Sattellite TV question
 

I was visiting my parents who recently purchased a Mitsubishi widescreen projection tv and the Dish Network.
The problem is, the picture is slightly blurry. For example I was watching Dennis Miller, and when he was moving his head, it became ever so slightly blurry, and somewhat out of focus. As soon as he stopped, his beard and everthing became sharp.
Is this normal? Every channel has this issue.

Also other things look pixilated, such as small text and channel logos.

DVDs look great.

I noticed this also happens on a 19inch tv as well, although not as noticable.
I'm wondering if something is wrong.

The strength of the signal your Dish unit is receiving makes a difference in the quality of the picture. The dish itself may be moved a few degrees in order to get the optimum picture. The larger the picture, the easier it is to see the pixelation as you noticed.

Signal strength has absolutely nothing to do with it. With digital satellite systems, you either have a picture or you don't. Higher signal strength readings only help avoid the very occasional rain-fade and cannot sharpen the picture.

Dish Network and Directv both compress their channels, but they use different encoding techniques. Directv provides a sharper picture while Dish Network's is slightly blurrier but has fewer artifacts than Directv IMHO. I had a DirecTiVo and a Dish Network 501 attached to my 27" Sony WEGA at the same time and did my own comparison. Read my sig to see which I preferred :)

Bigscreen TV's (anything over 30") can make the picture look bad simply because it shows more of the flaws. Adjust the settings to minimize them as best you can.

While both DVDs and DBS systems utililize the the MPEG compression scheme, the producers of DVDs have as much time as they need to compress the picture. In comparison, DBS has to compress the picture on the fly.

Although real time compression is challenging they are also focused on squeezing multiple channels on each transponder.

I would prefer higher video quality and fewer pointless channels.

True true. Unfortunately, due to carriage agreements, some of these pointless channels have to be carried. Otherwise, I would jettison the R$N and E$PN. The $port$ channels are the channels I rarely watch, but are among the highest in per-subscriber cost plus ABC insists that it be placed in even the most basic of tiers, whether it be Dish Latino, AT-50, or Select Choice on DBS.

Oh well.. I still prefer my DBS system with a 501 PVR over the local cable company any day.

because Dish Network sucks :p, seriously the PQ on dish is not very good at all, IMO

I was thinking about getting Dish Network for myself, but I would get that new PVR721 along with the HD reciever.

Uhhhh.... be sure to investigate both DirecTV as well as Dish Network. The 721 receiver is a dual-tuner PVR, however, it costs over $500, while a DirecTivo... errr... DirecTV with DVR is less than $200 and has two tuners. There is a $4.95 monthly fee that is waived if you get the total choice premium package.

Blantant board plug: A good DBS web site is www.dbstalk.com .

Thanks for that link to dbstalk.com. It appears this issue is normal with bigscreen TVs.
That 921 receiver looks pretty sweet...