'Legend of the Seeker' - First run syndication in HD - Page 2

First a little background. There are two audio types provided to the stations airing the series: Dolby-E, with DD5.1 and MPEG-1 layer 2, with Dolby Surround.

You'll notice that AC3-DD5.1 is missing (the format that ABC uses and one of the formats The CW uses).

So what does this mean to you the viewer, who is is equipped to handle OTA DD5.1 audio? It means that your local station's 5.1 may not really be 5.1 when it comes to this series.

If your station is doing DD5.1, but doesn't have the necessary Dolby-E piece of expensive gear, it has to use the MP2 audio stream and bump it up to DD5.1. You therefore are not getting true DD5.1, but what electronic stereo was to analog TV when stereo TV first came along in the 80s. Unless your station is a CBS affiliate and they can use the Dolby-E gear with syndicated programs, the odds are that your station doesn't have the Dolby gear. Even The CW affiliates do not need Dolby-E, as the network also provides AC3-DD2.0 and AC3-DD5.1 audio streams.

How do you know if your station can handle Dolby-E? If the DolbySurround upconverter is set up correctly, you'll have a hard time telling. If you only get mono sound out of the rear channels, then your station probably can't. I have no idea how well they take advantage of the stereo rear channels. If your station does DD5.1 during non-network primetime, call the chief engineer and ask.

Videojanitor fully understands the situation.

So, not only do stations need to be listed in this thread as doing HD, it also need to indiate if they are doing true DD5.1 with this series.

Surround upmixed to DD5.1 on KDAF, so I would expect that the rest of the Trib stations are the same way. Trib CW stations have always played fast and loose with DD5.1 audio, including upmixing 2.0-only shows like Smallville to 5.1, and not passing 5.1 when present, so not a big surprise there. Maybe it's just my perspective from the outside, but Tribune doesn't seem to care as much now that they don't have an ownership stake in the network most of their stations are affiliated with.

As to KDAF's PQ, the low bitrate is somewhat mitigated by the use of long GOPs (2+ seconds in some instances) where most older encoders use standard 1/2 second GOPs. It still looks like garbage on fast motion sequences like the intro to Seeker, but the long sequences of a motionless camera pointed at 2 people talking that seems to be a staple of most CW dramas end up not looking too bad.

That's only true if they can pass the AC3 right through to the encoder/mux a la Fox splicer. If you want to route it around the plant like other sources it basically takes the same Dolby decoder card to decode AC3 as it does to decode Dolby-E.


The way I usually can tell is that with most dramas using true discrete 5.1 audio there will be dialog audible only in the center channel. It's almost impossible for even the best upconverters to completely remove dialog from the front right/left stereo pair, though it's usually better than 10dB down.


The CBS(WRGB)/CW(WCWN) duopoly in Albany, NY carries Legend of the Seeker, CSI:NY and Lost in true 5.1 (So far the early seasons of CSI:Miami are only being fed in 2.0)

Does it? Dolby-E has a lot more timing issues and requires an expensive box. AC3 is a lot easier to decode and can be done with cheaper cards. I suspect stations would rather use a cheaper card than the more expensive Dolby-E box. I can tear apart AC3 at home extremely easily, and cheaply, but cannot do anything with Dolby-E.

TV engineers will have to pipe in on this, but I figure that engineers would rather deal with the cheaper AC3 audio streams than the Dolby-E stream. If cost wasn't an issue, I'd go for Dolby-E.


Good point, forgot about that.

AC3 was never designed for decode/reencode. ABC gets away with it by feeding at 640kb/s, but for streams designed to be put straight to air like CW's 384kb/s, there would be significant degradation to decompress, route it around the station, and recompress to 384kb/s. That's assuming the station's equipment is capable of routing 6+ audio channels, which isn't true of a lot of older equipment. Dolby E is basically 2 channel audio, which works quite nicely with everything. In fact, the NBC affiliate in Phoenix actually purchased both a Dolby E encoder and a decoder so they could take in NBC's stereo pairs, encode to Dolby E, route and switch as needed on their equipment which was only capable of doing 2 channel audio, and then decode and feed into their AC3 encoder. It took some time to adjust everything to compensate for the various delays, but it got them on with DD5.1 long before they would have been able to do it otherwise.

Also, Dolby E has built-in support for metadata to pass to the AC3 encoder at the station to provide information on number of channels, mix levels, dialnorm, etc. That information is of course present in an AC3 stream, but I'm not aware of any way for commercial equipment to extract it and pass it on to a downstream encoder to keep the data the same. This has been a major issue affecting ABC stations, because they have no way to know whether programming is provided in DD5.1 or only stereo. They either end up running everything from net in DD5.1 (resulting in C, SL, SR, and LFE being silent during stereo programming) or guessing when to switch and occasionally losing the dialog.

This is so difficult.. the show sucks, the casting is wrong, the dialog is silly, the acting is bad, the editing is hacked (gogo horses 5 feet behind Khalen, then 10 minutes to have a death scene in the ditch with your sister, then horses 5 feet behind)...

and yet I will watch it. DAMN YOU IRRATIONAL MIND!

Thanks for the info. It has been a help in getting more of an understanding around this issue.


That is a very novel approach (if not expensive) to get around the three audio pairs that NBC uses. Someone was thinking and management actually backed it up with $$$.


I've never seen the ABC HD feed do anything but DD5.1, including commercial breaks. Granted, I only watch an extremely limited number of ABC programs (scripted dramas).

The CW, OTOH, bounces in and out of DD5.1 on their DD5.1 stream all the time. And very poorly at that. There have been times were they (CBS) didn't go back into DD5.1 until a few frames into the program. I've seen it go into DD5.1 for a single audio frame. They need better control of their DD2.0 <-> DD5.1 transitions.

Garbage is still garbage. To have motion scenes affected by artifacts ruins the HD experience.

With any luck, ABC Studios will be smart and release the series on Blu-ray 1080/24p before the next season starts.

I believe the feed is always flagged 5.1, but that doesn't mean that all channels are active. Dancing with the Stars in particular sticks out in my mind as one that originated in stereo, though I don't know if the latest season is the same way since I don't actually watch it. The few times I've looked at it have always been in response to comments on here and in other forums about the audio. Also, IIRC, back when ABC Sports was still in charge (before it became ESPN on ABC), much of the sports programming was stereo. Now, of course, everything is Circle Surround upmixed to DD5.1.

How many stations actually use the AC3 track though? Running AC3 through switching equipment other than the splicer really isn't an option, and $4100 for a Dolby E decoder is pocket change compared to most of the rest of the equipment in use.

BTW if you missed the 2 premiere episodes over Nov 1 weekend (like I did)...WGN is broadcasting it this evening Wed @ 8pm est.

BTW, I am a TV engineer.

No offense, but I didn't know that. You make four that I know about on the forum.

I'd have to tear about some AC3 sections of audio into WAV files to see what it there. No to find the time to do sampling.


It seems that it is more than pocket change to some stations. An engineer at a station has told me that his chief engineer says to not look for a Dolby-E decoder any time soon. So they won't be airing LotS in true DD5.1 any time soon.

Such is life in DMA 93. Your local stations somehow find the coin for HD keyers to spam their awful bugs on top of everything, but can't find the money for actual improvements to their broadcasts. I still can't figure out why small-market stations feel the need to remind you for the entire program which station you're watching, while here in a major market we get at worst a legal ID at the top of the hour and at best nothing from the local at all. This is of course ignoring Fox's splicer-inserted bug.

ok seriously...why is anybody even discussing the techical details? the show is horrible...at least the old Xena and Hercules series didn't seem to take themselves too seriously. but this garbage is soooooooo bad.....they should've aired it in black & white 4:3 letterboxed with logos and graphics filling half the screen lol it was that bad!

You answered your own question. There is no point in discussing the show :P

The show is certainly not good enough for me to continue watching here in 4:3 fuzzy 480i.

If better downloads are available somewhere I might watch those for awhile. Even then I'd probably lose interest soon.

- Tom

I disagree. It's not great, but it's the only D&D fantasy show going right now so I'm giving it a shot. I don't think the hero is all that convincing so far, but maybe he'll get better. And the wizard could end up being a hoot. Plus the 'confessor' is a babe.

Works for me. I don't have high expectations, but it's no better or worse than Crusoe IMO.

Ditto, I'm sure I'd watch if it was available in HD here, but if I have to pursue alternate means, I'm not sure if I'll stick with it, it looks like about half can and half can't get this in HD, good idea, but I've been spoiled with HD and with two local stations carrying it and neither one showing it in HD, I'll probably lose interest a lot sooner than I would have otherwise.

I believe the station I'm talking about is in a top 20 market. I'd have to ask the engineer to make sure.

I thought it was decent, good enough to watch the next episode anyway.

My mistake, I assumed you were referring to one of your local stations.

Life doesn't seem to be much different even in some of the larger markets. In San Francisco for instance (DMA #6), not only does this show not have 5.1 audio, it's not in HD. There are a lot of other syndicated shows that don't air in HD in the market: Two and a Half Men, Everybody Loves Raymond, and ET just to name a few.

You have to hang in there until the Mord Sith show up.

Surely they can't screw up hot chicks in skin tight red leather?

It is being produced by Disney, so the hot chicks will probably be singing!

I enjoyed the pilot but didn't like some of the basic plot elements that the writers changed. I would have preferred that they stuck closer to the books.

You would think not. However, I have a tremendous respect for TV adventure writers almost superhuman abilities to destroy something seemingly as invincible as hot chicks in tight red leather.

I haven't figured out if there's any rhyme or reason for who gets this in HD and who gets it in pillarboxed SD. It comes up as HD in the guide for DirecTV CW11 in St. Louis, but it's 4:3 pillarboxed SD...stupid.

I emailed cw11 complaining about it not being broadcast in HD, the response I got was that they are in the process of installing equipment that will allow them to broadcast syndicated shows in HD. No timetable was given.

Brilliant.

That's because there is no rhyme or reason. Stations that have the necessary equipment to record it in HD show it in HD, and those that don't, don't. Unfortunately, I have found that the DirecTV guide seems to have "generic" information when it comes to HD syndicated programs -- if a show is AVAILABLE in HD, it seems to be indicated as HD in the guide, regardless of whether or not that particular station will air it that way.