Dave,

FWIW, I worked on a Mitsubishi HC3000 when I was in Kansas City recently. In general, I'm not a big fan of most current Mitsubishi TVs, but I have to say that I think it would be very, very difficult to find a more effective way to spend $1500. This projector also calibrates very nicely, although it has just one grayscale memory that's adjustable -- and it is global, rather than input/source specific.

This projector would be an excellent buy, particularly for someone who is looking to wait a few years for the price of 1080p projectors to decline. It's even better if you can pair this projector with a video scaler that would allow you to send everything at the native display rate. My customer was using the DVDO VP50.

I didn't watch much of the game last night, so I can't really comment on the picture quality. I did record from the halftime show on until the end of the scheduled time slot, and will take a look at that tonight.

FWIW, I thought the halftime show with Prince was excellent, particularly considering the conditions he was performing in. I've always been a fan of the freaky one...but one reviewer suggests that it may have been the best Super Bowl halftime show ever:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/sports/football/05halftime.html?em&ex=1170824400&en=92795bd9770351fe&ei=5087%0A

What a great Super Bowl that was! Correct me if I'm wrong, though - has there ever been another Super Bowl where both quarterbacks played for the same team?

BTW, the picture quality matched the quality of play on the field.

Yes Joe, the PQ was awesome until the rains came. Then the water vapor became a fog on close ups. I did notice pixelation on 3 occasions but I attributed this to the weather. I'm sure they pulled bandwidth stops.

This was the first Superbowl in the last 8 years that I could sit down and enjoy. I had no one to root for and no one to hate. The officiating was the best I have seen all year.

I know now, that for sure Tony loves Lovie. Anyone else would have kicked the FG in the last 2 minutes. My son-in-law was jumping up and down when they just snapped the ball on 4th down. He had the over at 41 and the Bears and 13 1/2. Won both bets.

Food and beverages were great. The only thing that went wrong was my MyHD recording went away when I tried to move it to a directory of my choice. Perhaps too much beverages?

Walt

I thought the picture quality was great for the Superbowl...I didn't see the blockings you guys are talking about...but I was watching sat, not ota...I almost always see blocks on Fox, occasionaly on NBC, but rarely on CBS....

my complaint though was the sound mix...I thought the center channel volume was low (the commentators)...

but on the otherhand, I thought the sound mix during Prince's performance was outstanding. A perfect mix. I was real disapointed last year with the stones...where the vocals are jacked up loud and the instruments are muted and compressed and lack dynamics....a common complaint from me about these "live" performances...

You guys have to be kidding me. As a musician, I was really disappointed in that halftime mix. Even my girlfriend was like "wow his guitar is way too loud in the mix." Best show ever? Not even close. No nipples!

You guys have to be kidding me. As a musician, I was really disappointed in that halftime mix. Even my girlfriend was like "wow his guitar is way too loud in the mix." Best show ever? Not even close. No nipples!

well I am a musician myself and I thought the mix was great.

[QUOTE=Left Jeff]I thought the center channel volume was low (the commentators)...QUOTE]

I think this is almost always a plus. The commentators are never watching the same program as me.

BTW...."Why haven't the terrorists thought of this?"

Probably because no one has told them about it you f***ing idiot. Now we need a news program the shows them who to make the bomb.

Walt

I am probably 75' below the height of the trees and 1/2 mile long hill. How high would I need to go? (WAF is a factor). Any suggestions on antenna, since I have (I think) multipath and a weak signal?That kind of location defies mathematical predictions. Radio waves do bend down over hilltops to some degree (it's called diffraction).

Just get a good antenna up on a chimney or rooftop mount. Feed it with good low-loss feedline (by the way, 300-ohm twinlead has less loss than coaxial cable, but you must keep it away from other wires and pipes).

I haven't bought any antennas for about 25 years, so I'd take the advice of members here who are more up-to-date on that topic. In your case I'd be looking for a little more gain and accept the tradeoff of a little less beamwidth.

Overall the projector produces an incredible picture for the money. The brightness was up there with my AE-700. But the colors really pop. My wife even commented how much better it looked during the Cirque pregame show.

2 things are leading me to try the Mits HC3000.
1) Offset - Because I want to retain my 106" screen I have to mount the projector at about 14'. Unfortunately this is just past an air duct, so not only do I have 8, ceilings, but I also have a mount that drops it to 7'. As a result I really have to tilt the projector to get it up on the wall. While the HC3000 has about the same offset, it also has a 1280x768 so I can use image shift to compensate a little.

Why can't someone make a low cost 720P DLP with 0 offset :mad:

2) There is a small amount of light spill. Don't know if this can be adjusted, but when I zoom my image out to fill the screen, about 3" of light show on either side of the screen border. Since my border is only 1" I can see a light ring arount my screen. It's very faint, but it's there.

Unfortunately I cannot do a direct comparison to my 3 year old AE700, but from memory I can say the colors popped more, there is no definitive pixel structure and
the overall picture looked considerably better. I put Ice Age 2 in my PS3 and again I noticed more vibrant colors. I also noticed the lack of FPN in the blue sky scenes, something that has bothered my with LCD since I read about it. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

I don't know If football & commercials is condusive to RBE, but I didn't notice it during standard viewing. In fact the only time I did notice I was trying induce it (shaking head back and forth, darting eyes back and forth across the screen)
So I don't think it's much of an issue.

I'm going to pick up the HC3000 today and I'll post a comparison later.
Dave

Looking forward to the review. I love DLP technology, and rainbows (once they got past the first or second generation units) have not been a problem for me. You just can't beat single chip DLP for image sharpness and "pop."

I think the Best Buy in south county has the Mits 3000 on display. Of course, they don't have a dedicated room for it, and the light washes out the display, but one of the sales reps told me that they sold 7 of them because of the makeshift demo area they set up.

I have vowed not to buy another Optoma projector because of my problems with the Optoma H79, but a lot of folks have had good luck with them.

well I am a musician myself and I thought the mix was great.

Probably cause I'm a bass player. :cool:

Thanks to Charter, no HD Super Bowl for me. CONGRATS COLTS!!!! I'm running rg6 this morning and looking at a Winegard ss-2000. I'm about 35 miles due east of St Louis with no obstructions. Anyone have any luck with this antenna???

I didn't watch much of the game last night, so I can't really comment on the picture quality. I did record from the halftime show on until the end of the scheduled time slot, and will take a look at that tonight.

FWIW, I thought the halftime show with Prince was excellent, particularly considering the conditions he was performing in. I've always been a fan of the freaky one...but one reviewer suggests that it may have been the best Super Bowl halftime show ever:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/sports/football/05halftime.html?em&ex=1170824400&en=92795bd9770351fe&ei=5087%0A


I like that Prince performed live -- but I thought the mix itself was deplorable... You heard his guitar and lead vocals quite well; but lots of the other band members (drum kit; keyboard, bass guitar) were pushed way back in the mix.

Cheers,

Probably cause I'm a bass player. :cool:

I don't know, to me turning down Prince's guitar is like turning down Hendrix's or someone else's...the guy is a guitar player first and foremost (despite the fact he plays all the instruments on most of his recordings), so it's going to be jacked up in the mix...plus he spent probably half his time soloing...

Did anyone else notice that was a Foo Fighters song he covered at the end... :eek:

tvaddict:

I use a Yagi; because most of the stations are within a 15 degree span and the Yagi is a directional antenna. I'm about 25 miles from the towers (don't forget to check antennaweb.org for correct orientation) and I used an antenna preamp as I goto a 4-way splitter.

I don't have any issues with this arrangement and you might want to look into it.

I have serious reservations that the SS will do the job for you; even if it's the amplified version. Have you talked about this with Antennas Direct? They are a very good source of information and it's 1-day shipping from them to you at very competitive prices. They might even allow pickup in Eureka, MO.

Cheers,

I don't know, to me turning down Prince's guitar is like turning down Hendrix's or someone else's...the guy is a guitar player first and foremost (despite the fact he plays all the instruments on most of his recordings), so it's going to be jacked up in the mix...plus he spent probably half his time soloing...

Did anyone else notice that was a Foo Fighters song he covered at the end... :eek:

It's all about balance... You can feature an instrument while not overpowering everything else in the mix. A competent mixer does just that.

Take a listen to the work of top mixers like Elliot Scheiner; Al Schmitt; Frank Fillipetti, Chuck Ainlay, Michael Bishop et al. They know exactly how to do this.

Cheers,

Of course the GF and I were like "he should do Purple Rain - its raining!" heeh, so I'm glad he did.

[QUOTE=John Kotches]tvaddict:

I use a Yagi; because most of the stations are within a 15 degree span and the Yagi is a directional antenna.



Already checked antennaweb - good to go with that. I will check with Antennas Direct. Thanks for the help John!!

I don't know, to me turning down Prince's guitar is like turning down Hendrix's or someone else's...the guy is a guitar player first and foremost (despite the fact he plays all the instruments on most of his recordings), so it's going to be jacked up in the mix...plus he spent probably half his time soloing...

Did anyone else notice that was a Foo Fighters song he covered at the end... :eek:

You're a musician and you're referring to All Along the Watchtower as a "Foo Fighters Song"? :rolleyes: Music and Lyrics by Bob Dylan; and the definitive version is Hendrix'. Yeah, Foo Fighters covered it; but to say it's a "Foo Fighters song" ignores a bit of rock history.

Just got my D* HD upgrade on Friday night (during the Blues @ Wings game... :( ) & have some observations / questions.

The installer, while being a nice guy, seemed to know less about the setup than I did.
I actually hooked up the HR-20 while he was on the roof changing out my dish for the new 5LNB model. I didn't really want someone else messing around with my entertainment center, & turns out for good reason, the dude unplugged my DVD player when he plugged in the HR-20 (he asked that if I was hooking it up that I leave the power unplugged until he was finished installing the new dish).
When we sat down to "go though" the remote & menus, I went in & turned on the dolby 5.1, since it's default is off. I made a comment like "Why would the default setting have dolby 5.1 off?" the installer asked "what's dolby 5.1?" :eek: Are you kidding?
He also made a comment about how he had the same box at home & that he just uses the RF connections for his hookup (which is not even HD!)
Man, I miss the ease of use that my TiVo afforded, but I want to believe that this is mostly due to the human condition that tells us "change is bad".

Local HD channels:
Speaking with the people at customer retention when I orderd my upgrade & the installer on Friday, I asked both, "Will I need a seperate antenna to receive my local HD channels?" Both said no, the 5LNB dish will pick them up. The tech indicated some of the local HD channels when he was done with the install, & I thought "great, that was easy"...

Wrong.

I get no HD channels for 9, 11, 24, 30, or 46! :mad:

I went in & messed with the setup a bit & can now see the HD channels for these stations in the guide, however they will not tune in, I am assuming because I have no seperate OTA antenna? I'm pretty pizzed about this, since I specifically asked & was told that I would not need it, & now my options appear to be call & complain & probably have to wait (god knows how long) for an installer to come out & install the $50 OTA antenna & run the extra RG6 (current setup has only 2 lines direct from dish, no multiswitches) or figure out some sort of OTA setup myself.

Am I missing something or are these my only options to get ALL of my local HD's?

Thanks for reading my noob rant.
-Scott

You should be getting 30 in HD from the SAT. But yes, without an antenna you will not see
the other local channel's digital feed.

Also, the installer is obviously a nut jub because there is no RF out on the HR20, or any HD box for that matter.

You're a musician and you're referring to All Along the Watchtower as a "Foo Fighters Song"? :rolleyes: Music and Lyrics by Bob Dylan; and the definitive version is Hendrix'. Yeah, Foo Fighters covered it; but to say it's a "Foo Fighters song" ignores a bit of rock history.

I've never heard the Foo Fighters version of Watchtower.

I didn't watch the halftime show, now I wish I had. I also heard other people refer to Hendrix and FooFighters covers during the show. They needed to put up a setlist to make me watch....

edit...According to the programming forum, he did the FooFighters song "Best of You".

If you could only have one premium channel what would you choose between.

HBO
Showtime
starz
cinemax

as far as picture quality goes for the super bowl last night. it was gorgeous on my new set. saturday wifey and i picked up a new samsung ln-s4041d. this was my first experience with an OTA antenna. it seemed once the set was on kmov-hd for about 5 minutes, the picture seemed really locked in and got better til the rain came and started fogging the "stuffing" out of the picture. i just chucked it up to the rain. pic quality was pretty good down in my neck of the woods

If you could only have one premium channel what would you choose between.

HBO
Showtime
starz
cinemax

1. Starz for the best movies
2. Cinemax for the skin flicks

by the way, Showtime BLOWS!! It shouldn't even be considered a premium channel. I remember when the Disney Channel was considered a premium offering on par with HBO, Cinemax, etc.

I don't get the whole infatuation with Prince.... I thought he would at least have some new songs to sing.

I think they could have had someone who at least had a hit within the last 10 years.

Did anyone else think when he was playing behind the curtain that it was a little "graphic"?

Tim

I don't get the whole infatuation with Prince.... I thought he would at least have some new songs to sing.

I think they could have had someone who at least had a hit within the last 10 years.

Did anyone else think when he was playing behind the curtain that it was a little "graphic"?

Tim

That's Prince for you...

He's one hell of a musician, love him or hate him.

If you could only have one premium channel what would you choose between.

HBO
Showtime
starz
cinemaxHBO -- and it IS my only premium channel.

If you could only have one premium channel what would you choose between.

HBO
Showtime
starz
cinemax

I usually switch depending on the shows/movies they have on. Right now I have HBO for Kong/StarWars Hexology and such. Until Dexter ended it's first season on Showtime, I had that. I also had showtime during Huff and Penn & Teller. I had HBO for Curb Your Enthusiasm/ Six Feet Under/Entourage. I haven't had Cinemax for a long time. Right now I have Starz also, but that's only for a 3 month promo for screwing up an install. I like the movies on there, but I can only watch SinCity and the Aviator Pan and Scan so much. I probably won't keep Starz after the 3 months is up. However, it did give me a chance to see some less "Blockbuster-y" movies that I wanted to see...Shopgirl, Three funerals of Malchiadas Estrada(sp?).

You can actually switch every month with DirecTv, but you'll get charged for the entire month if you switch in less than 30 days(IIRC).

I hope all of that is as clear as mud for you :p

Dug

You're a musician and you're referring to All Along the Watchtower as a "Foo Fighters Song"? :rolleyes: Music and Lyrics by Bob Dylan; and the definitive version is Hendrix'. Yeah, Foo Fighters covered it; but to say it's a "Foo Fighters song" ignores a bit of rock history.Who are the Foo Fighters? :eek:

Congress should pass a resolution that says Watchtower is uniquely Dylan/Hendrix and makes it illegal for anyone else to cover it, unless Hot Tuna wants to do it.

HBO is what i prefer in HD right now. even though it isnt considered a premium channel, HDNet movies is starting to get some pretty good stuff on.

You should be getting 30 in HD from the SAT. But yes, without an antenna you will not see
the other local channel's digital feed.

Also, the installer is obviously a nut jub because there is no RF out on the HR20, or any HD box for that matter.

Holy crap, I never even noticed, I guess since I had always planned on using the component outputs.

Anyone care to weigh in on what my best option is for the OTA antenna? (have the "clip on" one installed by D* for $50, or get my own)

I noticed on my buddy's non-dvr D*receiver he has a small 6" wire antenna that connects directly to the OTA in on his receiver & he says he's had no problems with it. (Edit: this antenna looks exactly like the antenna for the RF remote, I guess I should have looked at the input label closer when I checked it out)

I'm located in South City near Kingshighway & Gravois.

Dave,

FWIW, I worked on a Mitsubishi HC3000 when I was in Kansas City recently. In general, I'm not a big fan of most current Mitsubishi TVs, but I have to say that I think it would be very, very difficult to find a more effective way to spend $1500. This projector also calibrates very nicely, although it has just one grayscale memory that's adjustable -- and it is global, rather than input/source specific.

This projector would be an excellent buy, particularly for someone who is looking to wait a few years for the price of 1080p projectors to decline. It's even better if you can pair this projector with a video scaler that would allow you to send everything at the native display rate. My customer was using the DVDO VP50.


Doug,
Thanks for your input. This is something to hold me over to until 1080P projectors drop to a more reasonable price (under $2K)

Unfortuantely I'll still have to tilt/keystone. If it's even a little better than the Optima I think I will be happy with the picture even with the tilt/keystone, at least until we purchase another house.

Dave

Did anyone else think when he was playing behind the curtain that it was a little "graphic"?

Tim

Not exactly subtle, was it? The FCC goes ape$hit over Janet's nipple, but they're OK with a phallus the size of a 707. As a singer and performer, Prince has always left me stone cold. YMMV.

If you could only have one premium channel what would you choose between.

HBO
Showtime
starz
cinemax

Thank God I don't have to have just one but if I had to pick it would be HBO for sure. Sopranos, Deadwood, Boxing, Inside the NFL, etc.

Scott

I thought Prince was great but I'm still trying to figure out how he played all those screaming guitar riffs without his hands on the strings :eek: :eek: :eek:

I thought the PQ on the Superbowl was very good. Especially considering the conditions. Like others, I was annoyed at the occasional popping sounds between commercials and game. Prince? eh, I like some of his stuff. As far as the mix goes, I think it was about what I expected for a Superbowl. I've never really heard a good Superbowl mix. Of course, I don't watch football just to "critically" listen to music. Very happy for the Colts. :) Next year, Go Chargers!

Scott

Next year, Go Chargers!

Scott


Be careful you will start sounding like you are from the North Side of Chicago. And I aint talkin bout football, lol.

Uh, did you like watch and listen? He played the third verse to "All Along the Watchtower" and then went into "Best of You" by the Foo Fighters.

Maybe before you try sounding like a condensending know-it-all a-hole, you should make sure you know what you are talking about.

You're right, I was jumping the gun on that. However, if you're going to try to use a quarter word (condescending) it really helps to spell the word correctly. When you botch the spelling; it really doesn't make an effective point for you.

Also, I notice you haven't commented at all about the mix; and properly balancing the components of said mix.

Not exactly subtle, was it? The FCC goes ape$hit over Janet's nipple, but they're OK with a phallus the size of a 707. As a singer and performer, Prince has always left me stone cold. YMMV.

I don't know, it beats the hell out of performances past where the performers were lip synching...

Prince wasn't lip syncing; and he wasn't faking the guitar playing either. I watched pretty carefully. I hate when performers are faking a live performance.

I'm surely no performer....heck, I can barely walk from my bedroom to the kitchen without hitting the wall. But, I've been to well over 100 live music-type performances, in different cities and venues across this country.

I'm not a particular fan of Prince. That show, the conditions, ladies dancing with 6-inch heels is 2-inches of water. It was a live show, in an huge outdoor venue, being watched over TV...there are no scripted mixing standards.

IMO, overall, a fabulous performance.

You're right, I was jumping the gun on that. However, if you're going to try to use a quarter word (condescending) it really helps to spell the word correctly. When you botch the spelling; it really doesn't make an effective point for you.

Also, I notice you haven't commented at all about the mix; and properly balancing the components of said mix.

well of course you want everything "balanced", the problem is defining what is "balanced".

By no means am I saying it's reference mix, but for an actual live, happening right now mix, it was great to my ears. Generally I hate TV live performances....the vocals are really loud and the instruments are buried and sound really compressed. While I understand the volume of the keyboards and bass may have been a little low in the mix, it wasn't repulsive. I had no problem hearing them. ANd I didn't really care for them to be louder because the show was about Prince singing and Prince playing guitar. ANyone who is more than a casual fan of Prince's hits, knows not only what an amazing guitar player he is, but also how much he let's loose on it live. So I guess what I am trying to say is that when it comes to Prince live, it comes with the territory that is guitar is going to be loud.

I guess another point too is that it sounded good in my living room, through my receiver and through my speakers. And while a good mix is supposed to sound good on all sources, we can just wind up splitting hairs because to me on my equipment in my room it sounded just fine. Greatest TV live mix ever? Probably not, but a million times better than the Stones last year.

I'm surely no performer....heck, I can barely walk from my bedroom to the kitchen without hitting the wall. But, I've been to well over 100 live music-type performances, in different cities and venues across this country.

I'm not a particular fan of Prince. That show, the conditions, ladies dancing with 6-inch heels is 2-inches of water. It was a live show, in an huge outdoor venue, being watched over TV...there are no scripted mixing standards.

IMO, overall, a fabulous performance.

Yeah, but nothing beats REO Speedwagon at the Farmington Civic Center. :eek: Did you catch that one?

Scott

but a million times better than the Stones last year.

But the difference being a Live Alive performer vs a Live Dead group.

But the difference being a Live Alive performer vs a Live Dead group.

So that's what they meant by KISS Alive... And yes Bill, as you now know,I am old enough to remember that show. ;)

Scott

Yeah, but nothing beats REO Speedwagon at the Farmington Civic Center. :eek: Did you catch that one?

Scott
Uhm....I'm not THAT old :p

huey lewis and the news at the muny was rocking!

Speaking of Huey Lewis, I confess, I watched Back to the Future 1 & 3 this weekend. :o

so did i. it was a little depressing though. the quality of the hd picture makes those special effects look extra cheesey!

All Dish VIP 622 users having problems receiving 11.1 KPLR-DT please call Craig in engineering at KPLR. You can reach him at 314-447-1111 or KPLRTech@tribune.com. He's a very nice guy and wants us to get good reception of KPLR-DT. He was unaware of any specific problem with the VIP 622 Dish receiver and his station. Please let him know so we can get this fixed.

Thanks,
Andrew
Andy, good suggestion. I sent Craig an e-mail with the following text:

Hi, Craig. Really enjoy the CW Network and have been watching your high def broadcasts since you first threw the switch back in 2003. I watch with a rooftop antenna in Saint Charles have a very strong, reliable signal.

Unfortunately, I appear to have an imcompatibility between your digital stream and Dish Network's 622 receiver. Every few seconds there is a bad glitch, which makes your high def broadcast unwatchable for me. The web site avsforum.com contains a local thread discussing Saint Louis OTA, and it looks like many folks with Dish Network's 622 receiver for High Def OTA reception are having this problem. My own experience is that this started sometime in December, and has been consistently bad ever since.

UPDATE-- OOPS, NO JOY. THE TRIBUNE SERVER BOUNCED BACK KPLRTech@tribune.com AS 'NAME NOT RECOGNIZED.'

I thought Prince was great but I'm still trying to figure out how he played all those screaming guitar riffs without his hands on the strings :eek: :eek: :eek:


Its called "fingertapping" or "hammer ons" he was playing with his fret hand, no need to strum or pick the strings while doing that stuff.

Taken from Marketwatch.com

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray sales
NPD Group, a market researcher, says it's a tossup in the contest between competing-format high-definition DVD players, according to Video Business. Standalone Blu-Ray boxes grabbed 48% of the market between April and December while HD-DVD had 52%.
Checking Amazon.com's best sellers, though, it looks like HD-DVD is now way out in front on the hardware side while Blu-Ray owners are pacing software sales.
Ranking sales of the Top 20 DVD players, two Toshiba HD-DVD models stand at No. 6 and No. 14, while the lone Blu-Ray player on the list is a Samsung model in 20th place.
In DVD sales, high-definition software is tough to find. Among the top 50 best DVD sellers, there were no HD-DVD discs but two Blu-Rays placed 33rd ("Casino Royale") and 45th ("The Departed").

Andy, good suggestion. I sent Craig an e-mail with the following text:

Hi, Craig. Really enjoy the CW Network and have been watching your high def broadcasts since you first threw the switch back in 2003. I watch with a rooftop antenna in Saint Charles have a very strong, reliable signal.

Unfortunately, I appear to have an imcompatibility between your digital stream and Dish Network's 622 receiver. Every few seconds there is a bad glitch, which makes your high def broadcast unwatchable for me. The web site avsforum.com contains a local thread discussing Saint Louis OTA, and it looks like many folks with Dish Network's 622 receiver for High Def OTA reception are having this problem. My own experience is that this started sometime in December, and has been consistently bad ever since.

UPDATE-- OOPS, NO JOY. THE TRIBUNE SERVER BOUNCED BACK KPLRTech@tribune.com AS 'NAME NOT RECOGNIZED.'
I've been told his name is Greg, not Craig...Greg Boling is the Chief Engineer at KPLR.

Isn't the tournament broadcast on CBS? Not good for Charter subscribers.
That may put me over the cable edge.

Yes the tourney is on cbs. Thanks again Charter!

Yes the tourney is on cbs. Thanks again Charter!

Let's not forget The Masters. Which is why God created HD. Thanks again Charter.

Scott

Anyone else having problems with the EPG showing data on the sub channels on the 622 from Dish? I re-activated my dish account yesterday and when the EPG downloaded I was suprised that the PBS sub channels had data. Even 5.2 and 11.2 showed something. But today only 9.3 has data and all the other sub channels are back to the old "Digital Service". I tried forcing the EPG to download again by doing a check switch, but do help.

Yes. Same scenario. It was fun while it lasted. WHo knows what to do now? It took them a year to get it right and it lasted a week or two.

I've been told his name is Greg, not Craig...Greg Boling is the Chief Engineer at KPLR.

You're right. I misheard his name from KPLR's receptionist the first time I called. I also got an undelivered returned e-mail so I would suggest a direct call.

Greg Bolings direct number is 314-447-6312. He appears very dedicated to his work and concerned about fixing the problem I've reported with the Dishnetwork 622. I would encourage everyone having reception problems of KPLR-DT with Dishnetwork to call Greg to confirm that it's a global problem with KPLR-DT and Dish (atleast the VIP 211 and 622 receivers). I'm confident if enough people let KPLR know, we'll got this resolved faster.

Thanks,
Andrew

You guys have to be kidding me. As a musician, I was really disappointed in that halftime mix. Even my girlfriend was like "wow his guitar is way too loud in the mix." Best show ever? Not even close. No nipples!
Everyone who thinks Prince was reallly playing "live" raise your hand.

Everyone who thinks Prince was reallly playing "live" raise your hand.


Well if you know for a fact the he wasnt show us the proof.

Let's not forget The Masters. Which is why God created HD. Thanks again Charter.

Scott

Damn Charter, the air in the tires of my Charger were low.........THANKS CHARTER!!!! :eek:

Yes the tourney is on cbs. Thanks again Charter!
Less and less reason to stay with Charter.

Are all the local HD channels on satellite, or do you need an antenna to access them? Also, sometimes Charter offers Mizzou and Illinois basketball on "the Charter Channel". Does satellite also carry the game, or is it confined to Charter?

Are all the local HD channels on satellite, or do you need an antenna to access them? Also, sometimes Charter offers Mizzou and Illinois basketball on "the Charter Channel". Does satellite also carry the game, or is it confined to Charter?

You will get the locals with D* Mizzou is hardly on anymore but I did pick them up on 46 but I also have a OTA antenna which is probably how I picked them up.

StockInv,

Yes, you need an antenna as well if you want more than the main networks like 11 and 46.

Scott

I live in the City of St. Louis, and I have been enjoying HDTV OTA for over a year. My reception is sometimes sketchy. I only have a powered RCA rabbit ears antenna, hooked up to my Media Center PC, and I record my HDTV with it and stream it to my Xbox 360 as an extender. My reception comes in about 90% of the time into my MCE.

One station the CW affiliate KPLR hasn't been coming in lately. When fussing around with the antenna, I can get all the channels in my area, but not all a the same time. I remember back in the day with analog television, when rabbit ears, were the norm, not the exception, people would use tin foil. So out of frustration, tonight I went upstairs and ripped off a sheet of tin foil, and brought it down, positioned my rabbit ears in the best position, that I had been receiving my HDTV signals, spanned the sheet between the two poles on the antenna, and low and behold, I now get all my locals in no problem, where 10 mins earlier, I could get them all except the CW and KMOV the CBS affiliate. So my experiment has worked for the time being. I don't think it is a fluke. We'll see. I believe, being close to the broadcast towers, and being right on the cusp of getting all my stations, in at once, that the tin foil pushed me over the edge, and allows me to get everything in now. And the antennaweb site is very valuable, to position your antenna.

Believer in Tin Foil! ;)

If your're almost getting all of your stations, but not at the same time, give it a try.

Everyone who thinks Prince was reallly playing "live" raise your hand.

If he wasn't playing live that was one of the most incredible lip-sync jobs ever.
I saw Prince at the checkerdome in '85 (Purple Rain Tour)

As concerts and all around performances go it was one of the best shows I've seen in my life. Right up there with Pink Floyd at RFK, Paul McCartney at Busch, KISS on their first reunion (The Alive II set) and the Eagles Hell Freezes Over Tour.

Of course the best overall experience I think might have to go to the Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chilli Peppers show at what I think was the American Theater.

Say what you will about Prince and his idiosyncracies, but he has more talent than most of his peers.

Dave

Study Shows Homeowners Associations Biggest OTARD Violators

I thought the following is particularly relevant in view of the number of people looking for alternatives to receiving local digitals via cable.

The following is from today's SkyREPORT newsletter:
________________________________________________________

Homeowner's associations across the nation are known for giving residents trouble for everything from the lack of a neatly manicured lawn to cars parked in the driveway. If those hassles aren't enough, the Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association released data Monday that suggests these community associations and rental properties continue to be a significant obstacle to consumers wishing to lawfully install a satellite TV dish.

In April 2006, SBCA started tracking all OTARD (over-the-air reception devices) claims to determine which issues are most problematic for homeowners and installers. The heavy hand of community associations were most troublesome with 60 percent of claims, followed by rental properties at 34 percent, the association said.

OTARD rules were developed at the Federal Communications Commission in 1996, and they prevent homeowner's associations and others from prohibiting or restricting the use of DBS dishes or any outdoor antenna.

"These numbers reflect the SBCA's commitment to working at the ground level to solve OTARD issues," said Noah Cuttler, director of regulatory affairs at SBCA. "What is most telling is the number of claims involving community associations and rental properties. It's 10 years after the creation of the OTARD rule and we are still having problems."

The SBCA said it plans to use its research for the development of an OTARD rule manual. The manual will be accessible to consumers and satellite technicians.

The SBCA also encouraged anyone who believes their OTARD rights are violated to submit a claim at http://www.sbca.com/otard.
________________________________________________________

Reminds me of the Married....With Children episode where the family is getting ready to watch a Fox TV show and Al says, "Assume the Fox position," which was holding the rabbit ears, with aluminum foil attached, in a very precise angle and position to receive the station.

Anyway, yes, it can help reception for certain channels and locations. A few comments about foil in the last few lines at this post.................
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/RabbitEars.html

Steve

Why has no one started up some sort of grassroots campaign to force Charter to pony up for CBS-HD and ABC-HD? Didn't I read in the article in the Post over the weekend that Belo wants Charter to pay 1 penny per day per subscriber? I would be more than happy to pay an extra $4 a year to get CBS-HD and another $4 a year to get ABC. Instead Charter raises our rates and gives up more Lifetime Networks or some crap like that. Man, I hate Charter.....

i am sick of charter's crap. but i did get a new tv over the past weekend with a built in tuner. i am a little more tolerant of charter's stuff now that i have an OTA signal coming in. i just got off the phone with them about a billing issue and the gal answered all my questions just fine. but when i started asking about hd service and asking to be connected to tech support, she didnt have a clue. charter does suck, dont get me wrong, right now i think it is just who you want to put up with. i was thinking about switching to dish but then i couldnt have SD cable throughout the rest of my house. that is just me.

i do have one question. i heard from the best buy salesman that charter now has DVR's with DVI or HDMI activated. is this true??? do they have them in stock?? any tricks i need to pull to get one?

Why has no one started up some sort of grassroots campaign to force Charter to pony up for CBS-HD and ABC-HD? Didn't I read in the article in the Post over the weekend that Belo wants Charter to pay 1 penny per day per subscriber? I would be more than happy to pay an extra $4 a year to get CBS-HD and another $4 a year to get ABC. Instead Charter raises our rates and gives up more Lifetime Networks or some crap like that. Man, I hate Charter.....Sounds like we have a grassroots volunteer... ;)

Why has no one started up some sort of grassroots campaign to force Charter to pony up for CBS-HD and ABC-HD? Didn't I read in the article in the Post over the weekend that Belo wants Charter to pay 1 penny per day per subscriber? I would be more than happy to pay an extra $4 a year to get CBS-HD and another $4 a year to get ABC. Instead Charter raises our rates and gives up more Lifetime Networks or some crap like that. Man, I hate Charter.....

The grassroots campaign is to call retention, threaten to leave becasue of all those issues, and then get your bill reduced.

when i was on the phone with charter and threatened to jump the fence to att dsl, the gal didnt even try to sell me or get my bill reduced. i am pretty sure i was sent to an overseas call center, not the one in town and country.

when i was on the phone with charter and threatened to jump the fence to att dsl, the gal didnt even try to sell me or get my bill reduced. i am pretty sure i was sent to an overseas call center, not the one in town and country.
cd,
I called Charter a week, or so, ago, and was able to get my stand-alone $59.95/mo Pipeline (5mg) reduced to $24.99. I was switched to retention, though the 2nd rep I spoke to did not identify herself as such, the 1st person I was speaking to asked it I could be switched to a "account specialist." I presumed it was retention.
IIRC, there is a direct phone number posted a few days back, to Charter's retention Department.
Also, another member here was successful in having his Pipeline monthly fee reduced recently.
I'd give it another shot.

i dont mind paying the amount. i just want speed/quality the same as sbc. back to hd, i am with hfthomp, i certainly wouldnt mind ponying up a few extra bones a month for more HD i dont think that many people would mind at all. once you start watching something in HD you just cant go back to SD programs.

Yeah, any time you threaten to leave, you better be prepared to do just that. I once told a cable company to suspend my service, and what do you know, I wasn't watching TV that night.

Scott

i do have one question. i heard from the best buy salesman that charter now has DVR's with DVI or HDMI activated. is this true??? do they have them in stock?? any tricks i need to pull to get one?

The Charter HD-DVR has been the Moxi. It does have a DVI-HDMI connection. It is not without problems though. Most choose a component and optical connection. The thread is here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=412846 (http://)

Due to supply/demand issues Charter has been providing the Moto 3416 HD-DVR. This does have an HDMI-HDMI connection. Again not without glitches. You can find the thread here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=604142

No tricks to pull as you put it. Just call and order it. I have the Moxi and like it.

Why has no one started up some sort of grassroots campaign to force Charter to pony up for CBS-HD and ABC-HD? Didn't I read in the article in the Post over the weekend that Belo wants Charter to pay 1 penny per day per subscriber? I would be more than happy to pay an extra $4 a year to get CBS-HD and another $4 a year to get ABC. Instead Charter raises our rates and gives up more Lifetime Networks or some crap like that. Man, I hate Charter.....

I think the problem is that it is $0.01 per day PER SUBSCRIBER, NOT per HD SUBSCRIBER but everyone. Would you rent a car you couldn't drive? Why should non HD subs have to pay for HD. Would you pay if all non HD subs $0.01 per day was divided up among ALL HD subs? I won't. This is why I believe it is just as much BELOW's fault as it is Charter's.

Walt

Good point. What I fear is how long will it take for the parent companies of NBC and Fox to make this same request of Charter?

I think the problem is that it is $0.01 per day PER SUBSCRIBER, NOT per HD SUBSCRIBER but everyone. Would you rent a car you couldn't drive? Why should non HD subs have to pay for HD. Would you pay if all non HD subs $0.01 per day was divided up among ALL HD subs? I won't. This is why I believe it is just as much BELOW's fault as it is Charter's.

Walt

The bottom line is Charter has to market a product or products. They have certain operational costs associated with putting the product on the street. Charter chooses to save operational costs to market a product that gives its clients no access to ABC and CBS HD channels. Either Charter is ignorant, or they have come to the analytical conclusion that not offering these two channels is making the company and its stockholders more income.

Scott

Its called "fingertapping" or "hammer ons" he was playing with his fret hand, no need to strum or pick the strings while doing that stuff.


Thanks, that thought crossed my mind when watching but I had no idea that technique would create that sound.

Yeah, any time you threaten to leave, you better be prepared to do just that. I once told a cable company to suspend my service, and what do you know, I wasn't watching TV that night.

Scott


LOL,now that is funny.

The bottom line is Charter has to market a product or products. They have certain operational costs associated with putting the product on the street. Charter chooses to save operational costs to market a product that gives its clients no access to ABC and CBS HD channels. Either Charter is ignorant, or they have come to the analytical conclusion that not offering these two channels is making the company and its stockholders more income.

Scott

Excellent points. To me it seems Charter is failing at looking at the "big picture". They are not concerned right now with being an "HD leader" in their field or whatever. Meanwhile both E* and D* have shown their willingness to court HD customers and offer lots of choices. What's going to happen in the next year or two when even more people go High Def, Charter will be left in the dust because of their inability to be competitive when the market is new is going to send subscribers to other providers. In other words Charter is going to be playing catchup in a few years.

The bottom line is Charter has to market a product or products. They have certain operational costs associated with putting the product on the street. Charter chooses to save operational costs to market a product that gives its clients no access to ABC and CBS HD channels. Either Charter is ignorant, or they have come to the analytical conclusion that not offering these two channels is making the company and its stockholders more income.

Scott


"Bottom LIne" is a term developed by bean counters and marketing gurus. What if these people did a study that showed the number of subs lost would be less than the total cost of the HD. What do you have to say about the "bottom line" then. This might make it a sound business decision.

Remember the Ford study on the exploding Pintos that "bottom line" justified no recall.

These marketing gurus are the same a**holes that rearranged your super market to make you walk down all the aisles again. They weren't worried about how the customer felt. They have a captive audience.

Walt

Have any of you east side guys been to the new Buffalo Wild Wings in Edwardsville. I had a terrible seat but I think I counted 7 flash lights......errr Dell digital PJs. They could all use some Doug love but it impressed me as a sports bar with 7 large screens (5 around the bar area). I like the wings too.

Walt

Have any of you east side guys been to the new Buffalo Wild Wings in Edwardsville. I had a terrible seat but I think I counted 7 flash lights......errr Dell digital PJs. They could all use some Doug love but it impressed me as a sports bar with 7 large screens (5 around the bar area). I like the wings too.

Walt

Nice place, good food.

yeah a couple of the tv are definately "out of the box" :D

"Bottom LIne" is a term developed by bean counters and marketing gurus. What if these people did a study that showed the number of subs lost would be less than the total cost of the HD. What do you have to say about the "bottom line" then. This might make it a sound business decision.

Remember the Ford study on the exploding Pintos that "bottom line" justified no recall.

These marketing gurus are the same a**holes that rearranged your super market to make you walk down all the aisles again. They weren't worried about how the customer felt. They have a captive audience.

Walt

You're right about bottom line. If they did a study? Not going to happen. That's why they are "bean counters." I don't agree with you about marketing gurus though. They are the one's likely to do a study. Hell, not paying Belo may be a study for all i know. Not sure what you mean about grocery stores as I thankfully don't have to shop for groceries. I do know what you saying though. It's very hard for the so-called bean counters to think outside the box. My own personal belief is that Charter shoud pay Belo and Sinclair whatever they're asking for, so they can provide a somewhat competitiive product. As far as I'm concerned Charter is clueless.

Scott

For some reason Charter seems to be concentrating on bundling vs. focusing on HD. They think the appeal of combining subscription tv service and phone service and internet service on one bill is more important than improving their subscription tv service. I don't get it.

For me, the bundle isn't necessarily a dramatic savings (not enough to convince me to switch based on regular rates after the special "get started" promotion ends) and their lack of HD content is a major negative. Plus, I pay virtually all my bills online. Typing three or four dollar amounts and clicking the pay button isn't that much harder or takes more time than entering one dollar amount and clicking the pay button.

Until Charter can offer at least as many HD channels as I can get with DirecTV and the indoor UHF antenna connected to my HDTivo, Charter isn't even in the running. I don't necessarily need to have my dry cleaning, trash collection, groceries and gasoline on one bill. And, I don't necessarily need to have my subscription tv, local phone service, long distrance and internet on one bill either.

I really wish cable tv was a better option here. Right now I'm sticking with DirecTV and my HDTivo, at least until D* starts turning on all the new national HD channels in MPEG4 once the new satellites go up later this year.

At that point I'll have to decide between D* and the HR20 or Dish and its latest HD DVR. I don't think the Tivo Series 3 plus cable card rental from Charter is a good option based on cost and content and I don't like the Charter Moxi option either, especially if there's a waiting list for a Moxi and Charter has less HD channels, and I still need a stand-alone HD tuner and antenna to get all the local HD channels. It's just silly and stupid.

It's hard to believe Charter's corporate HQ is based here.

Have any of you east side guys been to the new Buffalo Wild Wings in Edwardsville. I had a terrible seat but I think I counted 7 flash lights......errr Dell digital PJs. They could all use some Doug love but it impressed me as a sports bar with 7 large screens (5 around the bar area). I like the wings too.

Walt
I've been there for lunch. Yep, you are correct.

-Service has been restored




About (8:09 edit)pm tonight 2/6 Charter is experiencing an Outage of Cable, Phone & Internet in the Fenton Area. Im in Webster Groves.

I asked for a 1/2 day discount and the operator told me that "Charter doesnt not give back credit for something like a cable signal loss" I tried to explain to her that it just wasnt a transmission signal, but service as a whole. She didn't budge.

Oh well, just hit redial and i asked for a full day credit, credit granted.

-Brent

KTVI:

Here's the results from Idol tonight from 7 - 8 pm. Almost all of them were during the main broadcast; a few of them were during commercials...

7:06 Audio Drop
7:07 Picture breakup
7:16 Picture breakup
7:18 Audio Drop
7:19 Picture
7:21 Picture
7:28 Picture
7:32 Picture
7:37 Picture
7:39 Picture
7:44 Picture
7:50 2 Picture breakups
7:55 Picture
7:56 Picture
7:57 Picture

I didn't track the times; but I also had 13 drops during House in the 8:00pm Hour.

Best,

About 9:09pm tonight 2/6 Charter is experiencing an Outage of Cable, Phone & Internet in the Fenton Area. Im in Webster Groves.

I asked for a 1/2 day discount and the operator told me that "Charter doesnt not give back credit for something like a cable signal loss" I tried to explain to her that it just wasnt a transmission signal, but service as a whole. She didn't budge.

Oh well, just hit redial and i asked for a full day credit, credit granted.

-Brent

Charter has been fine here on 2/6 in my neck of Fenton between 44 and 141.

KTVI:

Here's the results from Idol tonight from 7 - 8 pm. Almost all of them were during the main broadcast; a few of them were during commercials...

7:06 Audio Drop
7:07 Picture breakup
7:16 Picture breakup
7:18 Audio Drop
7:19 Picture
7:21 Picture
7:28 Picture
7:32 Picture
7:37 Picture
7:39 Picture
7:44 Picture
7:50 2 Picture breakups
7:55 Picture
7:56 Picture
7:57 Picture

I didn't track the times; but I also had 13 drops during House in the 8:00pm Hour.

Best,
John,
Was that on SAT or OTA?

For some reason Charter seems to be concentrating on bundling vs. focusing on HD. They think the appeal of combining subscription tv service and phone service and internet service on one bill is more important than improving their subscription tv service. I don't get it.

For me, the bundle isn't necessarily a dramatic savings (not enough to convince me to switch based on regular rates after the special "get started" promotion ends) and their lack of HD content is a major negative. Plus, I pay virtually all my bills online. Typing three or four dollar amounts and clicking the pay button isn't that much harder or takes more time than entering one dollar amount and clicking the pay button.

Not to defend Charter on this (I work for AT&T), but bundling services is THE most effective means to prevent churn, aka jumping ship. The more sevices a company has you signed up to receive, the less likely you are to drop any of those services. Obviously there are reasons why that isn't 100% effective (yours is one example), but it has the greatest positive impact on revenue of anything else they do.

Not to defend Charter on this (I work for AT&T), but bundling services is THE most effective means to prevent churn, aka jumping ship. The more sevices a company has you signed up to receive, the less likely you are to drop any of those services. Obviously there are reasons why that isn't 100% effective (yours is one example), but it has the greatest positive impact on revenue of anything else they do.

Make it harder for the customer to drop your service(s). Your subscription tv service lags behind in programming or hardware technology or customer service (or all of the above), but your customers are less likely to cancel because they want the deal on phone service. Or they take the phone service even though they don't use it (because they only use their cel phone), just because they need the high speed internet access. Better yet, let the marketing department and the retention department throw in a bunch of complicated promotional specials so that the customer doesn't realize what the regular price of the bundle is until six months or a year down the road. They'll buy now and be less inclined to cancel once they're invested in using the bundled services. Nobody reads the fine print.

The strategy may be good for investors, but it doesn't seem to be that good for the customer. Sort of like DirecTV's two-year commitment for HD and other advanced hardware. I'm not a big fan of that policy either.

Now, if only some giant conglomerate would buy NetFlix, ChemLawn and Great Clips so I could have the convenience of having my DVD rental, lawn fertilization and hair cuts all on one bill. They could lower the price on the front end, make it up on the back end with higher prices later and prevent me from trying Blockbuster, GreenTurf and Sports Clips. They could even make me sign a contract for the entire bundle and penalize me if I want to drop the services early. What a deal.

What ever became of concentrating on your core business and doing the best job possible? It's bad enough that Charter has a geographic monopoly. It's not like I can pick up the phone and order Comcast Cable here, and it doesn't look like AT&T is going to install FIOS in my neighborhood anytime soon.

If we don't watch out, we'll find ourselves working in a company town where you have to rent your house from the company, lease your car from the company, do your banking at the company bank and buy everything else from the company store. It will be great for the investors and will really cut down churn and the introductory pricing for the bundle is kinda attractive.

Zik-Zak Corporation. We make everything you need and you need everything we make.

On the urbanstl.com forum in the Retail, Restaurant, and Business Developments page I posted the following to rBar (in "The Grove" by Manchester and Vanderventer in the city.)


One thing: you guys spent probably 10, 12 or even $15,000 on the four plasma HDTVs. Yet, all you have them hooked up to is a bunch of old-school standard defention Dish Network boxes. Why didn't you spend a few dollars more and get the full HD boxes? IMHO you kinda wasted money buying the HDTVs if you're not showing HD on them.

http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/our_products/dish_hd/index.shtml

http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/our_products/dish_hd/receivers/vip211/index.shtml


within a day one of the owners posted the following


Hey Dweebe-

Thanks for bringing some people by on Saturday.

Just wanted to let you know that I took your suggestion to my partners (as I am not much of an HDTV buff), and we have decided that we should definitely spend the extra $$ and go for the HD. We are making some exciting changes on Feb. 21, some promotional and some housekeeping, and that is on our list now! You will have to come back after the 21st to check it out and give the seal of approval.

Hey, Doug,

About a year ago you predicted that HD disc copy protection would be broken within a year. Have you seen this?

No Big Surprise Here (http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=938)

I think this is probably bad news for the already muddy high def disc outlook, but it comes as no surprise.

Consumer Group Files Suit To Block Analog TV Shutdown

I guess I don't get this -- is the issue here one of legislative constitutionality, or is this just another anti-progress, Flat Earth Society whinge?
_______________________________________________________

Love it or hate it, as of today all analog television signals will go black on Feb. 17, 2009 as part of a federal mandate signed by the president a year ago tomorrow. But if a certain advocacy group gets its way - the digital transition could come to a screeching halt later this year.

As has been widely reported, the digital transition date is when every full-power television station in the country will be required to stop their analog transmissions impacting millions of Americans without the technology to receive the new all-digital signal. Consumers without a pay-TV subscription from satellite, cable or telco will be forced to buy new TVs with digital tuners or get a converter box to see images on their old sets.

But Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer-advocacy group in D.C., is trying to get the courts to strike down the law that requires the signals to be shut off. Earmarked to the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Public Citizen contends that the analog cutoff is unconstitutional because it was included in the law that was enacted unconstitutionally. (Article 1, Section 7, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires the House and Senate to pass identical bills - apparently the DRA had two versions.)

It should be noted that legal attacks on the Act have been fought in courtrooms on four previous attempts. All, according to Public Citizen, have been unsuccessful.
_______________________________________________________

For some reason Charter seems to be concentrating on bundling vs. focusing on HD. They think the appeal of combining subscription tv service and phone service and internet service on one bill is more important than improving their subscription tv service. I don't get it.

...and Charter does not understand the basics of customer service - bundling or not. I recently discontinued Charter cable for the well known reasons discussed on this forum. At the time, I made it clear (emphasized it twice) that I wanted to keep Charter's internet service. It's a pretty good product and I've not had any issues with it.

Last Friday, Charter disconnected the cable to my house at the service box located between mine and my neighbor's house. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with both the internet and TV customer service reps explaining that the problem was not mine, but theirs (there were footprints in the snow that made it obvious what had happened). The TV rep confirmed that yes, they had cut off my cable, but that shouldn't affect internet service! They tried to tell me that their computers still had me listed as getting internet service, so it must be another issue. Neither group seemed to comprehend that there is only one cable coming into the house and if it is disconnected outside, I won't get internet service. They wanted to set up an appointment for Monday (and I'd have to be home when they came). Finally waited a half hour for a supervisor to let them know it was their problem, I shouldn't have to take time off from work because of it, and they should fix it ASAP. At 5:00 p.m. Saturday, a service person came by to reconnect the line. If anyone else plans on dropping cable, but keeping the internet and/or phone service, let this be a warning. :eek:

If you're going to bundle services, you'd better know how to service all of your products, and more fundamentally know how each one works.

Just now looking over Monday night's episode of Heroes from "The HD Leader."

Coming back from the commercials at the 41 minute mark, KSDK didn't flip the switch and left the show in upconverted 4x3 SD, with all the dialog coming from the right front speaker instead of the center, until about the 45 minute mark.

I wish *D would let me have the NBC national HD feed.................

Hey, Doug,

About a year ago you predicted that HD disc copy protection would be broken within a year. Have you seen this?

No Big Surprise Here (http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=938)

I think this is probably bad news for the already muddy high def disc outlook, but it comes as no surprise.Joe, I'm not sure I completely understand this, but it appears that this company is developing a product that would allow HD DVDs to be copied by consumers. In the past it seems like these copying "tools" have always been produced by hackers lurking in the shadows, while this seems to be more of an above-ground commercial effort.

I'm hazy on this, but I thought there was a law that made the very act of trying to circumvent any copy protection scheme a felony. But even absent such a law, it seems to me that this is just an invitation to have a Hummer-load of Hollywood lawyers descend on the company and drive it out of business through Chinese Water Torture-style litigation.

I continue to believe that the film industry is massively overreacting to the losses it incurs through piracy. The last time I researched this, it totaled something around 5 percent of current revenues, and this was based on the industry's own estimates. Maybe the situation has significantly worsened since then, but if so, I think it has a lot to do with the film industry acting as its own worst enemy -- the more they bellyache about this issue and the more technology they attempt to throw at it, the greater the effort the hacker community will put into undermining and publicly embarrassing them. And there's no question which side most consumers identify with.

That's why I expect these latest copy protection efforts to be undone by a third party, or least see the whole thing break down into a cat-and-mouse stalemate.

In a somewhat related note, Steve Jobs is jawboning the record companies to drop the charade of digital rights management on downloaded music:

http://www.internet-nexus.com/2007/02/steve-jobs-calls-for-end-to-drm.htm

Just now looking over Monday night's episode of Heroes from "The HD Leader."

Coming back from the commercials at the 41 minute mark, KSDK didn't flip the switch and left the show in upconverted 4x3 SD, with all the dialog coming from the right front speaker instead of the center, until about the 45 minute mark.

I wish *D would let me have the NBC national HD feedForever and ever, amen... :)

Tweeter CEO Sees 1080p Plasma Launching a New Price War

I don't see a problem here... :)

The following is from the TV Predictions newsletter:
___________________________________________________________

Tweeter, the high-end electronics store, says flat-panel TV prices are likely to fall again in the second half of 2007.

That's according to an article published by TWICE Magazine.

The publication reports that Tweeter officials believe that when Plasma makers introduce new 1080p sets later this year that it could ignite a price war with flat-panel LCD makers.

The LCD-Plasma battle for the growing flat-screen audience triggered a price war in 2006 with some large-screen sets falling near $1,000.

Tweeter CEO Joe McGuire said yesterday in an investors conference call that flat-panel prices will likely hold steady in the first half of this year. But the new Plasma 1080p sets will change the landscape. Until now, almost all 1080p models are LCD or DLP rear projection sets.

“Right now LCD is beating plasma due to the 1,080p advantage,” McGuire said, according to TWICE. “That will change when both technologies have 1080p, and that will somewhat pressure the pricing.”

Panasonic and Pioneer are expected to introduce new 1080p Plasma sets in May and July respectively. The new format purports to offer a sharper picture although it may be years before programmers broadcast in 1080p. The only 1080p content now available are HDTV DVDs.

Echoing the concerns of other retailers who saw their profits fall last year with shrinking prices, McGuire said he hopes that the industry will not succumb to severe discounting.

“We desperately hope that sanity reigns and the lessons of the past holiday season are not lost on the industry,” he said.
___________________________________________________________

John,
Was that on SAT or OTA?

OTA with the strength indicator locked at 100% the whole time.

Cheers,

I think the fact that Charter is prioritizing the telecom elements of Triple Play over video and HD just comes down to simple economics.

HD package sales produce a relatively small increase in revenues, due to the relatively low cost of the HD tier, even after Charter jacked up its MOXI pricing. Also, the market for HD customers remains relatively small (Charter claims that only 40,000 local customers were impacted by the KMOV-DT developments). There's also an issue of the cost of creating and expanding an HD package, which again would have to be spread across a relatively small part of the total subscriber base.

On the other hand, the market potential for local phone service and (especially) Internet access is huge, and the incremental revenue it produces is significant, particularly when you compare it with HD billings. No doubt the investment hurdle for phone and Internet is larger, but it likely scales a lot better due to the greater scope for higher volume sales.

In short, Charter has no choice but to play for the short term. They are sitting on nearly $20 billion in debt, and despite a relatively frothy stock price of late, how or if they survive for the long term remains a big question mark. I've heard Charter mentioned as a takeover target, but it's hard for me to imagine that happening in view of all that debt. Bankruptcy filing seems to me to be a prerequisite for anyone buying the company. And I still think that selling off major pieces of the company is the only way it remains an independent entity for the long haul.

If I were a Charter customer interested in HD programming, I'd be frustrated too. But if I were a shareholder, I'd be happy (or at least supportive) of the strategy management is pursuing. While I think they're ultimately playing an unwinnable hand, at least they've managed to stay in the game for now.

Who is the best St. Louis play-by-play announcer?

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/polla.nsf/Result?readform&id=01B9898424FAE625862572790079DF75

Scary stuff.

There was some discussion about maximizing digital display lamp life here a few months back. A buddy of mine from the ISF Forum has written the following article for HDTV Magazine, providing some tips on preserving lamp life.

http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/articles/2007/02/making_your_hdt.php

Good stuff.

Hi everyone, new guy here. Ken recommended this forum to me on DBSTalk. I just got the VIP622 and l'm working out the bugs with Dish.

Look forward to participating in the discussion!

There was some discussion about maximizing digital display lamp life here a few months back. A buddy of mine from the ISF Forum has written the following article for HDTV Magazine, providing some tips on preserving lamp life.

http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/articles/2007/02/making_your_hdt.php

Good stuff.

I remember that discussion as I was involved in it. I was always under the assumption that keeping the contrast set to low would increase lamp life. However, many on this forum told me otherwise. Now, this article says to increase lamp life, you can set the power setting to low which I also assumed would increase lamp life. I hope my new lamp last as long as my last one did. It was rated at 2000 hrs, and still looked relatively good at 2500 hrs.

Scott

Who is the best St. Louis play-by-play announcer?

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/polla.nsf/Result?readform&id=01B9898424FAE625862572790079DF75

Scary stuff.
Whew....so...according to "us," Shannon, Rooney & McLaughlin are the best of what's out there....or we just prefer Baseball over Football over Hockey, over College Hoops? and we're becoming better at by-passing the center channel?

Or...maybe they said "Free Bud Lite" to anyone who answers Shannon!

Hi everyone, new guy here. Ken recommended this forum to me on DBSTalk. I just got the VIP622 and l'm working out the bugs with Dish.

Look forward to participating in the discussion!
Hi and welcome to the forum. I got my Dish Network VIP622 (High Def Receiver and Recorder) in December, at which time I retired my big 12 foot C-Band dish. The VIP622 was my first time with a Tivo-like device and it REALLY does make watching TV a much cooler experience.

Off-topic flame: Dish Network's standard def pictures are very poor; I'm convinced from time spent with friends that DirectTV is much better here. I've read that DirectTV will greatly expand their HD line-up this fall; and will be longing to move over though I'll still have many months left on my initial 18-month Dish Net commitment. Meanwhile I'll try not to worry about the hundreds of Standard-Def channels that are unwatchable, and enjoy the High Def line-up.

There was some discussion about maximizing digital display lamp life here a few months back. A buddy of mine from the ISF Forum has written the following article for HDTV Magazine, providing some tips on preserving lamp life.

http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/articles/2007/02/making_your_hdt.php

Good stuff.

Thanks Doug,
I picked up the Mits HC3000U. Out of the Box it looked really good. I'm amazed at how bright it can be. I can have my lights on half and Football still looks really good. I till have to point it up and correct the keystone, but overall I'm very happy with the picture. I plan to add a black or dark burgndy drape behind my screen to absorb any of the excess light spill.

However, since I got the 4yr extended warrenty I plan to burn through as many bulbs as possible in the 4 yrs. If I do it right I can get a new bulb just before the warrenty expires. :)

Hi and welcome to the forum. I got my Dish Network VIP622 (High Def Receiver and Recorder) in December, at which time I retired my big 12 foot C-Band dish. The VIP622 was my first time with a Tivo-like device and it REALLY does make watching TV a much cooler experience.

Off-topic flame: Dish Network's standard def pictures are very poor; I'm convinced from time spent with friends that DirectTV is much better here. I've read that DirectTV will greatly expand their HD line-up this fall; and will be longing to move over though I'll still have many months left on my initial 18-month Dish Net commitment. Meanwhile I'll try not to worry about the hundreds of Standard-Def channels that are unwatchable, and enjoy the High Def line-up.

When I had Dish I thought the same thing about their SD channels. The macroblocking was incredibly horrible.

Thanks Doug,
I picked up the Mits HC3000U. Out of the Box it looked really good. I'm amazed at how bright it can be. I can have my lights on half and Football still looks really good. I till have to point it up and correct the keystone, but overall I'm very happy with the picture. I plan to add a black or dark burgndy drape behind my screen to absorb any of the excess light spill.

However, since I got the 4yr extended warrenty I plan to burn through as many bulbs as possible in the 4 yrs. If I do it right I can get a new bulb just before the warrenty expires. :)

The extended warranty covers normal wear and tear on lamps? You could have a lamp with 3k hours on it and they'll replace it?

Scott

The extended warranty covers normal wear and tear on lamps? You could have a lamp with 3k hours on it and they'll replace it?

Scott

The salesman told me it covers replacing the lamp. He did not state any qualifiers and used that fact as a selling point. I'll be pretty upset if they refuse to honor this after spending $350 on the option. I'll go up and verify with a manager before my 30 days is up.

Also, I sometimes turn my PJ on for short periods of time (1hr) With my old PJ id was very mindful and did not do this often. Now, I have no qualms about it. I trat it like any other TV. So the hours may not be all that high when the bulb finally goes.

Dave

Isn't there someone here that works at Ultimate?

I have a question about their extended warranty. When I bought my TV I bought the warranty because
if something went wrong with it I didn't want to have to bring the big beast back to the store.

I remember them telling me that if I don't use the warranty I will get a $250 in store credit at the end of the period.

Do they send that to me or do I just have to be smart enough and remember?

I need to see when it expires.......I bought it several years ago..Mits WS-65613.

The salesman told me it covers replacing the lamp. He did not state any qualifiers and used that fact as a selling point. I'll be pretty upset if they refuse to honor this after spending $350 on the option. I'll go up and verify with a manager before my 30 days is up.

Also, I sometimes turn my PJ on for short periods of time (1hr) With my old PJ id was very mindful and did not do this often. Now, I have no qualms about it. I trat it like any other TV. So the hours may not be all that high when the bulb finally goes.

Dave

I'd get that in writing, Dave.

FYI -- if there's anyone here in the market for a 70-inch Sony SXRD (XBR2), I have a client who's looking to sell his at a pretty attractive price. I don't know for certain, but I suspect that it has had less than 1000 hours use.

Also, the same client is selling a Lumagen Vision HDP video processor that he was using with the Sony. I calibrated both back in early December, so this could be a really sweet deal -- you'd be saving on both the TV and processor, and get the calibration for free.

The only wrinkle is that my customer is located in Jacksonville, IL.

FWIW, the client is looking to move these items because he's going to remodel his basement so that he can go with a front-projection setup. I'm involved only as a matchmaker, with no commission coming my way.

If anyone is interested, drop me a private message and I can pass on the contact details to you.

Off-topic flame: Dish Network's standard def pictures are very poor; I'm convinced from time spent with friends that DirectTV is much better here. I've read that DirectTV will greatly expand their HD line-up this fall; and will be longing to move over though I'll still have many months left on my initial 18-month Dish Net commitment. Meanwhile I'll try not to worry about the hundreds of Standard-Def channels that are unwatchable, and enjoy the High Def line-up.This seems pretty "on topic" to me, though I don't really think the margin between DISH and DirecTV SD picture quality is significant -- they both suck bigtime.

Just my opinion, but at this stage, I think it's unwise to factor in SD picture quality into the pay TV equation at all. Maybe I'm overoptimistic, but within 18 months, I expect I won't NEED to watch SD at all.

So, my advice is to ride it out...

Isn't there someone here that works at Ultimate?

I have a question about their extended warranty. When I bought my TV I bought the warranty because
if something went wrong with it I didn't want to have to bring the big beast back to the store.

I remember them telling me that if I don't use the warranty I will get a $250 in store credit at the end of the period.

Do they send that to me or do I just have to be smart enough and remember?

I need to see when it expires.......I bought it several years ago..Mits WS-65613.

You have to be smart enough to remember.

Scott

This seems pretty "on topic" to me, though I don't really think the margin between DISH and DirecTV SD picture quality is significant -- they both suck bigtime.

Just my opinion, but at this stage, I think it's unwise to factor in SD picture quality into the pay TV equation at all. Maybe I'm overoptimistic, but within 18 months, I expect I won't NEED to watch SD at all.

So, my advice is to ride it out...
Ohhh....from your mouth, to the HDTV gods ears!

I'm involved only as a matchmaker, with no commission coming my way.



Where were you before I got married?

It sounds to me like you should be building your commission in.

We are very happy with our Panasonic calibration still. Thank you. And again I would urge anyone considering calibration to call Doug. You are correct, it provides a better picture than the older NEC.

FWIW a corporation's job 1 is to maximize shareholder profitability. So we must all understand as customers we are only a tool to reach this goal. Some companies do a better job of making the "tool" happy as a part of maximizing shareholder value than others do.

I am in Belleville, Ill, using a Terk indoor amp'd antenna. I get all the locals razor sharp. Not seeing the issues some others see on Fox, watched House last night. I do have a different problem though. During primetime on ABC, the audio is way out of sync, there is a stutter in the video about every 7 seconds. The only time it happens is at night on ABC 30-1. If I switch to Directv it is fine of course (on SD, dont sub to HD ). Can anyone take a guess at the problem and any solutions I might be able to try?


thanks

john

... During primetime on ABC, the audio is way out of sync,...

Same issue since I first got Charter HD a few months ago, only mine is on CW/Ch. 11 prime time (using Moxi box): very bad sync, and the lipsync control on my tv (Olevia 537H) does nothing I can see to fix it.
barry

I am in Belleville, Ill, using a Terk indoor amp'd antenna. I get all the locals razor sharp. Not seeing the issues some others see on Fox, watched House last night. I do have a different problem though. During primetime on ABC, the audio is way out of sync, there is a stutter in the video about every 7 seconds. The only time it happens is at night on ABC 30-1. If I switch to Directv it is fine of course (on SD, dont sub to HD ). Can anyone take a guess at the problem and any solutions I might be able to try?


thanks

john

This is a known incompatibility between KDNL's transmission facilities and many ATSC receivers.

There are many posts in the old thread on this issue going back to 2004 or earlier. If you have trouble finding them I'll try to look them up later. They should be brought forward to this thread anyway and perhaps be added to Doug's FAQ.

I am in Belleville, Ill, using a Terk indoor amp'd antenna. I get all the locals razor sharp. Not seeing the issues some others see on Fox, watched House last night. I do have a different problem though. During primetime on ABC, the audio is way out of sync, there is a stutter in the video about every 7 seconds. The only time it happens is at night on ABC 30-1. If I switch to Directv it is fine of course (on SD, dont sub to HD ). Can anyone take a guess at the problem and any solutions I might be able to try?


thanks

john

Does your signal strength jump around a lot? ..if so, could be a multipath issue. How far out of sync is "Way out of Sync?" Is it all the time?

Every time I exit IE from this forum, it crashes and wants to send something to uncle bill. It only happens on this website. If I go to a different website before I exit, it works fine. Should I get rid of IE.

Walt

Every time I exit IE from this forum, it crashes and wants to send something to uncle bill. It only happens on this website. If I go to a different website before I exit, it works fine. Should I get rid of IE.

You might try updating/reinstalling Flash.
I had similar problems with a different site and that did the trick for me ;)

Good luck,
Token

deuces,

Thanks for the comments about your calibration and the no-commission on the sale of the customer's SXRD.

FWIW, I don't take a commission on this sort of thing, because I look at it as part of a long-term customer relationship -- and it doesn't really cost me anything to do this. In addition, taking a commission complicates posting this sort of message, as AVS frowns on that sort of thing in general.

I'd rather be in a position to help out a good client (in this case, one that has has had me calibrate two of his displays) and possibly someone here who's looking to score a good deal.

BTW, this same client has available a couple of the late-model Hughes DirecTV HD receivers, but I'm not sure about the model numbers.

You have to be smart enough to remember.

Scott

10-4. I guess I'll go home tonight and see when that bad boy expires.

How many had D* reboot during the overnight hours and what was it for?

10-4. I guess I'll go home tonight and see when that bad boy expires.

That reminds me. I need to check to refund my extended warranty I purchased when I bought my HDTV several years ago.

How many had D* reboot during the overnight hours and what was it for?

There are not many HR20 users here, so you will have to continue monitoring those discussions at DBStalk.com.

Does your signal strength jump around a lot? ..if so, could be a multipath issue. How far out of sync is "Way out of Sync?" Is it all the time?


I can't tell signal strength, running direct to TV tuner input, not via Directv box.

Out of sync = 2 sec delay from lips moving to wordas heard

Tower Maps, Your Satellite/Antenna Rights & Local Station Feedback

St Louis Tower Maps

For anyone doing the initial install of an OTA antenna, or anyone looking to fine-tune the positioning of their existing antenna, the attached ZIP files at the end of this message contain maps showing the tower location for each digital station in St. Louis. Pick the ZIP file(s) most appropriate to your location, using downtown St. Louis as your reference point.

Note that there are three digital television towers that are clustered closely together -- KDNL, KPLR and KSDK (going from north to south). The limitations of the mapping software I used prevented me from making the labels visible for all three of these towers. However, there are flags indicating each of these towers, and all other towers and labels should be readable.

If you have any questions on the tower maps, feel free to send me a private message...

Your Right to Erect an Antenna and/or Satellite Dish

As more and more consumers purchase high-definition displays, there's increasing interest in arranging for receipt of HD programming via an over-the-air antenna or through a satellite dish.

Unfortunately with the proliferation of cable television in the 1980s and 1990s, many communities, property developers and homeowner/condo owner associations tried to undo the visual blight of antennas (and later, satellite dishes) from their local skylines. While these laws, rules or convenants were well-intended -- after all, it would be difficult to argue for the cosmetic benefits of a yagi antenna -- these actions are not legally enforceable.

The FCC has ruled -- with only a few very narrow exceptions -- that you have the right to receive over-the-air television and radio broadcasts and as a result you have a right to erect an antenna to receive these signals. This ruling also encompasses the erection of small satellite dishes.

Even if you have previously signed a lease or homeower association convenant that requires you to forego the right to erect an antenna or satellite dishes, the FCC has ruled that these types of provisions are unenforceable.

In general, there are only a few notable exceptions to this rule:

* First, the location of the antenna or dish must be an "exclusive use" area. As a homeowner or condominium owner, this would mean any part of the property over which you have control. For renters, this would also apply to balconies or patios that are intended solely for your use. The sort of rental property area that would not be covered would be general use areas, such as common passageways or rooftop areas that are clearly intended for the shared use of all residents.

* Second, the antenna or dish cannot be erected in areas that would create a legitimate safety issue, for example one that is dangling off a balcony or placed too close to electrical wiring.

* Third, there may be restrictions if you are located in a designated historical (or prehistorical) district, in which case a permit may be required.

The other major limitation is that these devices cannot exceed 1 meter (39.37 inches) in diameter.

The burden of proof in contesting your right to mount a dish and/or antenna rests with the landlord, homeowner association, city council, etc. Strictly speaking, you do not need to seek prior permission or provide prior notice, so long as the device is to be situated in an area under your control and there is no obvious safety issue.

However, before taking on the expense and effort of such an installation, you should read and review in its entirety the following summary of the FCC ruling on consumer rights to mount over-the-air devices:

http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html

Also, the Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association recently launched an initiative to help installers and satellite TV viewers protect their right to install satellite dishes. The SBCA online forum allows individuals to submit to the association any problems from governmental and non-governmental entities (such as homeowner's associations) concerning their right to install outdoor reception equipment.

The SBCA form can be accessed at: http://www.sbca.com/otard/default.htm


Feedback to St. Louis Stations

Is there something that you're unhappy about concerning the digital broadcasts by local St. Louis stations?

Weird-looking presentation of standard-definition programming? Multiple channel bugs cluttering up those beautiful images? Somebody at the station forgot to "flip the switch" before or during the middle of your favorite HD program?

Or better yet, maybe you'd just like to send your thanks and encouragement to your favorite local station for the effort they've made so far in providing us with more and better HD programming. The cost and effort in providing digital and HD programming is significant, and it's important for the station owners and management to know that we're watching.

Well, here's the place where you can find the online addresses where you can send your comments and feedback.

KTVI Channel 2 contact:
ktvitech@fox2ktvi.com

Don Rockwell (tech contact)
(314) 644-7425

KMOV Channel 4 contact:
programs@kmov.com
WNichol@kmov.com

KSDK Channel 5 contact:
Dave Hummert (chief engineer)
dhummert@ksdk.gannett.com

Lynn Beall (station manager)
lbeall@ksdk.gannett.com

KETC Channel 9 contact:
letters@ketc.org

KPLR Channel 11 contact:
whatson@wb11tv.com
technical@wb11tv.com

KDNL Channel 30 contact:
jwright@kdnl.sbgnet.com

WRBU Channel 46 contact:
[no email available & no website]

Fox Sports Midwest:
midwest@foxsports.net

Feedback to Charter Communications

Joseph Stackhouse
Senior Vice President, Customer Operations
Charter Communications
12405 Powerscourt Drive
St. Louis, MO 63131
Phone: (314) 965-0555

Stephen Trippe - Charter GM for St. Louis
stevegm@chartercom.com

Resources for Receiving Digital/HD OTA via an Antenna

* There are two ways to receive local digital/HD broadcasts in the St. Louis area. The first, and by far simplest, is to subscribe to Charter Cable. Unfortunately, Charter doesn't currently provide all of the available St. Louis digital stations. To date, Charter is offering KTVI-DT (FOX), KSDK-DT (NBC), KETC-DT (PBS) and KPLR-DT (WB).

Due to contractual issues, Charter does not provide KDNL-DT or KMOV-DT.

WRBU-DT (UPN) is not offered by Charter, but this isn't a major issue, since WRBU's digital station isn't capable of passing the UPN network's HD programs. And with the pending merger of UPN and the WB, this is even less a pressing issue.

* On the other hand, if you're a satellite customer, or you're only interested in receiving the free OTA digital chanels, you'll need some sort of antenna -- either indoor, attic or roof mount.

* Forget most of what you know about receiving traditional analog television via an antenna, as digital broadcasting is for the most part a different animal.

The first and most important thing to know is that digital signals, once received, tend to be highly stable. The sort of artifacts that you may recall about pre-cable antenna reception of local stations isn't all that relevant to digital reception. For example, in the digital realm there's no visual equivalent to the analog artifacts known as "snow," or "ghosting."

And in most cases, a digital signal won't slowly fade in and out as was sometimes the case in fringe analog reception areas. For the most part, with digital broadcasts you either receive the signal and have a near-perfect picture and sound, or you won't get anything at all.

In addition, barring significant topographical or architectural obstacles between your location and the transmission towers, digital signals appear to be more robust in terms of distance they can travel without degradation. While it's the exception rather than the rule, there are instances where digital OTA signals have been received as far as 120 miles from the tower.

So, just because you may have had difficulty with OTA analog signals in the past at your location, that doesn't necessarily mean you won't be able to receive digital OTA signals.

* All of the current St. Louis digital/HD stations are currently broadcasting in the UHF spectrum. The UHF channel assignments for local stations appears below:

26 - KPLR (WB)
31 - KDNL (ABC)
35 - KSDK (NBC)
39 - KETC (PBS)
43 - KTVI (FOX)
47 - WRBU (UPN)
56 - KMOV (CBS)

Today, all St. Louis stations are "simulcasting," with the traditional analog broadcasts via one frequency and the digital/HD broadcasts through another. For example, KMOV sends its analog broadcasts out as VHF channel 4 and then simulataneously sends its digital broadcasts as UHF channel 56.

As the transition to digital broadcasting progresses, there will come a time when the analog broadcasts will be discontinued and stations will only be transmitting digitally. While this switch from analog to digital was originally scheduled to take place in 2006, it's almost certain that the analog shutdown will be deferred for at least a few years.

But when that analog shutdown does occur, it's possible that one or more local stations will decide to shift their digital broadcasts to their longtime analog channel designations. As a purely hypothetical example, after shutting down its analog broadcasts, KMOV might opt to move its digital transmission to VHF channel 4.

* While the signals for digital/HD broadcasts are made up of binary data (zeros and ones), from a viewer perspective, there's nothing special about the antenna required to receive those broadcasts. As noted above, the actual transmission takes place over the UHF spectrum. That means that if you already have an old UHF-capable antenna on your rooftop or in your attic, there's a good chance that it will receive some, and possibly all, of the available local digital broadcasts. The only way to conclusively determine if that older antenna will carry you into the digital age is to test it.

However, it is possible that in order to maximize signal integrity you might need to upgrade the cable run from an existing antenna to your distribution point(s), especially if the antenna uses the flimsy ribbon-type cable connection. If you need to replace the cable for an existing antenna, RG-6 quad-shield coax is recommended. A 1,000-foot roll of RG-6 quad coax can be purchased for around $75, though it is possible to buy smaller quantities at a higher per-foot cost.

* If you're starting from scratch and need to purchase an antenna, there is some merit in selecting a UHF-only antenna. While a combo VHF-UHF antenna would likely work in many situations, a UHF-only antenna will normally give better, more reliable results. If you do have an existing antenna and it isn't capable of pulling in all of the stations in the area, there's a good chance that swapping out for a UHF-only antenna would result in better reception.

Of course, the downside in opting for a UHF-only antenna is that if any of the local stations subsequently decide to shift their digital broadcasts to their old analog channel assignment, a VHF antenna might be required to continue receiving those stations.

* Without officially endorsing one antenna over another, here are some suggestions that should work for most viewers within a 45-mile radius of the St. Louis transmission towers.

But first, bear in mind that antenna reception is one part art and one part science. What works in one location might not work across the street due to topographical or physical obstacles in the signal path at that second location. But that sort of anomaly is rare, and antenna reception is normally achievable with some reasonable effort and determination. But it is important to understand that there are no certainties and the only way to find out what can be received with an antenna in a given location is to test one yourself or arrange for one to be installed by a proven installer.

For outdoor or attic antennae, ChannelMaster sells at least two UHF-only models that you should consider -- the CM4221 (retail approximately $30 -- tax not included), which is a 4-bay rated for 45 miles, and the CM4228 (retail $50), which is an 8-bay rated for 60 miles. Winegard has the Prostar 1000 model PR-4400 rated for 45 miles, and the PR-8800 rated for 60 miles. Radio Shack also sells a UHF-only antenna (catalog # 15-2160, $30 retail) that is worth considering.

As a general suggestion, avoid antennas that appear to be working overtime to not look like an antenna. While it's true that traditional antennae are unattractive and a lot of people consider them to be eyesores to be avoided at all cost, the newer streamlined, aerodynamic antennae seem to compromise reception capability in exchange for a more friendly appearance.

For indoor antennas, there are many options here as well, but the current performance leader is the Zenith Silver Sensor (ZHDTV1). The Silver Sensor used to be available at several stores here locally, but recently distribution has dried up and the only sure way of finding the SS is going to be online. Figure on a cost of around $40.

The excellent performance of the Silver Sensor is probably in part due to the fact that Zenith actually designed the technology responsible for the transmission of OTA digital/HD signals, known as 8VSB.

Again, there's no reliable way to predict if an indoor antenna will work in your location, short of buying one and testing it. The good news here is that most of the major retailers have reasonable return policies, so it's unlikely that you'll be out major bucks if it turns out that an indoor antenna isn't up to the job in your home.

Frequently Asked Questions about HDTV

Q: I have excellent reception of all of the local digitals -- most of the time. But occasionally one of the stations will be lost for 30 or 40 seconds, breaking up and then coming back with a very strong signal.

Why does this happen, and what can be done to eliminate the problem?

A: It sounds like multipath issues, where the receiver is getting multiple copies of the same signal as a result of it bouncing off various objects on its way toward your antenna. With analog OTA, you would see this as "ghosting," with a shadow or secondary image on the screen; with digital OTA, it's simply an error and the receiver gets mixed up. Newer generation digital OTA receivers do a better job at rejecting multipath signals, but there is a limit to how much multipath they address.

Generally, a directional antenna (like a yagi attic/roof antenna) will perform better in installations where multipath problems occur. Multi-direction antennas are better at pulling in more stations without adjustments, but they sometimes increase the incidence of multipath issues.

Q: Sometimes the pictures on my local digital stations are fantastic, but a lot of the time they don't look that much better than what I was receiving over cable or satellite previously.

Why? Is there something wrong with my television or OTA receiver?

A: At this point in the transition to digital HDTV, local stations are only providing a small portion of their daily broadcast schedule in the HD format. In almost all cases, the only HD programming available is when the local station's national network affiliate provides a program in the HD format, and the local station passes it on via its digital channel.

As a result, HD broadcasts are largely limited to prime-time programming, with the main exception being certain sporting events that are broadcast live in HD, such as selected NFL games, the Olympics, some college basketball games, some golf tournaments, etc.

Whenever a local station isn't receiving and passing on an HDTV network broadcast, they simulcast and "upconvert" their local programming on the digital channel. You probably understand the concept of simulcasting, but "upconverting" may require some explanation.

In order to simplify this, let's take the example of local channel KSDK-DT. Whenever KSDK-DT is sending an HDTV program, they send it in the 1080i HD format. Likewise, when they transmit a "standard definition" program, they are also sending it in the 1080i format by taking the original NTSC (480i) signal and electronically converting it to the same 1080i format used for HD.

The important thing to understand is that "upconverting" is not a magical process of transforming a sow's ear (NTSC programming) into a silk purse (HDTV). The limiting factor is the resolution of the original picture. If the original source material was created in the 480i format, there's no way to create HD resolution out of thin air.

This is similar to trying to convert a Polaroid snapshot into a professional studio portrait. There's no question that the professional photographer or film processor could make the Polaroid snapshot larger or produce it on nicer stock, but the end results are never going to be confused with a picture that originated as a studio portrait using higher-resolution film and equipment.

As in the case of NTSC programming, the limiting factor is the original resolution when the image was captured.

Q: Why can't I change the screen mode for my television on the OTA digital channels?

A: Digital broadcasts (for the most part) are required to send their images out as a widescreen (16x9) picture. Although it's not always obvious from looking at the images, where black bars appear on the sides, these are actually formatted as part of the picture sent by the station.

One other point about digital broadcasts and your HD monitor. Many consumer televisions assume that when they receive an HD signal that the picture is being sent in widescreen format. In some cases this will limit or (more commonly) completely prevent the viewer from changing how the picture is formated onscreen. While the screen mode or aspect ratio controls for your set can be used with standard-definition programming, they may be non-functional or limited when your set is displaying either upconverted SD or true HD OTA broadcasts.

Q: I understand that HDTV supports the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound format, but this doesn't appear to be working on my sound system. Is there a problem with my OTA receiver or my A/V receiver.

A: It's true that Dolby Digital 5.1 is part of the ATSC specification for HDTV broadcasting. However, there are a few conditions that need to be considered before determining what you're receiving and whether there's a problem with your equipment.

1. You need to have in place equipment capable of receiving and processing DD5.1 broadcasts (a DD5.1-compliant A/V receiver or processor) and you need to be using a digital audio connection between your OTA receiver and A/V receiver or sound processor. There are basically two types of digital audio connections, one that makes use of coaxial cables and the other using optical cables.

You will need to consult the user manuals for your OTA receiver and audio equipment to ensure that you are making the correct connections for your particular equipment and configuration.

2. DD5.1 broadcasts require special equipment to be installed at the local station. Although you may know that a specific program is being sent by the network in the DD5.1 format, if the local station here isn't able to process and decode the DD5.1 soundtrack, you won't be able to hear the DD5.1 mix in your home theater.

Here's a list of the stations in St. Louis and their ability to send Dolby Digital 5.1:

26 (11-2) -- KPLR (WB) - yes
31 (30-1) -- KDNL (ABC) - yes
35 (5-1) -- KSDK (NBC) - yes
39 (9-1) -- KETC (PBS) - no
43 (2-1) -- KTVI (FOX) - yes
47 (46-1) -- WRBU (UPN) - no
56 (4-1) -- KMOV (CBS) - yes

Also, here is the Dolby Digital 5.1 status of some of the major cable/satellite HD stations:

HBO-HD -- yes
ESPN-HD -- no
BRAVO-HD -- yes
Discovery HD Theater -- yes
HDNet Movies -- yes
HDNet -- yes
TNT-HD -- no
NBC-HD East/West -- yes *
CBS-HD East/West -- yes *
FOX-HD East/West -- yes **

* = only available to St. Louis viewers who obtain a written waiver from the local affiliate

** = the East Coast FOX out-of-market feed is now available to all St. Louis-area DirecTV HD subscribers who are paying for the local channels package. No waiver will be required for receipt of the the East Coast FOX feed, as KTVI, the local FOX affilliate, is directly owned by FOX television. (updated 1/2005).

3. Not all programs are available in the Dolby Digital 5.1 format, so even where one of the stations listed above is shown to be capable of transmitting DD5.1 broadcasts, if the program isn't created with a DD5.1 soundtrack, the local station won't be able to send in that format.

As an example, although KMOV-DT is capable of providing Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, "Everybody Loves Raymond" is not produced with a DD5.1 soundtrack. On the other hand, although "NYPD Blue" is produced with a DD5.1 soundtrack, local station KDNL-DT isn't currently equipped to handle DD5.1 broadcasting.

I've yet to find a completely reliable source of information about HD programming that includes a DD5.1 soundtrack, but HDTV Magazine Program Guide is the best that I've found so far:

http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/programming/guide.php

In order to customize the guide for the local and/or cable/satellite channels you receive, it will be necessary to register with HDTV Magazine and set up a profile listing your stations. Note that the DD5.1 designations in the HDTV Magazine grid are "program-specific" and therefore won't accurately reflect the ability of the local station to provide DD5.1.

Q: I'm not clear on the difference between "true HD" and "upconverted HD." Take for example the "Hogan's Heroes" re-runs that sometimes are shown on HDNet -- how can a show that wasn't originally recorded in HD be considered real HD?

A: I think your skepticism about "true HD" comes from a misunderstanding of the difference between "upconversions" and true HD programming. The "Hogan's Heroes" example you mention is a good way to illustrate the distinction.

Let's pretend for a moment that one of our local St. Louis stations holds the local syndication rights to "Hogan's Heroes" re-runs and that these programs are based on the same film-to-NTSC video transfers that appeared when the series was a first-run sitcom on CBS a couple of decades back.

When the local station shows "Hogan Heroes" reruns, the picture quality over the station's analog channel will be largely the same as any other NTSC prime-time drama or comedy series. However, when the show is transmitted on the local station's digital channel, it will be electronically upconverted to either 1080i or 720p, depending on which HD standard this particular station normally uses.

Note the words "electronically converted," because what happens when the program appears on the digital channel is that the 480 lines of NTSC video resolution are "reconstituted" to match the station's 720- or 1080-line digital broadcast. The important thing to understand in the hypothetical example here is that even though "Hogan's Heroes" is being converted to 720p or 1080i broadcast formats, the underlying video is still only 480 lines of resolution -- an electronic conversion can't create resolution beyond what existed in the original video frames.

On the other hand, what HDNet has done is to go back to the original film masters of the "Hogan's Heroes" series and performed a true "HD transfer" of those film frames to 1080i HD.

At the risk of oversimplifying the process, HDNet has "re-scanned" the film master in order to capture more of the resolution that existed in the original film frames of the series but that was lost when the film was converted to 480-line NTSC video. At the same time, HDNet has exposed more of the original film frame in order to fill (or nearly fill) the 16x9 aspect ratio mandated in the HD standard.

One other point that may be muddying the waters for you is the dfference between HD that originates via film (most theatrical-release films and most prime-time TV dramas or sitcoms) and HD that originates as true HD video (live sports, concerts, etc).

In general, HD that originates as HD video may have clearer and more lifelike quality to it, but in fact, 35mm or 70mm film contains as much (actually more) inherent resolution as the highest ATSC HD video standard (1080p x 1920). While they do appear different and you may think HD native video looks better, when a film-to-HD transfer is done properly, it qualifies as "true HD."

STL HDTV Survey Results - Part 1: Stats About Respondents

As most everyone here knows by now, I recently developed an online survey to gauge the experiences of St. Louis viewers in receiving digital broadcasts and HDTV programming. The survey was open for participation from November 7 through December 1.

A total of 188 replies were received. I don't have a breakdown on how respondents learned about the survey, but I'd say it's a safe bet that 50% or more came via AVS. The survey was also promoted directly to my database of calibration customers and past prospects. I believe the survey was also promoted at an online bulletin board for local broadcast professionals. I also posted a note about the survey at STLToday.com, but I think that probably had the smallest impact, at least based on subsequent replies to that STLToday thread.

So again, I want to thank everyone who took the time to participate -- I really do appreciate you helping to make the time I spent on this worthwhile.

I don't see much point in dwelling on the number of responses. For what it's worth, this is roughly what I expected -- going into this I figured that 200 responses would be a reasonable number to expect, though I was hoping for more in order to give the results the maximum possible heft.

Still, I think for a first run that 188 responses is more than respectable, but then I am biased due to the scrambling around I did to get to that number. One of the good things about the survey is that the flow of replies was consistent from the start -- no major spike in the first week, tailing off into nothingness -- in fact, I'd say it's safe to say that there were a minimum of 40 replies per week, though I didn't think to try to track that.

I'd hope that if the survey results are found to be useful and the survey worth doing on an annual basis that we'd get a minimum of 500 replies next time.

In this first summary of results, I'm going to provide details on responses to the first section of the survey, which covers details about HDTV ownership and surround sound capabilities, how often you watch HD programming on your HDTV, and how you describe your interest level in HDTV.

While I think the data here are interesting, there's nothing very controversial here (though can't say that about subsequent sections):

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/1-HDTVOwnership.jpg

HDTV Ownership: As expected, virtually every survey participant owns at least one HDTV. Ideally the survey would capture more respondents who, for whatever reason, haven't yet purchased an HDTV, because that would provide more balance about overall local consumer sentiment toward HDTV. But this isn't surprising in view of the how the survey was promoted, and there's still a lot to be learned about local HDTV owners and what they like and don't like about digital broadcasts and HDTV programming.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/2-ofHDTVsOwned.jpg

Number of HDTVs Owned: I see the number of respondents who own more than one HDTV as a bit of a surprise, at roughly 35%, as I would have guessed at less than 25%. More suprising, I guess, is the fact that nearly 10% of all HDTV owners own three or more HD-capable displays.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/3-HDTVSize.jpg

Size of Primary HD Display: The interesting thing here is the number of respondents who said their primary display is 32 inches or smaller -- 13%.

To be honest, I screwed up this question from a couple of different angles -- I should have done a better job of setting up the size groups, going from 32 inches and below, to 33-40, to 41-46, to 47-58, to 58-65 and then 66 inches or larger.

In fact, this question also included a major error at release, as there was a 51-60 range and then a 70-plus, but no 61-70 range. This was spotted by fastmans (thanks again), and I had to temporarily close the survey to combine the 51-70 range into one. In the process, no data was lost, and at the time no one had selected 51-60 as an answer, so no major impact there.

I spent a lot of time going over the survey before finally pulling the trigger on its release, and I really should have caught that error. But it's true -- sometimes you get too close to the forest to see any trees. Needless to say, this question would be reworked if there's a follow-up survey in 2007.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/4-HDTVTechnologyType.jpg

Technology Type, Primary Display: Really interesting things here. First, I'm sort of surprised that CRT still has such a large share of the market, or at least that part of the market responding to the survey. On the other hand, you can be sure that CRT isn't likely to go any higher than 40% from here. A year from now, CRT probably manages less than 25%.

Other than that, DLP, plasma and LCoS line up more or less the way I thought they might -- maybe it's a little surprising that the LCoS share wasn't larger, particularly in view of how popular the Sony SXRD were last year and appear to be this year.

The overall LCD share is a little surprising, but considering the fact that LCD offers smaller flat-panel sizes than plasma and that there is an apparent preference among respondents for smaller displays, this fits together logically. This could also be taken as an indicator that LCD is well on its way to supplanting plasma as the flat panel of choice, though plasma generally maintains a cost-advantage at the larger sizes (for now).

Note: The "don't know" responses were not used to calculate the overall technology shares.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/5-HDasofTotalViewing.jpg

Percentage of HD Viewing: To be completely honest, I had absolutely no idea how this question would play out. I'll admit that I peaked at the results of certain questions as the replies rolled in, and it was interesting to note that from the first week on, the weighted average never moved more than a couple of decimal points above or below 60.3%.

One of my primary motivations for including this question was to get some idea about the share of HD viewing done on HD displays, but also to see if there's ANY evidence to be found to support the oft-repeated claim that there are 30 million HDTVs in the US, but that only 50% have a way to receive HD programming. Of course, the survey results don't necessarily prove that statistic to be bogus, due to make-up of survey respondents. But if there was something to this, I would have expected to see a lot more "zero percent" answers even within this survey sample.

I remain skeptical.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/6-DolbyDigitalCapability.jpg

Dolby Digital Capability: At 86% affirmative, this is much higher than I would have guessed. I figured the number would be closer to 60%, simply because I thought that a significant number of budget-constrained buyers would forego a surround sound system in order to get into the HD game more quickly. That doesn't appear to be the case at all, and when I stop and think about my own customers, it's probably true that virtually all have a surround system of some type, with many of them having spent several times more than what they shelled out for the video side of the system.

The retail sales troops are definitely getting the job done here... :)

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/7-HDTVInterestLevel.jpg

Your HDTV Interest Level: Again, considering where the survey was promoted, this isn't entirely surprising, though I did think there'd be more like 25% casual viewers.

And obviously there are a lot of HDTV Skeptics out there somewhere -- I was hoping that the posting at the STLToday forum would generate more of that type respondent. To be fair, I did get one reply from a skeptic via STLToday, and this person made the very valid point that if you don't own an HDTV and you consider yourself a skeptic, there's not a lot of relevant questions to answer from there.

So, if this survey is repeated a year from now, I'll try to develop a separate, "skeptic branch" of queries.

NEXT: Local Digital Reception -- how you receive local digital stations and how sucessful you are in receiving each of the seven stations operating digitally in St. Louis. I can't make any promises, but Im aiming to get this second batch of information out on Wednesday, but if not, it probably won't happen until the weekend.

DISCLAIMER: AVS is in no way a party to this survey, apart from being a vehicle to promote the survey's availability and as an avenue to report back results. None of the questions or results should in any way be taken to represent the views or opinions of the management of AVS or its various partners.

I look forward to hearing any comments about the initial survey data.

STL HDTV Survey Results - Part 2: Receiving Local Digital Stations

This second summary of the results of the "HDTV in St. Louis" viewer survey focuses on local digital broadcast stations.

This summary includes a breakdown between viewers who receive local digitals over the air via some type of antenna versus those who get them through a Pay TV subscription. The survey also finds out more about those using an antenna, including where they're located and the overall rate of reception reliability for each digital station.

In addition, all survey respondents were invited to rate each digital station in five areas -- HD network passthrough, HD picture quality, HD sound quality, HD network content, and locally produced HD content.

Note: Unlike the OTA reception-specific series of questions that appear below, ALL survey respondents were given the opportunity to rate the local stations, regardless of whether they received them OTA or via a pay subscription.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/8-LocalDigitalAccess.jpg

How You Receive Local Digital Stations: This is pretty straightforward stuff. As this AVS thread began life primarily dedicated to OTA receipt of digital broadcasts in St. Louis, I would have expected at least 50% of survey replies to come down on the side of receiving local stations over the air. But clearly, a lot of viewers aren't going to mess about with an antenna, no matter how cheap it is or much free support they might have available to them.

Another factor that I thought might skew results in the direction of OTA reception is the fact that Charter doesn't yet offer KDNL-DT. More on that issue later.

The Spouse Acceptance Factor likely casts some length of shadow here, too.

The results of this question also underline the importance of DISH and DirecTV being able to offer digital local stations, as it's clear that consumers who are prepared to mess around with an antenna are a relatively small minority, particularly when you consider that 85% of survey respondents describe themselves as HDTV Enthusiasts.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/9-WhereReceivingOTADigital.jpg

Where Are You Receiving Local Digitals: Note that this question and the next one were only presented to respondents who said they were receiving local digitals via OTA.

These two questions together are a good example of where the results would have been a lot more interesting if the survey sample was significantly larger -- at that point, I could have filtered individual locations (or groups of locations) and sliced and diced the results of OTA success for each channel by those geographic groupings.

That would be convenient for when an HD newbie comes along and asks the nearly mandatory question, "I'm in XXX part of the area, how much luck have you guys near me had in receiving the local stations?" With a fairly bulky data sample, a pretty informative, area-by-area snapshot would emerge.

I may still go back at some point and some basic slicing and dicing, but for now the big picture will have to do.

Obviously it's safe to assume that there are HDTV owners in Soulard and Downtown, but apparently putting up an antenna to receive local digital broadcasts is too difficult, or at least there's a perception that it's unlikely to result in much success. As a sidebar discussion, I'd be interested to know more about why viewers in these two areas are OTA shutouts.

Apart from the Downtown/Soulard goose eggs, the geographic breakdown is somewhat predictable, with West County and St. Charles County accounting for 40% of OTA installations. I'm a little surprised that the Madison/St. Clair/Monroe segment is as large as it turned out to be, but then those three counties do cover a fairly significant-sized land area and there is an expanding supply of upmarket and relatively affordable housing there.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/10-HowReliableLocalReception.jpg

Reception Reliability: Not a lot to say here -- I think these results are a reasonable reflection of the anecdotal reports on reception difficulty here at AVS.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/11a-RateYourLocalStations.jpg

How You Rate Your Digital Locals: And the highest rated local stations is...KSDK. So, ladies and gentlemen, start your debating engines...but let's try to keep it civil, eh?

Obviously when I saw how this question was playing out, I contemplated climbing up on the roof, UHF antenna in hand, and performing a textbook swan dive onto the driveway below. :)

Fortunately that feeling passed fairly switfly...

But there's no doubt in my mind that this question and the results are in some fundamental way imperfect, and that isn't just because KSDK came out on top. There are enough anomalies here to remain in finger-wagging mode for the better part of the day.

But let me start by addressing how I think it is that KSDK came out on top.

First and foremost, the fact that KSDK produces significant and widely recognized local content (HD news broadcasts and "Show Me St. Louis") pushed them over the top. I also have little doubt that KSDK's claim to local HD leadership had a positive impact on its rating here.

When I was designing the survey, I seriously considered weighting the different performance categories, because I didn't think that each of these are of equal importance.

To take an obvious example, when 95+% of all available over-the-air HD content is originated by a national network, there's a pretty strong case to be made that the network passthrough rating should carry more weight than the ratings for local content. And for what it's worth, I'm not completely on board with an HDTV survey giving equal weight to picture quality and sound quality -- but then, I do recognize that I'm primarily a "video guy." So in mulling over the weighting question, I ultimately decided that no matter how I weighted things, it was going to be viewed as too subjective.

And more to the point, I felt that giving less weight to local content would look like I was actively stacking the deck against KSDK. As it turns out, equal weighting appears to have stacked the deck in its favor.

Because someone is going to ask the question, here's how the ratings break down if you completely remove local content from the equation. Mind you, I'm not presenting this to diminish KSDK, but to show in the simplest possible form how the local rating impacted the survey rankings.

From here, I'll leave further KSDK editorializing to others, and say "congratulations, KSDK -- you win, I lose."

I'd also like to hear any suggestions for how five categories should be weighted if the survey were to be done again in future. Maybe these aren't even the correct categories...

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/11b-RateYourLocalStations.jpg

The other major anomalies in the replies to this question:

Other Local Content Ratings: While respondents were obviously successful in identifying the station that does the most in term of local HD production, there's plenty of other cause for head-scratching here.

For example, KETC, which hasn't done a single local HD production that I'm aware of, gets a higher ranking than KPLR, which has done at least two dozen live local sports presentations (Cardinals baseball) over the past 2 years. Sadly, KPLR gets no obvious credit for that -- hardly the sort of message HD-hungry viewers would deliberately send to KPLR station management.

In the same vein, WRBU gets half the Local Content points given to KPLR, and WRBU isn't even able to pass through NETWORK HD programming, never mind local HD content. In retrospect, I probably should have just completely omitted WRBU from this part of the survey, because strictly speaking, they have no HD operations in any sense of the term.

KDNL Ranking: No matter how you slice the ratings for KDNL, they seem to be getting shafted, particularly when considering how committed station management is to HD and how responsive they are to individual viewer issues. FWIW, I think this sends a really unfortunate message.

In trying to understand why KDNL received such a low rating, I initially thought it might be a product of a 1080i vs 720p bias. But then when you take in the KTVI/FOX ratings, you see there's no obvious case to be made for that.

The other possible explanation that occurred to me was that KDNL may have been "thumped" by some respondents due to the Sinclair-Charter standoff. The detailed survey data seems to confirm this.

Respondents were able to rate each station in each category on a 1-10 scale. If we completely ignore WRBU and put aside each station's local content ratings for a moment, no station other than KDNL received more than FIVE "1-point" ratings in each of the other categories, while KDNL received no fewer than FOURTEEN "1-point" votes in each of those four categories (network passthrough, picture and sound quality and network HD content).

The gap between KDNL and other non-KSDK stations for local content was similarly wide.

Clearly, a significant number of viewers rating KDNL (roughly 12 percent) used the opportunity as a way of thumping KDNL for its role in KDNL-DT not being available on Charter cable systems in the area.

FWIW, I think it's fair to assign a large portion of the blame to Sinclair Broadcasting (KDNL's owner) for the standoff with Charter. But this is ultimately a blunt force way of doing it -- it makes me wonder if the bulk of those fourteen 1-point votes originated in the "runaway jury" constituency of Madison County. ;)

So, in summing this section of the survey, feel free to blame the survey maker...

NEXT: Digital Multicasting -- the next summary, probably available at the weekend, will break down the results of the optional series of questions about the use of digital multi-casting by local stations.

Previous Summaries

Survey Respondents Profile (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9075182&&#post9075182)

DISCLAIMER: AVS is in no way a party to this survey, apart from being a vehicle to promote the survey's availability and as an avenue to report back results. None of the questions or results should in any way be taken to represent the views or opinions of the management of AVS or its various partners.

STL HDTV Survey Results - Part 3: Digital Multicasting

This third summary of the results of the "HDTV in St. Louis" viewer survey focuses on viewer opinions about digital multicasting.

As explained in the survey, "digital multicasting is a new technology that allows digital TV stations to provide multiple channels with different types of programming, instead of just a single channel as in the past. When a digital TV station uses multicasting, some of the station's available bandwidth normally used exclusively for HD video and digital sound is reallocated to enable delivery of one or more "subchannels." When multicasting is employed in this manner, the HD channel typically remains in place, but with reduced bandwidth."

The series of questions on multicasting was optional, and of the 188 persons who participated in the survey, 105 answered all four questions.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/13-MulticastingAwareness.jpg

Your Prior Awareness of Mutlicasting: With nearly 85 percent of survey respondents describing themselves as "HDTV Enthusiasts," it follows that there would be a large percentage of participants saying they are aware of how digital multicasting works and how it is used.

Also, a survey participant who knows something about multicasting seems more llikely to choose to answer questions about it.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/12-MultiastingQualityImpact.jpg

Do You See Multicasting Having an Impact on Picture/Sound Quality?: Slightly more than 3 out of every 4 respondents said they were able to see reduced quality and associated it with multicasting,

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/14-MulticastingRatingsInfluence.jpg

Did Multicasting Impact Your Digital Channel Ratings?: A healthy majority of respondents say they docked points from multicasting stations when they rated their picture and sound quality. But just as interesting, 25% of the participants who observed reduced quality as a result of multicasting apparently weren't bothered enough about it to take that into account when they rated individual local stations.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/15-MulticastingMoreorLess.jpg

Are You Ready to Forego Some HD Quality for More Non-HD Content?: Just shy of two-thirds of respondents weren't happy about a quantity-for-quality swap, with four out of 10 indicating they want no part of it.

But just over 25% say "deal."

NEXT: Digital Multicasting -- The next summary, probably available by Wednesday or Thursday, will provide details on Pay TV services, including customer ratings of each service in the areas of: HD channel choice; HD hardware and advanced services; HD customer and technical support; HD picture quality; HD sound quality; and overall HD value.

Previous Summaries

Survey Respondents Profile (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9075182&&#post9075182)

Receiving Local Digital Stations (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9091629&&#post9091629)

DISCLAIMER: AVS is in no way a party to this survey, apart from being a vehicle to promote the survey's availability and as an avenue to report back results. None of the questions or results should in any way be taken to represent the views or opinions of the management of AVS or its various partners.

STL HDTV Survey Results - Part 4: Rating Your HD Pay TV Provider

This fourth summary of the results of the "HDTV in St. Louis" viewer survey focuses on how local viewers rate the main Pay TV services available in the categories of HD programming choice, HD hardware and advanced services, HD customer support and technical support, HD picture quality, HD sound quality and overall HD value offered by each subscription service.

As noted in the original survey question, the point of this section of questions was not to try to determine an objective "best" option for HD services in St. Louis, as that would require costly side-by-side, double-blind tests involving all three services over some reasonable period of time. Obviously, that's not doable, probably even by the companies that have the most at stake in those sort of findings.

Instead, the survey asked each respondent to select the Pay TV service they consider to be their primary subscription service for HD programming and then to answer a series of questions about how satisfied they are with various aspects of the services.

As a result, there's no declared "winner" here -- just the nuts and bolts opinions of viewers who use these services every day. I think that's still potentially valuable, particularly for when someone new to HD comes along here and asks the question, "What do you guys think about XXXXX for HD?"

For at least the next few months, we have a pretty good barometer of customer opinion about each Pay TV provider's HD service.

Of the 142 people who answered the question about whether they subscribed to an HD Pay TV service, 91% replied in the affirmative, with only 9% saying they did not receive HD through one of the subscription TV services.

The actual ranking of Pay TV providers was an optional section, and of those who followed through, just short of 50% said they were Charter Communications customers, 39% were DirecTV subscribers and only 12% were DISH Network viewers.

To start, here's a breakdown on how long survey respondents have been receiving HD programming from each of the three Pay TV providers.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/16-PayTVHowLongHD.jpg

As expected, DirecTV and DISH had the greatest share of long-term HD subscribers, particularly after discounting the fact that Charter did not offer HD programming 5 years ago. It's likely that some participants didn't fully understand the question, which was focused on HD programming, not overall length of service with your provider.

Although it's not possible to draw concrete conclusions from the data, it appears that Charter is benefitting the most from the increasing number of first-time HDTV buyers looking for HD programming. That makes sense on several levels, as Charter likely has the largest share of overall Pay TV customers in St. Louis and it's the most friction-free way to secure pay TV programming (no dish, no line-of-sight hassles, no antenna, etc.)

Next, onto the ratings:

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/17-RatingYourHDPayTVProvider.jpg

The major finding here is the extremely high ratings that DISH Network customers give the company, pretty much right across the board. From these results, it appears that DISH subscribers as a group don't see any major deficiencies in the HD product, services and support they're receiving.

On the other hand, DirecTV gets hammered pretty hard for its HD picture quality and programming choice, and Charter is walloped on the customer and technical support sides. On the other hand, Charter subscribers are very happy with HD picture quality and DirecTV customers report feeling positively about the support they receive.

As always, I'd be interested any other comments or questions about this portion of the survey results, or any of the previous summaries.

NEXT: Rating Pay TV's HD Channels -- The next summary, probably available around the holiday break, will provide your ratings for each of the HD channels offered by the various services. Also over the holiday break, I'll provide some breakdowns on your favorite shows and channels in the areas of picture quality and sound quality, as well as the HD programming additions you'd most like to have available.

Previous Summaries

Part 1: Survey Respondents Profile (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9075182&&#post9075182)

Part 2: Receiving Local Digital Stations (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9091629&&#post9091629)

Part 3: Digital Multicasting Opinions (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9127512&&#post9127512)

DISCLAIMER: AVS is in no way a party to this survey, apart from being a vehicle to promote the survey's availability and as an avenue to report back results. None of the questions or results should in any way be taken to represent the views or opinions of the management of AVS or its various partners.

STL HDTV Survey Results - Part 5: Rating HD Pay TV Channels

This fifth summary of the results of the "HDTV in St. Louis" viewer survey focuses on how local viewers rate the HD channels they receive through their primary Pay TV provider in the areas of HD Content, HD Picture Quality and HD Sound Quality. In compiling your responses, each of the three categories were weighted equally in order to create an overall rating for each channel.

As in the survey, the results are presented here by category -- General Interest Channels, Movie Channels, Sports Channels and VOOM Channels.

This section of questions was optional -- of those replying that they subscribed to a Pay TV service, roughly 80% of Charter subscribers (50) opted to rate individual HD channels, while just over 70% of DirecTV subscribers (34) and nearly 90% of DISH subscribers (13) rated individual channels. Because of the relatively small number of DISH customers participating in the survey, ratings for channels only available on DISH, such as the VOOM channels, may be skewed to some degree.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/14a-GeneralInterest-1.jpg

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/14b-Movie.jpg

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/14c-Sports.jpg

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/VideoSavant/14d-VOOM.jpg

Notes on the Results:

* Highest-Rated Overall HD Channels: HDNet (8.72 of 10), followed by Discovery HD Theater (8.62), HDNet Movies (8.18), HBO HD (8.03) and the ESPN HD (8.01) channels.

* Highest-Rated HD Content: Discovery (8.30), followed by HDNet (8.28), Equator HD (8.00), HBO (7.88) and ESPN (7.69).

* Highest-Rated Picture Quality: HDNet (8.96), Discovery (8.80), ESPN (8.20), Equator HD (8.00) and HBO (7.98).

* Highest-Rated Sound Quality: HDNet (8.91), Discovery (8.74), Rave HD (8,40), HDNet Movies (8.33), and HBO (8.22).

* Different Services, Different Criteria? There was some fairly interesting variations in how subscribers to the various services rated content and picture quality. For example, the average picture quality rating given by Charter subscribers was 7.90, while DirecTV and DISH averaged around 7.50. On HD Content, DISH subscribers averaged 7.46, while Charter averaged 7.09 and and DirecTV 6.82. Subscribers for each of the three Pay TV services were clustered right around 7.80 for average sound ratings.

For overall ratings, Charter and DISH averaged right around 7.60, while DirecTV subscriber ratings averaged 7.37.

* Overall Category Averages: HD Content, 7.07; HD Picture Quality, 7.60; HD Sound Quality, 7.79; and Composite Ratings, 7.45.

As always, I'd be interested any other comments or questions about this portion of the survey results, or any of the previous summaries.

NEXT: Your Favorite Programs and HD Wish Lists -- The next summary, probably not available until the first week of January, will provide a summary of your favorite programs in terms of picture and sound quality. In addition, we'll list the top HD programming or channels that you're not receiving that you'd like to have available.

Previous Summaries

Part 1: Survey Respondents Profile (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9075182&&#post9075182)

Part 2: Receiving Local Digital Stations (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9091629&&#post9091629)

Part 3: Digital Multicasting Opinions (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9127512&&#post9127512)

Part 4: Rating Your HD Pay TV Provider (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9157953&&#post9157953)

DISCLAIMER: AVS is in no way a party to this survey, apart from being a vehicle to promote the survey's availability and as an avenue to report back results. None of the questions or results should in any way be taken to represent the views or opinions of the management of AVS or its various partners.

STL HDTV Survey Results - Part 6: Best Picture/Sound Ratings & HD Wish Lists

This final summary of the results of the "HDTV in St. Louis" viewer survey aims to summarize your write-in comments on the individual programs or channels you believe have provided you with the best experience in terms of picture and sound quality. There is also a summary of another free-form "wish list" question on the programs or channels you'd like to have available in the HDTV format.

Dealing with the answers to open-ended questions in this sort of survey can be a challenge, as the number and range of different approaches for answering such questions is (and was) virtually unlimited. As a result, trying to boil down nearly 700 different replies to this set of questions is a little bit like trying to get toothpaste back into the tube once it's escaped. But that didn't stop me from trying, and in several cases I needed to make some subjective decisions on how to group together certain different, but related, replies.

As in previous sections of the survey, points were awarded on the basis of first mentions getting three points; second mentions, two points and third mentions, a single point.

Viewer Favorites - Picture Quality

The majority of the answers provided here were for specific programs, but in other cases respondents simply named a channel that they believe provides consistently first-rate video. In other cases, "types" of programs were named, such as Discovery shows "about bugs eating bugs" or something as broad as "Football."

Among regularly scheduled programs, "Lost" was the favorite of viewers (51 points), but only by a slim margin over "CSI: Miami" (48) and the original "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (38). Interestingly, not a single viewer mentioned "CSI: New York," though a few respondents answered "all CSIs." It was also interesting that the bulk of the votes given to "Lost" came from DirecTV viewers. Not quite sure what to make of that, though I do wonder about how much a factor "HD Lite" was here for DirecTV respondents.

Other programs that received a significant number of votes or mentions included "Prison Break," "The Tonight Show," and PBS's "Legends of Jazz."

For non-series programming, the most common citation for picture quality was some variation on "NFL Football," whether it be "NFL," "FOX NFL," "CBS NFL games," "ABC Monday Night Football," "ESPN Monday Night Football," "ESPN Sunday Night Football," "NBC Sunday Night Football" or "NFL Sunday Ticket." I get it -- we like football in HD. Adding all the NFL football points together brought the total to 55.

There were also a fair number of mentions for college football, but these were dwarfed by respondents citing NFL broadcasts.

The other big non-series vote-getter was "The World Series" (35), and I'm guessing that most weren't referring to the 2001 Series. :)

I also thought it might be worthwhile to boil down the Picture Quality replies by channel or network, and when I did this CBS was far and away the biggest source of your favorite picture quality programming, totaling 161 points, followed by FOX (86), ABC (69), NBC (68), Discovery (49), HDNet (36) and ESPN (27). Note that the ESPN numbers includes both ESPN and ESPN2, while the HDNet total did not include any mentions for HDNet Movies, although there were, in fact, a handful of points given to HDNM.

Viewer Favorites - Sound Quality

The range of replies here was similar to for Picture Quality, though the number of overall responses was slightly lower.

Among regularly scheduled programs, "Lost" (30) again took the honors for sound quality -- FWIW, I can still hear that scene where Sawyer was chasing the tree frog from speaker to speaker in my room. Very cool. "CSI: Miami" (23) and "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (18) took the silver and bronze honors. Others receiving a significant number of mentions/points were "24" (16), "HDNet Concert Series" (15) and "NUMB3RS" (10).

The Best Sound results mirrored the Picture Quality for non-series programs, with variations on "NFL Football" dwarfing all other programming of this type. Other presentations that were singled out for sound quality included "MLB Baseball," "NCAA Final Four," "Grammy Awards," and "Cream Reunion Concert."

Looking at stations or networks that were mentioned most often in relation to Sound Quality was the same at the top, but it varied significantly from there. CBS again led the way with 106 points, followed by FOX (59), ABC (33), HDNet (33), and HBO (29).

Viewer Wish Lists

The variety of approaches to answering this question was similar to that for Picture and Sound Quality, but the groupings were effectively flip-flopped, with few mentions of regularly scheduled programs. Instead, the replies focused on channels you aren't receiving (or in existence) that you'd like to have (think Sci-Fi Channel), or more of some particular type of programming (including -- believe it or not -- more "NFL Football").

Among the channels you're not receiving that you'd like to be getting KDNL/ABC was the slam-dunk leader with 63 points. Obviously these votes were cast primarily by Charter subscribers, and I suspect that if the vote were held today, KDNL might actually be eclipsed by KMOV/CBS. The next most-cited channel was ESPN2 (24), again presumably a result of sports-deprived Charter subscribers. Tied with ESPN2 was a channel that doesn't even exist currently, the Sci-Fi Channel (24).

Others getting multiple mentions here included FOX Sports Midwest (16), National Geographic (14), and Food Network (11).

The other type of response given for the wishlist question was "more of this" or "more of that," with more "Cardinals Baseball" (52) slightly edging a handful of different ways of saying "more NFL Football" (47). Other significant mentions were collected by "Local News" (21), "Golf" (17), "Blues Hockey" (10), "Wimbledon Tennis" (10), "Formula One Racing" (9), and "Mizzou Sports" (7).

Among the relatively scant requests for specific programs, "reality" programming ruled the day, with "Survivor" totaling 23 points, "Amazing Race" (7) and "The Apprentice" (4). The top non-reality show making an impression here was HBO's "The Wire," with 6 points.

Closing Note: That concludes the reporting on the "2006 HDTV in St. Louis" survey. For me, this was an interesting exercise, and I hope that it helps bring some clarity to various aspects of the unfolding transition to digital and HDTV in the market here.

I'm not sure at this point whether I'll do this survey again next year. As someone who's naturally curious about these sorts of things, I'm inclined to do it, but I think I'll wait and see how much practical use there actually is for these results over the next 6 months or so.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to participate in the survey -- I really do appreciate your time and patience.

Previous Summaries

Part 1: Survey Respondents Profile (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9075182&&#post9075182)

Part 2: Receiving Local Digital Stations (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9091629&&#post9091629)

Part 3: Digital Multicasting Opinions (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9127512&&#post9127512)

Part 4: Rating Your HD Pay TV Provider (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9157953&&#post9157953)

Part 5: Rating HD Pay TV Channels (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9315435&&#post9315435)

DISCLAIMER: AVS is in no way a party to this survey, apart from being a vehicle to promote the survey's availability and as an avenue to report back results. None of the questions or results should in any way be taken to represent the views or opinions of the management of AVS or its various partners.

Apologies for interrupting the conversation flow with the previous nine posts, but I wanted to get all of the main threads that are referred to in the "Resources" reminder into the new thread before the old thread is archived.

Now that these are in the new thread, I can rework the links in the resource message and start reposting that every 10 days or so.

Again, sorry for the disruption...

I'm having a problem with audio dropouts on OTA HD broadcasts that has become quite annoying. I was hoping someone here would have a suggestion or solution.

I am in St. Clair county, with 2 HR10-250 DirecTV receivers. I have an OTA antenna in the attic with a signal amplifier. Receivers are set to output Dolby Digital by default if the signal is there.

Last night, while watching American Idol, there must have been 10-15 instances of audio dropouts. No audio for 5-10 seconds which comes back with a little pixelated video artifact.

Is this a problem with the broadcast? The HD receiver? The reception? DirecTV? A combination of things?

Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks

Funky,

This is an ongoing topic of discussion and several contributors here are feeding specifics on the glitches to a tech who works part time at KTVI.

Although no one at KTVI has officially acknowledged the problem, I'm virtually certain it orignates at the station. I have access to the New York FOX-HD station, and it does not happen during AI there, so it's not a network issue.

I'm having a problem with audio dropouts on OTA HD broadcasts that has become quite annoying. I was hoping someone here would have a suggestion or solution.

I am in St. Clair county, with 2 HR10-250 DirecTV receivers. I have an OTA antenna in the attic with a signal amplifier. Receivers are set to output Dolby Digital by default if the signal is there.

Last night, while watching American Idol, there must have been 10-15 instances of audio dropouts. No audio for 5-10 seconds which comes back with a little pixelated video artifact.

Is this a problem with the broadcast? The HD receiver? The reception? DirecTV? A combination of things?

Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks

Check to see if your Tivo software is 6.3a or 6.3b. Many others have or had the same audio dropouts, but they go away when your Tivo upgrades to 6.3b. I never get them anymore.

Scott

Update: St. Louis Guide to Available HD Programming

This is a pretty basic update, including just the addition of A&E HD on DISH Network.

No other changes since the mid-January update...

I'm having a problem with audio dropouts on OTA HD broadcasts that has become quite annoying. I was hoping someone here would have a suggestion or solution.
I am in St. Clair county, with 2 HR10-250 DirecTV receivers. I have an OTA antenna in the attic with a signal amplifier. Receivers are set to output Dolby Digital by default if the signal is there.
Last night, while watching American Idol, there must have been 10-15 instances of audio dropouts. No audio for 5-10 seconds which comes back with a little pixelated video artifact.
Is this a problem with the broadcast? The HD receiver? The reception? DirecTV? A combination of things?
Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks
It seems, the issues with KTVI vary with provider, be it, DTV, DISH, OTA, etc.
As a very general rule, the issues seen with DISH is usually video related...breakups, artifacting, ect. The issues seen with DTV is usually audio related....drop-outs, lip-syncing, etc.

All-in-all, as Doug said, KTVI seems to be the common denominator, though the behavior of their signal can vary with the user's provider.

Check to see if your Tivo software is 6.3a or 6.3b. Many others have or had the same audio dropouts, but they go away when your Tivo upgrades to 6.3b. I never get them anymore.

Scott
Scott,
Did you ever have 6.3a and D88 at the same time?

This seems pretty "on topic" to me, though I don't really think the margin between DISH and DirecTV SD picture quality is significant -- they both suck bigtime.

Just my opinion, but at this stage, I think it's unwise to factor in SD picture quality into the pay TV equation at all. Maybe I'm overoptimistic, but within 18 months, I expect I won't NEED to watch SD at all.

So, my advice is to ride it out...

When I first got into HD, I was really concerned about some older S-VHS tapes I had, and how well the new HD set would handle them. I thought they were a real cut above the average (I remember using that term with someone). After I had the HD projector for a short time, I realized my old tapes were hopelessly inadequate and I could hardly bear to watch them. Now, I watch almost no standard definition programming. Here's a warning - if you want to care about SD programming at all, HD may spoil that for you. Once you see HD on a good set, it's awfully hard to go back to regular video images.

I agree with Doug. I think SD programming will go away at a very accelerated pace from this point forward. All you have to do is go into any Best Buy, Circuit City or even Costco and see the push for HD. And D* just announced that it will have 100 national HD channels by the end of the year, from a lot of formerly SD only channels - such as SciFi, USA and many others. The pace of movement toward HD is much faster today than it was a year ago. I'm optimistic, too, despite some Luddite attempts to derail the transition.

Due to more "VCR" problems :rolleyes: I was unable to record 24 and Prison Break monday night. Can anybody hook a brother up?

For the on-topic conversation: more audio breakups tonight during Bones and American Idol. Much to my surprise, I even heard audio drops during the commercials.

Once you see HD on a good set, it's awfully hard to go back to regular video images.
'Tis always a question, whether we watch the hardware or the program.

And it's not new. Many people threw out all their LPs when they started buying CDs.

Wow! I just got done watching LOST in HD for the first time. It seems like the kind of show that is perfect in HD. It just gets me a little more hacked at Charter for not carrying KDNL-DT(HD). I know some folks have been talking about reception and getting drops here and there. My HD set is connected to a very basic RCA Antenna and I am getting great reception out here on almost all my channels. During LOST tonite not one drop or case of "pixelating". Sorry to sound like I am boasting/bragging about my signal. I just thought I would drop my two cents here.

Scott,
Did you ever have 6.3a and D88 at the same time?

Yes I did, and 88 never had the same 5 second drop outs that 2.1 had with 6.3a. Since 6.3b my drop outs have subsided.

The audio dropouts Funky describes are not KTVI related. The ones he describes are 6.3a/b related. It is true with everyone who has or had the HR10-250 Tivo.

Kudos to KDNL as tonight's return of LOST was perfect.

Scott

When I first got into HD, I was really concerned about some older S-VHS tapes I had, and how well the new HD set would handle them. I thought they were a real cut above the average (I remember using that term with someone). After I had the HD projector for a short time, I realized my old tapes were hopelessly inadequate and I could hardly bear to watch them. Now, I watch almost no standard definition programming. Here's a warning - if you want to care about SD programming at all, HD may spoil that for you. Once you see HD on a good set, it's awfully hard to go back to regular video images.

I agree with Doug. I think SD programming will go away at a very accelerated pace from this point forward. All you have to do is go into any Best Buy, Circuit City or even Costco and see the push for HD. And D* just announced that it will have 100 national HD channels by the end of the year, from a lot of formerly SD only channels - such as SciFi, USA and many others. The pace of movement toward HD is much faster today than it was a year ago. I'm optimistic, too, despite some Luddite attempts to derail the transition.

You're making me think back to the first time I saw Directv on a analog tv capable of 800 plus lines of resolution. I almost wet myself I was so excited. Back then I rented VHS tapes at blockbuster to the tune of about 5 to 10 tapes a week. The day I got Directv back in 94???? was the last day I have watched a VHS tape. Fast forward through laserdisc and SD DVD to HDTV and now I can't really watch SD directv without complaining. Is it possible that 10 years from now we will think HDTV looks like crap?

Scott

Hey, Doug,

About a year ago you predicted that HD disc copy protection would be broken within a year. Have you seen this?

No Big Surprise Here (http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=938)

I think this is probably bad news for the already muddy high def disc outlook, but it comes as no surprise.


They make a great product!! (so I hear :rolleyes: :rolleyes: ) I figured it was just a matter of time before they released an HD version. I would guess that blue ray won't be far behind...

They make a great product!! (so I hear :rolleyes: :rolleyes: ) I figured it was just a matter of time before they released an HD version. I would guess that blue ray won't be far behind...

I think they're an Irish company, and they do fly high on the radar. Irish laws must not be as friendly as to Hollywood as some other countries' are.

DIRECTV Meets 4Q Expectations, Adds 275,000 Net Subs

The following story is from today's SkyREPORT newsletter:
____________________________________________________________ _____

DIRECTV was expected to report an uptick in subscribers and an improvement in financial numbers for the fourth quarter. The satellite TV giant did that and much more.

DIRECTV reported 275,000 net customer additions for the three-month period that ended Dec. 31, putting the service's overall subscriber count at 15.95 million.

Gross subscriber additions for the satellite TV giant numbered 1.021 million, an increase of 6 percent when compared to fourth quarter 2005. The net subscriber additions and gross customer counts met most - and beat some - Wall Street expectations.

The subscriber numbers were helped by a drop in monthly churn, which went from 1.7 percent during the same period last year to 1.57 percent for fourth quarter 2006. That represented the biggest improvement in churn figures in more than three years, the company said.

Also, during a conference call with analysts, DIRECTV executives said about 200,000 customers were upgraded to HDTV service during the fourth quarter. DIRECTV CEO Chase Carey said he expects 2007 subscriber growth to mirror what happened last year.

Carey also said this year will be a big deal for the satellite TV company's move into a robust HDTV slate. The expanded HDTV offering is relying on the launch of a new satellite, set for the second half of the year.

DIRECTV said fourth quarter net income more than doubled to $356 million when compared to the same period last year. Fourth quarter revenues increased 16 percent to $4.18 billion, the company said.
____________________________________________________________ _____

Well I spent the first night with my new mits HC3000u DLP projector. I replaced a Panasonic AE-700. I haven't seen rainbows, but I am feeling eyestrain (like my eyeballs are burning)

I did some research and it appears ambient light may help and I may get used to it. I plan to keep it for a couple more weeks to see if I adjust.

If not, it's a shame because the picture is WAY better than my AE-700. Has anyone looked at the new LCD's? Do they still suffer from FPN? On my 700 I was able to eliminate the VB, but the FPN is always noticible in smoke & blue sky scenes.

On a side note. I checked the BestBuy Extended Warrenty and they limit to 1 bulb replacement. Currently a bulb is about $400 so $350 for the warranty isn't bad. However I will now go back to preserving the bulb as long as I can.

Dave

Dave,

It's possible that your eyestrain is caused by the projector being too bright -- I experienced this recently when I purchased a new LCD desktop monitor and had to turn down the "contrast" setting from 80 to 25.

I think a high light level is more likely to cause eyestrain than anything inherent in the DLP technology. But it's also true that some people are more susceptible to rainbows than others, so maybe there's something along those lines happening with you.

IMO, ambient light (or bias lighting) shouldn't be necessary, unless you are sitting quite a way back from the screen, to the point where the picture is not filling the majority of your field of vision.

Does your signal strength jump around a lot? ..if so, could be a multipath issue. How far out of sync is "Way out of Sync?" Is it all the time?

Mine jumps around a lot...what exactly is a multipath issue. I am in St Charles and using a very old UHF/VHF antenna.

Thanks,
pwsher

Took the advice here re: charter's retention center and the belo situation. within 10 minutes they took $30 off the monthly bill and added HBO, Cinemax, and Starz channel (including HD versions of HBO and Cinemax. Granted it's only good for one year, but I'll take it.

Reposting, just in case it was missed.

Can anyone tell me where I can get a copy of last Monday's episodes of 24 and Prison Break? I thought I was recording them, but something happened and I didn't get them. Any help would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks

rant on:

Now I'm totally freaking frustrated. Tried six indoor antennas before finding an amplified Terk that brought in Ch 4 and Ch 30 HD. ABC stuff on tests worked fine. Sat down last night to watch "Lost" and -- AARRRGGGH. Choppy video, lip synch so far off it was unwatchable. No breakup, just dropped "frames." Ended up watching SD via Moxi.
I gotta wait till the leaves pop out before trying D* or E* (previous attempt several years ago produced no line of sight) again, and I want to wait till D* hardware/HD lineup shake out. If no go, I'll get a rooftop or attic antenna, but I'm not running more line and drilling more holes until I have to.
Just wanna scream. In fact, I did.
Screw Belo, Sinclair and Charter. I don't care whose fault it is. I'll pay a few bucks more for what I want (after dumping as much as I can of what I never watch).

rant off

barry

Reposting, just in case it was missed.

Can anyone tell me where I can get a copy of last Monday's episodes of 24 and Prison Break? I thought I was recording them, but something happened and I didn't get them. Any help would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks

It ain't exactly HD, but you can always download them via iTunes to catch up on the missed week.

rant on:

Now I'm totally freaking frustrated. Tried six indoor antennas before finding an amplified Terk that brought in Ch 4 and Ch 30 HD. ABC stuff on tests worked fine. Sat down last night to watch "Lost" and -- AARRRGGGH. Choppy video, lip synch so far off it was unwatchable. No breakup, just dropped "frames." Ended up watching SD via Moxi.
I gotta wait till the leaves pop out before trying D* or E* (previous attempt several years ago produced no line of sight) again, and I want to wait till D* hardware/HD lineup shake out. If no go, I'll get a rooftop or attic antenna, but I'm not running more line and drilling more holes until I have to.
Just wanna scream. In fact, I did.
Screw Belo, Sinclair and Charter. I don't care whose fault it is. I'll pay a few bucks more for what I want (after dumping as much as I can of what I never watch).

rant off

barry

I assume that you tried the Philips Silver Sensor? It works great for me (Clayton). Circuit City has them for $25.

I assume that you tried the Philips Silver Sensor? It works great for me (Clayton). Circuit City has them for $25.

Yep, that was the first one I tried. I live in UCity off Delmar behind City Hall, subdiv is in a lower area, lots of big trees etc. I even tried the DB2 as an indoor, no go. The frustrating thing is the Terk worked for Ch. 30 before last night.

It ain't exactly HD, but you can always download them via iTunes to catch up on the missed week.Does that require that I own an iPod? Because I don't.

Does that require that I own an iPod? Because I don't.


Nope, just need iTunes on a PC or Mac. When I miss an ep I download to my laptop, set playback for full screen and put on headphones. Works well.

Does that require that I own an iPod? Because I don't.


Here ya go:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

For anyone interested.....

I received some positive feedback in regards to a St. Louis, MO. - Charter thread.

The current thread is primarily dedicated to OTA/Satellite. Many cable posters find themselves sifting through alot of non-applicable posts. This will hopefully streamline the topic. That is until everyone (me included) leave Charter for satellite :)

So for all of you Charter cable folks... come on over to the thread here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=802435 ..if you like.

If it works out then great..otherwise you guys might be stuck with us

Rich,

I'm curious if you have any idea how many hours you have on your Mits CRT...also, what would you sell the TV for w/o the entertainment center?

For anyone interested.....

I received some positive feedback in regards to a St. Louis, MO. - Charter thread.

The current thread is primarily dedicated to OTA/Satellite. Many cable posters find themselves sifting through alot of non-applicable posts. This will hopefully streamline the topic. That is until everyone (me included) leave Charter for satellite :)

So for all of you Charter cable folks... come on over to the thread here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=802435 ..if you like.

If it works out then great..otherwise you guys might be stuck with usBad idea, IMO. All of these HD topics are inter-related and trying to split them up takes away from the overall discussion.

For anyone interested.....

I received some positive feedback in regards to a St. Louis, MO. - Charter thread.

The current thread is primarily dedicated to OTA/Satellite. Many cable posters find themselves sifting through alot of non-applicable posts. This will hopefully streamline the topic. That is until everyone (me included) leave Charter for satellite :)

So for all of you Charter cable folks... come on over to the thread here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=802435 ..if you like.

If it works out then great..otherwise you guys might be stuck with us

I am a Charter sub but I think the second thread is a bad idea. True, there are a lot of satellite folks here but the post quantity is hardly overwhelming. I thiink adding a second thread is just going to complicate matters.

Just my opinion, obviously. I am curious what others think.

I wonder if they have a different retention plan for each of the many issues that customers currently have with them? We just got $20 off the bill for 6 months when we had problems with our DVR installer. With the derth of HD content, I'd really like to have HBO HD, but the price is too high for just one channel.

Took the advice here re: charter's retention center and the belo situation. within 10 minutes they took $30 off the monthly bill and added HBO, Cinemax, and Starz channel (including HD versions of HBO and Cinemax. Granted it's only good for one year, but I'll take it.

Me too- We're with Charter, but I like hearing about the overall picture from the dish people too. Besides, what could be more relevent to dish people than griping about cable? :)

I am a Charter sub but I think the second thread is a bad idea. True, there are a lot of satellite folks here but the post quantity is hardly overwhelming. I thiink adding a second thread is just going to complicate matters.

Just my opinion, obviously. I am curious what others think.

Hey everyone. I realize this probably isn't the ideal thread for this post,
but I wanted to make sure it was visible specifically to those AVSers in the St. Louis area.
I've just pulled the trigger on a JVC HD-P70R2U, which means that I now have HD-P70R1U
that I'm willing to part with (both were purchased from AVS).
My target price would be .50 on the dollar of the bottom-line price I paid for it last Xmas (2005).
I estimate the bulb has about 1000 hours of use on it. I don't have a vehicle capable of
transporting it, so the buyer would have to have/borrow a truck big enough.
But if you want help unloading it and setting it up at the destination I'd be happy to assist.
PM me if you want specifics. Understandably, I don't want to part with my existing set until
I have the new display to take its place. But if there are any serious buyers that want to
come to North County to see the existing set in action, let me know.

Good posts.
Thanks for the opinions.
Makes sense! I suspect if this is the overall sentiment then the thread will just die.

This is not a unique idea though. A few local threads have divided successfully.

It seems that in this thread not only do you Satellite folks offer up excellent advice in respect to Satellite/OTA and cable but many have very strong negative feelings about cable. You are certainly entitled to your opinions. I respect that but I am actually fairly happy with cable and would like to exchange ideas/questions/etc..with those that share my sentiment.

If this was a cable dominated thread you might feel the same. Yeah,yeah. I know. Its not cable dominated because Satellite is so much better, right ;)

So, again, I definitely appreciate the input. If the thread fizzles out then sorry but your stuck with me and my cable..That is until you convince me to switch to Satellite :D

I'm a Dish sub and I like having the Charter subs here. It is always good to know what is going on with the other carriers. I think it is beneficial for everyone.

For anyone interested.....

I received some positive feedback in regards to a St. Louis, MO. - Charter thread.

The current thread is primarily dedicated to OTA/Satellite. Many cable posters find themselves sifting through alot of non-applicable posts. This will hopefully streamline the topic. That is until everyone (me included) leave Charter for satellite :)

So for all of you Charter cable folks... come on over to the thread here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=802435 ..if you like.

If it works out then great..otherwise you guys might be stuck with us

I can't bring it up ...

vBulletin Message
Invalid Thread specified.

Reposting, just in case it was missed.

Can anyone tell me where I can get a copy of last Monday's episodes of 24 and Prison Break? I thought I was recording them, but something happened and I didn't get them. Any help would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks

I missed em both as well. I downloaded them. Use google to search. Both finished overnight. I'm amazed at how fast people are getting these shows out.

The new cable thread for St Louis was removed as it was viewed as a duplicate thread for as you know, their already is a St. Louis thread right here. Though not strictly cable.

I guess if we allow a thread just on cable, we would even have more of an issue seeing then all the viewing areas would then have threads for cable, sat, OTA, etc. Thus it could be a problem with cross posting.

We are looking at opening up sections for the provider types. So stay tuned.

(Note I do not read this thread, but it was brought to my attention. Thus please do not respond to me here for I will not see it. THANKS)

Had a thread and now its gone?

Discussed the idea with a handful of Charter locals yesterday in relation to a "Charter thread". Lots of positive feedback. I pm'd David Bott (administrator) yesterday to make sure it was okay to post the thread. He gave his blessing. Decided to test the waters and posted the thread about an hour ago. PM'd from a few Charter folks that said the thread is now gone.

I guess it was such a bad idea it just self destructed and disappeared?! :)

Any idea what happened? :confused:

EDIT.--------------see prior post

Oh well......nevermind :)

I pulled the trigger yesterday on the switch from Charter to E*. I have an install date set for Saturday the 17th. Also getting DSL on Monday, so after the 17th I will be Charter free. My attempt at their retention line ended up dropping my bill about $30, but it still will end up about $20 higher than Dish/DSL. We'll see what Charter counters with when I actually call to cancel. My guess is it will be underwhelming.

Had a thread and now its gone?

Discussed the idea with a handful of Charter locals yesterday in relation to a "Charter thread". Lots of positive feedback. I pm'd David Bott (administrator) yesterday to make sure it was okay to post the thread. He gave his blessing. Decided to test the waters and posted the thread about an hour ago. PM'd from a few Charter folks that said the thread is now gone.

I guess it was such a bad idea it just self destructed and disappeared?! :)

Any idea what happened? :confused:

See David's post.

Shame ... I think seperate threads for OTA / DBS / and Cable would be nice. Less to have to filter through.

See David's post.

Shame ... I think seperate threads for OTA / DBS / and Cable would be nice. Less to have to filter through.

Thanks.

Here was David Botts response to my pm yesterday. I would not have gone to the trouble of starting a new thread if I would have known he was going to pull the plug on the idea. His response yesterday indicated otherwise????

Re: Question about a new thread

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just start the new thread and see how it goes.


David

It occurs to me, the STL HDTV thread is dominated by satellite and OTA because the market's cable provider has yet to emerge as a viable HD provider.
Many of the OTA posters are cable customers, who have been force-fed OTA by their provider.

....

If this was a cable dominated thread you might feel the same. Yeah,yeah. I know. Its not cable dominated because Satellite is so much better, right ;)

So, again, I definitely appreciate the input. If the thread fizzles out then sorry but your stuck with me and my cable..That is until you convince me to switch to Satellite :D

If you had your own thread, how would we know if charter started adding stuff and picking things up. I "Might" switch to them if they picked up their pace with HD and let me customize a bit more.

Sorry if our(my) picking on cable made you feel unwelcome, there were just a couple of posts by someone in the past that got things into an arguement instead of discussion. I would love for charter to steal me away from D*. (I wouldn't have had to run new coax in my house).

It occurs to me, the STL HDTV thread is dominated by satellite and OTA because the market's cable provider has yet to emerge as a viable HD provider.
Many of the OTA posters are cable customers, who have been force-fed OTA by their provider.

I'm not so concerned about thread domination as I am about the constant bashing and cheerleading. Seems any mention of Charter solicits posts from non-Charter-subscribers about how awful they are followed by posts about how great D* is or E* is.

Fact is, Charter subscribers are Charter subscribers, either because they like the service or they have no other choice (lack of southern visibility, apartment dweller, etc).

If you had your own thread, how would we know if charter started adding stuff and picking things up ?
[...]

Subscribe to the thread :rolleyes:

If you had your own thread, how would we know if charter started adding stuff and picking things up. I "Might" switch to them if they picked up their pace with HD and let me customize a bit more.

Sorry if our(my) picking on cable made you feel unwelcome, there were just a couple of posts by someone in the past that got things into an arguement instead of discussion. I would love for charter to steal me away from D*. (I wouldn't have had to run new coax in my house).

Good points!!

Thanks for the input.

I'm a Charter sub. I like it here. The "discussions" are quite amusing.

Walt

I'm not so concerned about thread domination as I am about the constant bashing and cheerleading. Seems any mention of Charter solicits posts from non-Charter-subscribers about how awful they are followed by posts about how great D* is or E* is..

It might come as a surprise to some of you folks (maybe not) but this exact sentiment is shared by more than you might realize. I realized this when I proposed the original idea of a dual thread and got a very good response posted and pm's suggestive of the same.

Nevertheless. It is not an issue anymore. I will learn to coexist. And as many of you have pointed out...there are many benefits to mixed company so lets all try to play nice.

I know...I need thicker skin. I need to stop whining. I should go away. Nay. Your stuck with me.

This does happen to be an excellent forum with great contributors. ;)

Just a heads up for anyone that likes "Friday Night Lights". According to stltoday.com KSDK is bumping it to rerun their 60th anniversary special. I guess they get to keep all the add revenue from locally produced stuff. It's supposed to replay on Sunday night sometime, check stltoday if you watch that show(I don't, but thought someone else may).

I don't remember, does ksdk have the ability to timeshift HD?

I don't remember, does ksdk have the ability to timeshift HD?
Yes, IIRC, they're the only local that does.

Just a heads up for anyone that likes "Friday Night Lights". According to stltoday.com KSDK is bumping it to rerun their 60th anniversary special. I guess they get to keep all the add revenue from locally produced stuff. It's supposed to replay on Sunday night sometime, check stltoday if you watch that show(I don't, but thought someone else may).

I don't remember, does ksdk have the ability to timeshift HD?

I checked my Moxi the other day and "FNL" was scheduled for Sunday night on KSDK HD.
It's a fine show but ratings challenged. If affiliates start preempting for locally produced cr-- .. .uh, programming, it probably will mean the end.

I pulled the trigger yesterday on the switch from Charter to E*. I have an install date set for Saturday the 17th. Also getting DSL on Monday, so after the 17th I will be Charter free. My attempt at their retention line ended up dropping my bill about $30, but it still will end up about $20 higher than Dish/DSL. We'll see what Charter counters with when I actually call to cancel. My guess is it will be underwhelming.


Yes, keep us posted. I should note that I wasn't offered anything without a little prodding. ie., it did seem like they were moving towards the disconnect, but as soon as they started to take my personal info I asked whether they were offering anything to those leaving charter because of the Belo situation. Then, they offered the 30/month off and addition of HBO/Cinemax.

NBC Nightly News to Go HD in March

From this week's TV Week High Definition newsletter:
________________________________________________________

"NBC Nightly News" is about to become the first national evening news broadcast to go hi-def. The show will begin broadcasting in the format in March; an exact date is not yet decided.

The broadcast will join fellow NBC News production the "Today" show, which started broadcasting in HD in September. NBC's "Dateline," which is also produced by NBC News, is not yet making the jump, an NBC spokesperson said.

Though local news markets have increasingly embraced HD as a way of keeping viewers coming out of HD prime-time programming, national evening news departments have been slow to embrace the format. In addition to the cost of overhauling a studio, the department has to replace field cameras around the world. For "NBC Nightly News," most field reports will continue to use standard-definition cameras until early 2008.
________________________________________________________

NBC Nightly News to Go HD in March

From this week's TV Week High Definition newsletter:
________________________________________________________

"NBC Nightly News" is about to become the first national evening news broadcast to go hi-def. The show will begin broadcasting in the format in March; an exact date is not yet decided.

The broadcast will join fellow NBC News production the "Today" show, which started broadcasting in HD in September. NBC's "Dateline," which is also produced by NBC News, is not yet making the jump, an NBC spokesperson said.

Though local news markets have increasingly embraced HD as a way of keeping viewers coming out of HD prime-time programming, national evening news departments have been slow to embrace the format. In addition to the cost of overhauling a studio, the department has to replace field cameras around the world. For "NBC Nightly News," most field reports will continue to use standard-definition cameras until early 2008.
________________________________________________________


Wow, does anyone even watch National Network News anymore? What a waste!

;)

Glad to see all the Charter subs will remain here. Now, go get your shine boxes!

Scott

Yes, IIRC, they're the only local that does.

Ok, I can't be the only idiot wondering what the hell "IIRC" is?

Scott

IIRC = if I recall correctly

I have Dish, but my parents have Charter. My mom has had endless issues with the MOXI box. It failed on her again last week. She called Charter and they offered her one of the new boxes.

I have to say I'm very impressed with the picture on SD channels from that box.
They have a 53" Hitachi CRT and the MOXI looked splotchy on SD. Now the picture is crisp and sharp. Almost hard to believe it's SD.

Just thought I'd pass along some positive charter info.

Dave

Ok, what's the deal with FSNMidwestHD?

Charter sub, I'm getting the Blues game in HD!!???

I usually get "sign off" but all of a sudden I get FSNMHD.

Is this happening to anyone else? What's the deal? I'm confused.

Ok, what's the deal with FSNMidwestHD?

Charter sub, I'm getting the Blues game in HD!!???

I usually get "sign off" but all of a sudden I get FSNMHD.

Is this happening to anyone else? What's the deal? I'm confused.

Not sure but I'm getting it on D* 95 in HD too. :)

Scott

Ok, what's the deal with FSNMidwestHD?

Charter sub, I'm getting the Blues game in HD!!???

I usually get "sign off" but all of a sudden I get FSNMHD.

Is this happening to anyone else? What's the deal? I'm confused.

FSNMW is broadcasting in HD tonight, available on cable and Dish. Was scheduled in advance. 3 HD games in February, usually one or 2 Blues HD broadcasts per month. FSN schedule can be found here . . . http://msn.foxsports.com/id/5978940\

Speaking of which, I don't have *any* sound for the Blues game on Charter HD (happened before with Blues FSN HD). Anyone else? Sound on other channels (HD/SD) is fine, including the SD Fox sports feed on channel 37. What's up wit dat?

I need help!!!!!!!!!!

I just got home and turned the TV on. I have a RP Samsung. When I turned it on the convergence was WAY messed up. All the corners were bowed up and the colors were all out of alignment. Any ideas???????

Tim

Ok, what's the deal with FSNMidwestHD?

Charter sub, I'm getting the Blues game in HD!!???

I usually get "sign off" but all of a sudden I get FSNMHD.

Is this happening to anyone else? What's the deal? I'm confused.

Charter channel 792 is dedicated to FSNMW-HD, but they only activate it when a FSN event is broadcast in HD. Since this only happens less than a handful of times per month, they've deactivate the channel when there is no HD event to avoid people calling up to say "Why is FSN-HD showing a test pattern?".

just tuned in as well and not getting any sound either with charter and a moxi for FSMWHD

-Phatty

Sound fine on D*. I'm listening in stereo BTW. Go Blues!

Scott

just tuned in as well and not getting any sound either with charter and a moxi for FSMWHD

-Phatty

Mine is fine via my Moxi.

Mine is fine via my Moxi.


How is your sound hooked up??? I use an optical cable from the Moxi to My receiver... All other channels/shows I watched today had no sound problem.... Except Smallville that has what is becoming the usual audio sync issues.


-Phatty

I need help!!!!!!!!!!

I just got home and turned the TV on. I have a RP Samsung. When I turned it on the convergence was WAY messed up. All the corners were bowed up and the colors were all out of alignment. Any ideas???????

Tim
Could be a fried digital convergence board. If that's the case, you might be better off junking the TV than repairing it (which would involve replacing the exhorbitantly expensive convergence board).

I watched the Blues game on Charter HD (channel 792) the whole way through. The broadcast was perfect for me (i.e. no sound issues). I've got a standard Charter Motorola HDTV set top box, and I'm located in South County.

I don't remember, does ksdk have the ability to timeshift HD?Yes, IIRC, they're the only local that does.
Now, if they just had someone who knew how to work it :mad:
They switched in and out of HD all night...."war at home, 'till death, 30Rock," with some 60th Anniversary bug added at the top of the screen.

I have Dish, but my parents have Charter. My mom has had endless issues with the MOXI box. It failed on her again last week. She called Charter and they offered her one of the new boxes.
I have to say I'm very impressed with the picture on SD channels from that box.
They have a 53" Hitachi CRT and the MOXI looked splotchy on SD. Now the picture is crisp and sharp. Almost hard to believe it's SD.
Just thought I'd pass along some positive charter info.
Dave
A neighbor of mine just had his Moxi box replaced by Charter last week. The Moxi had been acting up, so he called the local Charter office here in Farmington. They came out 2 days later and installed the new box.

He has a Mitsu 50" CRT RPTV. Overall, he's happy with the new box, and the one specific comment he had was the noticeable improvement in SD PQ, saying, "even HNN looks good on this box."

I'm building a new house and it's going to be wired next week with RG6. I'll be continuing with D* so I was going to have them run lines up to the garage attic so they'd be there when the dish was installed. I know that D* will supposedly run the lines to the basement when they do the install, but this seems like the easier approach even though I'll have to pay for it.

Can anyone confirm the following two things:

1) The D* 5LNB requires (4) cables running to it.
2) The D* H20 DVR requires two cables for dual tuner functionality.
3) I can use a diplexor to run OTA into the D* receivers.

I know its cheaper to install cables during construction rather than later - but I feel like I'm spending a fortune on wiring and want to try and minimize costs where I can.

Thanks,

Mike

A neighbor of mine just had his Moxi box replaced by Charter last week. The Moxi had been acting up, so he called the local Charter office here in Farmington. They came out 2 days later and installed the new box.

He has a Mitsu 50" CRT RPTV. Overall, he's happy with the new box, and the one specific comment he had was the noticeable improvement in SD PQ, saying, "even HNN looks good on this box."

One of the really nice features of the new box is no modem, meaning anyone can return their moxi, pick up the new box and install it themselves. My parents wath a lot of FoxNews. Again it is as clear as any SD channel I've seen on any system, rivaling a digital upconvert of an SD show. I'd really like to know what the new box is using for it's video processing.

Still not enough to break me from Dish, but it's definately a step in the right direction.

Dave

I'm building a new house and it's going to be wired next week with RG6. I'll be continuing with D* so I was going to have them run lines up to the garage attic so they'd be there when the dish was installed. I know that D* will supposedly run the lines to the basement when they do the install, but this seems like the easier approach even though I'll have to pay for it.

Can anyone confirm the following two things:

1) The D* 5LNB requires (4) cables running to it.
2) The D* H20 DVR requires two cables for dual tuner functionality.
3) I can use a diplexor to run OTA into the D* receivers.

I know its cheaper to install cables during construction rather than later - but I feel like I'm spending a fortune on wiring and want to try and minimize costs where I can.

Thanks,

Mike
The 5 LNB has 4 cables.
The HR20 will need two cables if you want to use both tuners.
Diplexor may not work with this setup. It's better to run RG-6 directly to your receiver from the antenna.
A Zinwell WB68 Multiswitch is needed if you need more than 4 lines.
Use a RG-6 cable that has a solid copper conductor, not copper clad steel.
Good cabling will be your best (and reletively cheapest) long term investment.

The 5 LNB has 4 cables.
The HR20 will need two cables if you want to use both tuners.
Diplexor may not work with this setup. It's better to run RG-6 directly to your receiver from the antenna.
A Zinwell WB68 Multiswitch is needed if you need more than 4 lines.
Use a RG-6 cable that has a solid copper conductor, not copper clad steel.
Good cabling will be your best (and reletively cheapest) long term investment.


What is the difference between RG-6 and the coaxial cable that I have been buying for years? Is it marked on the cable?

3) I can use a diplexor to run OTA into the D* receivers.
I did this with my HR10-250 receivers, but when I got my HR20-700 receivers, both installers said you can't use a diplexor for OTA.

What is the difference between RG-6 and the coaxial cable that I have been buying for years? Is it marked on the cable?

Not sure if there is a difference. You may have been using RG-6 all along. If not, you have likely been using RG-59. The main difference between the two coax cables is size and attenuation characteristics. The cable from the dish to the Sat receiver must be RG-6.

Scott

I'm building a new house and it's going to be wired next week with RG6. I'll be continuing with D* so I was going to have them run lines up to the garage attic so they'd be there when the dish was installed. I know that D* will supposedly run the lines to the basement when they do the install, but this seems like the easier approach even though I'll have to pay for it.

Can anyone confirm the following two things:

1) The D* 5LNB requires (4) cables running to it.
2) The D* H20 DVR requires two cables for dual tuner functionality.
3) I can use a diplexor to run OTA into the D* receivers.

I know its cheaper to install cables during construction rather than later - but I feel like I'm spending a fortune on wiring and want to try and minimize costs where I can.

Thanks,

Mike

Are you saying you want the wires from the dish run to the attic and not the basement? If so, I would reconsider putting them all in the basement. Run ALL cat5e, coax, audio speaker wire to one central location or "homerun." Also, I would run a PVC conduit from the homerun in basement to the attic for future cabling needs.

In #2 you say H20. I think you mean HR20 which is the DVR model, and yes you need 2 coax for sat. I would forget about diplexers and they will not work with mpeg 4 satellite. I would run a coax from the attic to the homerun for the antenna then run a separate coax to each tv or room for antenna. Don't plan on using diplexers. Run speaker wire to every room you want sound. One place I really am glad I ran speaker wire to is the front porch. I don't care if the neighbors thought I was crazy to mount speakers there. I enjoy sitting on the porch listening to games or music. Hope this helps.

Question to E* or D* subscribers...

I'm a current Charter sub and hate the company with a passion. I'm reluctant to switch however, because I'm not sure I can get what I have with Charter with either of the satellite companies. Do either D* or E* allow you to have 2 HD-DVRs for to seperate TVs? I assume I would have to buy outright at least 1 of them, but I heard recently that the satellite companies won't even allow you to have it. Thanks in advance.

Question to E* or D* subscribers...

I'm a current Charter sub and hate the company with a passion. I'm reluctant to switch however, because I'm not sure I can get what I have with Charter with either of the satellite companies. Do either D* or E* allow you to have 2 HD-DVRs for to seperate TVs? I assume I would have to buy outright at least 1 of them, but I heard recently that the satellite companies won't even allow you to have it. Thanks in advance.There is no restriction on number of DVRs, at least not with D*. In fact, you pay one flat DVR/TIVO fee of $5.95 no matter how many DVRs you are using. There have, however, been shortages of HD DVRs -- maybe that caused the confusion and statement that only one is allowed. I have 2 TVs and 2 HD DVRs with D*

Like Dean said D* will let you have 2 or more. E* will limit you to a certain amount which is one of the reasons I stay with D*. I currently have 3 DVR's with D*.

Scott

Question to E* or D* subscribers...

I'm a current Charter sub and hate the company with a passion. I'm reluctant to switch however, because I'm not sure I can get what I have with Charter with either of the satellite companies. Do either D* or E* allow you to have 2 HD-DVRs for to seperate TVs? I assume I would have to buy outright at least 1 of them, but I heard recently that the satellite companies won't even allow you to have it. Thanks in advance.I have customers with as many as three DirecTV HD DVRs, so I'm sure this is not true for DirecTV. On DISH and the 622, I believe I have read that there is a limit of one box per household, but I've also read that this can be skirted once you've been a customer for a while.

BTW, I just want to point out that this is a Charter customer bashing Charter. As someone who has read virtually every post in this thread for the past 4 years, I can guarantee you that the overwhelming majority of the negative comments directed at Charter come directly from Charter customers or former customers. Charter's problems have NOTHING to do with what current satellite customers have to say about them and EVERYTHING to do with what current and past Charter customers have actually experienced that caused them to ultimately jump ship.

It's ACTIONS that matter, not WORDS.

I'm not denying that Charter has its positive aspects and that it can be an absolutely perfect fit for certain customers. For all I know, that is the truth for the majority of Charter customers. But at the same time, it's patently obvious that a significant percentage of Charter customers are extremely unhappy with their experiences of the company.

All the moaning and whinging about Charter bashing here seems to me just another example of someone trying to impose "politically correct speech" on a discussion, simply because they don't agree with the prevailing viewpoints.

That isn't going to fly here. Get over it.

I know its cheaper to install cables during construction rather than later - but I feel like I'm spending a fortune on wiring and want to try and minimize costs where I can.

My builder charged me $50 per run for my cabling :mad:
They charged me much less to have a few conduits ran which turned out to be more useful.

Like Scott mentioned, think about a 2" conduit from attic to basement and a one or two 1" conduit run from behind TV's to basement. It gives you a lot of flexibility for relocating things ;)

Good luck,
Token

Are you saying you want the wires from the dish run to the attic and not the basement? If so, I would reconsider putting them all in the basement. Run ALL cat5e, coax, audio speaker wire to one central location or "homerun." Also, I would run a PVC conduit from the homerun in basement to the attic for future cabling needs.

In #2 you say H20. I think you mean HR20 which is the DVR model, and yes you need 2 coax for sat. I would forget about diplexers and they will not work with mpeg 4 satellite. I would run a coax from the attic to the homerun for the antenna then run a separate coax to each tv or room for antenna. Don't plan on using diplexers. Run speaker wire to every room you want sound. One place I really am glad I ran speaker wire to is the front porch. I don't care if the neighbors thought I was crazy to mount speakers there. I enjoy sitting on the porch listening to games or music. Hope this helps.

Sorry for the confusion. I do have all wiring in the house terminating to a central location in the basement as you suggested. I asked the installer to also run cable from the garage attic down to the basement. This cable would be used to connect to the dish which will be mounted on the garage roof.

My installer is charging about $50 per run - I do get 12 runs that are included in the house price. It kills me to pay that much but its a decent sized house and I just don't have time to think through all the wiring myself.

-Mike

Sorry for the confusion. I do have all wiring in the house terminating to a central location in the basement as you suggested. I asked the installer to also run cable from the garage attic down to the basement. This cable would be used to connect to the dish which will be mounted on the garage roof.

My installer is charging about $50 per run - I do get 12 runs that are included in the house price. It kills me to pay that much but its a decent sized house and I just don't have time to think through all the wiring myself.

-Mike

Wow, will your builder let you run your own low voltage wire? It is very easy to do if you have a drill and ladder.

Scott

i am a charter customer who is also getting fed up with charter's crap. customer service of any service provider can suck. i used to have directv, got fed up with their crap and fled to charter because at the time i was getting great internet service. now that i am hip to this HD thing i am now jonesing from as much HD content as possible. from a strictly HD content point-of-view, who has more?

i am a charter customer who is also getting fed up with charter's crap. customer service of any service provider can suck. i used to have directv, got fed up with their crap and fled to charter because at the time i was getting great internet service. now that i am hip to this HD thing i am now jonesing from as much HD content as possible. from a strictly HD content point-of-view, who has more?All the information can be found here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9714728&&#post9714728

Sorry for the confusion. I do have all wiring in the house terminating to a central location in the basement as you suggested. I asked the installer to also run cable from the garage attic down to the basement. This cable would be used to connect to the dish which will be mounted on the garage roof.

My installer is charging about $50 per run - I do get 12 runs that are included in the house price. It kills me to pay that much but its a decent sized house and I just don't have time to think through all the wiring myself.

-Mike

I would do 2 runs to 2 walls (same location in each wall) in all rooms where you might put a TV. Include 2 cat5 in the same run and make sure the phone company doesn't use the cat5. After doing the layout on a house in Texas I found that this is about the bare minimum if you don't want to crawl around in the attic when the house is completed. Even so, you may end up crawling anyway especially if you have a 2 story. All runs should be labeled in your central location as to which room and wall they are located. You may save some money if you do the terminations yourself. I would not pay more than the cost of the wire for the extra wire through the same hole. This gives you the most flexibility for feeding multiple sets.

Remember there is RG6 and RG6 quad shield. There is a large difference in price.

Walt

How is your sound hooked up??? I use an optical cable from the Moxi to My receiver... All other channels/shows I watched today had no sound problem.... Except Smallville that has what is becoming the usual audio sync issues.

-Phatty

phatty-

Mine is hooked up the same as yours - optical audio cable from my receiver to the Moxi.

phatty-

Mine is hooked up the same as yours - optical audio cable from my receiver to the Moxi.


Odd thought it could have been difference between analog audio and the digital... I know one other blues game I watched had audio issues for the first few minutes but it was quickly resolved.... I have watched maybe 2 or 3 games no problem so frackin sucks... Oh well, had other shows recording most of the game anyway so I wasn't really planning on watching any of it I just like to check on the game when I know its HD.

-Phatty

The 5 LNB has 4 cables.
The HR20 will need two cables if you want to use both tuners.
Diplexor may not work with this setup. It's better to run RG-6 directly to your receiver from the antenna.
A Zinwell WB68 Multiswitch is needed if you need more than 4 lines.
Use a RG-6 cable that has a solid copper conductor, not copper clad steel.
Good cabling will be your best (and reletively cheapest) long term investment.

This may be a stupid question but here it goes anyway.
How do I tell if I have solid copper or copper clad steel

E* imposes their restrictions by tuners. Many of DISH receivers are dual-tuner and independently run 2 TV's.

The standard restriction is 4 tuners per household account. A 622 counts as 2 tuners. Many, many DISH subs have 2 622's (HD DVR's) plus additional single-tuner, either HD or SD receivers. DISH is currently "pushing" a second 622 to their current 622 subs. E*'s policy on is ambiguous, at best. It does seem, account longevity counts.

E* also imposes a one-leased receiver, per household account, per calendar year.
You can purchase as many as you choose (from any source), though you need to confirm with E* how many they will permit be activated on a particular account.

The most difficult property to understand with E* is, receivers and tuners, are not the same. A receiver can count as one tuner, or a receiver can count as 2 tuners.
Tuners equate to how-many are permitted per account.
Receivers equate to how many can be leased/purchased and/or activated per account.

Things don't look good about any improvement with FSN-MW and HD. I was at the Blues/Detroit game early and was talking to a FSN engineer. He said no FSN-MW-HD on satelite this year, no big improvement with the number of Cardinal games and no full-time FSN-MW-HD on Charter either.

I asked him why and he didn't know for sure. But rumor has it FSN-MW management doesn't really care about HD and don't want to spend the money.

Yep, that was the first one I tried. I live in UCity off Delmar behind City Hall, subdiv is in a lower area, lots of big trees etc. I even tried the DB2 as an indoor, no go. The frustrating thing is the Terk worked for Ch. 30 before last night.

Huh: I've got a buddy who doesn't live far from you (on Cornell just west of Midland) and his Silver Sensor works fine. :confused: Are you further down the hill?

Getting close to completing the home theatre..... Well the drywalling of the ceiling part anyway.

Going to redo charter cables before ceiling goes in... Want single run to each TV with access to the splitting point back where it comes in the house and is accessable...

Adding several TVs since finishing the basement.... Playroom, office, Theatre screen, etc...
So total will be 1 pipeline and 6 or 7 TV's...

Pretty sure I will need a powered splitter for all that pull... What model does charter use and where can I buy it? :cool:

This may be a stupid question but here it goes anyway.
How do I tell if I have solid copper or copper clad steel

Scratch the cable to see if it changes color.

This may be a stupid question but here it goes anyway.
How do I tell if I have solid copper or copper clad steel
Sorry, I had read your question to be about shielding.
I believe all CATV coax type cable is copper clad steel.
I've seen some RG6 marked with a CCS on its jacket.
It has something to do with mixing the strength of steel, with the conductivity of copper.
I don't know there is any way to determine if the copper is CCS or pure copper.

Given the high frequency nature of Cable signals; all of the current travels on the skin (Skin effect) so a CCS will have almost literally identical performance vs. pure copper.

Cheers,

Things don't look good about any improvement with FSN-MW and HD. I was at the Blues/Detroit game early and was talking to a FSN engineer. He said no FSN-MW-HD on satelite this year, no big improvement with the number of Cardinal games and no full-time FSN-MW-HD on Charter either.

I asked him why and he didn't know for sure. But rumor has it FSN-MW management doesn't really care about HD and don't want to spend the money.


how accurate do a think a field engineer is going to be....I am just saying, based on jobs I have had (none of which are in television though), that when in changes happen they seem to happen fast and from above...so I wouldn't be surprised if these are in dark...just sayin'

Charter Posts Positive Preliminary Earnings; Video Subs Down

This seems pretty much in keeping with the recent trend, with Charter clearly focusing on Internet and local phone service sales. Note also the number of customers subscribing to bundled services.

One sidenote: I'm not sure how meaningful a $500+ million EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) is when a business is lugging around almost $20 billion in debt. But still, a good quarter and clearly the financial performance is on an uptick from a year ago.

The following report is from today's Morning Bridge newsletter:
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Charter saw a 43,300 analog customer loss during the fourth quarter, for a total of about 5.4 million, but the MSO saw subscriber gains among its other products.

During the three-month period, Charter netted 40,500 digital video customers, for a total of about 2.8 million, an addition of 59,000 high-speed data customers, and 106,200 phone subscriber enrollments. The MSO said nearly 40 percent of its customers subscribe to a bundle, an increase of 18 percent from fourth quarter 2005.

Charter released what it called preliminary financial numbers, including fourth quarter revenue of $1.413 billion, an increase of about 11.7 percent when compared to the same period in 2005. The MSO said fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA is about $503 million, an increase of 10.3 percent when compared to the same period in 2005 on a pro forma basis.

The data was noted as preliminary since Charter is pursuing a debt refinancing involving $6.85 billion in an existing credit facility. The company said the effort comprises of a $1.5 billion revolving credit, a $1 billion new term facility, a $5 billion refinancing term loan and a $550 million second lien term loan.
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Huh: I've got a buddy who doesn't live far from you (on Cornell just west of Midland) and his Silver Sensor works fine. :confused: Are you further down the hill?

Yeah I know just where you mean, we go walking thru there all the time. It's defintely higher ground, esp. west of Midland. We're east of Midland, east of the park, down in the holler ...

Pretty sure I will need a powered splitter for all that pull... What model does charter use and where can I buy it? :cool:

As them for one. I asked for an powered splitter and they gave me one. It's kind of slick in reagards of power, it uses RG-6 for the "extension" cord.

Yeah I know just where you mean, we go walking thru there all the time. It's defintely higher ground, esp. west of Midland. We're east of Midland, east of the park, down in the holler ...

Yep, you're not in the best of spots: the hill is defenitely blocks your view down to most of the towers. You might be stuck with putting an antenna on your roof.

DirecTV Earnings Up Nearly Three-fold; Net Customer Adds at 225,000

I usually try to keep an eye out for the earnings numbers from Charter, DirecTV and DISH, but was asleep at the switch this time around. When the Charter numbers came out this morning, I realized I'd overlooked the DirecTV report, which came out on Wednesday, so here it is a couple of days late...
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DirecTV Group, the No. 1 U.S. satellite television provider, said Wednesday that fourth-quarter profit nearly tripled and subscriber growth came in stronger than expected.

The company, partly controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (Charts), said net income rose to $356 million, or 29 cents per share, from $121.2 million or 9 cents, a year earlier.

DirecTV has benefited from an accounting change last year that now classifies customer equipment as a capital rather than operational expense.

Revenue rose 16 percent to $4.18 billion from $3.6 billion a year. Analysts had forecast $4.08 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

DirecTV added 275,000 more U.S. subscribers during the quarter, compared with 200,000 a year earlier. The company said customer losses, known as churn, fell to 1.57 percent in the fourth quarter from 1.7 percent in fourth quarter 2005.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs (Charts) forecast DirecTV would have 210,000 net additions during the quarter, with monthly churn of 1.6 percent.

DirecTV said its strategy of focusing on customers who take on extra services like high-definition television and digital video recorders had helped increase average monthly revenue per subscriber to $80.70 from $75.53 a year earlier.
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Any body know of any Blockbusters or Hollywood Video stores that rent HD or BD movies.