[eswrite]

I also posted this in the HDTV programming forum, but since there are more MyHD users here...


I recorded both the West Wing and ER with MyHD MDP-120. The image looks great in both, if a little too dark at places. But I have this distracting silver/gray line at the bottom of the 16:9/letterbox frame on my 4:3 TV. I haven't seen this when I watch other shows live, and I wish I could have watched these live to see whether it's MyHD recording/playback introducing this or not. Anyone else experience this? I'm running v1.62 of MyHD with OTA reception.

 

[cai]

I also have a silver/gray line at the top of one of the station's broadcast screens, CBS I believe. I either posted or read something on this issue before and, if I remember correctly, Cliff said that it was an artifact of the signal transmission.


Since I also have a Dish 6000, I will tune both units to the same station and compare images.

 

[eswrite]

Funny, I'll have to record something on CBS to see if I get that now (with v1.62). My previous recording of CSI didn't have it, but all 3 recordings I have done on NBC this week (also "Las Vegas", which had tons of other problems, so I thought the silver line was just part of that) have had this issue. I hadn't recorded any HD from NBC till this week. Anyway to cure this? I think the answer is no, so I will have to install my own brain filter to avoid the annoyance.

 

[simmike]

From my viewing the past week, NBC is trying something new with their HDTV. To me it looks like they have lowered the overall data rate, which is causing more pixelization during scene changes. At first I thought it was my local station maybe trying multicasting, but since other people are complaining, I think NBC is up to something.

 

[eswrite]

Where would one register a complaint with NBC (local/national)?


PS: I found this NBC contact area

 

[Cliff Watson]

I bet that if you check the input resolution it will indicate 1088i instead of 1080i as it should.

 

[eswrite]

Hmm. I'll check into that, Cliff. Hopefully MyHD can still display this info on a recorded broadcast/file. Yes, I haven't used MyHD very long .

 

[Cliff Watson]

Of course it can and that is the problem with transport streams that are marked as 1088i instead of the correct 1080i.


This is a common error when setting up the tables for a transport stream. A 1080i video stream does contain 1088 lines, BUT only 1080 of them contain video data. When the video is marked as 1088 the decoder will attempt to decode the full 1088 lines and the results of this for the 8 lines without video content is a noise line.


The problem is in the local station ATSC encoder and not with the network. So if you complain do it with the local engineer.