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Brrrrriiiiip, what and where

35K views 252 replies 99 participants last post by  hasan 
#1 ·
This can be very annoying while you're trying to watch a program. They can vary from every once and awhile to being every few seconds during a show.

Thanks to BattleScott here is a sample: http://www.dbstalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=18074&d=1239640597

And to Ken S :

What is happening is the DirecTV MPEG-4 encoder is "dumping" and having to reset as it is transcoding the MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 at the uplink center.

This seems to happen to HD locals more than national channels.
If your locals are doing this, you can tune into the OTA feed and sometimes see it there too, but other times not see it. This doesn't mean the station isn't the cause/source. Their feed may have corrupted bits that don't affect the playback of the MPEG-2 stream, but these cause the MPEG-4 encoder to reset.
Sometimes it is the DirecTV encoder, which I've seen when several local stations are all doing this at the same time.

So this is the "what and where" but what can you do about it?

If it's with a local station, I found the best [quickest] thing to do is to call/email the station engineering about it. If they're responsive [some are and some haven't been], they will look into their end and work with the Network Broadcast Center at DirecTV.

If they're not responsive or this is with a national channel, then you will need to contact DirecTV, but you can't get directly to the broadcast center.
This means the CSR can "log a report" which will get the the center, but these don't seem to be acted on until there are many reports [which I really can't blame them with all the channels they're working with]. If they "can see it at the time" then they'll work on it, but since this problem comes and goes, they can monitor the feed and not see it [since it isn't happening at the time].

The next step I took was to email ellen.filipiak@directv.com and explain the problem I was having and the steps I'd done. I would recommend not emailing first, but calling and having it get logged a few times. Let their system try to resolve it, before escalating it to this level.

It took me a few email replies and phone calls, but I did have someone interested in resolving "my problem". One of the first steps was to have a service call to make sure there wasn't anything in my system that might be causing it. There wasn't and I knew it, but they needed to start somewhere and know it wasn't on my end. They asked me to have some recordings so I could show them exactly what it was when the came. They looked all over my system, watched the recordings and then called the broadcast center. The engineer had them hand the phone to me and explained what the problem was.

"The problem" wasn't fixed overnight, but my locals have been much improved and between a few emails to station and the broadcast center engineers, have seen the improvements from both the stations and at the DirecTV uplink.
 
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#102 ·
veryoldschool said:
You're doing everyone a disservice.
You mean as long as I am not in full agreement with your opinion I am doing everyone a disservice? :rolleyes:
veryoldschool said:
"Do I know EVERY possible thing that could be the cause? No."
OK, so you admit there just might, even the smallest chance, be other things along with your theory that can cause the same issue, you just don't know. That's a good start.
veryoldschool said:
Unless you've got any real proof to suggest anything else, please stop "misleading" those that post problems with your "idea" that it's related to any version of software on the receivers. You're doing everyone a disservice.
Oooops, there you go with that "misleading" word again. "Stop misleading people with my "ideas." When did I move to North Korea? Why is putting out another opinion misleading or a disservice? That sounds like I have an agenda to drag everyone over to the dark side. I posted my anecdotal evidence, and you and everyone else can choose to ignore it or take it under consideration. But blowing it off as "misleading" or posting "my idea" (heaven forbid I have another opinion) makes it sound like I have some sinister plot.

Rather then all your accusatory messages all you simply had to say was: "I'm 99% sure this is the only issue causing this problem but anything is possible and we're always looking for other causes." Wouldn't that have been politically correct? If you're running for higher office here you need to take example from the others.

And by the way. I still believe there was another shooter on the grassy knoll despite what the Warren commission said. No, I have no proof. I just don't think Oswald could have been alone.

"None of us is as smart as all of us."

veryoldschool said:
Some parts of technology are "my thing". This comes very close to one of them.
Do I know EVERY possible thing that could be the cause? No.
Do I understand what are the causes?
Yes, after lengthy discussions with: DirecTV engineering, Local Station engineers and others here that it's their profession also.
Unless you've got any real proof to suggest anything else, please stop "misleading" those that post problems with your "idea" that it's related to any version of software on the receivers. You're doing everyone a disservice.

If the problem is with locals contact your local station. If they're unresponsive or it's with national channels:
contact ellen.filipiak@directv.com

You seem to have the position that for this to be true I must prove every possible condition, while to be false, you're still "suggesting" only one thing [incorrectly to date].

Have you resolved any of yours?
Or are you simply waiting for some magic fix to fall in your lap?

If no one makes the effort to notify anyone, how can they know to try to fix it?
 
#103 ·
Keeping this all very simple....

There are several potential causes of the Brrrrrrp experience.

I just had my first one in 3 months yesterday while watching CNNHD. All year, I can count how many times I've heard these on one hand - pretty rare.

But as I stated...there are several causes, so others may have these occur more frequenty, as has been reported in this thread.

Since we are all getting the same DirecTV service, and most folks seem NOT to get this, or at least very rarely....that is not the first place I would figure to find the primary source.

Having seen this more frequently in the past, in my TV service area...I contacted 2 of my local stations. I learned that BOTH had relatively newer equipment for HD broadcasts and corresponding audio. Both indicated they were still "adjusting, configuring, and tweaking" that equipment...and that it might take "several months" to get things straight. Sure enough...about 3-4 months later....the Brrrrrrp happens virtually ended.

It is also possible that some audio amp equipment (especially more than 3 years old) can have issues with the current sophisticated codecs being transmitted. Some folks have done AV firmware updates to resolve those issues.

At this time, they are now a rare anomoly here.

For those folks still having this happen with regularity...I'd start by checking with the local TV station engineering departments and ask if others have reported this in your area. I'd also take a look and see if my AV had any firmware updates on their manufacturer website.

Beyond that....?
 
#104 ·
A year ago, this moved from bothersome to annoying for me.

[software]
During this time I've been running over 50 versions and never seen any correlation between software and frequency of the problem.

[hardware]
DirecTV MPEG-4 recorders and non recorders have shown this problem.
Sometimes the OTA feed straight to my TV has shown this problem.

[things that have caused changes]
Contacting local stations have had them report back what was their problem.
Contacting DirecTV has had the gray screen "we're having... don't call us" be displayed and the problem corrected.

Why it's doubtful receiver software has anything to do with this [beyond the above].
This problem seems to be channel specific. Not all MPEG-4 channels do this. Since the receiver MPEG-4 decoding is the same for all channels, if "a version" was to somehow effect this, then it would not be only certain channels, but would be all channels with some sort of pattern or randomness.

Discussions with DirecTV engineering has yielded the technical problem with the MPEG-4 encoders and the mechanism within them that is the problem. Following this "logic" has proved to correct/reduce the occurrences of the problem.
 
#105 ·
veryoldschool said:
Contacting DirecTV has had the gray screen "we're having... don't call us" be displayed and the problem corrected...
Looks like an editing error on your part, VOS. ;) Would you care to change that sentence? Maybe, instead of "Contacting DirecTV has had the gray screen...be displayed", you meant "DirecTV has displayed the gray screen"?
 
#106 ·
hdtvfan0001 said:
Keeping this all very simple....

There are several potential causes of the Brrrrrrp experience.

I just had my first one in 3 months yesterday while watching CNNHD. All year, I can count how many times I've heard these on one hand - pretty rare...
Thanks for your helpful post; I found it enlightening.

I hear the Brrrrrrp rarely, and as best as I can remember, always on spot-beamed LiL stations. Almost every time I notice it, it's when audio resumes after Instant Replay. And I didn't notice it until after the 0x034C update.

It is also possible that some audio amp equipment (especially more than 3 years old) can have issues with the current sophisticated codecs being transmitted. Some folks have done AV firmware updates to resolve those issues.
I have a Marantz SR8000 AV receiver that's about 10 years old. Do you have any negative info about it? I'd like to know which brands or models you had in mind.
 
#107 ·
Syzygy said:
Looks like an editing error on your part, VOS. ;) Would you care to change that sentence? Maybe, instead of "Contacting DirecTV has had the gray screen...be displayed", you meant "DirecTV has displayed the gray screen"?
What I meant was:
I called [the higher ups at] DirecTV about the problem and shortly there after my TV displayed the gray screen. It wasn't too hard to connect the two. "Calling" caused the "gray screen" to be displayed as they were fixing the problem.
 
#108 ·
Syzygy said:
Thanks for your helpful post; I found it enlightening.

I hear the Brrrrrrp rarely, and as best as I can remember, always on spot-beamed LiL stations. Almost every time I notice it, it's when audio resumes after Instant Replay. And I didn't notice it until after the 0x034C update.

I have a Marantz SR8000 AV receiver that's about 10 years old. Do you have any negative info about it? I'd like to know which brands or models you had in mind.
All I know about your Marantz is that is had the reputation of being a great workshorse in its day...a friend had one, until replacing it with an Onkyo a few years ago. I too have an Onkyo 989v2, and never have any issues with audio - of course, that unit wasn't exactly inexpensive...but it is Dolby, DTS, and THX certified. Despite all that, they keep coming up with new codecs...so I suspect the day will come when even my great Onkyo will have some challenges down the road.

As for the Brrrrrrp on your Marantz....it might not be that unit at all....per VOS's other post, as well as my earlier one pointing out the potential of local stations (in particular) having "tweaking" that may need to be done in their location.

All I know here is that when the CBS and FOX stations announce that they addressed this, I saw the Brrrrrp virtually disappear from that point forward.
 
#109 ·
Something I may have not posted [in this thread] is that the audio bit-rates will change and this too will give problems. Changing to [and from] commercials is where this happens the most.
The encoder locks on the audio to keep the video in sync as it changes the MPEG-2 to MPEG-4.
 
#110 ·
veryoldschool said:
Something I may have not posted [in this thread] is that the audio bit-rates will change and this too will give problems. Changing to [and from] commercials is where this happens the most.
The encoder locks on the audio to keep the video in sync as it changes the MPEG-2 to MPEG-4.
Excellent point....I'm sure they do that just to confuse the audio equipment. :D
 
#111 ·
Watching Dallas-Denver on Fox 69 in San Diego. This problem just exploded about 5 minutes ago. Doesn't matter if it's commercials or the game itself. Really bad. During the commercials, it looked as though the audio might have been out of sync because of the "Brrrrriiiiip".

Added:
Called KSWB, but couldn't talk to a real person so I left a message telling them what I have been experiencing. Other game on KFMB-8 (CBS), no issues at all.
 
#113 ·
Iwanthd said:
Almost unwatchable via D* on Fox 31 in Denver. Fairly serious picture break up as well. Watched OTA for a quarter and all was good. brrriiippp occurring about every 90 seconds or so.
Agreed.

The Broncos v Cowboys game on FOX 31 in Denver (KDVR) was absolutely horrible. Brrrriiips every few minutes. I have never seen it this bad, making it nearly unwatchable via DIRECTV. OTA, of course, was unaffected.
 
#114 ·
WOW - 3 posts on this one NFL game on FOX from Colorado....sounds like the FOX station(s) should get a call there to report the problem.

In the SouthEast...didn't see that happen at all here during that game - we had it turned up a bit louder too, and would have noticed it for sure.
 
#120 ·
bonscott87 said:
I don't think it's totally the local station's "problem" in all cases of course. But it *is* their signal, even if DirecTV is the only one borking it up...

Note the bolded sentence above. He says "D* is extremely sensitive to errors in the MPEG2 stream." I can read that to mean that there *is* a problem with the local station's signal. There are MPEG2 errors in it. DirecTV happens to have equipment that is more sensitive to it. So either the local station need to correct the errors they are putting in their signal or see if DirecTV can somehow tweak their encoders to handle the errors better (if possible). DirecTV is using all new encoders so it just might want a cleaner stream.

In my market I'd say 98% of the time it actually *is* the local stations problem and it's seen not only on DirecTV but also OTA and cable.
No one has reported brrrriiips anywhere but on the HD DVR+. That sort of rules out cable. It mostly rules out OTA. We would have to have reports from folks who actually correlated OTA recordings with brrrippps, and that also seems not to be the case.

While I can't say unequivocally that the original signal does not have errors in it, local stations certainly are not going out of their way to insert errors into the signal. It is what it is, and while nothing is perfect, it is certainly perfect-enough for no one else recording or viewing OTA to have mentioned it, other than at splice points for FOX local insertion, which has apparently been fixed. The brrrriiip problem is pretty much universally limited to DTV customers recording MPEG-4 stations, either local or national.

But if you assume that the signal is perfectly error-free when the station receives it (which is expecting something unreasonable), then where are these errors coming from? Well, they come from degradation of the signal during transport. Both analog and digital signals have to go through a hostile environment to get to the customer. In the case of a satellite up/downlink, that includes 46,000 miles of free space implying a great deal of attenuation (about 200 dB worth, actually).

With analog signals the degradation affects not only the carrier but the information itself directly, which is why it is plagued with video noise, interference, and ghosting. With digital delivery the information is mostly invulnerable, but the carrier and information still both go through that same gauntlet of degrading factors. If you look directly at the eye pattern of a digital signal as it leaves the source it looks perfect, and when it reaches the customer it is very ragged looking with lots of bits missing and time-base errors induced in it. The information itself survives mostly intact, and error correction and concealment typically make it perfect again most of the time.

But not all of the time. So rather than blame the source, which is typically error-free, blame the reception, and in this case, that probably means the reception done by DTV long before they ever transcode it to MPEG-4 or uplink it to customers. That is where the problem very likely lies. If reception is good enough, you will get very few errors that actually manifest in audio or video.

There may be some errors in the network signals as received by the stations, that's true, but the methods and systems they use are typically very sound, and tolerate very few errors. Errors in processing within the signal chain of a typical station are also typically very low.

DTV, on the other hand, typically receives local stations OTA using consumer-level reception equipment locally, and then multiplexes all local stations for each market into a digital fiber for backhaul. Then comes the MPEG-4 conversion. Directly after the opportunity for a lot of errors to have crept in. That is something DTV has control of, and local stations have no control of.

The theory is that it is the MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 conversion that is reacting poorly to these errors. While not proven, the fact that no one has ever reported a brrrriiip on a MPEG-2 signal recorded OTA from a local TV station (on a HR10-250 Tivo), or from a MPEG-2 channel on DTV sort of points to that as the likely problem area. Either that or something inherent in the AC3 decoder used in the HD DVR+. But then we haven't really heard of brrrriiips recorded as MPEG-2 on them, either, pointing back to the conversion.

The fact that many errors are corrected in digital delivery masks a lot of what may manifest as an error (if it were analog the error would likely also be visible, such as video impulse noise puches sparklies in analog sat feeds). Also, the nature of what plagues digital manifests as incidental errors that occur farther apart but may be severe, while analog errors are usually constant and possibly less severe. Something that causes a brief pop or tear in analog video might cause two or three seconds of breakup of the entire picture in digital, but then even the milder errors manifest in analog while they are masked completely in digital.

DTV needs to either improve their backhaul techniques, or find a way to get that converter to tolerate errors better (or at least mute them). Maybe a little of both. There isn't much that the TV stations can do to improve an already-super-low error quotient in their signals as broadcast.
 
#121 ·
Sometimes the problems are visible/audible in OTA but not often. I have been told both by a DirecTV developer and by one of the engineers at one of my local stations that the problem is triggered by Dolby Digital packet errors that are not detectable at the consumer level but that play havoc with the DirecTV MPEg-4 encoders because they essentially go out of sync for a fraction of a second. The local stations can fix this if they try. Here in DFW for example we had a period of time late last year when the CBS local was almost unwatchable because of these problems. Then one of the station engineers spent time hunting down the issue and suddenly almost all the "brrrrps" disappeared.
Fox stations seem to be particularly prone to this problem and my understanding is it is something to do with the splicer technology they use. This Sunday for example many Fox stations were completely unwatchable.

None the less it seems that the DirecTV encoders are particularly susceptible to the issue.
 
#122 ·
azjerry said:
Phoenix PBS station has been terrible during the National Parks series this week. :mad:
ohpuckhead said:
I am watching a recorded episode of Ken Burns National Parks on our local PBS station and it is happening almost ever 10 seconds. :nono2: WVIZ Cleveland PBS It's been bad all week.

I'm thankful for this thread.
osu1ne said:
I'm having the same problem with WOSU PBS in Columbus, Ohio. Recorded the Ken Burns National Parks special. Tuesday and Wednesday night was practically unwatchable. I've had Directv for 5 years and this is the first time it has happened. :nono2::
Not sure this is the reason, "but":
I've recorded the Ken Burns National Parks shows [six] and noticed my free space didn't seem to match the number of shows/lengths. I watched and deleted most other shows and saw the normal free space increase, but still had more used than made sense.
Watched the first Ken Burns [2 hour] show and when I deleted it, I had twice the normal amount of free space gained.
I next played a Ken Burns recording with DirecTV2PC so I could monitor the bit-rate. The MPEG-4 recording was streaming at 20+ Mb/s, which is twice the rate of most all other MPEG-4 recordings.
I have no idea why these shows are doing this, "but" if this is happening with other PBS stations, then this could very well overload some of the encoders/transponder bandwidth, as more than one channel are all sharing the available bandwidth.
 
#124 ·
veryoldschool said:
Not sure this is the reason, "but":
I've recorded the Ken Burns National Parks shows [six] and noticed my free space didn't seem to match the number of shows/lengths. I watched and deleted most other shows and saw the normal free space increase, but still had more used than made sense.
Watched the first Ken Burns [2 hour] show and when I deleted it, I had twice the normal amount of free space gained.
I next played a Ken Burns recording with DirecTV2PC so I could monitor the bit-rate. The MPEG-4 recording was streaming at 20+ Mb/s, which is twice the rate of most all other MPEG-4 recordings.
I have no idea why these shows are doing this, "but" if this is happening with other PBS stations, then this could very well overload some of the encoders/transponder bandwidth, as more than one channel are all sharing the available bandwidth.
I just watched my third program in the Ken Burns series and had many breakups. This is the only one of the recordings that was recorded during "prime-time", as all the others were in the re-airing at 2 or 3 AM.
"I think" this is pointing to the bit-rate, being as high as it is, being the cause. The muxing is having a hard time allotting bandwidth.
 
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