Question of the Day: Burn Notice NOT in HD?

As you can see from the pic above, the first two episodes of DirecTV’s Burn Notice broadcast have been accompanied by both horizontal and vertical black bars. And Jack R. of Michigan is wondering what’s up with USA Network or his HR20-700. Other USA Network shows, such as Law & Order, at least give the appearance of high definition content by filling the screen and displaying the USA-HD bug in the lower right (versus just the “USA” logo above). Unfortunately, I can’t verify having already removed my Comcast-provided episodes from the bedroom TiVo. I do recall the content filling the entire screen, though both episodes appeared somewhat dark and grainy – not sure if that’s a stylistic choice (like the uneccessary video pauses) or a side effect of stretching SD content. What are you seeing?

17 thoughts on “Question of the Day: Burn Notice NOT in HD?”

  1. SDTV Comcast Burn Notice looks just fine on my 37″ Olevia from my Series 2. Of course I record that at highest quality, versus medium for all the Seinfelds and Daily Shows. So it may be a little “HD-to-you” relativism coming into play.

  2. Jeadly,

    DirecTV doesn’t offer different levels of recording. Its all or nothing. I did notice that when playing back, these were both in 480p. I hope to watch it live this week, so we’ll see if there is a discrepancy between the feed and the DVR.

    thanks
    jack

  3. I watch Burn Notice every week DVR’d on my Comcast box, and it’s been in HD. USA seems to be grainier than other stations however, I’ve always assumed it’s being over compressed.

  4. I’ll check tonight, but I just watched the first episode of the 2nd season recorded on USA HD and it seemed fine. He should check out DBSTalk to see if the point was raised there as well.

  5. That’s Comcastic©!

    Comcast, others degrade HD video quality to pack in more channels

    “…The news is the result of independent research from a user at AVS Forums, probably the best-known meeting ground for audio and video enthusiasts. Here, that user provides a wealth of examples and empirical data outlining the issue, complete with screenshots of what channels look like with standard compression and with Comcast’s extra squeeze.”

    http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/88795

  6. I have seen similar presentation issues on SciFi-HD when watching Dr. Who. The widescreen aspect ratio is preserved but the number of pixels being presented is significantly reduced by the black bars completely surrounding the picture. Other content on SciFi-HD is just fine (like Stargate Atlantis).

    In earlier episodes of Dr. Who there a large amount of digital artifacting (big single color blocks) that would occur. Now that they have shrunk the pixel area by use of the black bars there are no longer artifacts, but a lower resolution. I use my Series 3 Tivo’s aspect ratio button to “zoom” the 16×9 display which will then fill the screen area (at a lower resolution of course).

    I have assumed that this was a way for Comcast to limit the bandwidth used for less popular programs.

  7. On Cox New Orleans, USA HD is full-screen (no bars) here, at least on new original programming like Burn Notice and In Plain Sight; I noticed the same graininess that you did on BN, but I chalked it up to stylistic choices (e.g. fake film grain) or old-school film grain since it didn’t seem to be the result of artifacts from high compression or upscaling.

    Doctor Who is a bit different since it’s only shot at EDTV resolutions (the Beeb only recently started broadcasting in HD to the public, and Who’s creator doesn’t think HDTV is worthwhile for the show); for whatever reason (maybe the BBC sends the transcoded video to them pre-matted rather than giving them the raw BBC airings to cut to death), SciFi doesn’t upscale and kill the black bars.

  8. I was watching a show on Travel HD on D* this weekend and the same thing was happening/annoying me. It would appear that the show isn’t being broadcast in HD. I have an HR21-200.

  9. Dave, more importantly, did you like Ep 2 better than Ep 1? I thought it was much more on form, funnier, etc.

  10. Dave,

    I noticed this week that my TiVoHD also recorded Burn Notice in SD. I thought last week’s was in HD, but can’t be sure.

    Then I looked at my Season Pass Manager – it turns out that when I got my TiVoHD I added Burn Notice as a season pass on USA, because I didn’t get USAHD at that time. A couple weeks ago, in anticipation of the new season, I added the season pass for Burn Notice on USAHD without realizing I had one already set up on the SD station.

    SO…I think TiVo just recorded the SD because the SD season pass had a higher priority. I deleted that season pass, so next week I’ll see what happens.

  11. Sometimes these shows when shown as a repeat are in a lower quality broadcast. Heck Ive seen some that go clear back to 4×3 with DVD quality. They even do away with the Wide screen even if it was originally broadcast that way.

    Saves bandwidth Im guessing.

    As a side note we all need to be on the outlook for the evil MPAA again. They are after the FCC to allow what they are terming Selective Output Control SOC. They want to be able to TURN OFF you OUTPUTS so you cant record anything. They want to disable these for certain shows etc.

    You need to hammer the FCC web site and your Congress Reps. THis has got to stop.

    They have wanted to do this since the 1970’s Sony Betamax case they lost that allowed the old VCR. When Jack Valenti testified before congress that allowing the VCR would completely destroy the movie industry…heh.

  12. Turns out the Season Pass was setup last summer, before there was a USAHD channel, and even though the SD channel isn’t available to me in the UI (DirectTV hid them all a while back), it is available to the DVR, so it was recording on the wrong channel. Sorry for the hoopla, but there was no indication it was recording on the wrong channel, since there is only one USA channel I can see, and it said the show was in HD. I discovered this by watching it live last night, and then flipping to the DVR at a commercial, and it was SD again.

    Thanks for the suggestions and help.

    jack

  13. It may not be true HD, but this issue was confirmed to be a season pass that retained the old (SD) USA channel location. I do find Burn Notice to be grainy – I know they’re doing crap with filters for artistic effect, but I think it’s still likely to be upscaled SD.

  14. It was a production issue. Season 4, episode 1 which just aired last night was true HD – there was no more graininess.

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