some decoder models. If there was a way to disable this from the settings menu, I for one, would skip that functionality without a moment's hesitation. Thanks. |
| Response on behalf of DSTV | Awaiting a Response |
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