Lines on Fox Animation?

[CaptainJack]

I watch Family Guy, Cleveland Show, American Dad on Sunday nights. I have a HD tv. I wanted to know if Im the only one who is seeing this. Its very hard to explain what Im seeing so I'll post a couple pics instead. Keep in mind that I only see this in the animated shows on Fox. But they are really annoying.
Ive circled what Im talking about in these pics in red. Basically the vertical lines. Some of the other stuff is from me taking a pic of my TV...

 

[Trekker4747]

I'm guessing it has something to do with the cartoon not being "in HD" and it's some kind of artifact of the animation cells being upconverted.

 

[Christopher]

Animation doesn't use cels anymore; it's all done digitally. The character drawings are still done by hand, but either they're drawn in pencil, then scanned and digitally inked, painted, and composited, or they're drawn directly into a digital graphics program.

And that kind of artifact looks like the effect of pixels being converted from one resolution to another, with the number of pixels not quite adding up so there are "beats." Maybe it's an artifact of the digital image compression techniques that broadcasters often use. I notice it's common in live-action shows for lighting gradients in the background to be simplified into a few distinct shades with angular dividing lines between them (at least when I watch them on a non-HD set).

 

[backstept]

it might also have something to do with possible compression to the signal that the station or service provider uses

you wouldn't notice it in live action because there aren't large swatches of uniform color like in animation

 

[CaptainJack]

Is anyone else getting these on the Fox Animation Domination thing? I figured it had something to do with a crappy signal coming from my provider.

 

[Non Sync]

How are you watching? Are you watching the local station directly or through a cable provider? Or are you watching via satellite (DirecTV or DISH)?

 

[137th Gebirg]

it might also have something to do with possible compression to the signal that the station or service provider uses

you wouldn't notice it in live action because there aren't large swatches of uniform color like in animation

^^^ This. It's called Compression Quantization. Wiki article is pretty technical but, the long and short of it, it's artifacts resulting in the compression of the video stream. This article has a better visual example.

It's stuff like that which honestly makes me pine for the good old days of analog TV. A good enough antenna with unrestricted line-of-sight will give you a picture better than any digital HD broadcast.

 

[CaptainJack]

Im using a Hopper and Joey setup with DishNetwork. It seems to me that I only see these on Fox animation domination cartoons on Sunday. Weird thing is, if I watch the same episode on Adult Swim I dont get these lines. Must be the Super crappy signal provided by Fox to Dish. Either that or Dish is compressing and screwing up the signal to save their precious bandwidth...

 

[137th Gebirg]

IIRC, shows are digitally broadcasted from a source location via satellite to its affiliates, who then, in turn, broadcast it on their usual show times. It is entirely possible that there was some data loss in the transfer to that particular affiliate, likely on the receiving end, causing a greater degradation prior to final broadcast. I'm not quite sure why they still do this, and not just simply FTP the video files directly to affiliate servers, with no loss of signal. That way, the video quality should be identical to the final cut (transmission compression to client cable boxes notwithstanding).

BTW, these compression artifacts are more noticeable in animation programs than live-action, due to the large over-saturated fields of color and low texturing. The artifacts are still there in live-action, but not as noticeable due to the greater variety of hues and shades in the picture. The human eyes and brain tend not to notice pixellation on that level (at least, not as much) and automatically "fill in" the image information that isn't there. Audio, however, is treated differently by the brain. Audio compression quantization and breaks in the stream are much more easily noticed than video/image imperfections.

Yes, I was one of those A/V geeks in school.

 

[Yoda]

it might also have something to do with possible compression to the signal that the station or service provider uses

you wouldn't notice it in live action because there aren't large swatches of uniform color like in animation

^^^ This. It's called Compression Quantization. Wiki article is pretty technical but, the long and short of it, it's artifacts resulting in the compression of the video stream. This article has a better visual example.

It's stuff like that which honestly makes me pine for the good old days of analog TV. A good enough antenna with unrestricted line-of-sight will give you a picture better than any digital HD broadcast.

The lines don't look like an artifact of typical digital compression at all to me.

Anyway... really, you pine for the good old days of analog TV? Did you have a good enough antenna with unrestricted line of sight? Or did you suffer from various issues like the rest of us? Ghosting? Static?

And of course in the good old analog days content was lower resolution... so despite some digital artifacts it's pretty obvious that digital transmission is better than "the good old days."

IIRC, shows are digitally broadcasted from a source location via satellite to its affiliates, who then, in turn, broadcast it on their usual show times. It is entirely possible that there was some data loss in the transfer to that particular affiliate, likely on the receiving end, causing a greater degradation prior to final broadcast. I'm not quite sure why they still do this, and not just simply FTP the video files directly to affiliate servers, with no loss of signal. That way, the video quality should be identical to the final cut (transmission compression to client cable boxes notwithstanding).

Well, the most obvious reason things are broadcast the way they are broadcast is to accommodate live television. As for "signal degradation," well, with digital transmission that's one of the perks, you are either getting the signal, or you aren't. What's not going to happen is you getting dark vertical lines.

As for where those lines are coming from... not sure. The lines coincidentally sort of look like they're suffering from digital compression artifacts near the black lines that outline Chris's pants. That implies to me that they're there at the TV station or maybe Dish Network before they recompress it.

There also seem to be quite a bit of ugly looking edge enhancement/ringing artifacts. Definitely not there in the MKV rip I have of this week's Family Guy. Did you crank the sharpness up on your TV or something?

Anyway, I don't think we can come up with anything conclusive based on those pics. Who is your Fox affiliate? Can you check the over the air broadcast and see if the lines are still there? Check with neighbors/friends?

 

[Mr. B]

IIRC, shows are digitally broadcasted from a source location via satellite to its affiliates, who then, in turn, broadcast it on their usual show times. It is entirely possible that there was some data loss in the transfer to that particular affiliate, likely on the receiving end, causing a greater degradation prior to final broadcast.

Personally I'm amazed HDTV is even watchable with all the re-encoding and reformatting between source and end user.

First there's all the reformatting at the production level. Then it's recompressed and beamed via satellite to the affiliate. (Daytime shows like Judge Judy are probably downloaded though a service like Pathfire) Then it likely gets processed though some MPEG encoder at the affiliate before getting beamed out over the air.

If you're watching the local station on satellite like DirecTV, you're most likely watching a signal DirecTV captured over the air and a data center in your market area which is then streamed back to DTV headquarters, where it's again re-encoded beamed up another satellite and sent to your TV.

Unless it's a 1080i signal on a 1080p TV, then it's being resized by your own TV which in all likelihood has lousy color calibration settings.