That should make the picture worse.

Line doubling (de-interlacing) just adds another level of processing, and the fewer of those the better. The plasma has to scale whatever you send it to it's own resolution anyway. The only way that might help is if the plasma were EDTV and the line doubler you used was better than the one in the plasma.

Not to mention, some plasmas won't let you change aspect when fed a 480p signal (not current ones, but some older ones).

Will the plasma actually line double to achieve the correct resolution? I still have a gut feeling that it's something in the conversion process that causes the problem.

coupla things here...

1) The number of subscribers to a satellite system makes ZERO difference in the signal strenght per subscriber...it's NOT like CATV or Electricity! If any analogy can be made here, it's like an ANALOG TV station signal, a radio station, etc...It doesn't matter whether there are 100 or 1 million people wathing CSI on Thursday, or listening to their favorite radio station. It's an RF signal, and if it's there...it's there, if it's not, it's not. Signal strenght versus distance from transmitter is an issue sure, but the number of people using it is not the determining factor!

2) The off air and cable tuners in these satellite set top boxes are marginal at best. Try hooking one up to one plasma, the right next to it, use a dedicated ATSC off air-box next to it on another identical plasma...you will likely find a better picture for the dedicated box, than from the combo box. Just like you'll get a better performance from some seperates, than from some AVR's...

3) McNasty...not quite true...not ALL locals in all markets are on the 110 bird...some are, and continue to be added, to the 119, as well as the 101...

keep in mind that both Dish Network (parent company Echostar; Echosphere) and DirecTv (leasing ALL programming and space on satellites from Ecosphere; Ecostar) use the SAME SATELLITES! What WOULD have solved this problem was the merger of the two that failed. Why? Beacause the two companies would have become one, and the SIMULCAST of the SAME signals would have ceased! Right now, every channel that the two have in common, are sent to us from the heavens on two different channels, from different transponders, at the same time. Get rid of one provider, and you instantly DOUBLE the available room on the satellites.

The proposed buyout of DirecTv by CableVision and Rupert Murdoch MAY help this problem, as CV has some of their own stuff up there...shared with Cox, Comcast, Etc...

It is definitely a compression issue...as HDTV programming is added, the NON-HD channels will continue to suffer, and we'll have to continue to explain to customers!

Back to the question at hand though, Dr. Z., if you've used the exact same configuration several times RECENTLY, without the problems you're experienceing here, is it possible that you have a bad plasma or sat receiver, in this setup?

Please keep us posted what you're finding out!

avdude

Fairly new here so I don't know Drzhivago well. So if I offend you my apology in advance:

Here's my two cents:

I assume that you verified that the Sat receiver was outputting properly by hooking it up to another display device and that you verified that the input on the Fujitsu was good by hooking up another device to it? Tried composite and SVideo?

Does the sat Menu/Guide also tilt?

Maybe it is a compression problem--Do all the NTSC channels do this? If not which ones do? If we could narrow it down to channels located on one particular satellite that might be helpful. Then maybe we would have a way of addressing the issue with the customer before hand.

I not only had this problem with the NTSC output of the Samsung HD receiver, but when I looked at the component output, also on a Fujitsu plasma, there were horizontal lines that occasionally stood still, but moved around, scrolled up, scrolled, down, and basically drove us all nuts. I had two different receivers, and they both did this on the plasma and neither did it on a Toshiba Colorstream set.

The cure was to take it off 720p. It looked better on both 480p and 1080i. I did not care about the NTSC output, so I don't remember if changing the resolution switch made any difference there.