Charter Cable, The Golf Channel, and Network Coverage - a little venting

[Old1964]

Ever since I upgraded to HD for charter cable my image and sound has been intermittent. The image freezes several times an hour and the sound cuts out (as it is doing today).

I called Charter - they said it was not their issue, but an issue with The Golf Channel's technical abilities.

Now, after they have partnered with NBC to cover tournaments, I am getting some of the same $hit....

It's bad enough that Johnny Miller blathers on incessantly. My luck, the sound never cuts out when he is talking about something that he knows everything about.

Is anyone else having this problem with their HD?

[clubchamp]

Is your TV 1080p? I know that esp with the golf channel I have to back my tv down to 1080i or 720p. If I leave it on 1080p it gets pretty choppy but the sound never cuts out.

[Old1964]

Nah, I have a 780 , but thanks for that thought though.

[turtleback]

I have directv with HD and a 1080p TV, but all of the channels come in at 1080i except pay per view movies which come in at 1080p.  With that set-up I've had none of the problems you cite.

[Clambake]

I can pretty much guarantee your problem is with Charter and not TGC.    TGC has one feed that is provided to all the multichannel carriers including Charter, Cox, Time-Warner, DIRECTV, Dish, etc.    It is a fairly uncompressed digital feed that is distributed by fiber to each of these carriers.    The carrier then takes that signal and their own video compression equipment reduces the bandwidth to what they feel is necessary for their network: they scale the video, do noise filtering, MPEG compression using most likely MPEG2 or H.264 standards, and then multiplex it with other channels.     Your set-top box then decompresses this signal and converts it for output to your TV, with scaling to match your TV's resolution.

The symptoms you describe are most likely caused by insufficient buffer management in your Charter set-top box.    I've seen that a lot of the cable set-top boxes will use a minimum amount of memory for video decompression, and the memory management in the box gets kind of swamped over time - it has to reset the buffer and start over, and this will cause a video freeze and audio drop out.     I used to work with a large satellite direct broadcast operator, and this was something we worked very hard at so that the customers did not experience this problem.   In our comparison testing, we found our competition usually didn't put as much memory in their box and also ran their video compression much more loosely, further exaggerating the problem.

Keep complaining to Charter.   Their CTO is Marwan Fawaz, and you could always send a letter direct to him - constructively complaining directly to the executive responsible is sometimes very effective.    Or you can switch to DIRECTV!

[Old1964]

Thanks so VERY MUCH Clambake!

Your answer was exactly the kind of answer I was looking for. Your technical knowledge will give me something to use in my appeal for better service. God knows I'm paying top dollar!

Thanks again.

Originally Posted by Clambake

I can pretty much guarantee your problem is with Charter and not TGC.    TGC has one feed that is provided to all the multichannel carriers including Charter, Cox, Time-Warner, DIRECTV, Dish, etc.    It is a fairly uncompressed digital feed that is distributed by fiber to each of these carriers.    The carrier then takes that signal and their own video compression equipment reduces the bandwidth to what they feel is necessary for their network: they scale the video, do noise filtering, MPEG compression using most likely MPEG2 or H.264 standards, and then multiplex it with other channels.     Your set-top box then decompresses this signal and converts it for output to your TV, with scaling to match your TV's resolution.

The symptoms you describe are most likely caused by insufficient buffer management in your Charter set-top box.    I've seen that a lot of the cable set-top boxes will use a minimum amount of memory for video decompression, and the memory management in the box gets kind of swamped over time - it has to reset the buffer and start over, and this will cause a video freeze and audio drop out.     I used to work with a large satellite direct broadcast operator, and this was something we worked very hard at so that the customers did not experience this problem.   In our comparison testing, we found our competition usually didn't put as much memory in their box and also ran their video compression much more loosely, further exaggerating the problem.

Keep complaining to Charter.   Their CTO is Marwan Fawaz, and you could always send a letter direct to him - constructively complaining directly to the executive responsible is sometimes very effective.    Or you can switch to DIRECTV!

[DarkPrince]

One quick fix when the audio cuts out is to pause, then hit play, that usually fixes it. I've got charter and I've just randomly figured out that that works.  No idea about the choppy video though.