HDPVR HDMI green line

[kalynrg]

I just bought an HDMI cable to reduce the cable clutter on my connections. I have always run my PVR in 1080i and never had an issue. The HDMI cable caused a green line to appear on the right side of my screen and a "bevelled" distortion on the left side of the screen. Obviously I don't want my screen to have these.

After doing some research, I found a forum of people having similar issues with another provider. The only way to solve was to switch back to component cables or change the output of the box to 720p. I did the latter, but prefer the picture of 1080i.

Has anyone else had this issue? Anyone know if Rogers is actually looking at solving this problem?

I am in New Brunswick, so we are about 5 years behind Ontario in Rogers priority list. hehe

[57U]

This is not really a Rogers issue. You have your TV set to dot by dot (pixel/pixel) (no overscan). Without any overscan your TV will often show issues that are caused by the broadcast affiliate or minor variations in other equipment. You may be able to keep your HDMI connection, but switch to a stretch mode that has 1-2% overscan. You don't mention the make/model of your TV, but this should be accessed via the HDMI menu, or one of your stretch modes. See the following post on the topic:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=793236#post793236

Motorola has recently brought out new firmware that should eliminate this issue (it's been used by Shaw in western Canada. I don't know when Rogers will be rolling that out. This newer firmware also allows for an external HDD.

The Canadian forum link above should help you with any other issues that you may have.

[kalynrg]

Thanks for the extremely quick reply.

I did change the settings to remove the green line on the right, that was no big deal. But as for the distortion on the left, adjusting the screen size to remove that (it is about 2" wide) cuts a fairly significant amount of the picture. I don't really want to loose that much image.

Given the fact that it works perfectly in 720p (no line, no distortion), and that Motorola has released a firmware that fixes it, it does sound like an issue to me. Despite the fact that it is Motorola's STB that is the cause, I still consider it a Rogers issue since they force you to use only the hardware they choose and nothing else (with this being the only choice). And I do not have any faith that they'll actually implement the firmware fix unless they can disable the use of an external HDD.

[57U]

...I do not have any faith that they'll actually implement the firmware fix unless they can disable the use of an external HDD.I don't know why you'd think that. We've had the eHDD option available to us on our SA PVRs for years and Shaw has implemented the firmware in Western Canada with the eHDD option enabled.

The eHDD option was a limitation of the Motorola firmware (supplied by Motorola specifically written for each Service Provider) however, there's no reason that Rogers would not keep the eHDD option enabled. The previous firmware from Motorola also had a 160 GB HDD limitation, which is gone from the latest firmware.

Have you performed a recent cold reboot of the STB? See that and the following other tips: I have heard of the green line issue many times, but I haven't heard of any distortion issues. I believe there is an option in the menu to shift the picture that appears in the top right of the screen when viewing the IPG that can sometimes cause problems. Try shifting that.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=21274

I suggest you use the Canadian Website that I've linked to several times for any future information/discussion since it's tailored to Canada.

[kalynrg]

The external HDD just seems a little too "open" for Rogers.

The distortion I'm talking about literally looks like when you look into a beveled mirror or window. There is a distinct "line" down the left side of the screen, and the picture is shifted on the other side of the line. I did some searching and found a few discussions of similar issues.

I will definitely check out the site you've been linking to.

Thanks again. As always, you are quite helpful.