A/V equipment sucks
I’m pretty annoyed right now. For reasons that I really don’t understand, This American Life Season 2, as seen by Netflix Watch Instantly on Xbox 360 Live was not working properly. The music was working fine, and some sound effects, but not the dialog.
Now, I think I should explain a bit how things are wired up. The component output goes into the TV, and the stereo audio outputs WERE going into the satellite inputs on my receiver. This has worked perfectly fine since I bought the 360 last fall – but not tonight. I tried two separate episodes of the series, and both “failed”. I tried some other instant watchable Netflix and it worked. I futzed around with the surround settings on the receiver, and occasionally was able to hear Ira Glass, sounding like he was at the bottom of a well. I turned off the 360 in disgust.
On a whim, I tried moving the audio outputs to the VCR inputs on the receiver, and lo-and-behold it just works. I really am not sure why the receiver input matters in this case, but there’s bound to be an explanation. Maybe one of me 5 readers knows. If not it will just be a mystery to me.
My theory is this relates to some kind of “surround sound” processing done on the receiver.
When such algorithms are used, they look for hints in the relationship bewteen the sound streams in the left and right channels, and sometimes end up with undesirable artifacts on audio sources which either were designed for alternative surround processing, or where they were designed as straight stereo.
One example is very slight flanging of a channel between left and right channels, as might occur if there are two mics in a real environment with an assymetrically located speaker.
Comment by Joshua Rodman — June 30, 2009 @ 6:31 am
Yeah, I know it has something to do with encoding – I should have mentioned this, and I guessed (correctly) that the VCR inputs totally ignore any sort of encoding since VCRs are dumb. But what would be special about the encoding on this one TV series that would make my receiver go nutty?
Comment by neil — June 30, 2009 @ 8:08 am