channels pixelated

[maximumm]

What causes some channels to break up freeze and loose signal I having trouble with my cable channels they very pixelated, but the signal is very good. could be the cable going form the pole outside the house that is causing the problems. their is no loose connection and the box is the 3250hd or could it be a amp issue it only happening on one tv but the others are fine.

[ebo]

My guess is that the pixelation is only on SDV channels. I don't know if you can tell which channels are SDV, but the broadcast channels are not, and if you post a list of problem channels here I'm sure someone can tell you.

Some hardware is showing pixelation on SDV channels when channels are added to or dropped from the stream containing the channel you're watching, i.e. when your neighbors change channels. See Hurnik's post, "SDV Pixellation with TA" in the Cable Boxes, DVRs, & CableCard section and follow his link to a discussion on the TiVo Community Forum. Pay attention to recent posts there by SCSIRAID, who is working with TWC in NC to try to figure out the problem.

Also, I suspect that TWC is overbooking SDV by assigning popular channels to it, channels that someone is watching nearly all the time. SDV only works well if the channels that use it are sufficiently unpopular that only a small percentage of them have to be fed at any one time. If the bandwidth is being used up by channels that must be fed nearly all the time, the only recourse is to reduce the bitrate on each channel and that can lead to pixelation or worse, particularly on fast-changing scenes.

[Chris Miller]

The cable companies are viewing SDV as a free lunch, pump out more channels without increasing the bandwidth. With most of the channels now on SDV, this problem is just going to get worse.

Jan 18, 2010 14:03:36 GMT -5 ebo said:

....Also, I suspect that TWC is overbooking SDV by assigning popular channels to it, channels that someone is watching nearly all the time. SDV only works well if the channels that use it are sufficiently unpopular that only a small percentage of them have to be fed at any one time. If the bandwidth is being used up by channels that must be fed nearly all the time, the only recourse is to reduce the bitrate on each channel and that can lead to pixelation or worse, particularly on fast-changing scenes.