Picture on ABC has horizontal lines

[dcampano]

This problem started occurring last night, and I am wondering if anyone has experienced anything like this. I started noticing lots of horizontal lines and artifacts when watching a show that taped yesterday on ABC, and at first I assumed that it was just an error in the show. But my LiveTV and Recordings on ABC all are having the same problem (lots of horizontal artifacts and lines). The problem didn't start until yesterday. I have recordings from 2 days ago on ABC that didn't have any problems like this. When I watch LiveTV, I can switch from ABC to any other channel, and the distortion is ONLY occurring on this one channel! Does anyone have a clue what could be happening. FYI, I am running a 2.8GHz server w/ 1GB RAM, and a PVR-500. Thanks!

[mdmint]

How do you receive your TV signal? (airwave, analog cable, digital cable etc.) It may just be a bad broadcast signal coming to you for ABC. Have you compared how ABC views directly to TV bypassing Sage encoder?

[waynedunham]

As was asked, are you getting analog, or digital cable, and what provider?

I have Comcast analog and the picture on the lower channels, 2, 3, 4 have horizontal lines that slowly scroll downscreen. This is on every TV, and recording, sometimes worse, sometimes a bit less, but always there.

At another location they have digital, with 2 TV's in remote rooms sans box so they are getting analog on those TV's and they have the same problem, but only on the sets without the Digital box.

Comcast doesn't want to hear about it, they just try to get you to switch to digital cable, which doesn't have the lines.
That's not going to happen for me anytime soon since I'd need about a dozen boxes and my last name isn't Gates! I have 3 tuners in Sage, 4 ReplayTV's, 2 VCR's, 2 ATI TV capable video cards, and 2 TV's.

[dcampano]

I am receiving my signal through analog cable, and my provider is Charter. ABC comes in on Channel 9. I can see slight distortion when I bypass Sage, and hook up directly to the TV, but it is much worse going through Sage. Thanks for your responses!

[dcampano]

I may have found some help in this post http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ed=1#post88649

I'll post back later!

[kny3twalker]

I have Comcast analog and the picture on the lower channels, 2, 3, 4 have horizontal lines that slowly scroll downscreen.

this is a ground loop problem

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by kny3twalker

this is a ground loop problem

Any idea how to fix it? I had the problem a while back on audio in the sub woofer channel when I hooked all my video equipment into my AV receiver and a Mondial Antenna Ground Isolation Circuit plugged into the source cable coming in cured that. It doesn't have any effect on the video however. I did just pull out the manual for it, and it is designed for ground induced noise caused by Cable or antennas. It doesn't specifically mention any benefits for video noise and only mentions "noise" in general.

I've tried it unhooked and it made no difference in the video signal, but the hum in the subwoofer returned with it unplugged.

I've also tried various boosters/attenuaters with no change, or even worse effects.

[kny3twalker]

just googled ground loop
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/g...oop/index.html
http://www.smr-home-theatre.org/Ground-Loops/
http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...uct_id=270-054

[waynedunham]

After I wrote my message I did the same thing and "Googled" ground loop. I also went through Vivisimo which I find sometimes easier to manage with searches that give lots of hits. Vivisimo ( vivisimo.com ) puts a grouping on the left side of the page which categorizes the hits into subsections. Makes it easier to drill down to the pertinent information.

At any rate, it sure looks like the solution may end up being very expensive since my video system entails 3 rooms, 4 ReplayTv's, my Sage machine, main computer, 2 VCR's, 2 DVD players, AV system, etc, etc.
From what I could gleen from the information worst case is I have to deal with each component. Way expensive!!!!!