Hi wbdotcom,

I am a Video Engineer and I have seen the artifacting you mentioned. I have seen it at home with my Comcast Receiver, and I have seen it at work at the station. This artifacting is usually the result of the HD Standard conversion. The reason some customers see and some don't, generally depends on the native HD Standard of the TV, or the converter used.

For instance I see it because my Comcast SA receiver outputs 1080i and my TV is 720p. If my TV were 1080i, I would probably not see it (unless the original program was shot and edited in 720p). I have also seen that some converters do a better job than others. Maybe your Charter box was doing the conversion from 720p or 1080i to 1080p and the signal looked cleaner.

The thing is, even some professional grade converters still have issues. Since this technology is still new to everyone (including the broadcasters), it may still be a while before all the bugs are worked out. If everyone could have been on the same page from the beginning, maybe things would loook better.