Sparklies...

[GadgetRick]

Has anyone noticed the sparklies getting worse lately? I was watching the History Channel last night (amoung other channels) and it was REALLY bad. I'd not noticed them on the History Channel before but had on the other channels I was watching. I've gotta say this is one VERY annoying problem as I don't just watch HD programming. I tend to watch the History Channel quite a bit (I'm a Modern Marvels junkie) as well as a few other non-HD channels and I'm concerned this problem hasn't been fixed and seems to actually be getting worse.

Anyone notice this?

The Rickster

 

[slffl]

Yeah, I noticed it has been worse the past couple of days. I'm hoping it has something to do with them trying to fix it .

 

[The Stone Man]

The only time I ever get the sparklies is when I open the main menu, and the picture shows as the small square in the upper right hand corner. No matter what channel I am on, the sparklies appear in the little picture. When I exit out of the menu, the sparklies go away. Weird.

 

[cameron119]

The only time I ever get the sparklies is when I open the main menu, and the picture shows as the small square in the upper right hand corner. No matter what channel I am on, the sparklies appear in the little picture. When I exit out of the menu, the sparklies go away. Weird.

Your TV may be better at filtering the large picture. I know when I'm using RF or Composite, my digital comb filter clears a lot of that junk up with both Voom and analog cable (which also has a few sick C-band LNB's in my area). However, when the picture is scaled for PIP or a IPG, the comb filter isn't as effective for the window. Nor are any of the other screen effects.

As far as the sparkles, that's probably a result of the sick C-band LNB on their analog feeds. Notice that a lot of the SD's and ALL of the HD's don't have those symptoms. It's because those are received digitally or are on a different LNB.

There is no encoder that is designed to introduce analog noise.

 

[GadgetRick]

Hmmm...

I think you mentioned this in another post Cameron. Do you know if anyone at Voom knows about this possible cause?

The Rickster

 

[cameron119]

I think you mentioned this in another post Cameron. Do you know if anyone at Voom knows about this possible cause?

The Rickster

I guarantee Wilt Hildenbrand is familiar with the effects of a failing LNB. His engineers may not be aware of it right now, or they may not see a great interest in correcting the issue as of yet.

My local cableco is still using a bad LNB. Comedy Central is purely unwatchable thanks to the sparkling.

 

[Commandline]

History Channel

You'll see me around here about this too:

The History Channel is experencing problems with there uplink. I have a C-band and am from the C band community. We have the sparkles on our dishes as well. Voom reuplinks the C band VC2 signal to their sat Rainbow-1. The sparkles seem to be more prolific on Voom, and this may be caused by a failing LNB or a under aligned dish. I feel it's the later of the two, for they are also experiencing sparkles on many of there analog reuplinked channels as well.

 

[GadgetRick]

Gettingn worse?

It seems to be getting worse lately. Either that or I'm just getting very irritated with it.

Why is it I didn't have the sparklies on DTV (just overall horrible pq) and I have it with Voom? Just because of a possible misaligned dish or bad lnb? You say there are sparklies with c-band though. I would think dtv, Dish and Voom would all have at least some sparkiles then?

The Rickster

 

[Augurr]

Odd, I don't see sparklies on any channel. Except for my local ABC where there is a sparkly line running across the top border of the picture, but I think that is because they are broadcasting it in 4:3, and the picture is slightly disfigured(like a bad computer monitor where you gotta adjust the geometry to get a straight side). That's the only place I notice anything. But that is probably the locals problem since they just started broadcasting anything but the weather info OTA.

Augurr

 

[Sean Mota]

I've got confirmation from Wilt that he is aware of this problem with Cartoon Network, Headline News, TLC, BET, NICK, CNN and History (too mention a few SD channels). He told me that this problem is being worked on.

 

[GadgetRick]

Thank goodness...

Glad to hear someone is working on the problem. Now, about my larger dish...

The Rickster