BT Vision HDMI or SCART Cable?

eghamR

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Last weekend I recieved my new Sony KDL-32V4000 TV ...promptly connected my BT Vision box and DVD Player to it with 2 cheap (£7 from Tesco) HDMI Cables ...no problems and very impressed with the picture quality.

Then yesterday I start getting poor reception for the ITV Channels, Channel 4 and five ....did an auto tune/scan and the first time they disappeared totally ...a couple more attempts and they are back.

After a bit of fiddling around today I have found that I have 100% signal quality if I change to a SCART cable but poor picture or when i use the HDMI cable I only have 20/30% signal quality therefore causing the poor reception ...however the SCART cable leaves me with a poor picture quality.

My question is basically if I spend more on...

A. If I spend more on a good quality HDMI cable will that give better reception and signal quality?

or

B. If I spend more on good quality SCART will that give a better picture quality?
 
Several things not making sense there.

Could you clarify which tuner you were using to do the 'auto tune/scan', TV or BT Vision ?

Difficult to see how SCART vs HDMI would be affecting the tuner scan where ever it is as that would depend on the aerial connection to the tuner, not the link between your BT Vision box and the TV.
 
Cheers Mark...

Yes I thought it was strange the the SCART/HDMI Cables effected the signal quality ...I thought that would all be down to the aerial and I had a digital aerial fitted 3 years ago that worked fine with my CRT.

I was trying to retune through the TV and it wasn't picking up the ITV channels when the HDMI cable was connected ...but was when the SCART was connected? I did a rescan through the BT Vision box and it picked up the channels (eventually) when the HDMI cable was connected ...the TV then followed suit!
 
Last weekend I recieved my new Sony KDL-32V4000 TV ...promptly connected my BT Vision box and DVD Player to it with 2 cheap (£7 from Tesco) HDMI Cables ...no problems and very impressed with the picture quality.

Then yesterday I start getting poor reception for the ITV Channels, Channel 4 and five ....did an auto tune/scan and the first time they disappeared totally ...a couple more attempts and they are back.

After a bit of fiddling around today I have found that I have 100% signal quality if I change to a SCART cable but poor picture or when i use the HDMI cable I only have 20/30% signal quality therefore causing the poor reception ...however the SCART cable leaves me with a poor picture quality.

My question is basically if I spend more on...

A. If I spend more on a good quality HDMI cable will that give better reception and signal quality? You need better made HDMI cables.

or

B. If I spend more on good quality SCART will that give a better picture quality?

Cheaply made HDMI cables with poor shielding are giving out interference and stopping the BT Vision box receiving all the channels.
 
Cheaply made HDMI cables with poor shielding are giving out interference and stopping the BT Vision box receiving all the channels.

Cheers.

I'm assuming poor shielding means the case/gold bits at the end of the leads? ...can you suggest what sort of leads I should be looking at? ...Sony's own brand maybe?
 
Cheaply made HDMI cables with poor shielding are giving out interference and stopping the BT Vision box receiving all the channels.

I'm really struggling to believe this is possible. Are you saying that an HDMI signal cable can generate enough EMI to uspset the signal through a coax aerial lead? Also, even when the guy is tuning his TV, in which case there would be no signal on the HDMI lead?
 
I'm really struggling to believe this is possible. Are you saying that an HDMI signal cable can generate enough EMI to uspset the signal through a coax aerial lead? Also, even when the guy is tuning his TV, in which case there would be no signal on the HDMI lead?
Not only that, but interference specifically in the TV channel range?

I agree with Mark, lots of this just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If channels are coming and going through several re-scans and nothing else has changed (this problem only started yesterday so assuming it was ok until then?) then I'd suspect the aerial / weather more than an HDMI lead! We have been having some nasty weather the last couple of days after all.
 
Not only that, but interference specifically in the TV channel range?

I agree with Mark, lots of this just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If channels are coming and going through several re-scans and nothing else has changed (this problem only started yesterday so assuming it was ok until then?) then I'd suspect the aerial / weather more than an HDMI lead! We have been having some nasty weather the last couple of days after all.

Come to think of it the weather was quite bad on Friday ...heavy rain and windy ...could this be the reason? ...would that lead to me not being able to pick up the ITV channels? ...never happened with my old CRT TV? ...are LCD TVs and HDMI a lot more sensitive to these things then? ...would be a bit disappointing to lose or get poor reception everytime we have a bit of wind and rain.
 
Forget HDMI issues. This has nothing to do with poor TV reception and no, LCDs and Plasmas are not more sensitive to TV reception than older crt TVs. However, I believe that digital TV is being transmitted at lower power than analogue during the transition period and will be boosted once the switchover to digital is fully implemented. This may have a bearing on things.

I suspect that your problem was just borderline reception, maybe caused by bad weather, and the switching about of leads was just coincidental.

There is one other possibility that comes to mind. That is the aerial lead itself, specifically the co-ax plug on the end. If this has a "flaky" connection, then it may be the cause of your problem. It could be that you may have disturbed it while you were rummaging about at the back and swapping leads around. This could make reception better or worse depending on if the connection was good or bad.
 
Forget HDMI issues. This has nothing to do with poor TV reception and no, LCDs and Plasmas are not more sensitive to TV reception than older crt TVs. However, I believe that digital TV is being transmitted at lower power than analogue during the transition period and will be boosted once the switchover to digital is fully implemented. This may have a bearing on things.

I suspect that your problem was just borderline reception, maybe caused by bad weather, and the switching about of leads was just coincidental.

There is one other possibility that comes to mind. That is the aerial lead itself, specifically the co-ax plug on the end. If this has a "flaky" connection, then it may be the cause of your problem. It could be that you may have disturbed it while you were rummaging about at the back and swapping leads around. This could make reception better or worse depending on if the connection was good or bad.

I work for a Panasonic/Sony shop/service centre and feedback from our installation team is that poorly shielded HDMI cables can cause enough interference to prevent reception of Freeview channels. When these HDMI cables are removed the reception comes back, plug them back in again and the reception disappears.

The problem is permanently fixed when the HDMI cables are replaced with well-made cables. Also look at the aerial flylead from the BT Vision box to the tv as these are quite often completely unshielded.
 
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When these HDMI cables are removed the reception comes back, plug them back in again and the reception disappears.

Cheers Alsina ...this sounds exactly what was happening ...although it didn't happen for a week when I first set up the TV and it hasn't since I had the problems on Friday/Sat.

...sorry to sound a bit thick but what do you mean by better shielding? ...can you give me an idea/link to what sort of cables I should be looking at?

Cheers again.
 
I work for a Panasonic/Sony shop/service centre and feedback from our installation team is that poorly shielded HDMI cables can cause enough interference to prevent reception of Freeview channels. When these HDMI cables are removed the reception comes back, plug them back in again and the reception disappears.

The problem is permanently fixed when the HDMI cables are replaced with well-made cables. Also look at the aerial flylead from the BT Vision box to the tv as these are quite often completely unshielded.

Well bless my soul. If that's true then I stand corrected but (as I said before) I'm really struggling to believe that this is possible.
 
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I generally buy Molex hdmi cables from CPC. Good price and reputable brand you can expect to be properly conforming to specs (although unknown in retail).

(Unfortunately CPC (Farnell) seem to have doubled the price they originally charged, probably because of the retail channel bleating back to Molex!)

If the problem is interference, it might be radiated, or it might be via some sort of earth loop or similar, which would mean a change of cables wouldn't help. You need to experiment, bearing in mind loops (A cabled to B cabled to Cabled to A), and inverse square law (for radiated interference - try moving things apart).

Finally, whatever its spec, remember that a 3m cable is 3 times as bad as a 1m cable. Short cables often work OK even if they are out of spec.
 
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Hi, I'd be interested to see if this was ever resolved. I've had the same intermittent problem. I've changed all cables to QED, including my aerial and interconnect. I've also had another bt vision box. a few days later problem re-appears. Have a Sony 32V4500 TV
 
Hi, I'd be interested to see if this was ever resolved. I've had the same intermittent problem. I've changed all cables to QED, including my aerial and interconnect. I've also had another bt vision box. a few days later problem re-appears. Have a Sony 32V4500 TV


Square Eyes, I too was keeping an eye on this thread as had similar problems. I paid over the odds for HDMI cable at John Lewis and upon scanning for channels wouldn't receive the 64 I normally do in this area, instead I would only receive 52 or so. I switched to SCART to test and found I would recive the full number again.

A quick trip to Tesco's for their HDMI leads at £10 resolved this issue. All channels now scan and can be watched perfectly. It's true as many say on here that it's down to the quality of the cable and the correct type. I was surprised however that the Tesco's cable worked perfectly. I am now going to take my £30 HDMI cable back to John Lewis for a refund.

I hope this helps.
 
Thanks a lot for replying - I'll head down to Tesco's and give it another go ...

Cheers
 
Hi all.

I've also had a similar problem. Trying to connect a new Tosibha LCD 37XV635DB tv to a Tosihba RT97DT hard disk recorder, and all works fine if you connect up with a scart lead, both tune and you get a good TV on both. But put in a HDMI cable and all fine till we switch on the hard disk recorder, then we loose aerial signal to both the TV and hard disk recorder.

I will try another HDMI lead after reading this, but still think it's amazing that radiated RF from the lead can kill the aerial signal, esp as we have a booster on the signal as well.

The HDMI lead I'm using was bought off the net, supposidly "triple screened" with big ferites on both end and 99.9% oxygen free copper, so sounded like a decent lead.
If I needed to get another one, how do I know what's decent as this one has the right spec??

Or does any one else have any thought on what's going on? As Toshiba customer support don't.
 
Well I tried other brands of HDMI cable without any improvement (Tesco, Argos, QED - all supposedly well shielded etc etc . I decided in the end it must be something to do with the way the vision box talks to my TV via HDMI .... or odd earthing loops ..... maybe. Life was starting to feel too short so sadly I reverted to SCART.

Anyway, I ended up buying a AV receiver, and this buffering the HDMI output means that I can view my vision box with HDMI. Of course if the vision box is on, and I want to watch the TV without the receiver I end up losing my signal again.....

good luck
 
I've just phones Toshiba again, as no "REAL" engineers work the weekend.
After the person who answered the phone, relaid the info back to the engineer, they said they don't ubnderstand what is going on, and are going to sent out an engineer to look into this problem.

Will post out what they find.

The good bit wit hthis set up is, both bits are Toshiba, so they can't fob me off it's the other manufactuere....
 
Locostracer I know someone who has the same problem!
I'll see if he ever sorted it or just bashed it with a big hammer which is what he normally does:rotfl:
 

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