why does my HDTV have ripples going through the screen?

Question

my HDTV has horizontal ripples going down the screen and i dont know why. please help

Answer 1

I had/have the same problem with my TV. The cause is interference between the electrical and video cables behind your TV. In my case, I have the whole stereo/tv/video game setup in one corner of the room, so there are many, many cables. The XBox 360 power brick was in there, too. The magnetic fields of the cables interact, and cause the lines on your TV.

I was able to minimize the problem by moving the XBox 360 power brick away from the rest of the cables. I still have lines, but they are faint enough that I don't notice them much. To fully resolve the problem, I'd have to really rearrange everything so that electricity vs. video cables are far a part, and that's a big effort for anyone with even a mid-sized audio/video system.

I read somewhere online that they are caused by the difference in frequency between the electrical line (60hz) and the video signal (56hz). This difference gets transfered to the video cable, and shows up on your TV as slow moving lines traveling vertically on the screen. The technical name is "hum bars" or "ground loop". Google that and you'll be off to a good start.

Good luck!

Answer 2

Have you had a magnet anywhere near your screen.

We once found out that our TV's colored ripples that we found were being caused by having large speakers way too close to the sides of the screen. Moving the speakers somewhat helped the problem.

Answer 3

Chances are you have a signal issue, contact your cable company and have them come out and check your signal level, you may have a bad line, spltter, fitting,ect. There is now clear cut answer unless the tech is right there to see whats going on and checks your signal levels.