Anyone catch the all-stat game on CBCHD? There was really bad macroblocking when the players were coming on the ice with the strobe lights. There was also some sound drop outs. I decided to phone in for fun and the CSR I talked to didn't know what macroblocking was. When I mentioned the sound drops, he said he notices it on his system but said "it's no big deal". I was fuming.... anyway he went and reset my box without asking first ( I was taping the hocky game). Anyway it said it should really improve things. It didn't.

"it's no big deal".

Well that just about sums up how far we're bound to get looking for a solution. Shaw may just sweep our issues under the mat.

Anyone catch the all-stat game on CBCHD? There was really bad macroblocking when the players were coming on the ice with the strobe lights.

Didn't catch the game, but strobe lights definitely would be testing the limits of a HDTV. 19.4Mbps MPEG2 works fine when not everything on screen changes. However, change all pixels at a fast rate, like a strobe would do, and it's difficult for MPEG2 to handle in 19.4Mbps. Live events are also tougher (a multiple pass encoder can adjust for fast moving scenes, but that takes time...something that doesn't fit well with live events). Macroblocking was quite possibly part and parcel of the broadcast, even at full bandwidth HDTV (which Shaw doesn't do).

As for the sound drop outs, Shaw has acknowledged the problem. The CSR wasn't the best, and that's frustrating (reset your box without warning...that would really set me off!). Hopefully a the dropout problem can be solved soon so that we don't have to deal with problem CSRs.

wow my spelling was a little off in the last post...

Understand what you are saying oilblue, maybe I have been oversold on the whole HDTV experience? Some shows are fantastic but others are so poor. Lots of factors involved indeed. I'm just not as impressed as I used to be.

Ya I wasn't very happy about the reset...I think he learned a lesson on that one though.

I could see strobe lights, or even camera flashes, causing some macroblocking. But slow-mo replays?

Shaw is selling us HDTV Ultra-Lite. All the price, none of the quality.

If gb stands for Giga Bytes, this is not possible, as the maximum broadcast bitrate is 19.4 Mbps - which gives 19.4 x 60 x 60 / 8 /1000 = roughly 9 GB (Giga Bytes) - the rough maximum possible in an hour of HD programming. If gb is Giga bits, then you've got roughly 3.5 Mbps. Something seems amiss in your 13 number.

Ok, I was way off. That number must have stuck in my head from a movie or something that I had checked a while back. Anyway, I checked last night and it was 7.82GB for a show from CBC and 7.84 from CTV. So, that looks like something in the 16-17Mbps. Again, this is OTA on Tivo HD. I don't know if we can check the Mbps of Shaw now. A cynic might find it interesting that they have turned on 5C so nobody can transfer the files and calculate the bandwidth.

I could see strobe lights, or even camera flashes, causing some macroblocking. But slow-mo replays?

Shaw is selling us HDTV Ultra-Lite. All the price, none of the quality.

Again, what you're seeing is not representative of Shaw HD. There's obviously something wrong. To give a couple examples, my parent's HD from Shaw doesn't have issues like that, and neither do we. Mozza, merve04, and jfplay seem to have it especially bad. I can't answer why.

That's not to say Shaw HD is perfect. Shaw HD could certainly be better. For example, macroblocking on HDNet never used to occur. Now it does on some programs. Best chance of a fix would be a move from 3 per QAM to 2 per QAM (meaning full bandwidth HD, same as OTA). With 21 HD channels, that means 11 6MHz slots instead of 7. I can think of 4 analog channels to bump to digital. Shaw probably wouldn't do that though since the majority of their customers aren't digital, never mind HD. D'oh.

BTW, HD from Bell isn't quite the answer you're painting, judging from the "Enough Compression Already" thread.. From the sounds of things, Bell is worse than Shaw. Post 287 on page 20 lists various bitrates for Bell "HD" channels. Not a pretty picture (for comparison, at three per QAM256, Shaw is about 13). Which is why MPEG4 is on Bell's horizon. They have no choice. In the meantime, Bell's customers are getting HD-lite. Not only subscribers with problems, but every subscriber.

From reports in the various Digital Home sub-forums from people with access to all three, StarChoice apparently has the best HD, with Shaw next, and then Bell. There are exceptions of course, as we can clearly see from the screenshots you and jfplay provided.

Point is, it's wrong to presume your lousy picture is indicative of what Shaw HD is everyone else, unless you think we're all blind. Why would we all put up with it if our picture was that bad? Consequently, as Nanuuk said above, it's wrong to make blanket generalizations based on a problem picture.

7.82GB * 1000 * 8 / 3600s (in 1 hr) = ~17 MBPS OTA.

7.82GB *1024*1024*1024*8/3600 = ~18.7

57 can confirm which is correct.
I don't think the simple 1000 is the correct number though.

Mozza, I assume you live in an appt. Have you contacted anyone else in the building that has HD to see if they are having the same troubles?

One more quip...
There are constants that many of us are familar with that can be used for comparison. For instance, the maximum amount of information that can be transmitted over-the-air in an 8 VSB modulated stream is 19.39 Mbps (that's 8.126 GB/hour, but no one thinks of it that way); a QAM 256 carrier can hold exactly twice as much in the same band (6 MHz), at 38.8 Mbps. (QAM uses far less bandwidth for noise rejection, and broadband cable is a far less noisy environment than an open-air microwave transmission).

Shaw uses 3 streams per 256QAM, which is 38.8/3=12.9 mbps...still within the range for HDTV.

When I grab off the PVR I usually get around 13 mbps.

Again, what you're seeing is not representative of Shaw HD. There's obviously something wrong. To give a couple examples, my parent's HD from Shaw doesn't have issues like that, and neither do we. Mozza, merve04, and jfplay seem to have it especially bad. I can't answer why.

That's not to say Shaw HD is perfect. Shaw HD could certainly be better. For example, macroblocking on HDNet never used to occur. Now it does on some programs. Best chance of a fix would be a move from 3 per QAM to 2 per QAM (meaning full bandwidth HD, same as OTA). With 21 HD channels, that means 11 6MHz slots instead of 7. I can think of 4 analog channels to bump to digital. Shaw probably wouldn't do that though since the majority of their customers aren't digital, never mind HD. D'oh.

BTW, HD from Bell isn't quite the answer you're painting, judging from the "Enough Compression Already" thread.. From the sounds of things, Bell is worse than Shaw. Post 287 on page 20 lists various bitrates for Bell "HD" channels. Not a pretty picture (for comparison, at three per QAM256, Shaw is about 13). Which is why MPEG4 is on Bell's horizon. They have no choice. In the meantime, Bell's customers are getting HD-lite. Not only subscribers with problems, but every subscriber.

From reports in the various Digital Home sub-forums from people with access to all three, StarChoice apparently has the best HD, with Shaw next, and then Bell. There are exceptions of course, as we can clearly see from the screenshots you and jfplay provided.

Point is, it's wrong to presume your lousy picture is indicative of what Shaw HD is everyone else, unless you think we're all blind. Why would we all put up with it if our picture was that bad? Consequently, as Nanuuk said above, it's wrong to make blanket generalizations based on a problem picture.
Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as it appears. This is because Shaw get all of it's HD and digital channels from Starchoice/Shaw Broadcast Services (with the possible exception of local OTA channels). Currently Starchoice maintain 3 HD channel per transponder (with the exception of HDNET and A&EHD which are 2 per transponder), with each transponder currently having almost the bandwidth of a single cable QAM 256 channel.

If you're seeing really significant macroblocking or distortion then it would be useful to go into the diagnostics menu (power off STB and hit Select), go into In-Band Status and look at the 5 second error counts for correctable and uncorrectable errors. Definitely if you are getting uncorrectable errors you likely have a cable signal or noise ingress problem.

It could also be that Shaw is using different compression levels in different local areas? I'm not sure if they actually have the infrastructure to recompress HD locally, though.

I tried that quite awhile ago.

Everything was in the normal range and no error counts.

Same here - all of my levels are fine and I'm getting ZERO errors, correctable or otherwise.

I'm thinking the fact that we're in apartments has something to do with it, but my building is newly renovated with all brand new cabling, so I'm really not sure what that has to do with anything. I would suspect that if the apartment was the issue, I would be seeing low signal levels or errors, which I'm not.

Shaw doesn't seem to really care about their HD quality, seeing as I can't get any where with them. They just blame my TV set, suggesting that perhaps it's an EDTV set rather than HD. Nothing like being treated like an idiot...

I'm going to have to take back everything I said in this thread... after seeing DiscoveryHD getting worse and worse day by day I finally thought to check the diagnostic screen and saw 10-100,000 5-second uncorrectable errors. Well I knew something was up now... after 30 minutes of testing and thinking about it I tracked down a bad splitter. I swapped it with a new one and DiscoveryHD is perfect.

It's really weird that I initially had problems with only one single HD channel (all the rest were perfect) but when DiscHD really went bad and then two SD digital channels (2 and 10) started breaking up I decided to investigate.

I finally got fed up and scheduled a service call.

The CSR went through all the usual BS fixes, anything to avoid costing the company money on the call...even when I told him I've tried every one of his fixes.

My tact now is to cost the company money. I want a number for the service call to reference in subsequent email correspondence. This will eb followed by scaling back the services I subscribe to with them.

I may switch over to Telus for internet. I'm pretty much fed up.

NBCHD (any affiliate) is unwatchable, as is UPNHD.

Wow what was with FOXHD West last night, like as soon as the game finished everything was just pixelating\macroblocking, it was unbelivable. BTW I'ved taken a look under that In-band status page, I've tried a number of SD channels and the 5 sec error count is also always 0, sometimes something between 1~10 may show up in the correctable area and then dissapear, never any uncorrectly. HD channels on the other hand, always have high number anywhere from 20~100 errors, it says its correctable, but why so many?? I do see macroblocking at times, is this why, but if it were, wouldnt those errors be uncorrectable?

Thanks

Same here - all of my levels are fine and I'm getting ZERO errors, correctable or otherwise.

I'm thinking the fact that we're in apartments has something to do with it, but my building is newly renovated with all brand new cabling, so I'm really not sure what that has to do with anything. I would suspect that if the apartment was the issue, I would be seeing low signal levels or errors, which I'm not.

Shaw doesn't seem to really care about their HD quality, seeing as I can't get any where with them. They just blame my TV set, suggesting that perhaps it's an EDTV set rather than HD. Nothing like being treated like an idiot...
I live in a Condo thats about 10yr old,, so i mean the cable is relatively new. When i was trying to hook up my STB using HDMI, it wouldnt work and Shaw was blaming the cable, the tv, w\e they could find right.. after much convincing that 2 cables and 3 tv's did the same, they changed the box and voila it was fixed. Remember this, most shaw techies use Telus internet at home, no joke. Wonder why?? haha

merve04... what is your FOXHD station? Mine (Victoria BC) is KCPQ-Seattle and it was flawless after the game. I watched House without any issues.

i have slight pixelation in fast moving scenes on all HD channels, it wasn't enough to complain but last week a re-aranged my basement and cleaned everything up. I decided to call up shaw and ask if they would re-wire my house to remove any upstream splitters and replace the old cables that are thin.

My house has had reception problems in the last 6 months and i've had 2 of shaws servicement look at the house. Both of them looked at the mess of cables and how thin they were and all they did was boost the signal. They told me if I do get problems call shaw and ask for a re-wire and they will gladly do it for me.

After cleaning the basement and moving everything around i figured i'd give calling shaw a shot. I got 1 other TV re-wired for future HD service so when i hook up a HD box to it I won't get bad pixelation, and the shaw guy re-wired my HDTV.

Overall, it was mostly a waste of shaws time. Other than the fact that I pay shaw a lot of money for their service and have been a long-term customer, I thought that a service call would make it that much better. That being said there IS an improvement, but not as much as I hoped. sometimes the macroblocking can get to me and make me a little frustrated but I can live with it.

I considered switching to BEV for their HD, before trying out shaw HD, but after seeing some problems my grandfather ran into I'm kind of glad I didn't. I posted in the new channel discussion my grandfathers BEV issues and I don't really want to repeat them. But to make it simple and short.. I'd rather have my problems I have than the problems my grandfather has.

On the subject of macroblocking and signal, I'm sure with time this problem will get fixed better. Hopefully shaw updates their software to support newer codecs. Maybe part of the macroblocking is the infrastructure in the immediate neighbourhood and I would like to assume that newer neighbourhoods would have better signal than older? I know shaw will be replacing a line in our front yard this spring because when they ran lines for digital about 8 years ago (i'm giving a rough guestimate) they ran the line so close to my grass they killed it. We are doing landscaping this year (summer) and its not our fault that some shaw guy didn't put the line low enough. So maybe if the cable gets cut up by a rotertiller I'd do the neighbourhood a favor and give them new cable and better signal.

and no, I'm not an *******.. We have complained to shaw that it did kill our grass and it was too high and they did nothing about it.