No problems here. Hawks/Edmonton was great HD. Too bad the Flames/Blues was upconvert.

Actually, after watching the Oilers-Hawks and then the Flames-Wild tonight I'd have to concur that TSN is looking pretty bad.

The Canucks-Oilers game on SNET looked worlds better and that's not usually the case.

On the Flames game tonight if Backstrom moved on a closeup shot to grab his water bottle his jersey became a beautiful work of blocky abstract art.

I'm also averaging anywhere from 5-7 audio drops per hour. If I watched commercials the total would be higher, I'm sure.

noticed lots of audio drop lately...

I am getting tons of audio drops on TSN lately. IT used to be a pretty good channel for audio drops and Fox was the worst for me.
Now Fox is pretty good and TSN is horrible..
I phoned Shaw and they said I should not be getting any audio drops.
For me and from what I have read and heard from friends 'audio drops" have been a part of Shaw HD since its inception.
We have had good times with it and bad over the many years I have had a HD PVR.
But never totally gone.
When talking to the Shaw rep he said that it is totally fixed????
Not at this house!

we're watching ch 207 WDIVD in winnipeg right now, DEAL OR NO DEAL and holy crap is it ever bad, i tried thew rewind thing, and it's definitely a SHAW bandwidth problem, not hardware.

called today to request a new box, they wanted to try RESETTING the box from their end 1st, so i'll call again tomorrow and get someone to come out and swap boxes.

we have the DCT3416, is the DCT6416 a newer box?

if i have a choice, which should i get?

The 3416 is actually a newer box. It has a digital tuner and no analog tuner. The 6416 has both a digital and analog. Essentially, they function the same; however, if you have a 3416, I would want a 3416 as a replacement.

DEAL OR NO DEAL is not filmed in HD.

DEAL OR NO DEAL and holy crap is it ever bad

Yes anything that has black bars on both sides is 4:3 aspect ratio and is not HD. HD is only 16:9 aspect ratio.

I have noticed myself tons for lack of a better term of macroblocking on most to all HD stations.
I was watching discovery HD last night and the level of blocking was horrible.
I can't remember what thread but I tried rewinding back when i had a audio dropout to see if the sound came back and it didn't so its definitively a Shaw issue and not my DCT.

I noticed the macroblocking was quite bad on the CBCHD broadcast of Finding Nemo. Any sort of splashing or fast movement with groups of fish were really tough to watch.

Hi, I'm just 'piping in' to assure Shaw that I am still out there and continue to be PISSED OFF!

I continue to be astonished that a company with the extensive resources of Shaw cannot solve their HD picture-delivery issues.

I continue to be skeptical about the effort that Shaw is making.

I continue to wonder if some consumer law is not being contravened.

I continue to not be able to entertain my friends with a consistently good-quality HD broadcast.

What the hell are we paying for?

My next step, which I will begin today, is to contact many of the big U.S. cable companies, let them know what I am tolerating, and ask them if they have similar problems and, if they had or have, what they have done, or are doing, to correct it.

I will then report my findings back to this forum. Wish me luck!

so the audio drops are not a hardware problem that i should be concerned about? i was worried it was my refurbished PVR or my TV.

here's a pic of the banding i get across the top of some channels:
http://img409.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img4784ff1.jpg

and yet, the channel 1 up (both on HD channels coming in 4:3 size), the picture does not have that. go figure.

brucered... I had the same banding / noise issue on the top of some of my channels / programs on my Toshiba Regza. It turned out to be a setting on the TV that fixed it. In my video settings the "theatre" setting was set to "Native". When I changed it to "Natural", the problem was solved. Try playing around with some of the TV screen mode settings.

I am getting tons of audio drops on any channel we watch, it seems to be every twenty minutes or so. It is definetly shaw because even recorded programs on my Pace pvr are droppping sound!! any ideas??

Just wondering if the Motorola HDPVR has problems with timers with some audio chipsets. I experience some audio drop (not a lot and not frequent) using hdmi for digital audio direct to my tv. This makes the tv do the d-a conversion, and should in theory remove the load from the Motorola pcm on the STB.

Having done computer card based audio recording for many years I have often seen audio drop caused by PCM timers not being synchronized between two devices. If the timer bits are constantly being reset or have not got the priority needed then trouble can occur. Consumer grade Sound Blaster cards are especially notorious for having these kinds of issues.

Perhaps changing over to rgb cables and using the optical audio connections could help.
The other option is to let the PVR's PCM do the d-a conversion and go to two channel stereo with rgb for video and stereo rca for audio.:eek:

I use optical to my receiver and experience audio drop outs frequently.

I believe digital home did a big survey on the audio drop outs last year.

In short as far as I know it happens on all HD boxes, regardless of ones setup.

Perhaps if people started calling in everyday requesting a credit for their audio drop outs then shaw would listen.

Until we find a way to make it affect their profits, I don't think we're going to see a solution.

...In short as far as I know it happens on all HD boxes, regardless of ones setup...

Correct, and I have totally given up on the issue after going through tons of service calls, techs at my house replacing cable and connections...etc. Had made one last complaint about it with the threat of jumping ship a while back and got a DCT3416 I (free 6 month rental with option to buy for 1/2 price, free HD service). Still have sound drops on this box hooked up to my new sharp with RCA audio cables. Even had sound drops on my 14" CRT old TV with a DCT 2500 box....It ain't me or my equipment.

Please do complain. Won't fix the problem but you can get some free stuff if you can tough it out with Shaw.

Until we find a way to make it affect their profits, I don't think we're going to see a solution.

Exactly what I did. I didn't even bother with the freebies. I called and cancelled Shaw. 3 or 4 months after purchasing an HD-PVR outright. I didn't care.

I get my TV from 'other' sources now. Not Satellite either. And it's completely automated. I don't have to do a thing except click on the icon in Windows Media Player.
Also, it's great having my computer connected to my tv.

Screw you Shaw. MAYBE if you fix your stuff I'll come back, but not until then.

Correct, and I have totally given up on the issue after going through tons of service calls, techs at my house replacing cable and connections...etc. Had made one last complaint about it with the threat of jumping ship a while back and got a DCT3416 I (free 6 month rental with option to buy for 1/2 price, free HD service). Still have sound drops on this box hooked up to my new sharp with RCA audio cables. Even had sound drops on my 14" CRT old TV with a DCT 2500 box....It ain't me or my equipment.

Please do complain. Won't fix the problem but you can get some free stuff if you can tough it out with Shaw.
I have noticed that the American HD channels are subject to audio drop more than CBC and Discovery, my suspicions are that the American HD feeds are being converted and recompressed thus the tendancy to drop audio. The MPEG2 codec is geared to drop audio first if there is a stream conversion lag. I guess the thinking was that you are going to see what the actor is saying then your brain will fill in the rest...causes real fun though if the dialogue is off camera! I think we should go back to radio drama and forget tv then dialogue would have meaning again and your brain could fill in the pictures. I think we all need to go fishing and get the he-el-el away from the HD idiot box for a while.

Having experience audio drop with studio audio D-D transfers my suspicion that some of the audio troubles the Motorola 6412 III with Shaw's HD signal experiences is with the timer bits. My latest tweak has just confirmed this to be the case.

I set the 6412 to pass through digital audio through the HDMI rather than the factory default AUTO setting. This means that the digital audio signal is just sent through with the decode lock bits removed and not pre-processed at all through the stb's pcm. In essence I am making sure that the pcm on the TV is the only one to require set timing bits.

I ignored the warning that I might lose audio and/or video and guess what it works just fine. The dts 5.1 signal seems to have no trouble now.

I hope this helps cure the audio dropouts otherwise I will start giving Shaw a piece of my mind. I am a Classical music listener and would be ticked right off if they are still screwing up the audio feeds! PBS still has some very good classical broadcasts that I would like to see and hear full throttle.:o

EricReesor... I truly hope that works, but a quick test might be to go to TSN HD and you may witness a dropout... I hope not, but these vicious gremlins lurk and rear their ugly heads in an unpredictable manner.