NBC Audio Issue

[jlutzky]

When we were watching our recording of Studio 60 on Thursday, we had a strange thing happen. About halfway through the show suddenly some of the audio dropped off. We could hear the music and background noise, but no dialogue. When the show went to commercial it was fine, but when it came back it wasn't working again. We watched our recording on our other SD DVR and that one was fine.

Has anyone else come across this problem, and is it a DVR issue or an NBC HD issue.

[hilmar2k]

When we were watching our recording of Studio 60 on Thursday, we had a strange thing happen. About halfway through the show suddenly some of the audio dropped off. We could hear the music and background noise, but no dialogue. When the show went to commercial it was fine, but when it came back it wasn't working again. We watched our recording on our other SD DVR and that one was fine.

Has anyone else come across this problem, and is it a DVR issue or an NBC HD issue.

Sounds like the center channel wasn't being broadcasted. I have heard this in another thread somewhere. I sure it was not an HR20 issue, but a problem with the broadcast from the affiliate.

[CCarncross]

+1, most likely trouble with your local NBC affiliate. My locals screw stuff up like that nightly in the primetime HD lineup. How often do they come back from commercial and forget to switch it back from pillarboxed to full HD? I'd bet it happens close to 1 in 10 for me.

[wmldwilly]

When we were watching our recording of Studio 60 on Thursday, we had a strange thing happen. About halfway through the show suddenly some of the audio dropped off. We could hear the music and background noise, but no dialogue. When the show went to commercial it was fine, but when it came back it wasn't working again. We watched our recording on our other SD DVR and that one was fine.

Has anyone else come across this problem, and is it a DVR issue or an NBC HD issue.

We just watched the TiVo'd broadcast of that same show and had exactly the same behavior. Details:

We use an HR10-250 (expanded drive), have the AT9 dish, and TiVo that show (and all our other national network shows) from the west coast national channels (NBC-W is ch. 83). That's an MPEG-2 channel, right?

We're optically linked for audio from the HR10-250 to our receiver. The broadcast kicked into dolby decoding as per normal, showing the "dolby digital 3/2.1" identifier.

When the dialogue audio / center channel audio dropped out, we at first thought it was part of the whole "disaster show" joke since the surround channels were still playing. It was like watching a special feature on a DVD where you turn off the dialogue to hear the immersive sound design going on all around the scene. It was pretty cool at first, but soon got annoying.

At the same time as the dialogue audio track dropped off, the receiver detected an audio stream change and displayed the "dolby digital 2/0" identifier, and I knew something had gone wacky.

The commercial break was of course fine since they're rarely in surround (except for the commercial makers who have gotten cunning enough to dupe their main audio track into every track of the 5/1 mix and take over your entire surround rig and assault you with 300% more volume to sell whatever they're selling), and the Dolby Dig. 5/1 (or as my reciever calls it "3/2.1") stream returned. Just as the DD surround mix returned and all was fine again with audio, the full HD picture dropped down to the SD 720x480 box floating in the usual black surround. After a few seconds of that, the picture finally switched back to HD and filled the screen, and audio continued as per normal in DD 3/2.1.

VERY wierd. Note that we don't have an R20 so we're not recording off one of the MPEG-4 NBC broadcasts, OTA or otherwise. I'm especially curious if every flavor of NBC that's re-broadcast on the Sat had this problem with this section of show, or if it was indeed part of the joke of the episode being about TV shows gone wrong.

WM

[tbpb3]

so was it just a local KNBC problem?

[HDTVFanAtic]

Its the audio mixdown.

When CBS or NBC send out 5.1 audio to the affiliates, the local affiliates must have the right code for the dolby encoder so that for 2.0, the center channel is placed on both the L and R channels (thus your vocals). If that is not done, you get only sound effects and music that are typically on the Left and Right channels - no voices.

Usually it is an affiliate issue - but as Directv plays around with the audio as well as the video, the error could potentially be in either place.

As the problem corrected itself when the commercials came on, most likely it was a problem with the local affiliate.

Fox does not have the issue as they stay in 5.1 mode all the time.

CBS tries to control the encoder setting with metadata fed over the network. However, if that has been known to screw up as well.

NBC affiliates seem to have the most issues.

[micah67]

I recorded the same feed and experienced the same problem. Something similar had happened before (I don't recall the recording or channel, though) so I kind of knew what had happened. Closed Captioning filled in the gap for until it picked up again.

[mazer75]

Hey guys, having this problem now in Los Angeles area (90254, Hermosa Beach), also with NBC.

For NBC, on anything that shows up on my receiver as DD 5.1, there is no audio information for the center channel. For programs that are only in stereo, the sound is fine.

Is there anything I can do to make NBC fix this? Does anyone else in the LA area have this same problem?

All other channels with DD 5.1 audio are processed and sound just fine, so far all I've found an issue with is NBC4.

Thanks! :)