black box in middle of tv screen??

More than likely it is digital artifacts when trying to render an MPEG stream, if it can not decode it fast enough you end up with usually, many small blocks.

However, I've seen very large blocks before too with digital signals (Cable TV, HDTV, HD Satellite TV, regular satellite TV)...

Welcome to the end of analog broadcast and digital glitches.

Usually it's a bandwidth issue with your TV service provider.

Its the channel, not your TV.

We have a channel that I guess doesn't get enough power put into its signal it gets the 'green snow' tiny green pixel squares that 'fall' kind of sort of.

These are the digital version of static and snow found on the analog broadcasts.

We also have a channel that is occasionally goes black, the sound keeps on going. A quick image of the program 'frozen' while the sounds continues, black again, then the picture comes back.

Again its the channel.

These are 'artifacts' of the digital broadcast. For analog this would be static, snow, etc.

Does this happen more often during commercials? If so it is a problem at the distributor's end (example: Cable Company) Cable is better known for tailoring commercial broadcasts for the local area. During commercial breaks they will replace the stations signal with another signal sending through local commercials over the station's. This can lead to black screen, pixalation and other problems.

Hard to buy this is a digital glitch. We have the pixilation, sound going while images stilled etc.

In our case, exactly like other writer, the sound and picture behind the black box are all perfect. Was on one station only for certain programs and now another station only for certain programs/times.

However, this is not occurring at our home 60 miles away from our broadcasting city, where we had a good antenna and recently installed a power box. Just at our city apt. with rabbit ears.

So, maybe I buy it.

If it is bandwidth, what shoud be done? Just another big antenna? More specifics would help, and less "welcome to the digital age."

Thanks

The problem is with closed captioning. Check your converter box manual for controlling this setting.

This Worked for me

I need to know this answer AC...

Why did you bring up this thread from 3 years ago?

It's very irritating. Goes away when I turn it off and on. Did not know it had anything to do with close captioning and the cable company seemed as mystified as me. Thanks for the answer.

are you BLACK?