HD question...Not that HD, Hi-Def TV...

[PapaUtah]

Just purchased my first hi-def television. We have cable and have signed up for the digital package. The picture is awesome (DLP rear projection)...except for some occasional pixelization on 2 of the lowest numbered digital channels. All of the other digital channels are free of any problems, just HDNet and HDNMV. I used composite cables to connect the cable box to the TV. Can they make a difference? Wouldn't the problem appear in all of the channels if it were a connection problem?

I really do like the show Get Out! on HDNET! Ummm..... :dribble: Really pretty girls in bikinis...perfect content for Hi-Def. :dribble:

Could it be the box? I don't think it is the TV. There must be some early adopters here who have solved this problem in the past...

 

[Randy]

Just purchased my first hi-def television. We have cable and have signed up for the digital package. The picture is awesome (DLP rear projection)...except for some occasional pixelization on 2 of the lowest numbered digital channels. All of the other digital channels are free of any problems, just HDNet and HDNMV. I used composite cables to connect the cable box to the TV. Can they make a difference? Wouldn't the problem appear in all of the channels if it were a connection problem?
I really do like the show Get Out! on HDNET! Ummm..... :dribble: Really pretty girls in bikinis...perfect content for Hi-Def. :dribble:

Could it be the box? I don't think it is the TV. There must be some early adopters here who have solved this problem in the past...

I have had the same problem since day 1. It's not on all of the shows. Perhaps it's because the transition from analog to digital didn't go so well????

 

[chornbe]

Just purchased my first hi-def television. We have cable and have signed up for the digital package. The picture is awesome (DLP rear projection)...except for some occasional pixelization on 2 of the lowest numbered digital channels. All of the other digital channels are free of any problems, just HDNet and HDNMV. I used composite cables to connect the cable box to the TV. Can they make a difference? Wouldn't the problem appear in all of the channels if it were a connection problem?
I really do like the show Get Out! on HDNET! Ummm..... :dribble: Really pretty girls in bikinis...perfect content for Hi-Def. :dribble:

Could it be the box? I don't think it is the TV. There must be some early adopters here who have solved this problem in the past...

I have had the same problem since day 1. It's not on all of the shows. Perhaps it's because the transition from analog to digital didn't go so well????

Yeah, I think it's a source data (signal?) issue. I have the Samsung LCD 40" and digital cable, but plan-jane DVD player. I've been catching up on some DVDs of TV shows I used to like. Between the non-HD signal and the LCD latency and older content... Now that's some interesting stuff. I should spring for a better dvd player and/or up-converter I guess.

 

[PapaUtah]

The kid at the A/V store says I need to spring for the $120 HDMI cable and everything will be perfect. But I am skeptical...isn't it 1's and 0's coming across the wire? So it either works or it doesn't, correct? I could understand if it were every channel all the time. But it isn't. I prefer not to just throw money at it...

 

[bmwhd]

The kid at the A/V store says I need to spring for the $120 HDMI cable and everything will be perfect. But I am skeptical...isn't it 1's and 0's coming across the wire? So it either works or it doesn't, correct? I could understand if it were every channel all the time. But it isn't. I prefer not to just throw money at it...

Don't fall for that. HDMI is nice but the $39 cable will work just as well as the $120. Unlike your component cables, HDMI is a pure digital signal, either it gets through or it doesn't and any HDMI cable will work fine.

The video quality will be essentially identical between HDMI and good quality component cables BUT cable quality can make a difference on component cables. I have seen at least one case where a better quality set of component cables fixed a pixelization issue.

At what resolution are you seeing this? Which model set top box do you have?

HINT: if you want to try the HDMI connection, check the iPod section at BestBuy. Apples sells an HDMI cable that's just like the ones BestBuy sells in the TV section for half the cost.

HINT 2: Swing on by https://www.avsforum.com for all the deep dive info you could ever want on all this stuff

 

[mdisher]

The kid at the A/V store says I need to spring for the $120 HDMI cable and everything will be perfect. But I am skeptical...isn't it 1's and 0's coming across the wire? So it either works or it doesn't, correct? I could understand if it were every channel all the time. But it isn't. I prefer not to just throw money at it...

Don't fall for that. HDMI is nice but the $39 cable will work just as well as the $120. Unlike your component cables, HDMI is a pure digital signal, either it gets through or it doesn't and any HDMI cable will work fine.

+1

HDMI is the best you're gonna get, but dont' fall for the over inflated cable prices. SamsClub has a GREAT cable for ~$30

They actually sell (2), one by Phillips in stores and another brand over the net. I have both, and they are excellent.

Screw that $120+ stuff it either works or it doesn't.

P.S. here's a great site for quick and dirty info: https://www.hdguru.com/

 

[NYPete]

The problem most likely is weak signal coming in to your HD setop box. I had the same problem with pixilization and occasional audio dropout on only a couple of HD channels. Everytime I called the cable company they kept telling me the signal was OK(I have an addressable cable box) which they would check from their HQ. When the problem continued and the cable company couldn't or wouldn't fix it, I wrote a letter to the PSC which controls cable in this state. About a week after I sent the letter the cable company called me and scheduled a senior technician at the house for the day, checking the box and changing all the cables inside and also changing the outside house drop and SURPRISE, he told me he wasn't getting a good signal. He called the office and had their pole climbers come to the neighborhood and adjust something on the poles in the area, I would guess signal amplifiers. The picture and audio was then perfect and I even got a couple of follow up calls from the cable company to see if everything was satisfactory.

The bottom line is that you need a very good signal coming in to the house because if it's borderline, some HD stations will be good, others bad.

I hope you mean component video cables

and separate audio leads(red and white) NOT composite video

NYPete

 

[Charlie Hoss]

Cable sucks. Check out DirecTV or Dish Network. I've had cable, switched to PrimeStar (it was bought by DirecTV), went back to digital cable. It really sucked with variable quality from channel to channel. Then put in Dish, moved and tried DirecTV, Now have DirecTV HD. Never happy with cable, always pleased with satellite.

 

[PapaUtah]

Well I got the cable company to send someone out. They did something at the pad outside my house, then the tech spent about 20 minutes on the phone with someone else who was accessing my cable box remotely. They plugged and unplugged the thing a couple of times and now I have wonderful pixel free HD reception on all the HD channels! I guess sometimes you just gotta have the pros step in. Now I gotta get back to watching Katie Cleary and Lindsay Clubine in their oh so teeny weeny bikinis! :yahoo:

 

[Bounce]

Sounds like they didn't upgrade your service properly. Either a bad patch at the panel or a failure to change the software settings on their end when you upgraded your account. Or, as someone else mentioned, they hadn't properly boosted your signal 9poor connectors, corrosion, etc. causing weak signals).

I have to add a +1 to DirectTV and the comments about inexpensive HDMI cables (component cables are okay too, but my kids had audio synch problems between their monitor and their surround sound receiver until they went HDMI (my system works fine with component signals and I still need to upgrade my media center receiver to support HDMI).

Sometimes the root cause of your problem is the origination signal. All digital media is compressed for broadcast (over the air HDTV signals being compressed the least and important sports broadcasts being next). Many services (cable and satellite) will mix up their broadcast compression so that the same channel might use more or less compression as each show is shipped out. Some channels are consistently compressed more than others (HD channels being compressed less and less often than something like a shopping channel for example). However, even on an HD channel there can be more compression on a given movie depending on the format which they have to broadcast, if the source was remastered for HD, and other factors. So even though a channel broadcasts in 1080i, the program may have been compressed before broadcast.

Watch a night scene with fog and check out all the compression artifacts. That's an example that constantly drives me bonkers; big chunky blocks of fog as the compression tries to keep up with all the video changes. Many "high" compression techniques were designed for a unchanging background and slight movement of the foreground (a talking head newscaster with a static background). The compression ignores what was the same between frames and only updates the areas that change between frames. Thow some fast action, or a lot of motion at it, and it breaks down (fog in low-lighting).

Add to that a large screen display and what used to go unnoticed on that 27" CRT 15' or more across the room, is not on a 50'+ big screen; magnified many times over.

If your equipment supports it, check out the resolution of the source on those shows that look really good (1080i? 1080p?) and then check out those that you are less than happy with (480i and 480p are used more than you'd expect).

But that's just my observation after about 4 or so years of HDTV ownership. At least the amount of programming for HDTV is starting to inrease. HDTV DVR rocks!

 

[FJR919]

The problem most likely is weak signal coming in to your HD setop box. I had the same problem with pixilization and occasional audio dropout on only a couple of HD channels. Everytime I called the cable company they kept telling me the signal was OK(I have an addressable cable box) which they would check from their HQ. When the problem continued and the cable company couldn't or wouldn't fix it, I wrote a letter to the PSC which controls cable in this state. About a week after I sent the letter the cable company called me and scheduled a senior technician at the house for the day, checking the box and changing all the cables inside and also changing the outside house drop and SURPRISE, he told me he wasn't getting a good signal. He called the office and had their pole climbers come to the neighborhood and adjust something on the poles in the area, I would guess signal amplifiers. The picture and audio was then perfect and I even got a couple of follow up calls from the cable company to see if everything was satisfactory.The bottom line is that you need a very good signal coming in to the house because if it's borderline, some HD stations will be good, others bad.

I hope you mean component video cables

and separate audio leads(red and white) NOT composite video

+1 on that.

I had pixelation problems on my HD channels and it was a signal strength issue. They changed a signal limiting device called a "tap", but that didn't clear it up completely. They wound up putting an amplifier in the house and that cleared the problem up. I was skeptical about that solution as I told them I had previous experience with cable tv amplifiers and wasn't thrilled with the extra "noise" they introduced to the picture. It was explained to me their eamplifiers are not like the ones you buy at Radio Shack and I wouldn't have any problems. They were right.

NYPete

 

[PapaUtah]

I do have component connections, definitely not composite. I ran the normal L/R audio connections to my TV and I ran the SPDIF digital audio port directly to my receiver for Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. It rocks! All of my digital tier content is in 1080i. My TV is 1080p.

 

[radman]

So maybe while you're watching the tube, you can think about how you're gonna word the update thread on yer wing project.