HDNet Test Patterns

[jrfuda]

I've seen test patterns listed on HDNet's site, but they're never in my Dish guide?

from HDNet's website:

HDNet Schedule for Tuesday, March 14, 2006
5:00 AM CT HDNet Test Patterns
Wonder how your home theatre is doing? Wish you had test patterns to help set it up? Well, HDNet is here to help. This short program will help you get the most out of your home theatre setup by providing you with the same professional test patterns HDNet uses to set their gear.

However, my Dish Guide does not list this (at least it didn't this morning).

Has anyone ever used them? I was thinking of DVRing and protecting it for later use.

Right now, my component inputs were setup for my DVD player using DVE and Avia, however, I think my HD channels have a bit of a red push. Since my DVDPlayer and HTPC have their own, additional color controls, I was going to tweak the set to the 622, and then compensate with the HTPC and DVDplayer's color controls to equal them all out.

 

[StevenD]

You will never see it in the guide as its only a 10 minute program. You have to setup a manual record.

 

[jrfuda]

Thanks, I've set a manual timer

 

[jrfuda]

Well, my manual timer went off as planned, but all it recorded ws the first 10 minutes of the agency. I read over at AVS Forums that the schedules over at hd.net are not always accurate. I'll try again the next time it's supposed to be on and see what happens.

 

[tawhite]

I tried it as well last week with the same result. Has anyone had any luck recording this?

 

[Dave Lewis]

I set a manual timer for this event and unfortunately had the experience of being awake during this time due of an illness. I had just turned on the set and saw the test pattern displayed before "The Agency" aired. I guess someone screwed up and didn't run the program according to schedule.

Last night I set a new timer for next week to capture the broadcast on Tue., Mar. 28th - 6:50 AM ET (3:50 AM PT).

 

[jrfuda]

I missed it to. It actually showed up in the Dish Guide for 05:50 CT Tuesday, but all that was recorded was the last 10 minutes of the Agency.

I set a manual timer to try and get it next week. Maybe I should set one timer for 0500-0510 CT and another for 0550-0600 CT, hopefully it will be broadcast in one or the other (HDNet's site says 0550, though).

On Sunday night CBS went haywire and we got a test pattern for about five minutes during what was supposed to be Cold Case (Cold Case ran late, so 60 minutes was still on, but - for some reason - we'd see a few frames of Cold Case once in a while, then we saw a test pattern for five minutes.) When this happened I ran over and whipped out the color filters that came with my DVE disc and demonstrated to the wife how to use them to adjust the sets color. To my suprise, the set was very near on target, which means my calibration of my component inputs for my DVD player are good for HDTV, despite them having different color matrices, and being from different sources. So, that leads me to beleive that any red push I'm seeing in my HD signal is intentional... Perhaps the directors wanted a more vivid picture?

 

[jrfuda]

I finally recorded the test patterns last week (Last Tuesday in March). There's a color/contrast/brightness patter, a convergence patter, and an overscan pattern.

I used my DVE filters and checked the color, which did not require any adjustments from my DVD settings (on the same input). The contrast/brightness (whit/black level) settings were good as well. So, the red push I've seen on some HD broadcasts (CSI Miami comes to mind) is all director-intended.

The convergence pattern was useless since I have an LCD TV.

The overscan pattern was both usefull and interesting. I was able to move my screen geometry around a bit to get it centered (I must've moved it since last I centered it with DVE - probably when I was messing with the HTPC and needed to see Window's Start menu). I also noticed that I have a wee bit more overscan on the sides of my screen than I do on the top and bottom - probably due to the screens bezel, which covers a few pixels all around.

I also viewed the patterns on some of my SD TVs on the 622s TV2 output, in particular a 17" Samsung LCD Monitor/TV I got this weekend and installed by the treadmill, as I got tired of falling off the treadmill trying to see the TV on the left side of the room it's in. It helped improve the picture of the monitor a bit, but boy does an SD picture look bad on an LCD monitor!