Delay between channels?

[Vandals909]

I just got a new TV and got my system upgraded with a new dish and a hr23 receiver. Picture is great, never had HD before.

Problem is now when switching channels there is a 3-5 second delay before the picture shows up and it is a grey screen.

Is this normal, how can I fix it? Should I be contacting the installer about it?

 

[rad]

Sounds normal to me. You might want to check that NATIVE is set to off on the receivers HDTV settings.

 

[jdspencer]

Do you have "Native" turned on or off. With native turned on the DVR will pass the source resolution to the TV and let it do the conversion. So depending on the TV this could cause some delay before the picture is displayed. My HR23 takes about 3-4 seconds with native turned off. I don't get a grey screen.
BTW, my HR20 is about one second quicker.

 

[Vandals909]

Yes native is set to off, the color for background was set to grey. So this is normal? My regular DVR receiver didnt to this!

 

[rad]

Yes native is set to off, the color for background was set to grey. So this is normal? My regular DVR receiver didnt to this!

Part of the reason is that there is a lot more data in a HD stream that needs to be buffered in the receiver before it can display a picture then the SD stream.

 

[mike752]

It may be resolution change. Try going to two channels of the same resolution (TBS, Spike, NBC, CBS) and see if the time is quicker. If it is, it is your TV and/or receiver switching resolutions.

 

[Vandals909]

It is the same between all channels no matter what definition. Is one dish better then another? The new one they installed is way bigger then my last one.

Is the HDMI cable that comes with the receiver good? Or would a better one yeild a better picture?
Picture does look amazing though.

 

[Sooner02]

HDMI is digital, you either get a picture or not so a new cable won't change a thing. HD content requires the larger dish to pick up the extra satellites.

 

[sudnshok]

You can thank Hollywood for most of the delay.

Most of the delay you experience is the HDCP handshake between the receiver and the display. Copy protection does nothing to stop piracy but does inconvenience legal users. It's always been that way and always will be that way. Super annoying.

Some of the delay is also the resolution switching between channels. If you set the receiver to output 1 resolution only, you may see a little less delay (but not much). Caveat: when I switched my receiver to output 1080 only, the ticker on the bottom of ESPN (a 720 broadcast) get so distorted it was hard to read.

 

[dcowboy7]

I just channel surf with the program guide instead.

 

[Lkr]

You can thank Hollywood for most of the delay.

Most of the delay you experience is the HDCP handshake between the receiver and the display. Copy protection does nothing to stop piracy but does inconvenience legal users. It's always been that way and always will be that way. Super annoying.

Some of the delay is also the resolution switching between channels. If you set the receiver to output 1 resolution only, you may see a little less delay (but not much). Caveat: when I switched my receiver to output 1080 only, the ticker on the bottom of ESPN (a 720 broadcast) get so distorted it was hard to read.

E* is faster, so I wouldn't blame everything on HDCP

 

[shouchien]

I agree that E* is much faster when I had it a year ago. For DirectTV, the problem is that when I punch the channel numbers or to bring up the program guide (especially this), the lag time is so severe that sometimes I can't even be sure whether the key was pressed or not. Again, back then when I had E* HD, this did not happen. If it wasn't for the YES (Yankees' baseball channel), I would take E* over DTV any single day.