Has D messed with my Tivo? Image quality issues.

1064 Views 7 Replies 6 Participants Last post by fasTLane, Sep 28, 2007

flapbreaker

Discussion Starter · Sep 25, 2007

I noticed the other day that non of the HD programs look impressive anymore. In fact there seems to be far more motion artifact (blocky pixels) than normal. I used to have a episode of Insectia saved that was one of the best examples of HD I've seen. Somehow it got deleted. It re-aired and I recorded it. Same thing, not near as good as I remember. This seems to be true for OTA and Sat signals. Last nights Monday night football was the same. My question is, anyone else notice this? Could Directv of changed something with the Tivo do do this? I have 3 different TV's and two different HD tivo's and it's the same on all systems so I doubt it's an isolated part of my system or setups. I guess the ultimate test will be to wait for an HD OTA broadcast, see what it looks like live through the tivo and then hook the antenna up directly to the TV and see if it looks better? Any idea's?

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JimSpence

· #2 · Sep 25, 2007

Maybe the output resolution got set to 480i?

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flapbreaker

Discussion Starter · #3 · Sep 25, 2007

JimSpence said:
Maybe the output resolution got set to 480i?

I checked that. From the lack of responses I take it noone else is having this problem. I'll do my antenna check and see if there's a difference.

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wolflord11

· #4 · Sep 25, 2007

Sounds like you have an isolated incident. It would be best to check out your entire setup.

But I doubt very much that Directv has messed with your Setup or Tivo's. Perhaps you have others living in your Household?

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fasTLane

· #5 · Sep 26, 2007

I thought the same thing about the quality of some channels lately. Still investigating.

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Cajunclicker

· #6 · Sep 26, 2007

I did notice some football games kinda "pixely" when they did close ups of the players on the field. But, that may be resolution issues of the camera and FPS limits. Great... now I'm going to be obsessed with this. Thanks alot flapbreaker!

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TyroneShoes

· #7 · Sep 27, 2007

Cajunclicker said:
I did notice some football games kinda "pixely" when they did close ups of the players on the field. But, that may be resolution issues of the camera and FPS limits...

If it helps, "pixely" is only a manifestation of bandwidth limitations or over-aggressive compression, and never is it related to either resolution issues or FPS.

For a local production such as a FB game, the resolution and FPS are set at the same format as the signal is distributed in (720p/60 for ESPN, for instance). All items use that same resolution/FPS format, with the rare exception of isolated SD cameras upconverted (which would manifest as less-defined sharpness, but never pixellation).

Also, there is always plenty of bandwidth and compression is mild at the production venue. Only when it is distributed do compression/bandwidth issues rear their ugly pointed little heads, so nothing fishy at the game site should really contribute to "pixely" video.

So, you can probably rule those concerns out.

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fasTLane

· #8 · Sep 28, 2007

flapbreaker said:
I noticed the other day that non of the HD programs look impressive anymore. In fact there seems to be far more motion artifact (blocky pixels) than normal.... Any idea's?

This will not do. If the bitrate and resolution is not improved in the next week I will be dropping the HD package. I can make do with OTA and refuse to pay for substandard crap from Directv. Odd how this has reared its head again around the same time the mpeg4 channels ramp up.

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