I was wondering since the quality of HD movies on dish is phenomenal.

It's better.

The satellite providers compress and down-res their HD signals. HD-DVD looks quite a bit better.

Isn't the compression done in real time for HD broadcasts? At least, it would have to be that way for live events, but I don't know about shows and movies.

With HD disc formats, they compress the video ahead of time, and allow the bits to be allocated as they're needed (in addition to just having more bits to work with).

While HD movies on dish might not look as good as HD movies on DVD, I have a strong suspicion that OTA HD shows will look as good or better than HD movies on DVD. Thus the public's perception of HD on DVD will be that's it's about the same as OTA HD.

Can you please explain where that makes sense?

I have cable HDTV and the pics on that are definitely not as good as HD-DVD.

The difference may be less dramatic between OTA HD and HD DVD, but I don't see that as much of a downside. Commercial breaks, censoring, modified aspect ratios, an inability to watch movies when I want, a limited selection of movies...OTA is the best way to watch new television programming in HD, but other than cost, it doesn't have any other advantages over HD DVD.

Since most of the stations in my neck of the woods multicast, I see a fair amount of blocking whenever there's fast motion, and sometimes I can see compression artifacts and mosquito noise even when there's not. I haven't seen anything like that on HD DVD. I doubt most people would ever compare OTA HD and HD DVD, so I don't think they'd be drawing any conclusions one way or the other, but unless the quality of authoring plummets at some point, OTA HD really shouldn't ever look better.

Most of my local channels are splitting their signals up or not transmitting at full power so OTA HD looks good, but you can still spot artifacts and it does not look as good as HD DVD. Granted stuff shot with an HD video camera can seem to look better than film to some.

My TNT HD and other channels constantly break-up and freeze-up. Not sure what the problem is but I've just learned to accept it. But it's definitely not near HD-DVD quality.

TNT-HD is of poor quality. However, other Dish network HD-channels are superb including OTA channels like Conan O'brien and Jay Leno.

TNTHD is a poor example. They don't even broadcast in true HD (only 480p).

Hmm? They broadcast in 1080i -- look at some of their basketball games or many of their Law and Order reruns, for instance. A lot of their programming is stretched/upconverted, but there is some HD in there.

Huh? Where did you get that TNTHD is 480p?

Watch the NBA playoffs sometime. It's full HD.

Now, some of their reruns and movies are done in "Stretch-O-Vision" witch is fugly beyond belief, but please don't try and state that the resolution is only 480p.

Definitely. I never watch their movies. It's all about Law & Order.

They ONLY broadcast NBA and (I think) auto racing in HD. Virtually nothing else. It's not 480p, it is upconverted 480i.

I'd check that again.

Saving Private Ryan was definitely in HD...as is Law & Order.