HGTV

[Actor]

I hope this post is not considered too off topic but I find that this group to be one of the most technically competent on the web.

My kids bought me a digital TV for Father's Day, a 720p unit. Last week they followed up with a Blu-Ray player. Some observations.

Previous to HDTV when we were still watching analog we would experience occasional "freezes" of the picture/sound, which would last from a fraction of a second up to about two seconds. These were rare. Obviously the cable company is feeding us decoded digital signal. (We still are using the analog sets in some rooms of the house.) Just as obviously, these freezes were attributable to the cable company's equipment or to cable networks.

Since going digital the frequency of these freezes has increased. We can hardly watch a one hour show without experiencing one or two of them. One of them lasted about 10 seconds by my estimate.

As for the Blu-Ray player, it also plays DVDs. When playing DVDs the freezes are much more frequent, at least one every five minutes. Very annoying. The problem is not on the DVDs since I can watch these same disks on my computer with no problem.

My daughter's bf, who makes good money as a computer tech, says the problem is "cheap equipment." I.e., the TV/Blu-Ray can't keep up with the signal. Since these were gifts I really don't know what they cost but I'm fairly certain that the TV was under $500 U.S. and the Blu-Ray about $100.

We have watched one rented Blu-Ray disk and the problem did not seem as severe.

Another problem is aspect ratios, a real pain. The TV lets me select from 4 aspect ratios:

• Wide
• Zoom
• Cinema
• Normal

"Wide" seems to be for 16:9 hi-def signals. "Normal" is for watching analog; it windowboxes the picture. "Zoom" simply enlarges a 4:3 picture, cutting off the top and bottom. Haven't figured out what "cinema" is for.

The Blu-ray also offers four aspect ratios:

• 4:3
• 4:3 letterbox
• 16:9
• 16:9 full

I have the Blu-ray set for "16:9 full," which seems to work well if the TV is set to "wide."

Juggling aspect ratios is a pain. It seems to me that the state of the art is such that the selection of the proper aspect ratio should be automatic. In ten - twenty years it probably will be.

[Angus]

It does sound to me as if you're suffering from poor cable service and cheap equipment in the case of the blu-ray player.

If your analogue TV signal freezes, you correctly surmise your cable provider at some point in its transmission chain has a freeze which is passed on to you. If you have more freezes on digital TV, it could conceivably be your TV but I would still suspect poor cable service is it sounds like your service is sub-standard to begin with.

By contrast, fully aware I am in a different country, but I've enjoyed digital cable for over a decade and HD for 3 years. I would normally expect one or two brief freezes (less than half a second each) per DAY.

As for the blu-ray player, it does sound like it may just be a cheap product. My Blu-Ray player is hardly an esoteric machine....but it only freezes on home made DVDs which are alreadya few years old and have been left in the sun. Commercial discs (DVD, Blu-Ray, CD) never skip or freeze.

The problem you have with apsect ratios is a shame. Most TVs I've come across offer at the very least 16:9, 4:3 and a couple of zoom options....14:9 zoom is often a good compromise for watching old 4:3 material on a widescreen TV. Having said that, over here everything including SD material has been widescreen for so long that you have to go quite far back to find 4:3 material.

See if you can borrow another HDMI source from a friend, either a Blu-Ray player or an upscaling DVD player or perhaps a laptop or camcorder and see if you have problems when it is connected to your TV. If another source works out fine then it's not your TV...though any TV which cannot accept 1080i is again unusual in my experience (even those with 1440x786 native resolution will usually accept a 1080i input).

[Actor]

I want to thank Angus for his input.

I seem to have found a solution to all problems.

Blu-Ray disks do not seem to have the freeze frame problem at all.

The remote for the Blu-Ray player has a button labeled "HDMI reset." Pushing this button seems to eliminate the problem of freeze frames on DVDs. I'm not certain why but I have a theory.

• The HDTV receiver is a 720p unit but will display 1080p signals. All sources of digital video seem to be either 1080p or 480i so it is always converting 1080p or 480i signals to 720p for display.
• If you play a Blu-Ray disc the player will automatically output 1080p which the receiver converts to 720p for display.
• After playing a Blu-Ray disk the player remains in 1080p output mode. If you then play a DVD (480i) the Blu-Ray player converts it to 1080p which it feeds to the TV. The TV in turn converts it to 720p for display. Thus, when you play a DVD the signal gets converted from 480i to 1080p to 720p. Somewhere in all these conversions something in either the player or the TV cannot keep up and you get freeze ups.
• Pushing "HDMI reset" will, among other things, set the Blu-Ray players output to 480i. This eliminates one conversion and the system can keep up.
• Playing a Blu-Ray disk will automatically set the output to 1080p. You're OK as long as you watch Blu-Rays, but before you can watch a DVD you have to push "HDMI reset" again.