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Picture and sound problems with digital TV

V

vchimpanzee

So much for "better picture, better sound".

I used to keep the volume between 14 and 18 with anlaog TV. With digital, it's 34 and I get this hissing in the background. Sometimes it clears up while I'm watching a tape, but that could be because a car is passing or a plane is flying over, or at least I'm experiencing the pattern I remember from analog TV. It's not the nsignal, though, because I hear that hissing when i'm changing channels and only the word "scanning" is on the screen.

As for the picture, if i'm not watching a network showm live action TV looks like a Charles Schwab commercial. I wanted to blame this on a poor signal, but it is just syndicaed shows and commercials, and the stations rarely pixilate. If they were, I'd know that was the problem.

I do now have pixilation problems on two stations.

http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,114330.0.html

I mostly watch cable, for various reasons. The syndicated shows are on a station not on my cable system. I also watch ABC on a digital channel to punish my affiliate for threatening to take themselves off cable, but also because it just works out better for taping.
 
Where is the volume set on the converter box? Some of the CECB models are known to have very low analog audio levels coming out, but the volume control works OK on many others. If it's set low, and the TV volume is set high to compensate, you'll get hiss....I've seen this problem, too.
You might get better results with A-V connections, rather than RF ("Channel 3 or 4"), if available.

Not sure I understand what you mean about "Charles Schwab commercial" on the video.
 
kenglish said:
Where is the volume set on the converter box? Some of the CECB models are known to have very low analog audio levels coming out, but the volume control works OK on many others. If it's set low, and the TV volume is set high to compensate, you'll get hiss....I've seen this problem, too.
You might get better results with A-V connections, rather than RF ("Channel 3 or 4"), if available.
Click to expand...
I don't know if there is such a setting.
kenglish said:
Not sure I understand what you mean about "Charles Schwab commercial" on the video.
Click to expand...
It's like really realistic animation.
 
I've got the same audio level issue with a Tivax converter box. It was solved by turning up the audio on the box to maximum (a reading of 63 for some odd reason) then adjusting the TV set to the desired volume. No hiss or other audio artifacts are present.
 
"...turning up the audio on the box to maximum (a reading of 63 for some odd reason)..."

They use the numbers "0-63" because that comes out to 64 "steps"....a nice even binary/digital number. That's what the CPU in the box sends to the audio attenuator in the decoder.
 
My Insignia box has a traditional volume bar which stops at "100". I always keep it at its maximum level, since I use the TV remote for the TV volume anyways. I've never had a single problem when it came to this.
 
The only problem I have is picking up WDEM CA a low power DT station. Since I have an HDTV and using the omnidirectional RCA HDTV antenna. I still use my cheap UHF-VHF antenna. I have an amplifier connected to the RF port, then I have a coaxial cable connected to a splitter. on the other end is the RCA Antenna and an cheap UHF-VHF antenna. This is my antenna array.
 
kenglish said:
"...turning up the audio on the box to maximum (a reading of 63 for some odd reason)..."

They use the numbers "0-63" because that comes out to 64 "steps"....a nice even binary/digital number. That's what the CPU in the box sends to the audio attenuator in the decoder.
Click to expand...

That's clever. Also unique. Every other box I've ever seen (and I have 4 more of different makes) all use 0-100 as the range. Good thing they display a tracking bar so you can see the volume is all the way up or you'd think it stopped short.
 
63 is a nice binary number. Its the largest number that can be expressed in 6 bits (i.e. 64 = 2^6)
 
My daughter had set up a converter on a spare set and we had this very problem.
By poking around in the settings, I was able to find a toggle between stereo and mono audio output. Apparently the factory sets them to default to stereo. I switched it from stereo over to mono (is not a stereo TV). This yielded a very great improvement. But the sound is still not as robust as it was with the analog signal. (this is not the first piece of video equipment I've owned which had this problem. I bought a TEAC VCR back in 1987, and the sound was weak and hissy all the way up until I pitched it a few years ago. Odd because TEAC was making high-end stereo equipment at that time)
 
Some other problems I've had--I knew I would run out of tape before I had time to watch the tape, so I moved a tape to another TV which is still analog so I can watch or tape a show without having to rember to change the channel while doing something else. The audio of what I had taped from the digital channel was too low, so I had to turn up the volume and the hissing turned to buzzing. And ghosting was more pronounced. They tell you there's no ghosting with digital TV, but I've had it on every channel. On the other TV, there was magenta to the right of everything and yelow to the left. Perhaps this isn't related to digital TV, but digital TV sure doesn't solve it.

And with some colors, "snow" still appears. Plus there's vibration at borders between colors. I've seen this with cable too, though.

Of course, last night I had a terrible problem with pixilation and I don't know why. Switching back to cable was the only solution.
 
It sounds like you are having tracking problems with your VCR's rather than DTV problems. I have three VCR's but cannot watch a tape recorded on one on the other two without substantial "interference" (noise). Sometimes I am able to manually set the tracking to a suitable picture and sometimes not. As the noise never shows up on any of my DTV's I know it is a VCR issue and not a digital TV problem.

If you can figure out how to manually adjust the VCR tracking you may be able to watch the tape on a VCR other than the one on which it was recorded.
 
landtuna said:
It sounds like you are having tracking problems with your VCR's rather than DTV problems. I have three VCR's but cannot watch a tape recorded on one on the other two without substantial "interference" (noise). Sometimes I am able to manually set the tracking to a suitable picture and sometimes not. As the noise never shows up on any of my DTV's I know it is a VCR issue and not a digital TV problem.

If you can figure out how to manually adjust the VCR tracking you may be able to watch the tape on a VCR other than the one on which it was recorded.
Click to expand...

Tracking can usually be fixed manually by pressing and holding your VCR channel up or down button for a couple of seconds.
 
Vchimpanzee:

Also remember that if you are recording in EP mode (or SLP, depending on what the manufacturer called it) and you play the tape back in a different VCR than the one you recorded it in, you may see/hear some noise as well. This is because of manufacturing differences between the heads used in the different machines. Sometimes adjusting the tracking can fix this, sometimes it can't. I can record a tape in my Panasonic PV-9662 and play it back in my '87 JVC and no amount of tracking adjustment seems to be able to fix it. (Vice-versa, however, is a different story.) It's just one of those weird VHS things, I think. Usually for best compatibility (and quality!) you should record in SP mode.

(Of course, had we all ended up using Beta instead of VHS, this might be a different story..... ;o)
 
landtuna said:
It sounds like you are having tracking problems with your VCR's rather than DTV problems. I have three VCR's but cannot watch a tape recorded on one on the other two without substantial "interference" (noise). Sometimes I am able to manually set the tracking to a suitable picture and sometimes not. As the noise never shows up on any of my DTV's I know it is a VCR issue and not a digital TV problem.

If you can figure out how to manually adjust the VCR tracking you may be able to watch the tape on a VCR other than the one on which it was recorded.
Click to expand...
No, it's the TV. The problem is just magnified on the other VCR. But the program is still quite watchable.

I always record in SP mode because I've always gotten poor signal quality. I could try SLP now with cable or digital TV.

Regarding how things appear animated on some programs and commercials, I noticed that if a person stands still, I can see details. It's when the person moves that it's only possible to see an area the color of what I am seeing. It's not pixilation because these areas aren't rectangular, although that happens too occasionally. And when it does the sound gets messed up. At least with the hissing, I can hear what I am suposed to hear.

One of my VCRs messed up last night and I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. With another tape, the tape was just old, but this was with an almost new tape.

The topic got moved off this board so I'll have to provide a link.
 
Majority of picture and sound issues lies with the station, where the TV is located, what type of antenna one's using.
 
The problem with characters looking animated can be explained more easily if I say that I watched the movie "Happy Feet" on Friday (on cable since I still am not 100 percent confident when I have other options). The people in that movie looked so real. That's how people look on the digital stations sometimes.
 
I saw a couple minutes of that on our ABC's digital affiliate, WTNH-DT channel 10 (analog 8 ) of New Haven. WTNH, which did have some synch issues before, looked to be doing fine here.

Meanwhile, I had an issue with WTIC-DT (FOX) channel 31 (analog 61) of Hartford. They were picking up the Pirates vs Mets game from WPIX this Sunday. Not only was the game carried in SD, but the on screen graphics were very hard to read and all fuzzy. I know Tribune can give us the picture. Last season, WTIC's sister station, WTXX-DT (CW) channel 12 (analog 20) of Waterbury, picked up a Yankees game from WWOR. It was in HD, so no graphics problems.

Lastly, who has the best looking local SD picture? Easy! WFSB-DT (CBS) channel 33 (analog 3) of Hartford. The smaller graphics during the newscasts and SD syndication are fine. Hopefully things will change for WVIT-DT (NBC) channel 35 (analog 30) of New Britain, once they open their new state of the art studio in West Hartford next month. Their local SD looks like s---.
 
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