Well, called Bell time ago... Of course, there were playing the innocent game. They say to watch HD channel tonight and check if the same thing is happening, and if so, they will switch the receiver...bla bla bla.

I'm curious to know if this is indeed a channel thing. Does anyone heard something with Starchoice of cable freezing?

Also, does anyone here got a 100% no freezing installation???

Also, to get this straight, is the problem worse or better with the 9200? I'll be watching the monday night football to confirm.

I switched from Star Choice DSR 500 to Bell 9200.

One of the reasons for switching was the HD freezing/pixellating as well as the receiver freezing up and requiring rebooting.

The Bell 9200 has been no better - at least once a week I have to reboot the receiver.

I think it's been a bit better on the HD pixellation issue. The HD football games are problematic though - as are HD hockey games.

I wonder why this is?

After my 3rd call to Bev re problems with my newly activated replacement 6100 a "senior" tech admitted the freezing I was experiencing on all HD channels was a known software problem they were working on. My 1st 6100 only exhibited it on simsubs at the beginning, but by last weekend was doing it on all HD channels. The new one is even worse. Freezing every 30 seconds or so last night. They said to wait a week and call back if things didn't get better. Frankly I don't know what to believe now as I have had a number of different stories. I will say, this is the first time I have had an admission of an across the board problem with 6100. Doesn't mean they will fix it but at least he admitted it was there. For the record I have only had HD since Thanksgiving so I am not impressed with the number of problems and calls I have had to make. Rogers is looking real good right now.

I have had my new 6100 HD receiver for two weeks. Since day one, I have had this freezing issue for 1-2 sec every 5 min or so. Yet other times, I can watch a show for an hour with no issue. I am very picky and immediately called bell. They have done all upgrades they can do by download and are now sending a tech to my house this coming Wednesday. From what I have read here, I am not optimistic it will be solved.

Some people here have speculated that it could be a bandwidth issue. Well, if so, why does the freezing happend on an HD channel while watching a NON HD program??? It appears to me that the processing in the receiver could be separate for HD vs NON-HD content. It does not freeze on SD channels.

Also, I have noticed that a majority of the time, it appears to happen when there is a lot of camera movement going on. This looks like a buffer problem or some processor that cannot keep up.

Anyhow, I will most likely either cancel Bell service completely and move to Rogers (my friend has Rogers with no issue). I do not care if I have a contract with them. No court in their right mind would rule in there favor after I show them a video tape of the freezing every few minutes.

I am now regretting buying my Plasma tv since all it is good for now is watching DVD's.

I'll keep you posted after next weeks visit.

Bob

Well, if so, why does the freezing happend on an HD channel while watching a NON HD program???Because the fact that the programme is not HD doesn't affect the bandwidth used by an HD channel - it's still an HD channel, but displaying upconverted material.

There may be a minor reduction in bandwidth due to the black bars, however, it's still 4-5 times the bandwidth of an SD channel.

As I said in my previous post my freezing issue is now worse with replacement 6100. I hope you get your problem fixed but don't bet on it. Purolator just picked up my old 6100 to take back to Bell. Guy said he picks returns up all the time. My feeling is they have no idea how to fix the problem and just keep "throwing darts at the dart board" in hopes of a bulls eye. On a positive note the CSR I spoke to today was most sympathetic and I believe tried to his best to resolve the issue with higher up tech. Bottom line is "they are working on it". I too am regretting my TV purchase. Not what I had hoped for.

I have had this problem for over a year just found this forum, great to see that I am not alone. Have had all the same fixes, last night Bell suggested that I have all my out door wiring checked by one of their service people.
Estmate $90.00. I changed all my out door cables guess what, same problem no change just $28.99 less money in the wallet. I am calling Bell as we speak.

Read the following article which in my view is the major problem why the 6100 has picture freeze issues.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=769843

I understand reading posts on the forum that BEV does not carry the full MPEG2 HD bandwidth required as defined in the article. Rather, there is compression being used to fit at least two HD channels on a transponder. My belief is that certain HD channels have more compression than others which may cause difficulty for the 6100 MPEG2 decoder to properly decode the signal.

I don't want to get too technical but with MPEG2 there are three types of frame signals i, p and b. The i frames provide a complete frame refresh and allows the decoder to reset the frame picture should there be a problem with the information carried on the p and b frames (which are backward and forward predictors of pixel changes in the video frame). If you compress the signal too much then the i frames are carried with less frequency (for example, 1 in 15 frames versus 1 in 10). Since the i frames have the complete video frame information, the less times you send it the more compression you gain. The problem is the MPEG decoder in the 6100 may not be able to consistently produce the next frame information properly and will then have to wait for an i frame to reset the picture. Hence the picture freezing for a half second or longer. That is the length of time that the next i frame is actually being sent by BEV.

Bottom line, too much compression on HD will degrade the signal and cause picture stuttering/freezing. What we need is more MPEG2 bandwidth or a better decoder in the receiver to deal with the higher compression rates. IMHO.

John;)

I just need to know if there are any HD 6100 recievers that do not freeze like mine does. That way, I will just continue to get new ones from Bell until it works!

I really don't want to leave Bell. It would suck to have to change everything over to Rogers. I also know Bell will put up a fight when I break the contract I signed. Which means I have to change the phone too or they will try to bill me extra on that to make up for the contract break.

thanks,

I have yet to have a freeze on my 6100. The only issue I have had on my 6100 was the channels I hide are not hidden any longer. That seemed to be fixed a few firmwares back. I think they are on V562 now....

ITLDvl..... How long have you had your 6100? It seems that my freezing problem has gotten a lot better in the past few days. I was only able to watch the occassional program without freeze now I am able to watch sevaral. It is still happening but way less frequently.

This tells me that it may not be a receiver issue, but rather what Bell is sending on their end.

The tech is coming to my house today as I mentioned. I don't think it will fix anything, but at least all steps will be documented and I can still negotiate for additional programming unless this gets fixed.

Bob

I have had my 6100 for 1 year now (I think as of last December or so...).

Well, that sounds a bit promising. I guess if the service tech does not resolve the problem, I will just keep getting new recievers until one works. I sure am glad I found this forum. I will keep everybody posted on my progress.

By the way, has anybody heard of any new channels coming our way on HD? My buddy has Rogers and he just got National Geographic and Showcase HD.

Bob

There's a thread about it already....no sign yet. People are now wondering if Bell will even get the channels seeing that the bandwidth is limited to how many more channels can be sent down the stream.

Just to let you know my freezing issues have been greatly reduced in the last week. No problems all weekend except for Leaf game Saturday night. Last night Bones on Fox was perfect. Switched to CSI NY and the dreaded CTV simsub showed up. 3 freezes in 5 minutes and I switched to SD. Everything was fine there. I guess things are hit and miss. Reminds me of how unreliable the internet was at the beginning. I have given up expecting it to work well all the time and just enjoy it when it does and watch SD when it doesn't. Not the way it should be but life is too short to spend it on hold with BEV. LOL My contract is up next November. BEV has until then to convince me to stay. Meanwhile I am going to investigate OTA. From my reading I think this may be the best way to go.

My freezing appears to have let up a bit, though still present to a small degree. But it has gone away before only to come back, so I will have to wait and see.

I must say it's rather embarassing, I'm showing my brother in law my set up (big screen, surround sound, etc) and I put the Styx concert on HDNet on and it's goes into a massive freezing episode.

Ya, go Bell go!

I wish Rogers would expand into my city or Shaw would get more HD channels.

This seems to be getting worse for me these days. I don't think it ever went away, I just got used to it. I wonder if other providers have the same problem?

My wife's cousin has Rogers in Waterloo and they report the odd freeze and break-up on the video in HD.

I must add that my 6100 has been relatively freeze free in the last few days and even the 'judder' that I was getting constantly on CTV HD E & W and Global HD has gotten a lot better. More like it was several months ago before this whole 'shaky vision' thing started. Maybe they're on the right track to getting it fixed.

I was going to jump ship and dump this dish in January, but I may wait another month to see what happens.

Well, as expected, the service tech came and replaced the switch on the dish and there is no improvement. So I called Bell and they are sending a new receiver.

I'm hoping it will not take 10 new receivers to get it solved. But I will persist!

Bob

My freezing has been greatly reduced since 2 weekends ago when all HD channels were freezing. I got a replacement 6100 but to be honest I am not convinced it was the problem. I think there are a number of issues in play here and they are sporadic in nature. It is the only thing I can come up with to explain why sometimes it works perfectly and other times it is unwatchable. As many have posted perhaps there is a bandwidth problem and sometimes it just doesn't work. I did get a senior tech to admit the freezing is a known issue that they are working on. If my freezing stays like it is now I am fairly satisfied with things and I am willing to ride it out and see what happens. From reading this forum both Rogers and Star Choice seem to have their problems as well. As I have said before I think we are in the relative infancy of HD here and we are experiencing growing pains. Is it frustrating? You bet. Should it be this way? NO! Lets hope they get it sorted out because when it works properly it is great.