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Montgomery, AL - HDTV

602K views 7K replies 201 participants last post by  johnfholman46 
#1 ·
According to titantv, wcov(fox) is broadcasting in HDTV. Anybody receiving this channel in high-def?
 
#5,511 ·
Got a glimpse of Fox 6 (Bham) and their new HD news set (since WCOV carries their morning news, although in SD). Got to say the Birmingham

TV market continues to disappoint (when I was young cable brought in Bham, MGM, and Mobile/Pensacola...we always laughed at how poor the BHAM stations looked). The set has what appears to be a

BLACK AND WHITE city skyline behind the main anchor desk. They must have

spent hours figuring out how to make that HD pop!
 
#5,512 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by WAKA-DT 8 /forum/post/17439332


Got a glimpse of Fox 6 (Bham) and their new HD news set (since WCOV carries their morning news, although in SD). Got to say the Birmingham

TV market continues to disappoint (when I was young cable brought in Bham, MGM, and Mobile/Pensacola...we always laughed at how poor the BHAM stations looked). The set has what appears to be a

BLACK AND WHITE city skyline behind the main anchor desk. They must have

spent hours figuring out how to make that HD pop!

It's called "Raycom." What did you expect from the company who puts sub-$10k HD camcorders in their stations?
 
#5,515 ·
We've had unusual atmospheric conditions the last few days, especially between dusk and 8-9pm...all the Montgomery OTA stations (measured from my remote location) had intermittent signal drops/losses during that time...


As the weather cleared the signals stabilized again at, or near, 100%...temperature inversions and low clouds tend to play havoc on digital signals when received from 40 or more miles away...causing multipath conditions which does more harm to digital signals than it did to our old analog signals...
 
#5,516 ·
I don't think you were harsh enough. Cable companies are pathetic in Montgomery. When I moved my family here from Orlando, we lived with my parents for a few months until we found our own house. I saw first hand how horrible Charter was and vowed to never buy service from them. It wasn't just the lack of HD but the service. Billing errors and struggling to correct those, PPV football games that wouldn't work half the time but you still got charged for them. Then they charged something like $35-50 for a in home service call to fix there connection to the house. Brighthouse in Orlando never charged for any type of in home service call.


I went with Dish Network when we moved into our house and have been pretty happy for the most part. 80+ HD channels and one of the best DVRs I have ever used. Only problem I have with Dish Network is the rain fade happens too often for a company that claims it doesn't happen that often.


I would have chosen DirecTV but, they don't offer Montgomery locals at all (SD or HD). Dish Network only had the locals in SD when we signed up but, they added HD not long after. DirecTV claims that they have 94% of the country's locals yet they still don't have Montgomery's. I just don't buy that claim. I know Montgomery isn't a huge city but, it is not the smallest either.


I agree with you though, if you have a nice HDTV and home theater, satellite is the only way to go in Montgomery. I'm trying to get my parents to switch because they hate Charter but, they just don't want to deal with the switch for some reason.
 
#5,519 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by jtrippe /forum/post/17513475


I don't know what Charter's problem is with APT digital/HD. Just another example how bad Charter is. There's no excuse not to have a local in HD. Don't look for the CW in HD here any time soon. That actually is not the locals fault. Montgomery is a smaller market and the CW hasn't rolled out HD for us yet. Charter does have it in HD for Birmingham as the CW produces its channel in HD for that market.

I would think all the affiliates can get access to the SD and HD feeds, it's just a matter of the local channel ponying up the dough to buy the right equipment. Is it different for CW?
 
#5,520 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Servo /forum/post/17526415


I would think all the affiliates can get access to the SD and HD feeds, it's just a matter of the local channel ponying up the dough to buy the right equipment. Is it different for CW?

It IS different with CW. The result is a CW decision, not the local station.

I'm not totally up on the whys, but the top 100 markets actually get a

feed that difffers somewhat from the 101+ markets. Locally (it is my understanding) WNCF has very little "local hands on" of CW. The feed is received and routed through a "spot box" which inserts and plays out the local commercials. These local commercials actually have to be shipped out in advance to the insertion center via electronic or physical means. This is then downloaed into the Montgomery spot box by the insertion center as a sort of playlist with the programming. Since all this is done in advance of the broadcast day, WNCF kinda acts like a babysitter for the transmitter. They do have the ability to "break in" as they do at 9pm to run the local news we produce for them (and they might drop in other local programs as well...I just don' know) but the whole 100+ model is quite differnt from a "normal" affiliate/network set up. I'm sure other factors play in to this relationship, and it may not apply to all 101+ stations, but again I'm not up on that.
 
#5,521 ·
WGSA, WWMB, and KNIN.


What do these stations have in common? They air two different CW feeds on their over the air signal. All were UPN affiliates before the merger.


As WAKA-DT 8 stated, there are two different things going on with CW.


In markets 1-100, it's a normal station-network relationship. Network provides network programming, local station airs syndication and local programming to fill the rest of the schedule.


In markets 101-210, however, this situation is different. The CW network has purchased across the board rights to syndicated programming that is then pre-packaged for air in all of those markets. This feed is only made available to local stations in SD at this time, being designed for digital subchannels and analog cable.


In the case of the three stations at the beginning of my message, those stations already had invested heavily in HD gear from their UPN days as well as in syndicated programming to fill out the non-network time. Rather than scrapping all of that, they are the only three markets in the 100-210 range that have a CW-HD feed. But they also show CW+ in SD on a subchannel.


Now I've been told by a very reliable source that CW+ in HD is coming in the future, but no solid timeframe was given.


WAKA-DT 8 gave you the more technical side differences, this is the legal/contractual difference, I suppose.


- Trip
 
#5,527 ·
We had a new roof installed last week, so I hooked my DIY antenna back up to the HDHomerun to see if my in-attic reception had changed for better or worse. (I installed a pre-amp since I last posted about this, btw.) I saw a slight improvement in signal quality, but still couldn't pick up 12 or 32/22. But, I got excited enough again to look into building a single channel VHF Ant for 12. While I was reading, I noticed a major flaw in my current build. The reflector needed to be 4" from the whiskers, and I had them much closer. I fixed that today, then did one more thing I should've done a while back. I took a laptop into the attic crawlspace with me so I could watch the levels myself as I positioned the antenna. My wife had watched them prior to this. She did a fine job, but the information exchange was rather high latency.


I found a pretty good spot. I now get 12 and 22 with very good signal strength and quality, but 8 is spotty at best. I don't know if I'll be able to find a better placement up there, but I'm much happier with it's current performance. If I can't fine tune it enough to get everything, I'll probably add another antenna at some point soon.


We're planning to cut the cable programming off soon, and just use OTA and the Internet for content. It was going to be easy to make the disconnect call, until Knology added 10 new clear QAM channels. Science Channel and BBC America will be tough to say 'bye' to after just gaining them.
 
#5,529 ·
I replaced some older cables with new monoprice.com RG6 quad-shielded cables hoping to get a little more db particularly on the Bham stations. I maybe got 1db gain. I also thought that signal strength got better as the weather turns colder. I'm getting the opposite. Maybe it's the leaves falling this time of year and I will see better numbers in the winter.
 
#5,530 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by 47HO /forum/post/17555998


Can you show us pics of the VHF antenna?


thanx

I never built the VHF antenna, I was just looking into it. Once I fixed the reflector on my UHF ant, I was able to pick up 12. I was going to use these instructions , which might give you an idea what it would've looked like. I'm just a little disappointed I don't have an excuse to make one now. But only a little. I've just about had my fill of finding my way across that crawl space.
 
#5,531 ·
Wooohooo!


Saturday 1 1/2 hours before the games started the bulb on my 52" Mitsubishi DLP went out.

I went to BB and picked out the Panasonic TC-P50S1 (1199.00). Got it up and running about 30 minutes into the game. I wasn't very happy with the picture. It was pale and dim. Today I returned it and got the Panasonic TC-P50G10 for 200.00 more.

Man am I happy. What an awesome picture!
 
#5,533 ·
WCOV really screwed this one up. How can you show the out of state game!? It's on channel 446 on Dish.
 
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