U-Verse Audio Dropouts - Page 2

Thanks so much for replying. I am shocked that this whole issue doesn't seem to be talked about, much. If you know off the top of your head, can you tell me about when and on what channel the "test patterns" are broadcast. AT&T told me that there were no test patterns broadcast on their system.

If you don't mind my asking, could you tell me why you think ATT is sending HDMI signals via the PC signal range?

The tests I ran show that the problem is something else. I am sending digital video via the ATT box over HDMI to a JVC RS1 PJ (and also to a Pioneer PDP-6020 plasma in a different room and system). My PJ can be set to expect either Video or PC signal ranges. Setting it to PC does not reveal the shadow detail that has been clipped by ATT, it only makes Black much lighter. The clipped signals are still missing.

I also ran what is actually the same test as above, but in a different way. The PJ is normally set to expect Black as signal level 16. At this setting everything below 16 would be displayed as Black, just as you have said. The PJ does not clip signals below 16 from the video signal. Those "Below Black" signals are still there, if they were in the video signal to begin with. They are invisible because they are being displayed as Black. However, by raising the Brightness control on the PJ, those "Below Black" signals are raised and become visible, if they are present. When you raise the Brightness control, you are setting the PJ to display a lower signal level as Black. For instance, with the PJ's Brightness control set normally, it displays signal level 16 as Black. Raising the Brightness control from this setting will display signal level 15 as Black. Raising it further will display level 14 as Black, and so on.

With the signal from ATT, raising the Brightness only makes Black greyer, it does not reveal any Below Black signals. There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from this, and that is that they are not there.

Additionally, it appears that White is also depressed. From this observation, I am surmising that the whole signal range is being lowered by somewhere between 5-10 steps.

After reading the description of my "tests", what do you think?

Glenn

P.S. I have not seen the pattern that you have described, but if it is a typical pattern, the 10 bar or ring represents 10 IRE, not digital signal level 10. 10 IRE is above Black. IRE describes the amount of stimilus in the video signal, with 0 IRE being Black and 100 IRE being White. What your observation tells me is that the clipping point is somewhere between 0 IRE (Black) and 10 IRE (which off the top of my head would correspond with about digital signal level 38). My signal generator has patterns in it that show bars at 1 IRE, 2 IRE ...10 IRE. The RS1 shows each IRE step as being distinct from Black and from the step immediately above and below it. In fact as it is set normally, it shows digital signal levels 16, 17, 18, etc as distinct from each other.

i wonder if now that they've done their due diligence if they will make the issue known company-wide. that would be a nice first step.

[quote=JonAM;16328699]Well...this is what my house looked like today...at one point their were eight techs here...they were all on cell phones and at one point I thought this was NASA.......anyway, they tried anything and everything and after 6 hours they finally admitted I was correct, and it was their software....they have no idea when the patch will become available...no surprise there.

So I wonder does this drop outs happen on Comcast Motorola 34xx and 64xx or all Motorola box regardless of providers?

That is just silly. Someone at AT&T already knew it was a problem with their software. They just wasted yours and all of their techs time for nothing. They need to let their tech people and installers know. All of them, so that every time a customer calls to complain, they don't have to reinvent the wheel..again.

I had Comcast before U-Verse which also has the Motorolo (I did not have DVR with them). I thought it was my receiver but the dropout didn't occur as frequently. I think it is a Motorolo issue. But, i tried the "rewind" the show so I am just a few seconds off the live feed and I have ZERO dropouts. hope there is a fix soon.

I am another who is having the audio drop out problems. It pains me to do this, but for now I think I will use the stereo output from the Uverse box and the Toslink output from my PS3. I have a switch/splitter that only accepts digital audio, and both PS3 and Uverse only output Toslink, not digital audio. And I only have one converter anyway, so I guess the Toslink/converter goes to my PS3 and my uverse gets the stereo RCA plugs.

But, yeah, this is pretty annoying. Any updates?

I am using a motorola box...minus the dvr part, in my living room system with the toslink plugged into an Outlaw 990 pre amp processor. No audio dropouts with that set up. I am on my second DVR box in my family room system and both of them have had it with both an HK signature 2.0 preamp/pro and my current Integra dhc 9.9.

I actually am having this exact problem with my setup and the optical cable. I can't do HDMI since my TV is too old, so I guess I'm stuck with A/V until there is some kind of fix.

Please keep us updated.

I just wonder if Uverse (AT&T) engineering department can actually fix this problem. Or will they make or get with Motorola/General Instrument to update or repair their product?

from what i've read it is a software issue- one that's running on all their stbs. that would leave me to assume that the fix would be implemented with either a firmware/sw update or replacement boxes with the updated sw installed.

Whoever gave the tip to pause the DVR for a few seconds and then press play seems to be correct.Ihave been trying that and it works. I have a VIP1225 STB with a SONY receiver connected Via and Optical cable with a HDMI going to Sony HDTV. I recently converted from Comcast.I did not have a problem with sound drops with Scientific Atlantic 8300 DVR but I did have a sound drop problem with Sony Directv DD stb years ago. I had to drop Directv when trees got in way of line of sight to HD bird. I have a Panasonic BD35 Blu-ray which also give me fits with audio using optical link to Sony reciever. DTS HD works but DD Truehd crashes.

That is a really odd thing but it's good to hear hitting the pause for a couple seconds works for other people as well. I just got the Oppo blu ray player and have that hooked to my Integra dhc 9.9 with an HDMI cable, and everything works perfectly that way. I actually didn't think Dolby True HD or DTS HD master was supposed to work through any cable but the HDMI. Something about the HDCP thing.

This is solely an AT&T issue.

I installed ATT Uverse 5/02/09 and cannot get a consitent digital dolby signal lock. I am running an optical cable from the ATT box. I (they) have tried 3 different Motorola boxes. Att Tech knows of this problem but says it is not widespread. And no one can tell me if they or Motorola have or will have a fix. I have used the same connection config since 2001 with 2 cable providers Comcast in Chicago and Charter in St Louis with no audio drop problems. ATT seems stumped or maybe I just can't find the right person to help me. Any suggestions? Names? Contacts? Thanks!
Oh am using a Sony Receiver with no problems on DVR mode etc etc,and have spoke to Sony as well as Abt who seem to believe it is a signal issue. BTW when this begins once the drop starts it occurs at approx 12 second intervals for 1 second each.

it is definitely an issue with the att boxes. unfortunately, it seems communication at that communications company may have broken down. while the issue is known by att (and it is widespread), it seems that many area techs and phone csrs either aren't being made aware of the issue or att has made it a policy to deny it is an issue in order to keep subscribers hangin' on (that's solely my opinion as i can't think of another reason why they would continue to deny the issue after nearly a year of reports).
the audio drops affect some receivers more than others and some users report no audio problems at all. i switched av receivers mid-service (from a jvc to a denon 1909) and went from continuous audio drops to continuous audio pops, but no resolution by att.
i cancelled the service last year because of it and because of the runaround trying to get it fixed over the course of several months. it's too bad, because i liked many other aspects of the tv service.
it kinda peeves me that they're still withholding this issue at the tech level. It's a waste of tech's and consumer's time.
check out this link for more info and you may want to voice your opinion there, it's the att uverse forum:
http://utalk.att.com/utalk/board/mes...cending&page=1

I spoke with a tier two tech at ATT and he believes that using an HDMI input to the receiver will be the fix eliminating the optical input. The problem is that my receiver has no HDMI input. I'm wondering if changing receivers to an HDMI inputed one will slove the issue. Has anyone got info if U-verse is brodcast in Dolby Digital in the first place?

the tier-two tech was mistaken. when i left uverse, the hdmi from their boxes only provided uninterrupted 2-channel stereo, not 5.1 digital surround. i was disappointed when i went to the expense of upgrading my optical-only receiver to an hdmi-switching receiver and found out for myself. it took more of my time researching on the forums to discover that their hdmi didn't carry 5.1 and even more time trying to eliminate audio pops via optical and calls to support. pretty sure the hdmi limitation can be recently corroborated on the uverse forum.

You are correct. HDMI does not currently provide 5.1 digital surround.

Are you talking here about the U-Verse box, or HDMI in general. If in general, I'm confused. The HDMI website reads:

"HDMI supports standard, enhanced, or high-definition video, plus multi-channel digital audio on a single cable. It transmits all ATSC HDTV standards and

supports 8-channel, 192kHz, uncompressed digital audio and all currently-available compressed formats (such as Dolby Digital and DTS),

HDMI 1.3 adds additional support for new lossless digital audio formats Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio with bandwidth to spare to accommodate future enhancements and requirements."

Are their capabilities not implemented, or are they dreaming?

hdmi certainly supports digital audio. however, the uverse boxes do not support digital audio via hdmi. forum posts i've read state that it is the current software running on all versions of their boxes.
yes, they have not implemented full capability of hdmi and yes, i believe they may be dreaming. i hope they wake up soon.

Just to avoid any confusion here..the AT&T Uverse box IS capable of providing digital audio over the hdmi connection, since that is the only kind of signal that hdmi is capable of. It is currently NOT capable of sending a 5.1 dolby digital signal through on HDMI. It sends through a 2 channel PCM signal which your processor can then process through it's pro logic II settings into something that doesn't sound too bad. Not 5.1 dolby digital, but not too bad.

gotcha strindl. i stand corrected. i hope they implement 5.1 digital surround over hdmi soon.

Just a note that with a new U-verse installation performed just this afternoon, I have so far experienced this audio drop-out issue with only one specific channel/program (MLB) broadcast in Dolby Digital. I did go listening for this over several different programs using Dolby, but so far only experienced a short partial second drop-out at roughly 20+ second intervals on that one program. I probably wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't found this thread while looking for remote control code info for the Motorola VIP 1225 supplied with the installation.

I have an Onkyo TX-SR674 Receiver connected to the VIP 1225 via TOSLINK, though the video is currently connected using a pre-existing component cable left over from cable. It will be interesting to see if anything changes when I try an HDMI cable, I'd avoided using this with cable due to other STB idiosyncrasies.

I note that someone mentioned earlier that not everyone experiences this issue, so I wonder what exactly aggravates the situation with certian receivers? Since the cable itself is passive it obviously can't be the problem as already mentioned, since it would either just work or not. It must be some sensitivty in the audio stream and how that signal is accepted by some receivers.

Hope you guys get a resolution soon. I'll let you know if anything changes with the HDMI hookup, this thread was worth finding if only to learn that the HDMI doesn't carry 5.1 from the U-verse STB.

If anyone has any suggestions where I might find remote control code info for either the VIP 1225 or the Onkyo SR674 for the other units remote, please point me in the right direction. Thanks.

Welcome bitman2, try using the Automatic Code Finder.

But here is some codes for the Onkyo Receiver to try: 5018, 5073, 5074, 5075, 5076, 5077, 5078, 5079, 5080, 5081, 5082, 5084, 5085, 5086, 5087, 5130, 5131, 5140

Thanks for the codes JChin, your list made it clear that I was looking in the wrong part of the codes list supplied with the remote. The first code from the correct list worked perfectly so now I have complete control with the U-verse remote.

I've also noticed some additional programming today being affected by the audio drop-out issue. So apparently this is relatively common with Dolby programming only in my case, but not always easy to detect. It must vary due to the specific response of either the Dolby or other circuitry to the edges of the drop-out itself, since I only experience a split-second audio drop-out with no associated 'pop'.

In my case this is minorly annoying, but only really noticeable during quiet passages with a consistent even background of some sort. In any case, the workaround of a short rewind removes the issue completely and I often view things like news and other programs using the DVR recording anyway.

I do hope they release a fix for it soon, but for me it's much less annoying than the sluggish response to the remote and other idiosyncrasies of the cable stb it replaced. Since I require broadband to support significant work from home including occasional ISO and application downloads, I really only have these two choices available.

Glad it worked out, you're welcome.

Reports are coming out of Austin that the latest U-Verse software update not only fixes the audio issue but also passes Dolby Digital 5.1 via the HDMI cable. This update is supposed to be rolled out Nationwide later this month.

I just saw a mention on the Uverse update channel saying they are adding some new digital audio hookup menu choices in a firmware update starting in austin TX. This sounds promising. It would have been real nice if Uverse tech support had actually acknowledged this problem months ago though. They obviously knew about it for a long time.