WWE's VOD service is having video quality issues and nobody knows why

[Bix]

Back in January, WWE's subscription video on demand service, WWE Classics On Demand, started to be filled with shows that looked...wrong, with odd motion blurring. Eventually, with some help, I was able to determine that the problematic titles (all originally produced on interlaced broadcast quality videotape) were deinterlaced somewhere in the production chain. People would email WWE but the problem never got fixed. Today, I called WWE on a lark and talked to the guy who's pretty much in charge of department. He was very nice, came off very sincere, and clearly wants the problem fixed. He filled in a lot of details, but they make the situation even weirder.

The whole department has been stumped for months. In January, they noticed it on their end and pulled some of the affected shows. They thought they fixed it, as everything looked fine on their end when quality checking the final encodes. Those files are sent to TVN, their distributor, who sends them to the cable companies, who store them on their servers for VOD playback. Both TVN and the cable companies have reported no problems on their end. It's only happening to the end users who subscribe to the service.

Everything they could think of in the production chain has been checked. The encoder profile (a strict standard that they need to adhere to for compatibility) was never changed. The idea that the video got deinterlaced has been brought up (and he said he'll bring it up again), but they don't know how it would happen, as the videos look as they should with proper interlacing during the quality checks. Since they're just moving around digital files, nothing in the distribution stage should be causing this, and it's not happening to other VOD content providers. It's only happening to WWE's programming, it's not happening to all of it (Though there have been some weeks where all of the shows had the picture quality issues, "normal" ones would pop in randomly), and it's only happening once it's decoded by cable boxes.

So, what the heck do the experts here think is happening? Even though this problem has stumped a billion dollar company known for top-notch production values, I know I should never underestimate you guys, and WWE seems to want any ideas that could help them fix it.

[poisondeathray]

I remember you posted this a while back in another thread

Hard to say without examining the contents at each stage, anything else would just be guesses

[Bix]

I know, but I figured some brainstorming could be fun at worst and mildly useful at best. At least based on all of the discussion online, it's always the same shows regardless of cable provider and cable box manufacturer/model. Logically, based on what we know, there's no reason for it to be happening since the encoding didn't change and the only analog part of the chain after encoding is the cable box decoding the video and outputting it to the TV. If it was isolated to a certain cable company, cable box, or cable box manufacturer,then that would make sense, but it's everyone, so I don't get how this can be happening, and WWE's staff seems to be having the same problem.

Is there anyone here that knows anything about the MPEG-2 encoding standards used for cable VOD programming?