ABC O&O's destroy HD quality with launch of Live Well HD. - Page 8

Time to broadcast it at 352x480i and tell everyone the H stands for Half.

They could say that "HD" stands for "healthy day" if that would make them feel that they were saving face.

Yeah, I mean, so many people are talking about LiveWellHD, to change it to LiveWell, at this point, would be ruin the branding.

Tell us how you really feel.

Your retort would have worked better without the emoticons.

But I got my position across, didn't I?

I sent an email earlier this week to the GM and CE at WTVD Raleigh Durham and they said that they knew there was an issue and were working on the setup to try to improve it. I did notice that Lost looked better last night than last week. I wish they would just do away with it alltogether, but if they work on it, maybe they will get things dialed in more. As long as they do this, I would not say I am a happy camper though, just less unhappy.

WABC-DT has given more bandwidth back to 7.1.

On May 2nd, a two hour recording of WABC-DT 7.1 was 8.51 GB.
A one hour recording of WABC-DT 7.1 was 4.14 GB.

Today, a two hour recording of WABC-DT 7.1 is 10.1 GB.
A one hour recording of WABC-DT 7.1 is 5.9 GB.

Good to hear icemannyr.

Yup. 7.1 is now peaking at 12 MB/s. 7.2 seems to be capped at 4.5 or 5 MB/s, and 7.3 at just over 1 MB/s.

Excellent!

(it would have been better if they got rid of both subchannels, wishful thinking I know :P)

Anyone know what the bit rates are now for WLS's 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3?

Now Cablevision's distribution of WABC and its subs may differ from OTA, but all 3 WABC stations are on the same QAM.

Here are the average video bitrates I logged on May 1 compared to tonight.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can't compare bitrates on different content. The NetVXs in use at ABC O&Os have always been aggressive in their use of variable bitrate, so a 10Mb/s or lower average bitrate on SD or barely HD content (say Desperate Housewives) was common even before LiveWorse made its appearance. Hell, I noted recordings of Desperate Housewives that barely broke 6Mb/s on WABC even before 7.2 went HD.

My recording sizes for both days came from the local news cast for the 2 hours and GMA weekend for the one hour.

If LiveWellHD is being capped at less than 5Mbs, and is 720/60p MPEG2 - doesn't it look pretty awful?

How much 16:9 content is there on the channel at the moment - and how much is HD?

As others have stated - running 16:9 480/60i (sourced from 720/60p or 480/60i) or 16:9 480/60p would surely be a better use of bitrate. If you've only got 4-5Mbs then you could get a half-decent SD signal out in MPEG2 at that bitrate - which might look better than a heavily compressed 720/60p one?

LiveWell looks terrible at 5 MB/s. The good news is that it mostly runs windowboxed infomercials. Most of the rest of the programmin is "HD," but none of it is really worth watching.

The actual Livewell programming is six half-hour shows that run in a three-hour block, five times per day (how often a given episode is repeated, I don't know).  They're 16:9, but whether they're natively HD or they're upconversions is beyond the kenning of my eyesight or my hardware.

The other nine hours of programming per day is up to the local station.

Certainly there is nothing in them where it's an advantage to air them in 720p over widescreen 480i (other than the illusory marketing edge of the names "Livewell HD" and "livewellhd.com" over just "Livewell" and whatever the domain would have been if the station were not in HD).  To do so at the expense of the main channel is even worse.

That's what most of us on here were hoping for.

On my 50" 768p display, most of what I've seen definitely looks like it's shot in HD.

And yes - at 5MB's, it is virtually unwatchable. It really is the most insane thing I've ever seen since the advent of digital television.

The subchannel that it formerly was here in Chicago was 4:3 480i, and as long as there wasn't anything fast-moving (which there usually wasn't) it looked alright. The programming was also occasionally worth watching - that is, if you hadn't have already seen it on the main channel.

Most of us would find it unwatchable if it had its own RF frequency and got all 19 Mb/s.

Bear in mind that 1 QAM is 38 Mbps. So, technically, you could put 2 transport streams broadcasting 19 Mpbs each (which includes all of both station's sub channels) in 1 QAM.

So you're saying that a 6 Mbps bit rate does not cause any loss in this content and a higher bit rate will make the content look exactly the same?

I'm saying that some of the HD content on ABC is mushy crap to begin with and a direct numeric comparison is only valid when comparing apples to apples. Those same shows that barely hit 6 on ABC O&Os also barely broke 10Mb/s on affiliates with no subchannels using VBR encoders. Comparing shows that don't max out the capabilities means that the differences in what is shown from week to week can have a significant effect on the final bitrate. A basketball game, on the other hand, is going to be maxing out the available bitrate most of the time because of the high level of detail in most shots and the high level of motion.

I cannot believe how terrible ABC looks now (KGO in SF Bay Area for me)...everything looks so soft it is ridiculous...if it wasn't for Lost I would boycott the channel completely...

So, don't watch the station. Send them an e-mail explaining why you will no longer watch that station.

Then purchase the Lost Blu-ray discs in glorious 1080p.

Of course KGO would then say "One viewer gone, millions left" and pull out the inevitable letters they got thanking them for adding Live Well.

That's the problem...my wife is one example of the "average" viewer...she had no idea the station went down the crapper PQ-wise until I pointed it out...then she said something like "oh yeah - it does look worse" - and then continued on with her show happily...

Not to mention everyone getting new HDTVs due to the digital switch will just assume that's the way HD always looked.

Live Well HD seems like a waste of bandwidth to me.

They can use the money to make another great show or something.