HDMI Related Display Problem with VIZO 42LHDTV

[sweenyl]

Any help on this issue would be great or I will have to return the TV to Costco. I know that HDMI is 3 Bits of Digital Data transmitted at 3.4Gbs each and includes both audio and digital information.

Description of Problem
A)
Playing a DVD in an upconverting Toshiba DVD player (connected through HDMI 6' Cable to VISIO 42" LCD). On a random basis the video is lost and a white fuzzy screen is displayed for about 2 seconds. It happens on a random basis.

B)
Playing a DVD in my computer with a new ATI 3850 Graphics Card (DVI to HDMI cable to Vizio). I get the same results but it happens more often. Same Cable used for both experiments.

C) Watching HDTV with ATSC tuner (Comcast Analog Cable is directly input to TV). I see a loss in transmission for about 2 seconds on a random basis only when viewing HDTV.

NO ISSUES at all when viewing SD tv or inputing DVD output into SVIDEO VIZIO input.

So my current theory is that I am geting a burst of errors on my HDMI receive side (VIZIO) and the whole resync(handshaking) process takes about 2 seconds. The burst of errors is long since the handshaking process is probably just a few usec.

The analog cable loss of signal is a little unnerving in that HDMI has nothing to do with the ATSC tuner.

So here are my questions:

1. Has anyone else seen this issue with any TV?

2. Do I have a defective HDMI reciever (ie. functional but with very little margin)?

3. Could bad sectors on the DVD cause a problem with the digital coding of the data stream for 2 seconds and be the cause of the HDMI problem?

4. Could there be common random noise event that is corrupting the MPEG decoder causing both the HDMI and ATSC source to go bad for 2 seconds?

[sweenyl]

I spoke with an Engineer at my company and he stated that
MPEG compression is based on 1 Reference Picture Frame uncompressed
then the next 2 seconds or so of frames are compressed and motion estimation is used to regenerate the original picture.

This means that if there are enough errors in the Reference Frame then you could see 2 seconds of garbage on the screen.

I spoke with Technical Sales guy at Fry's and he stated that there were a few TV's from a few manufacturers that they had similar problems with but only with the ATSC input and never HDMI.

The bottom line is that I should never see a dropped frame with a short 6 foot HDMI cable and he stated that my TV was deffective and should be returned.

I hope this helps with other people who might see a a fuzzy picture for 2 seconds during a movie.