DHC FAQ describing simsubbing: http://www.digitalhomecanada.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17715

Ok now i understand what it is. BUT... i don't understand what causes the freezing. I work for CTV. We record the American shows over satelitte during the day here in Toronto on either hard drive or Digital betacam. They come with the fox or cbs or abc etc channel label on them to us. We key a CTV logo over theirs. We then play the show out to the cable/ sat guys like BEV with our own commercials inserted. They then send that signal out on our channel 800 for CTVHE and what ever the american HD channel number is on BEV. They are only getting one feed from us.

I can understand a freeze in the picture when BEV switches from say CBS at 859pm to our SIMSUB at 9pm of CSI and then a slight freeze perhaps at the end of the show when they switch back to their original source from CBS. But there's no reason for freezing during the 59 minutes of the program.

It has to be a problem out side of the SIMSUB. It has to be a bell issue.

My 6100 has not had any freezes for quite a while. I define a freeze as when the picture freezes and stays there unitl I do something. I am still getting 1-2 second freezes(blips), and I suspect that it is caused by weak sat signal or other errors, but at least the 6100 recovers now. I am getting used to it these days. I also had this type of issue with cable HD due to bandwidth issues, and perhaps some over compression.

It has to be a problem out side of the SIMSUB. It has to be a bell issue.

I have called BEV on this and they play completely dumb on the issue...This only happens on the 6100 and at the start/end of the simsub and will freeze the picture until you change the channel and then flip back. Whether it is BEV issue or the subbing channels issue, there is a problem with the HD simsubs and BEV should be suspending them until it is fixed.

Alt

I have spoken with bev as well. They don't care. They blame the networks. they blame the weather. Its always something other than them.

When my contract ends i guess i'll have to with rogers or Dishnet/Direct TV!!!

Just wanted to bump this thread. The freezing isnt going away for me. I keep getting freeze ups on the HD channels. I havent noticed it on sd. Its driving my wife nuts as she thinks it should be as reliable as analog tv. Anyone solve the problem with their setup?

We still have it. Sometimes it really interupts the show. We are still on the bleeding edge with HD, with limited bandwidth available, and less than perfect error correction. At least it is not frozen permenently, but few a few seconds at most for me. I also had some problems on the Rogers HD I had for a while. SAT suffers from variable signal strength, and othe issues related to weather etc. On the positive side, I have seen some improvement in the severity of the problems.

I find the freezing is worse on certain channels, specifically the American ones that are sim subbed. Last night watching CSI:NY on CTV the freezing problem was frequent. When I switched to the Jays game the freezing stopped. By the way the HD quality from the game was terrible. It would be nice if we could statistically prove this. I'm going to monitor this on my setup for awhile to see if my theory holds water. I also think the freezing impacts the 9200 PVR owners with their green line recording problem.

John

I know were on the bleeding edge.. But I would think that they would have to conform to some minimum standards.

The bleeding edge was 3 years ago. I put up with it as did others. These are 2nd/3rd generation HD receivers. Major Japanese manufacturers would have most of the bugs fixed by now. The problems lie squarely with lousy E* engineering, EV's delays in getting firmware updates to Canadian customers and EV's lousy handling of HD signals.

The bleeding edge was 3 years ago. I put up with it as did others. These are 2nd/3rd generation HD receivers. Major Japanese manufacturers would have most of the bugs fixed by now. The problems lie squarely with lousy E* engineering, EV's delays in getting firmware updates to Canadian customers and EV's lousy handling of HD signals.

I had Rogers HD for a while, but had some problems there too. They also could not give my the full HD package beacause of bandwidth issues. Bell does seem worse though. Still, I think it relates to bandwidth issues. There is very little bandwidth available for overhead of error correction etc. Sat signal is less reliable than cable, and needs good error correction.

Just bumping the thread. I am still having the freezing issue on HD channels although somewhat less frequently and of less duration (less than a second). I watched CBC (hockey game) last night and parts of the Blue Jays game and continue to see the freezing approximately a half dozen times per period. I have my receiver set for 1080i and am wondering if there is an issue with scaling/deinterlacing in the 6100? :confused:

John

Just bumping the thread. I am still having the freezing issue on HD channels although somewhat less frequently and of less duration (less than a second). I watched CBC (hockey game) last night and parts of the Blue Jays game and continue to see the freezing approximately a half dozen times per period. I have my receiver set for 1080i and am wondering if there is an issue with scaling/deinterlacing in the 6100? :confused:

John


I am still getting the odd freeze, but am also getting a few seconds of garbled audio every 20-30 minutes or so. My son has just come back from school(he has rogers), and he wondered what was going on with the TV. I guess I was getting used to the blips that occur. Funny how you get used to these things.

Based on these issues, and other billing realted issues, I would switch back to cable if they could give me a reasonable HD package and I did not have the contract with BEV. I think I could resonably argue that they have breached the contract though

It is such a shame to have our expensive HD experience marred by these glitches. I suspect that many people would just rather watch SD on cable than deal with the constant barage of errors we get.

My biggest beef these days is garbled audio.

Glenn,

I feel your pain. Since I am watching a 100" picture from my FP the video freeze is quite apparent when it happens and it happens much too often. Watching one period of hockey I usually count 6 to 8 freeze instances of varying lengths (from a split second to a couple of seconds) and the same happens when watching Jays baseball. I am trying to see if there is a co-orelation between the source channel bandwidth setting (trying to get the HD channel information now - 720p vs. 1080i) and the setting I have on my receiver (using 1080i which for my setup looks the best). I believe it is a receiver firmware problem (not enough buffer?) but have no way of proving it. Since I bought my receiver I can't just replace it (out of warranty - over a year). I have not had the audio problem but I am only using the analog audio outputs, not the optical at this time.

John

Glenn,

I feel your pain. Since I am watching a 100" picture from my FP the video freeze is quite apparent when it happens and it happens much too often. Watching one period of hockey I usually count 6 to 8 freeze instances of varying lengths (from a split second to a couple of seconds) and the same happens when watching Jays baseball. I am trying to see if there is a co-orelation between the source channel bandwidth setting (trying to get the HD channel information now - 720p vs. 1080i) and the setting I have on my receiver (using 1080i which for my setup looks the best). I believe it is a receiver firmware problem (not enough buffer?) but have no way of proving it. Since I bought my receiver I can't just replace it (out of warranty - over a year). I have not had the audio problem but I am only using the analog audio outputs, not the optical at this time.

John

I think that they are so close to the edge on bandwidth, that the buffering capability, and error checking scheme just don't work very well. A good error checking scheme eats up bandwidth. When the HD feed is good, there is nothing like it, but under typical conditions it is really debatable. Ther have been times where I have switched to an SD channel because we just couldn't stand it any more. We pay extra for this? What happend to the promise of all digital TV being high quality?

The sole reason I purchased the 6100 was for HD to feed my FP. SD blown up to 100" doesn't look very good so I avoid watching those channels on the FP (use the 3200 on my two other SD TVs). Initially the HD service was good, very little freezing but in the last 6 months it has gotten progressively worse IMO. Some channels are worse than others. Sports is worse than regular TV or movie programming. I concur with the view that bandwidth is being squeezed and it shows on sports channels due to the fast motion sequences which require more bandwidth to capture the movement.

I have already discussed this with a BEV platform performance manager and although sympathetic to my problem, he has not provided me a solution (yet). My next step is to call customer service and complain. I think everyone who has this problem needs to do the same. The more calls they get the more priority this problem will become to the firmware developers (judging by the fixes listed in the next 9200 firmware release thread).

John:mad:

Well, I'm very sick of the whole thing as well... I'm to a point that I'm thinking of cancelling HD all together!

As others had already stated, it worked great a few months back but now the freezing is happening all the time on my 6100. It most likely has something to do with the current software load on these units, since I'm not seeing too many complaints from 9200 owners.

W:(W

counted 8 freezes on CSI Miami (HD) within half an hour last night on my 6100, this is really starting to bug me!!

counted 8 freezes on CSI Miami (HD) within half an hour last night on my 6100, this is really starting to bug me!!

I have seen a lot of freezes, audio glitches while watching CTV-HD or when it is simsubbed in. It really does get annoying if it goes on to long.

It seems CTVHD is pretty bad as I have seen alot of freezing on this channel. But I also see the freezing happen on other channels like CBCHD, TSNHD and SportsnetHD as well. I watch alot of sports on my setup and this can be very annoying. Has anyone tried doing a hard reset on the receiver and if so did this help? I'm really getting annoyed with this.

John