Not how it works at all Nigel. Anything you're describing would prevent proper demodulation of the data. With enough errors it would fall off the 'cliff' and give no useful data. I don't doubt he saw 'ghosts' but they weren't RF multipath problems. I've been seeing a bit more 'enhancement' artefacts on some HD signals which makes me a little sad to see a good system get mis-used. OR, it may have been SD material again 'enhanced' to cause the cartoon-like outlines. I have seen some commercials that clearly (well, to me) came from a composite source (likely a D2 machine) with decoding artefacts. Fortunately THAT variety is fading away.
Digital broadcast TV doesn't support ghosts from transmission artifacts. The link from DTV adapter to analog TV, or the video amplifiers inside a vacuum-tube CRT television, can support some kinds of ghost/ringing that might be perceptible.
But the important question is, is this connection from tuner an analog NTSC (USA old TV standard) connection, or a digital ATSC connection? Does your TV get this signal over channel 3, or is it a digital channel, like 7.3, that it tunes? I presume it's analog (i.e. your DVDR is converting ATSC input to NTSC output).
If it's really a poorly-terminated bunch of coaxial wiring, or even a loose connection somewhere in the coaxial knotwork, your sixty-feet of wire can cause a resonance with circa 120 ns of delay (that's a signal reflection doing the sixty feet of travel in round-trip style). Full screen-width, NTSC, is about 55 uS, so 120 ns is a couple of percent of the screen size. Whether that's consistent with '1/8 inch', I can't say.
Reflections in wiring are caused by (1) stub transmission lines - like splitters with long cables connected that DO NOT have a receiver attached. You can fix that by disconnecting long cables, or by putting a 75 ohm terminator on the unused end. This applies to cables that are NOT part of the connection to your target television, as well as to the connecting channel; the echo from the cable can be related to wiring to the spare bedroom. It all connects. (2) loose connections. While watching the signal, adjust/loosen/ tighten any and all connectors in the coaxial maze. (3) faulty or overdriven amplifiers- For most use, a simple splitter is better than an amplifier; the signal/noise is not improved by amplification on the OUTPUT of a tuner, you don't NEED any amplifier to drive a bit of cable from that output. If the amplifier(s) cause signal overload, or support oscillation, they're a problem rather than a solution.
None of these reflection issues is related to the digital transmission. It is also possible that the TV has a weak video amplifier that has started to create dark shadows behind bright vertical lines because of aging of the video amplifier's filter capacitors. Plug a video game into the TV and see if it has the same artifacts (if it does, it's TV repair time).
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