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New Contributor III
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Poor quality video with minibox on non-digital TV
I have a Panasonic 32" CRT model with coax input. Despite being 14yrs old, this TV has excellent video & audio with Cox basic cable. Once I insert the minibox (wall->minibox->TV), the video is noticeably degraded, with lots of 'jaggies' along edges and noise whenever the scene being viewed contains any type of horizontal line. All channels have this problem. HD with the minibox is worse than non-HD without the box. I have a 2nd minibox that I will try.
Tcox
New Contributor III
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I also have a 58" Panasonic flat panel with HDMI inputs. Setting this up with a 2nd minibox produces both video and audio noise for certain channels. The video noise consists of fine curved diagonal lines across the entire screen. For these same channels, the audio has random pops & clicks. These problems are not present without the minibox in place. I have to conclude that either the digital content contains noise or the minibox design is flawed.
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ChrisL
Former Moderator
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The pattern of symptoms you've described to me sound like there might be a ground hum or grounding fault of some kind interfering with the signal. Do you have an electrical outlet tester you can try plugging into different outlets around your home to check for faults?
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Tcox
New Contributor III
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For each TV, the power for the set and minibox comes from the same outlet. I have tested these with a general purpose outlet tester and there are no obvious faults. The entire house is quad shielded coax of recent vintage, and the house was recently rewired. As an engineer I understand that some equipment is more sensitive to noise sources, but I would not expect this of the minibox if properly designed. The main benefit of going digital should be greater immunity to noise, not less.
The 'jaggies' I mentioned for the CRT TV looked like what you see when viewing low-res images, or having a monitor set to a non-native resolution. Oddly enough, the infomercial channels don't seem to have the issue, but the news channels and PBS channels do. From that standpoint this noise seems to depend on specific content, and how it was encoded/decoded, but the same channels viewed on the large flat panel only show the fine line noise which also appears on every channel. This makes me think it is noise injected locally by the minibox.
I noticed during the first full day of operation that the minibox firmware had a new update, so there is a chance the issues will resolve themselves. BTW, is there a way to view the minibox firmware version?
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ChrisL
Former Moderator
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If that isn't the problem it may just be time to arrange for a technician to come out and take a look. If you need help getting that setup email us here at cox.help@cox.com so we may further discuss your account.
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Tcox
New Contributor III
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I tried different outlets with no improvement.
After a 2nd day of operation, all the audio problems are gone on both sets. The fine lines appearing on the flat panel are moire that are only visible when there is a uniform light colored background (white, tan, etc), and when standing within 3ft of the screen - way too close. The big clue is they shift when your position shifts. They seem to be reflection interference and not something to be fixed. It isn't an issue for normal viewing anyway.
On the small TV, about half the channels appear letterboxed for no reason, reducing a 32" image to 29" image, yet the guide still extends to the edges of the screen. The TV is too old to have aspect ratio correction, and I guess the minibox does not either.
For this CRT, the remaining issue is the video quality for certain channels, possibly only HD broadcasts. Fine edges will show flashing/sparkling as they move. This is most noticeable when straight edges move slowly on screen. Sparklies/jaggies will walk along the edges as they move. This would seem to be a result of the minibox conversion.
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