Pixelation in tv reception

I use an HD antenna for my tv.

Even when the antenna signal is showing good to excellent, I still get irritating "pixelation" in the picture.

Doing a channel rescan does not help.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

This never happened with analog TVs.

Andy

Reply to
Andy
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Digital is different than analog. It takes more signal for digital as a general rule. Analog will fade in and out, sometimes even from an airplane going over. If a digital signal is not received at 100% you will get the pixelation. It is an either on or off condition where analog will just fade. Sometimes on the old analog you would see what is called a ghost. Where one picture will seem to overlay another but be an inch or so to the right. This is when 2 signals arrive at different times. If this hapens with digital, you may get the pixelation.

There is nothing special about a HD antenna. Just advertising hype. It is the same as the old UHF antenna.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

What you are seeing is the digital OTA TV equivalent to the "snow" seen on old-school analog TV.

The pixelation can be caused by more than a weak signal at your antenna. Distortion anywhere along the digital path can cause it.

It does occur sometimes on my Comcast cable TV, but not very often.

Reply to
reedh

Hi Andy,

If you are getting good signal strength and providing nothing temporarily walked in front of the antenna that would decrease your signal, then what you are experiencing is an issue with the signal coming from the TV station.

The way HD works is that they try to save on bandwidth by "compressing" the digital signal. What this means is that they scan the data for repeats and create a table of repeats. Then they send the table. Your end then recreates the repeats based on the information in the table.

This works well, unless there are few repeats or there is a lot of changes in the data all at once that won't fit down the pipe, then they just drop the extra data and you get your "pixelation".

Drives me nuts when Arron Rodgers is about to pass and it getting chased by someone.

There is nothing wrong at your end.

-T

Reply to
T

I second that. They are useless at VHF

-T (Former RF Design Engineer)

Reply to
T

In retaliation for all the cord cutters, the cable tv companies are sucking the digital signal out of the air so you'll have to abandon your antenna and subscribe to their cable.

Reply to
Ryan Broberts

Not gonna happen. :-)

Andy

Reply to
Andy

It sounds ridiculous that anything less than 100% results in pixelation.

Andy

Reply to
Andy

In a word: Netflix! Plus, Viki and Drama Fever.

Way cheaper than cable!

I don't watch any broadcast TV anymore, except Packers games. I can't stand commercials.

Reply to
T

I hate commercials too. I have Comcast cable with X1 DVR and DVR all I watch so I fast forward through all commercials. Netflix is great and can be shared as long as not in use by maybe 3 viewers at one time. They do not need to be in the same home or state for that matter.

Reply to
Frank

t irritating "pixelation" in the picture.

It doesn't have to be 100% signal strength. It doesn't even have to receive all the data correctly, there is error correction built in. But when it de grades enough that there are unrecoverable errors, then it shows up as pixe lation. With an analog system it showed up as a less than perfect picture o r snow. Also, with HD any imperfection is going to be more noticeable than on a low resolution one.

If this was working, but suddenly isn't, could be a cabling problem, poor c onnection, etc. If it's always been marginal then a better antenna and/or l ocation could help.

Reply to
trader_4

Not exactly true:

A digital signal is error corrected. Something less than 100% can still result in a 100% clear picture.

Only when the error threshold is exceeded do you see visible symptoms.

Nothing ridiculous about it.

Reply to
Dan Espen

Try making your own ..

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Are you viewing on a modern TV or through a HD-analog adaptor ? John T.

Reply to
hubops

Modern TV.

Reply to
Andy

Don't blame the cable companies, the digital signal is being sucked out of the air by Trump and Putin.

Reply to
Bob B

Per Andy:

My first antenna was "HD" (Channel Master 4228), then I got the pixellation issues (in this case I think it was a neighbor's tree having grown into the signal path) and, coincidentally learned that "HD" means nothing in the context of OTA antennas.

I left the "HD" in place - strapped to the chimney:

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But supplemented the "HD" with one of these Bad Boyz:

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mounted on my garden shed and aimed at the antenna farm that supplies virtually all of our local TV channels:
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The Windgard is *Huge*, but does the job.

Per

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that antenna farm is less than 35 miles away - looks like about 15...

Now my TV's "Antenna" input is still connected to the old "HD" Channel Master, but my Tivo-On-Steroids PC application that is connected to SiliconDust digital tuners gets all it's input from the monster Winegard HD7084 and life has been good.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

Per Frank:

I am strictly OTA, but get the same effect using a Tivo-on-Steroids app called "SageTV".

It even has an add-on that claims to automagically skip over commercials, but it's so easy to just hit the 60-second jump and then a few 10-second jumps that I never bothered to look into it.

It's been at least five years since I have seen or heard more than a few seconds of *any* TV commercial.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

Oh come on now Bob. What a silly claim. EVERYONE knows it is Bush's fault!

:-)

Reply to
T

As a retired scientist, I did some experimentation.

Using a piece of foil about 8 x 11 inches, I laid it on top of my indoor antenna in different positions.

It increased the signal strength to good for ALL channels except 13.

Rotating the antenna fixes channel 13.

Have yet to see any pixelation. :-)

Andy

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Reply to
Andy

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