Bad pixelating on TWC...ditch my tv??

[Movin2Milwaukee]

I have Time Warner and a Sony Bravia LCD...but thinking of ditching it. Almost every HD channel has bad pixelating with any fast movement...the picture breaks up into blocks. The especially bad channels are NBC and CBS. NBC Sunday Night Football was almost unwatchable for me this year.

I must ask....is this a common issue with TWC here in Milwaukee or is the problem likely to be the fact that I have an LCD tv? Only a few channels seem not to suffer from the pixel breakup...ESPN is probably the best.

Thanks in advance for any feedback....

M2M

[Mark Strube]

Have you done any calibration with your TV's video settings? Often times the factory settings (especially with Sony's "Vivid" and "Standard" settings) enhance far too much detail to let even HD channels look very good. Start with the "Pro" setting and go from there, make sure all the extra enhancement settings are off (edge enhancement etc).

However our local CBS and NBC are a few of the mildly lower bitrate 1080i channels... sports tend to look much better on ABC, FOX, and ESPN, which are also 720p, lending to less artifacting in high motion. 1080i is better for film or tv shows, so it's kind of unfortunate when those channels have sports. Your Time Warner Cable is not the culprit, as I believe their HD channels are still untouched... they're giving you the exact same digital video stream that they're receiving from the networks.

[mhz40]

I've seen this issue on two identical and older Sony CRT-based TV's.  They were XBR's I think.  It was worse when using the internal QAM tuner/cable card setup.  Pictures via component input was much better.  Not sure what the issue was, but clearly they have some signal processing issue on the path through the tuner.  Again, that was on TVs built 3-5 years ago, when we were in the stone ages using direct view CRT's.

[Movin2Milwaukee]

Thank you both for the feedback. My Bravia does indeed have much of the 'enhancements' turned off and any tweaking I do doesn't seem to affect the pixelating issue I have. I suppose this is just an issue with LCD tv's...as I know they are not supposed to be the best for dealing with motion.

As I mentioned, WTMJ's HD channel is horrible. Watching "The Office", with all its quick cam pans and movement is particularly painful...lots of pixel break up. I guess I will just have to invest in a plasma tv instead and get rid of the LCD.

I have not had my tv calibrated but may look into this for the future. I just wasn't sure if the issue was with TWC and compressing the HD signal, etc. Again, some channels are worse than others, which lead me to believe the fault was with TWC.

M2M

[kmclayman]

I have this problem too with my Philips HDTV. I believe it is TWC, as turning the HD box off and using just the tv channels work fine. I have terrible pixelation with my HD box, and even more when I dvr shows.

[Mark Strube]

I'm confused now as to what we're talking about. From the first post it just sounded like what you'd call "artifacting" which is the picture getting blocky due to high motion and over-accentuation of details combined with lower bitrate.

What this last reply seems to be talking about is the picture going blocky (with some freezing) due to low signal strength.

[kmclayman]

If we're talking two different things, my apologies -- I can certainly start a new thread with my issues, I just wasn't sure if they are related.

[hoophead]

If, by using the term calibrating, you mean adjusting all the picture options setup on your TV to your preferences, I have done that with my new Panny. I also got my hands on a DVD on the subject by some fellow but it was WAY over my head. Must have been intended for an engineer or he just wanted to ensure he spread out the knowledge to over an hour. If there is anybody here that can point me to an exact method of 'calibrating' please let me know.

Thank you

[Movin2Milwaukee]

I'm confused now as to what we're talking about. From the first post it just sounded like what you'd call "artifacting" which is the picture getting blocky due to high motion and over-accentuation of details combined with lower bitrate.

What this last reply seems to be talking about is the picture going blocky (with some freezing) due to low signal strength.

Yes, that is exactly what I am talking about....the picture getting blocky and breaking up with fast motion pans, etc. I am not sure what the other user was posting about but my original post was about this. I suppose I am more relieved that the problem is with TWC but I have heard that LCD tv's are particularly poor with motion, so perhaps it is a combo of the two?

[RonH]

If you're using a TWC box that could be the culprit.  I'm not sure what output settings are chosen, but for example choosing 1080i (like the TWC rep probably would default it to) on a 720p TV would result in horrible picture quality.

I don't believe TWC modifies the signal much, I can not tell the difference between OTA and the cable signal.  I do notice a few rows of pixels missing off the bottom with cable, but that could be the way the HDMI connection works on my TV.

The pixelation sounds like mpeg2 compression artifacts, but this is inherent to all all digital tv channels, but much more evident on 1080i 30fps channels like NBC and CBS.  I'm not sure a plasma would eliminate this.  And between NBC and CBS, I don't know what NBC does but it has by far the worst PQ of any HD channel.

[Mark Strube]

If you're using a TWC box that could be the culprit.  I'm not sure what output settings are chosen, but for example choosing 1080i (like the TWC rep probably would default it to) on a 720p TV would result in horrible picture quality.

This really just depends on video scaler used in your television. Even if someone has a 720p set, there's many cases where better video quality can be achieved by just leaving the cable box set at 1080i. In some cases not.