Cropped HD picture, Comcast, Pioneer Elite PRO-720HD

[dbottoms]

I've got a nagging problem I hope you can help me with. I know this board likes detail, so I'm going to give as much detail as possible. I'll spell out my equipment, then the problem, and finally what I've done so far to try to fix this. I'd appreciate any thoughts, suggestions, etc. especially if there is an explaintion or a work around.

Equipment:
Pioneer Elite PRO-720HD
Motorola DCT6200 HD Cable Receiver (with latest 7.15 bios)
Krell HTS 7.1 Pre/Pro
Straightwire Silverlink II Component video interconnects

Cable box is set for 1080i, 16:9, and I have 480 override set to 480P.

PROBLEM:
I switched from a DirecTV non-HD service to Comcast in May 2004. In August I bought the ATI HDTV Wonder for my PC and noticed a better picture from my PC than my high-end Pioneer Elite PRO-720HD RPTV. I started to suspect that my Comcast HD video was being cropped. Specifically, what I mean is that the edges are being chopped off. This is not black bars on the edges. This is more like a zoom problem. In my unscientific estimate it appears that the top and bottom is being cropped by 100 pixels, and the sides are being cropped by 60 pixels. This is a best guess because I have no way to measure this.

I've got Comcast's full service, and I'm getting ABC, CBS, NBC, Discovery HD Theater, PBS, Ideas!, INHD1 and 2, HBO HD, Cinemax HD, and Showtime HD. They've also recently added an HD Special Events channel that usually off (although I caught part of some college game last weekend...).

EVERY HD Channel has this issue. What's a bit unusual is that depending on the content the cropping is worse for non-HD stuff on these HD channels. For instance watching the local and evening news most of the time their logos are cropped in half or worse, and I rarely can see the ticker along the bottom. On obviously HD stuff, though, I can see a tad more but it's still cropped enough to make me concerned something is wrong.

I'm using component cables, as my Pioneer Elite RPTV does not have a DVI input. My Pioneer Elite with HD content only has one resolution and display mode, that is of 1080i (consistent with all/most RPTV CRT based sets), and a "Full" display setting. (For those not familiar with the Pioneer Elite RPTVs SDTV content can be stetched and contorted to fit the screen with "Natural Wide", "Cinema Wide", and "Zoom" which all are only useful with 480i/p signals.)

The Comcast HD Tuner (Motorola DCT6200) DOES have a DVI output, as well as component. According to Comcast both work fine; and they supposedly are not doing any special processing to limit the component analog video signal yet (more on that in a moment.)

Of interest, when I press the "TV" button on my Pioneer Elite RPTV remote, it switches from the HD content on the Component cables to the regular SD signal coming in from the RF COAX cable. With this method I appear to get the entire widescreen picture, but I have very deep black bars on all the edges. My best guess here is the HD box is deeply processing this image and adding the black bars. And the video quality is considerably lower than HD. But in this mode, I can clearly see the parts of the picture that are being cropped. It was useful to demonstrate this to the Comcast tech. (more below).

Note I pass the video through the Krell first, but I've witness the SAME cropping problem when I removed the Krell from the equation.

WHAT I'VE DONE SO FAR:
I've tried changing the Motorola DCT6100 menu from 1080i to 480p and 480i, and from 16:9 to the other 4:3 modes. Tweaking these either does no good or makes the zoom issue worse. If it is a setting on the cable box it's something I don't have control of.

So I called Comcast and an HD tech. came to see the problem. I have no clue if this guy knew his stuff or not. I've had plenty of bad experiences with Comcast and poorly trained staff. But this tech. was very nice at least. He supposedly immediately saw the cropping problem and immediately thought the Pioneer Elite was zoomed in. When we looked at the setup of the TV he could see that we couldn't change the display mode. It's locked into 1080i and on 'full'. He reviewed the Comcast Motorola DCT6100 receiver and found it was working perfectly (his words). Of note, it has the latest 7.15 bios, and a 'tcas3218" code of 32.18 (don't know what that is). Comcast tech. noted that my Upstream signal strength was very good at 47dB. He said anything below 50dB was good. He offered to swap the cable box for another one if I wanted but strongly recommended against it. He said that I needed to have the Pioneer Elite RPTV serviced becuase he believed it was a calibration issue since it was a zoom problem on all HD content. I asked if this was due to my not using DVI, and he said absolutely not. Today they aren't intentionally downgrading analog-only signals. He did warn that he's heard discussion that this may change "later this year" but I would imagine that was an unfounded warning since we know that hopefully our lawmakers are going to grandfather us into whatever changes the industry makes. (Am I being naive?) By the way, Comcast said that if I didn't get this resolved through my reseller that they'd come back and swap the box if I wanted.

Next I took his advice and called the fine folks at Ovation Audio and Video in Indianapolis where I bought the TV 2 years ago. These folks are the high-end big time retailer in the Mid-west. My sales consultant agreed to pop over to my house to see the problem (is there any better reason to buy from a local retailer than to get this kind of great customer service??). He sat down for about 30 minutes and we went through the problem as I saw it and flipped through channels. Just happened to be a Friday evening so we had plenty of HD content to choose from. ABC for instance looked nearly terrible because the Primetime news program was obviously not in HD. The ABC logo was contorted and ridding the edge of the screen. But Discovery HD was running its Chopper program which is supposed to be in HD. The Discovery logo was chopped off - nearly 1/3 of the logo on the right side, and the bottom was not visible. NBC had some sitcom on and its logo was crisp, but again ridding the bottom coner.

My Ovation sales consultant is certainly not a technical expert but an incredibly nice guy and I've worked with him for 8 years now so I do trust he wouldn't mislead me. He thought it was actually not necessarily the TV, or the Motorola, but the content at the source! This didn't hold water with me so I took him to my home PC with the ATI HDTV Wonder and we watched the same programs on my PC and we could clearly see what I believe I should be seeing on my TV! The local channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.) all looked crisp and was an appropriate wide screen. The NBC sitcom for instance had the NBC logo much closer to the center on my PC than on the TV. This what I'd expect from my TV. I didn't have Discovery, HBO, or other premium content on my PC of course so we couldn't do a true comparison of other channels. But based on this my Ovation sales consultant this back to their technical support department this past Monday. He consulted with one of their head experts who agreed that since the zoom issue appeared worse on non-HD content on these HD channels and the zoom issue wasn't necessarily consistent that it had to be the content at the source. He hasn't seen this first hand, so it's possible he was influenced by m Ovation sales consultant. He didn't have an explaination why the OTA content through my PC wouldn't share this problem though.

Note I can't take my PC and export the HDTV Wonder video to my TV sadly or I'd try that. It does have an S-video out, but when I tried it (using a 75 foot S-video card, ugh) it looked terrible so much it wasn't usuable. I can't get my PC out of my desk because of some other wiring I can't change for my business sadly.

My Ovation sales consultant has suggested that they would of course bring a tech. out to calibrate my TV but I don't want to pay that expensive fee unless I know its the problem. And they strongly feel it won't help since they feel it's the broadcast source. But as I've said this doesn't hold alot of water with me based on what I see from the RF Coax of the HD signals, and from my ATI HDTV card.

Also I'm worried why Comcast wouldn't warn me that it was the broadcast source instead of the TV?

My choices as I see it right now is to try to buy an HD Tuner and see what OTA HD looks like. This is money I don't want to spend considering I'm still not sure if this is a solution. I could also have Comcast come back out and swap the box out. And finally I could pay an Ovation tech. to come out and calibrate which they believe is a waste. Another possible option is I wonder if there are any ways to plug in some HD source?

Please if anyone has anything to contribute to this I'd really appreciate it.

Most sincerely,
Douglas Bottoms

PS - Kudos by the way goes to Comcast for giving Indianapolis the most HD content so far of any cable provider I think of any service area and so far for not charging me a dime for the tech. visits.

[akirby]

Can you say "overscan"?

Get it calibrated.

[Richard]

And they strongly feel it won't help since they feel it's the broadcast source.

Douglas,

I am very sorry to hear about this very unfortunate experience and all you have been through to resolve it providing us with a mini novel.

Your display is overscanning and this is well known within the independent calibration community. ISF calibration is highly recommended and will resolve your issue. For Indianapolis we have Ken Whitcomb listed on the ISF Forum. I suggest you give him a call as he will be able to assist you with your problem.

http://www.imagingscience.com/isf_resul ... status=CAL

Please keep us informed of your progress.

Thanks,

[dbottoms]

Great. At least this sounds like a simple problem to solve I hope.

So I've been in the dark about the 'magic' of calibration and so I've been reading all night about what Overscan is, and how calibration happens.

If it is okay I'd like to share a rather detailed website that seems to give in depth reading of the whole Calibration process. It goes well behond my knowledge but it's a good read for academic interest.

http://myweb.accessus.net/~090/how2adj.html#3.4b

So what frustrates me is why TV makers don't make it easier for me, the end user, to do some of these calibrations myself. Given the nasty overscan issue I apparently have leads me to believe my set was set way off; and perhaps not even tested at 1080i. So this brings me to my next question of are there any options available to me as an end user to access some of the calibrations myself? Granted I'm sure I can screw everything very easily. But in this day of Proto remotes, and PC TVs it looks like this type of calibration *should* become available to the end user much like it already has been for years on computer monitors...
Thanks to everyone for their time. I'll certainly report back.

[Richard]

it looks like this type of calibration *should* become available to the end user much like it already has been for years on computer monitors...

That is a completely different animal from your RPTV.

So what frustrates me is why TV makers don't make it easier for me, the end user, to do some of these calibrations myself.

Hmm... We calibrators have the same question for our access. It is not as easy as you might want to think...

Overscan is common as dirt and there a number of brands that do this excessively like Pioneer. To get the maximum results I recommend you let a professional do this for you.

Some very good reasons why you would not want to do this...

viewtopic.php?t=3282

Some places that support you going where you really should not tread...

viewforum.php?f=36

HD Library does not support end users attempting to enter the service menu and calibrate the display themselves. Using your favorite search engine you can find pleanty of places that will.

I can't tell you how many homes I have been in where somebody attempted to calibrate the display themselves and in the end simply traded one artifact for another. Call Ken...

Good Luck!

[dbottoms]

I realised I had purchased an extended service warentee and found my service contract. I then spoke with Mr. Rick Brauns, the general manager for service of Ovation - the high-end Audio/Video retailer in the midwest; and where I bought my Pioneer Elite PRO-720HD. He hadn't heard of this problem as I described it to him, but promised he'd speak with his "TV guy" and get back to me. He called later in the afternoon and his "TV guy" assured me this is something that they can easily fix under warentee. They said that the Pioneer is apparently forcing itself into the zoom aspect ratio for 1080i content. They were concerned that it wasn't overscan stating that overscan should be affecting all sources. The fact that the problem only exists for 1080i, and that the picture cropping is uniform on all sides suggests to them a calibration issue. They did say they may be able to fix this through the service menu (which suggests it may in fact be similar to overscan I'd say...).

So... the plan is they are coming on Tuesday at noon (EST) to dive in head first and it shouldn't cost me a dime. I guess compared to the ~$300 ISF calibration compared to the $350 extended service warentee I'm seeing some return on my investment. I think the Pioneer Elite has a 2 year warentee without the extended warentee so I'd still be covered since I bought only in March 2003. But if for whatever reason they can't fix this under warentee I'll definately call the ISF tech.... Hell $300 is cheaper than a new TV considering this is still a top CRT RPTV.

Sincerely,
Douglas

[Richard]

I am crossing my fingers for you. Let us know how it goes...

[dbottoms]

Just checking back in to report on my Pioneer Elite RPTV issue. In mid-December, Ovation (my retailer) agreed to fix the Overscan issue under warentee and sent out a support guy. It turned out I had a couple of weeks left on my original 2 year warentee, although, the extended warentee would have also included this they said. Kudos to my salesman, Mark Stella who is a God-send -- he is the most customer focused salesman I've ever met.

The Ovation provided technician was extraordinarily nice, but was obviously a complete noobie with calibrating Pioneers. He said he'd been with Ovation for 20 years and I have no doubts. But he also said he rarely gets calls on these Pioneers -- which I guess is a good thing right? I was a little discouraged that he had to read the Pioneer Elite maintenance manual while sitting in my family room. He did have some calibration equipment (signal generator, and another tool...) and was able to squish my picture horizontally and vertically so that it's 95% acceptible.

I tried to pay attention to the changes he was making, involving h-pos, v-pos, h-sync, v-sync, and something called Phase adjustement... Remember, these are based on my limited memory of watching over his shoulder. The picture now mostly fits within the viewable portion of the screen, save for a slight cut off on the right and bottom. I didn't see this until the evening after he left when we turned on Discovery HD again. I think the problem was during his visit he just used I think a movie on Cinemax HD so it's not clear to me if we had a good HD signal during the time he visited. Apparently, his signal generator cable for red apparently snapped as he was trying to plug it in, so he didn't use that much. I'm not surprised because it looked like it had been shot through a cannon.

My biggest complaint now, though is since this repair guy approached the TV as an Overscan repair issue, and not from a true calibrator or optimization, he didn't do much to make sure that the TV picture was perfect. This was free to me (save for taking a half-day vacation from work to meet him...) One other issue I think I see -- I didn't think about this at the time, but now I've noticed that on HD content, the corners don't seem to be able to sync up with the red, blue, and green. And when I use my convergence menu to try to sync that all up, I can't reach into the corners. My guess is this is a limitation of the Pioneer Elite, and why they probably by default from the factory had such a high overscan setting to begin with.

Let me preface this with saying that the resulting ghosting in the corners, especially the worse corners which are the upper two corners is not bad at all. You can't really see it with most content. Its really only visible on Letterboxed movies from Starz, or from Fox HD (Fox always has the vertical left and right black bars). But since I know they are there, I do tend to look for it... This is only in the top about 1 to 1.5 inches from the top mostly where the convergence doesn't seem quite right. Again since this was covered by the Overscan issue - I'd have to guess this was always a problem that I never saw.

One other strange behavior I've seen, on the far left side, about 4 inches from the bottom left corner, there seems to be a 'ripple' that is only about an inch square or so. I don't know the term to use, but it's like the picture isn't quite as smooth, but just in that place. Think of it as taking a piece of paper, and pinching it on one side, and then laying it down. It's mostly a flat paper, but you can see where the paper was pinched. It's virtually invisible with most HD content, but I do occationally see it usually with solid colors (like News broadcast graphics) near that area. This area was previously hidden from my view with the above mentioned Overscan.

So my question for this board is are these new issues I've highlighted a big enough issue to justify paying the $350+ to have a professional calibration? I struggle with that because money is a problem right now. But these issues certainly stink from a once $8,500 TV just 2 years ago... If I were to want to get one thing fixed it would be to have the TV shifted slightly to the left and up because on good HD content (like Discovery HD) their logo is right on the bottom corner. I've seen Discovery HD with their logo offset from the margin on other sets so I know that I still have a slight position issue. This is the one that bugs me the most.

By the way, regular TV, and DVDs look fantastic and I have absolutely no complaints.

Thanks again for the great suggestions.
--Douglas

[Grumpy_Bob]

Doug,

I also have a Pioneer, but just the regular one, not the Elite. I had the same problem. Richard did the ISF cal and it fixed it.

If it bugs you enough, then go ahead and get the calibration. Make sure the guy knows your complaints before he (or she) gets there, and is prepared. It took Richard two trips and probably 20 hours to fix mine, but it's right. My only regret, is that I cheaped out on one part, a part that I strongly suggest you get, since we have similar sets and similar problems, is a full grid convergence. That's where they place a model-specific grid over the screen and slowly, one by one, make absolutely sure that EVERY line is spaced equally, and located exactly where it's supposed to be. It costs more, like $100, but it's worth every penny, and I will have it done on mine during the next maintenance trip.