I've had this issue for a while (with overscan turned off so showing full image) where a white line is left on the right and bottom edge of the TV screen after going into and exiting red button content i.e. selecting News or similar and pressing yellow then text to exit, but have put up with it as you can just change channel and back to get rid of it. This should be fixed as it seems to be a general problem the box has with MHEG red button content, Echostar should really not rely on people having overscan turned on as many people don't now with HDTVs. Screenshots-

Red button index with data line at bottom

Exit red button close up

Exit red button wide

After the last update BBC TWO also no longer seems to give also in HD reminders on the info popup as BBC One does.

(edited for Olympic white line- BBC problem- moved to new thread)

There is also an issue with overscan off where you can see a thin line of TV content on bottom and right edge when showing the guide.

Don't have any of these issues with my Echostar at all, could be your tv?

Do you have overscan turned off though, you'd only see the line issues if you do. If you don't your TV will be basically cropping a bit off all the edges. A simple way of checking is going to CNN (207) and see if you have dotted lines at the top, if you do, you have overscan turned off, if you don't, it is on.

Regarding the BBC TWO also in HD reminder, are you sure you get these, i.e. you press info then info again, does it say press OK for HD to take you to the BBC HD channel? It did this for me before the latest update.

Sorry jzee, my tv/echostar are both set to 16:9, i'm real happy with picture output i get never noticed the HD prompt on bbc2 before, always see it on bbc1/itv1 though.

The overscan setting would be on the TV menu settings, as I said if you go to CNN and you don't have dotted lines at the top you have overscan off so wouldn't see the red button line issues I'm having.


Yup it was definitely there before the update, perhaps someone could check with Coast tomorrow at 19:00?

jzee,

I noticed the 1 pixel of TV picture breakthrough at the bottom of the guide screen on my relative's Echostar box. This was September last year, so it wasn't the current software. I set her Sony TV to zero overscan for one simple reason: she was upgrading from a 4x3 CRT, and had been watching 14x9 broadcasts on it for years. She always complained that on other people's 16x9 TVs it looked like the top part of the picture was cut off (which, compared to 14x9 letterboxed into 4x3, it is - by the overscan on the 16x9 TV!), whereas with overscan switched off, she was happy with the result on her new 16x9 TV.


no, they shouldn't - but sadly the broadcasters do! You will see far worse things from major broadcasters in the "overscan" area than you'll ever see from a STB.

The amount of crud that's broadcast at the edge of some SD channels (only visible with overscan disabled) is shocking. Plus the DOGs look like they're heading for the middle of the screen.

One weird anomaly is is that, on BBC SD channels, there are far more MPEG artefacts at the edges of the picture. These are hidden with overscan enabled (as most TVs are by default), but easily visible if you choose to watch the whole picture (as I do with files from my Humax STB).

I used to think it was some clever coding trick to save bits where few people would see it - but now I think it's just the fact that the BBC often broadcast black pixels at every edge of the screen (~8 pixels left and right, ~1 pixel top and bottom), and it stresses the MPEG encoders trying to encode the transition from black to picture. Some other broadcasters tend to fill all the pixels with picture, and don't have this increase in MPEG artefacts at the edges.

I just warned my relative: "if I set it up like this, it'll stop it chopping the top of the picture off, but the TV companies assume people's TVs are chopping the edges of the picture off, so you'll often see some strange stuff right at the edges with it set like this. If it's too annoying, I'll put it back how it was." She's never asked me to change it, so I guess she's happy.

Cheers,
David.

P.S. I had a vague memory that the thing you screen capped at the bottom of BBC Red Button MHEG was related to some BARB interactive MHEG audience tracking, and google found this...
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=410546
...sadly the link to the screen cap in that thread has died, but it sounds like the same thing.

TBH I've only seen real problems with CNN & the movies4men channels, other than that having overscan off doesn't seem to be an issue (except this Echostar red button issue of course).


Actually you could be right, that that is the reason they use 704x576 as they don't have the black bars that BBC do, I wouldn't be surprised that the black bars do cause artifacts as you say.


Thanks for that, this doesn't look like something Echostar can fix then, but the white lines appearing after you exit the red button are definitely a bug that needs fixing.

Quick reminder- can anyone check to see if they get the also in HD click OK to go HD prompt on BBC TWO with thhree progs up to 10:30 tonight, thanks.

I get a white line but just down the right of the screen when in dot by dot mode.

Thanks, you mean when you exit red button mode or while red button index is showing?

Red button.
Select news.
Press text to return.

See the white line when back viewing normal tv.

Looked ok on the index.

Thanks.