Comedy Central - 249 - Incorrect black level

[Mark Strube]

Just got DirecTV today, loving it so far, both the SD and HD channels have overall better picture quality than E* gave me.

However, the only exception I've seen so far is Comedy Central on channel 249. The correct calibrated brightness level on my 1080p Sony SXRD remained at 54, just like it was with my E* receiver, and both were connected using component and locked at 1080i output. However, for some reason only Comedy Central is far too bright! It's glaringly obvious if you pause in-between commercials or look at letterboxing during some commercials. (That is if you haven't noticed the overall washed out picture... that was the first thing I saw.) To get the correct level on this channel, I have to turn my brightness from 54 down to 34.

Do DirecTV engineers browse this forum? I'm not sure how to alert them that something is probably up with their encoders.

Anyone else notice this?

 

[charper1]

No they generally do not, and if they are here would likely not out themselves due to violating their employment terms and likely risk being fired. I have not noticed any issues with COM but will check out some shows over the next few days. Is it constant or was it on a particular program?

 

[Mark Strube]

It seems to be constant, but I've only had this installed for one day - so could just be a temporary thing.

 

[charper1]

I am watching it right now and it is a few ticks brighter than most but not washed out or unwatchable. I would fire off an email to the tech departments of both DirecTV and COM or their parent.

 

[Mark Strube]

I'm sure I notice it more than most, I'm a videophile, and a technician at a movie theatre as well. However it seems to me that when my brightness goes up to 100, and the correct setting for everything else on D* is 54... and 34 is close to the "correct" setting just for that channel, that's pretty far off.

Do you know an email address that would give me a good chance of their engineers looking into the issue?