OT - TV adverts disrupt digi-box

[robgraham]

Sorry if this is Off Topic but there is such a pool of knowledge here that I'm sure someone will know the answer.

My mother's digi-box (Borders area are fully digital now) gets upset when the adverts come on - it's fine with BBC 1 and 2 but seizes up on the adverts on the other channels. I watched it yesterday and on the first round of adverts it frame locked every so often and made a clicking sound each time, but continued fine when the programme material came back on. On the second round of adverts it locked and didn't clear itself - would have done so seemingly if switched off and on again. I changed it for another box and the TV was OK.

I've brought it home to play with but what is there different about adverts on TV from normal transmission ?

Thanks Rob

[Adrian]

robgraham gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Probably the adverts are transmitted in a different aspect ratio, and the box is trying to shift - our TV does that, chucking up an on-screen display to tell you, so it's quite noticable. Seems to be most prevalent on C4.

[Jules]

Just to back that up a little, our (analogue) setup, hooked up to a cable TV box, often barfs when the ads come on - the aspect ratio changes and half the ad disappears off the right of the screen. Usually it doesn't come back again until a half minute or so *after* normal programming has resumed. Drives me nuts, it does...

[dennis]

Bit rates, aspect ratio, sound levels are the obvious differences.

[Fred Bloggs]

In article , robgraham writes

Had you bothered to even look, there is a suitable group called uk.tech.digital-tv which is active and has a bunch of knowledgeable posters.

[Harry Bloomfield]

That is odd....

We had a weird problem with the sound going off on ITV3 only and only during the ads. The really weird part was that certain ads for some products were not affected by the silence. Only one actual program was affected and that wasn't completely silent, we could hear all of the background sound, but none of the left or right.

Getting the box to rescan the channels fixed it.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It's a myth that ad levels are higher than all progs. They may be higher than some - but on ITV their *peak* level is actually lower than progs can be. Of course they may subjectively sound louder but that's not going to effect an STB.