# Ghosting effect with HDMI cable and Samsung LN-S3251D



## goldenbear

I'm not sure if this is a problem with my samsung lcd TV or Dish VIP 211 receiver or both! I currently connect to my TV through HDMI cables and get pretty severe ghosting effects on black backgrounds. This is on both SD and HD channels. A simple example is a slight ghosting of the dish info bar that appears when I change channels. Across a black background, I can see a light outline of the infobar - sometimes it is before and sometime after the bar pops up. Other shapes (slightly grey in color) often appear in black backgrounds that should be pure black (or as black as an lcd can get). At first, I thought is was a compression problem with the Dish service, but I tried running the signal via component and had none of these problems. I have no other HDMI sources to experiment with yet. Could this be a problem with the HDMI cable? Dish's HDMI output? or my TV's processing of a digital signal? Its very strange that the TV can show a component signal with no flaws, but cannot show the HDMI one! Thanks for your help.


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## dishtsr3tech

First thing you wanna do is try replacing the HDMI cable and if the problem still persists and you dont have anything else that you can plug into the tv HDMI port, try pushing the power button in for about ten seconds to reset the rec. This is a known rec issue with dish network and they will not create ra's for this problem as is appears to be software related. best things if the reset doesnt work is to use component cables and soon enough there will be a software update to resolve this problem.


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## volga

no problem here


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## tvuser123

I am having the same exact issue that you have described. My set is doing it with both HDMI and Component, using a cable receiver or a dvd player. I called Samsung and they sent their tech over. Tech changed the main board and the problem still exists. They sent another tech to tell me that this is how the tv will behave and it is normal. I told them then why is that not listed on the Samsung manual if the set behaves like that. I am now escalating with Samsung to get my TV replaced. Please let me know how you are planning to get this fixed with Samsung. They plan to get back to me by end of November. We can share our knowledge and that may help us both.


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## goldenbear

I only seem to have to problem with the HDMI input from the Dish VIP 211 - not with the component input. I also tried a HDMI DVD player to see if the TV had problems with other HDMI sources, and the picture looked fine. I was thinking that it was just a problem with HDMI on the dish receiver, but I haven't seen anyone without a Samsung report the problem so that is now suggesting that it might be the Samsung LCD. The other test I want to try is to connect another HDTV to the dish receiver via HDMI to see if there is a similar problem, but right now finding someone willing to bring a HDTV over to try this with my setup is not likely. It is frustrating because the ghosting is very annoying! 

I have DVD and XBOX connected to the component input through my AV receiver, but I might try to run component from dish to the TV for a few days to see if I ever see the ghosting. 

Please post an update on the results of the your Samsung service inquiry. I really haven't had the time to deal with either dish or samsung yet - it would really help if i knew who was at fault. Obviously, this is a 1500 dollar piece of equipment, so I'd like to get it working right! I just re-read your post and you say your DVD player has problems too? That definitely rules out the dish receiver. Any way you can get a screen shot with a digital camera? I'll try to do the same just to make sure we have the same issue.


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## Rollett

goldenbear said:


> I only seem to have to problem with the HDMI input from the Dish VIP 211 - not with the component input. I also tried a HDMI DVD player to see if the TV had problems with other HDMI sources, and the picture looked fine. I was thinking that it was just a problem with HDMI on the dish receiver, but I haven't seen anyone without a Samsung report the problem so that is now suggesting that it might be the Samsung LCD. The other test I want to try is to connect another HDTV to the dish receiver via HDMI to see if there is a similar problem, but right now finding someone willing to bring a HDTV over to try this with my setup is not likely. It is frustrating because the ghosting is very annoying!
> 
> I have DVD and XBOX connected to the component input through my AV receiver, but I might try to run component from dish to the TV for a few days to see if I ever see the ghosting.
> 
> Please post an update on the results of the your Samsung service inquiry. I really haven't had the time to deal with either dish or samsung yet - it would really help if i knew who was at fault. Obviously, this is a 1500 dollar piece of equipment, so I'd like to get it working right! I just re-read your post and you say your DVD player has problems too? That definitely rules out the dish receiver. Any way you can get a screen shot with a digital camera? I'll try to do the same just to make sure we have the same issue.


 I would like to hope it isnt a problem with the TV its self... considering it was one of the top 5 TV's of this year (mine is at least).... I would hate it if both of the HDMI ports are worthless.... actualy that would make me very agnry and i would be calling samsung.. but alas .. i have nothing else to test this on..

Samsung LN-S2641D

Btw the Samsungs we have are the same set.. differnt size.. The differnt modle 51/41 is the color of the frame on the out side.


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## tvuser123

Samsung called back and said that it is a normal behavior and they are not willing to do anything else about it. I told them that if it is a normal behavior then it should happen on all sets and also it should be noted in the user's manual. I am going to fight this issue with Samsung until they replace the unit as I am very annoyed by the problem. I will post a few picture of the issue that I am seeing as soon as I can.


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## Rollett

if its a NORMAL issue... why does it even have HDMI ports ? defys the whole point.


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## Rollett

Also Important: Any source you connect to your TV using HDMI must be HDCP compliant. If it is not, the picture will be distorted and in many cases unwatchable.

Off their website, Is the Dish box HDCP compliant ?


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## Rollett

Here's a nother thought.. are they just blowing it off as being *Ghosting for LCD's* And just not reconizing how bad it is ?


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## goldenbear

To me it looks like either there is some kind of error in the dish 211's mpeg 4 decompression that introduced the artifacts, or some kind of problem with the samsung processing digital signals. Not sure how to attack this because obviously dish will blame the TV or their crappy box, and samsung will blame dish. But it's not normal. I would really like to know whether another brand of TV ever has this problem because I have never seen anything like it..... It's obviously not ghosting due to the response time of the TV, the artifacts linger far longer than the refresh rate. I don't see why the Dish box has to be HDCP compliant - HDCP is a future copy protection encryption method. If dish doesn't want to (or isn't required to) encrypt their signal, then HDCP isn's used. I don't think any sources are encrypted yet.

Strangely, I haven't seen any of this ghosting recently, so I haven't been too upset with my TV lately.


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## Spirit

goldenbear said:


> To me it looks like either there is some kind of error in the dish 211's mpeg 4 decompression that introduced the artifacts,...


Dish sends their Mpeg4 programming on satellite 129. That would be all the VOOM HD channels along with Local HD programming. All other channels, including HDNET, TNTHD, SHOHD etc., etc., from the 110 satellite in Mpeg 2.

So if what you say is true, it seems the problem would only exist on those newer VOOM and other 129 satellite channels, because the 110 and 119 satellites are still sending in Mpeg2.


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## Rollett

Your saying the ghosting on yours on the blacks stopped Golden ? i got ticked and returned my HDMI cable. . and bought a component switcher.. thing is i dont have money to just blast out for some other device that supports HDMI. Just to test if it IS the TV...


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## goldenbear

Rollett said:


> Your saying the ghosting on yours on the blacks stopped Golden ? i got ticked and returned my HDMI cable. . and bought a component switcher.. thing is i dont have money to just blast out for some other device that supports HDMI. Just to test if it IS the TV...


Not saying it has stopped, just at that time, I haven't noticed it lately. And it was really annoying before. Interesting point on the different dishes - I had the problem on both SD and HD channels, so if those cover both MPEG2 and MPEG4 feeds, then I wouldn't expect the same problem.

I did just get a PS3 and hooked that up with a HDMI cable - and yes there was minor ghosting on some black screens, not during gameplay, but on some title menus. what is strange is that it is hard to predict which shows/ menus will have problems with ghosting - ghosting shows up the most on all black backgrounds with text across it, such as movie credits, the dish logo screen saver, or in the black bars that frame 4:3 SD picture. But it doesn't happen every time under similar circumstances. I can't say let's go to this screen or this situation and repeat the ghosting. As for the PS3 and ghosting, it has yet to show up in very limited gameplay, but I will keep the postings coming if see anything.

I also tried out a sony HDMI upconverting DVD player, saw no problems at all, but returned the player because there was absolutely no difference in picture quality between it and my non-upconverting sony dvd player.

So the lastest info is pointing to the TV..... if I see something repeatable with dish and/or the PS3, i will try to get samsung to come out and do something. But my main concern is that the TV has problems processing dark signals and that there might not be a fix to it. Arg. Still waiting for a report of the 211 with side by side HDTV's as well......


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