Comcast XFINITY TV → [HD] Screen Door effect on HD channels

I just upgraded to the HD Preferred Triple Play with Blast last Saturday. Before this upgrade I just had cable TV with Comcast. I have 3 SDTV and 1 HDTV, and 2 digital boxes and 1 HD DVR box. My PQ on my Sony 46 inch 720p HDTV was perfect before this upgrade on HD feeds. After the upgrade I noticed ghosting and screen door effect on just about all the HD channels, especially in dark scenes and motion(sports and movies).

A tech came out and checked my lines and said my cable from the pole to my house needs to be upgraded. He said all my lines in the house seem to be fine, and that the triple play did not do anything to effect the picture quality on my HD channels. I was guessing that it did since the internet , phone, and cable is all being shared. He said that they will upgrade my outside line, and if that doesn't fix the problem call back and they will replace my HD DVR box.

After the line was upgraded on Thursday, the ghosting is now gone, but I still get some screen door effect on HD channels, and all sports on ESPN-TNT-CBS, etc. have screen door effect and the picture does not look as clear and sharp as it did before this Triple Play.

What now? Will replacing the HD DVR box fix this problem? Do I need my signal boosted or balanced? I am also concerned that when the tech comes to my house he is going to say my picture looks fine, and it is my TV settings that are causing the problems with PQ. I know my picture was much better before the Triple Play, but the Tech doesn't know that. You can really see how bad the picture is when you pause it, as the picture gets blurry.

Any suggestions on what my problem is with my PQ? I would like to know so I can ask the tech what to check or upgrade/replace when they come out again.

Thanks

I'd say get the box swapped. You shouldn't be seeing anything looks like SDE because of the source.

SDE is normally associated with the display and not content, so that's very odd.

Is this what you are seeing? »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc ··· r_effect

If so, I have only ever seen this be caused by the persons TV (usually an older DLP/projection type). Not to say it couldn't be the box, but I would look closer at the wiring and settings on your TV to make sure everything is the same as it was before the rate change.

Upgrading to Triple play with all the same hardware is just rate codes and will not effect anything that you can see other than your bill.

screen door is caused my the grid on the dlp/projo screens as beach said.....

did you have HD before you went triple play? if so, nothing changed TV wise.....RF levels would not cause this

Maybe screen door is not the correct term. Maybe grainy is a better word to describe my picture quality. The picture just looks out of focus and not sharp. You can really notice this when you look at peoples faces, especially during sporting events.

I noticed the poor picture quality while watching TNT NBA on Thursday night, and college hoops yesterday on ESPN and CBS. My LCD picture settings did not change before the Triple Play install. I have tried different settings since then to try and correct the picture. My HDTV is not rear projection.

I had HD before the Triple Play. When I paused the picture on true HD feeds, I did not get a blurry/blotchy image. I just paused the picture on ABC NBA Countdown show, and all of the players faces are blurry, and I can't make out who they are.

So you had the same box / settings before the rate change?

Yes, same box, and haven't touched my settings since I got the TV 3 years ago. Something happen after they installed the Triple Play because I got ghosting on all HD Channels. That was corrected when they replaced/upgraded my outside line going from the street pole to the roof of my house. The cable from my rooftop into my basement, where the splitter device is to send the cables to each TV was not changed. They ran a new white cable from that splitter to my room where the computer and modem sit when they installed the Triple Play.

I have a splitter in this room that Comcast upgraded for me when I got the HD DVR box a few years ago. This splitter has the cable from the wall going in to it, and then 2 cables going out to my TVs(1 HDTV & 1 SDTV). None of this stuff has been changed or moved since I set up the HDTV and HD DVR box about 3 years ago. I use a HDMI connection with the HDTV.

There are no changes by upgrading your package other than your bill as beach said. Sounds like you're watching sports on an LCD TV and have a refresh issue like LCDs tend to have.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LC ··· nse_time

I made a thread a few months back about the "ghosting" effect, which seems to be a more aggressive form of telecine than the standard 2:3 pulldown. I was quickly dismissed with nobody else saying they had seen it and something else was wrong. Except nothing had changed on my end.

It still happens to me on HD onDemand and I can tell when something changes because I will get little white horizontal artifacts just before and during the apparent framerate reduction. Not to mention that it immediately ruins the movie I'm watching if it is a high-motion film because it begins to judder badly and streak; literally making me slightly nauseous.

I'm just glad that someone else sees it besides me because I'm fairly certain that Comcast is reducing the framerate to 16 or 18 FPS and performing a 3:4:4:4 or 3:4:4 telecine to further reduce needed bandwidth for HD programming.

And to the nay-sayers, my signal is fine. In fact, it's just about perfect. I personally re-wired the entire house with RG6 and professional-grade compression-fittings and eliminated all but two splitters. I do cabling as part of my profession, so just throw the argument that it is the wiring or signal.

The TV is also not the issue, as I have noise-reduction off to allow for the TV to perform its own 3:2 pulldown and eliminate ghosting.

I have a feeling if you set the box to output at the TV's native resolution, you may solve your issue as well.

My Comcast box has always been set to 1080i. This is because my HDTV is 768p. The same tech came last week and said they need to do more work outside on a couple poles and upgrade more wires. He hooked a HD box up to the street pole and said he saw my picture wasn't perfect. He said it would be done in a couple days. I called tonight and CSR said a work order ticket was put in for work to be done by the maintenance department. The CSR did not know their schedule. She put me on hold to see if she could pull up the work order, but I was then hung up on after 3 minutes on hold. I am going to call tomorrow to complain again.

768p is effectively 720p have you tried setting the box to 720p? Many sets (especially older than say 2008) do not do well with 1080i deinterlacing.

If it does a poor job and say, bob's everything, it would result in pretty terrible resolution that is quite soft looking.

I did switch the Comcast box to 720p after the Triple Play install, and didn't notice any improvement in PQ.