captjhamine wrote:
Hi wbdotcom,
I am a Video Engineer and I have seen the artifact you mentioned. I have seen it at home with my Comcast Receiver, and I have seen it at work at the station. This artifact 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.
you are totally right. that is the main reason why i waited so long to take the HDTV plunge in the first place, there are no standards
i actually see little (if any) difference with the uverse STB output at 720p or 1080i, so it's hard to say that its the conversion, though it obviously could be. i see the same artifacts on a friend's 44" DLP. i dont really know what the casue is - as you say, it could be a resolution conversion issue, it could be a decompression issue, or who knows. the STB for charter could be set to output the native resolution of the signal, so it would change from 480i/p, 720p or 1080i depending on the channel. i dont have any beef with a STB that is capable converting resolutions, but there is something more philisophically more satisfying with haveing few things in the chain, especially if they are ultimately redundant.
