Dayton / Lima, OH - HDTV - Page 212

Well, last evening I recorded Hawaii Five-O from Dayton channel 7.1 and also from channel 12.1.

The sound on 12.1 is great, with the dialog easy to understand and the background audio properly balanced.

The dialog on channel 7.1 is "buried" down in the mix and is hard to hear.

Something is definitely buggered at WHIO!

Ken

wcpo9 cincinnati new transmitter (ch.22) begins broadcasting tonight at 2:30am. Don't forget to rescan your boxes or tv's if you receive them over the air.

But I've gained 9. I actually lost 5 and 48 as well, but 48 was always fairly weak, and 5 also came and went every now and then.

But 14, 19 and 64 were always strong clear stations, and then one day about 1 or 2 weeks ago they disappeared all at once. I read that channel 9 was going to show up on 12/8, so I wondered if all these channels shared the same antenna. I waited, and on 12/8 I started receiving channel 9, loud and clear, but still today I can't get 14, 19 or 64.

I have a Zenith DTT901 connected to an analog TV on the side of the house facing south-west. Antenna's pointing that way, too -- living Miamisburg, that direction seems to pick up Cincinnati well. This has always picked up more channels than my HDTV in the liviing room. The signal indicator on the DTT901 shows channels 14 (RF 28), 19 (RF 29), and 64 (RF 33) are there, but the signal levels for those three are very low now and more variable. Re-scanning of course doesn't pick them up when they're like that, so I have to manually tune the DTT901 to the RF channels to see this.

Anybody have insight on this? Is there antenna work still ongoing on these channels, or have power levels been dropped for some reason? Be great to get these channels back again.

With the Channel 7 (et al), move - hopefully they won't be moving the antenna?

Why would they do that? That tower is not going anywhere.

Their tower, along with most of the other networks, have their antennas in West Dayton. They don't use the tower on Wilmington to broadcast TV signals. Radio, maybe ?

WHIO is definitely having audio issues.... sound 5.1 mix is all messed up for Bengals Steelers game.

And what is up with WHIO stretching some 4:3 commercials into 16:9? Ugh.

UGH! and what is WRGT doing with the FOX NFL Sunday feed? They've got their First Warning HD Overlay which I guess is fine, but they're squishing the letterboxed SD feed which is resulting in a picture with the wrong aspect ratio about the size of a postage stamp. Time to swing the antenna back to Cincinnati where all we complain about is WKRC's low bitrate and lack of 5.1 sound.

From WHIO's Facebook page,

A rumor is, they had maintained the old analog xmitter there up until the digital switch, and the tower,(Wilmington) has been up for sale for a year or more. I think their STL antenna is up there, but little else. Sunday's paper (12-12) states they are switching their feed to the new studio this afternoon. I would say the next few days will see a bit of 'de-bugging'. Maybe someone 'in the know' would comment?

Lots of glitches with WHIO's switch to the new studios. The aforementioned audio issues and the stretching of 4:3 commercials to 16:9. I've also seen them mess up a bunch of network to local (and the reverse) switches. HD on their 11pm (delayed) newscast looked pretty good. Also I noticed 7-2 was not 7 Weather Now, but just RADAR.

Not having to work today, I'm being entertained by the WHIO noon newscast. They just went to break, and more troubles. Black screen and then the audio from the set started to come through. Anchor John Paul talking very clearly saying things like 'Whatever we're going to call our weather deck' and 'well of course we can't hear them because our mikes don't work.'

And STILL stretching 4:3 commercials to 16:9. Apparently Dayton is getting fatter.

Has WHIO switched to a true HD newscast or is it still the widescreen 480p broadcast?

Their 480p widescreen always did look real good to me. I guess compared to channel 2's piss-poor SD or 22's, it should though. Last night, it was hard to judge 'cause they were distorting the picture with the delay ticker across the bottom... Today, for the 5-6:30 news, I do think it's no longer 480p (they say it's 'full' HD now). I hate to say it but when HD first started becoming popular, you heard about actors or news people insisting on 'filters' or something so facial features weren't so *clear* and let's just say, Cheryl McHenry shows her age in HD-glory !

Yes, they are full 1080i HD. They will probably implement skin tone filters at some point, but right now they need to figure out how to use all their new toys! As for their old SD widescreen (and I'm pretty sure it was 480i at 16:9 aspect upconverted to 1080i but I could be wrong) yes it did look good. The quality of inputs and upconverters can make a HUGE difference when watching SD sources on an HD channel. WLWT in Cincinnati has been doing an amazing job with upconversions for as long as I can remember. Even before they went widescreen, their SD newscasts looked almost like 4:3 HD. Their current newscast is still in SD (16:9) but there are times even on my 56" DLP on studio shots that I check myself and ask if it's really not HD because it looks amazingly good.

Not sure if anyone remembers this far back or had an HDTV back then, but when the networks first started broadcasting HD, FOX's stance was that 480p widescreen was good enough and they weren't going to do HD. Eventually they changed their minds and went to 720p, but even now they still use a lot of widescreen SD upconverts (FOX NFL Sunday studio show (not the games themselves) is done completely in SD and there are probably a lot of people out there that can't tell).

Widescreen 480p can look very good. I am hoping that local stations start converting their subchannels to 480i/p widescreen (not by stretching them of course!). I would absolutely love for Universal Sports on 25-2 in Cincinnati to be a high quality SD widescreen product.

My impression is that there's too much motion in Universal Sports for it to look good as a subchannel. On WBQC-LD, maybe this is possible, but in many places it is sharing bandwidth with the local NBC-HD.

- Trip

Oh, I agree 100%. I'm extremely happy that Universal Sports isn't on our local NBC affiliate WLWT, as WLWT is consistently the best-looking OTA HD channel in both the Dayton and Cincinnati markets. But since it is on WBQC-LD, my hope is that the owner of WBCQ (Elliot Block) will realize that he has a really good channel as far as content is concerned. I know Olympic (or non-"game" as I call them) sports aren't everyone's cup of tea but I can watch that channel for hours, especially when they're covering running, cycling, and triathlon.

I know the station is a very low budget operation but I would love to see 25-2 get more bandwidth and some better processing equipment to improve the PQ. That's the downside to the channel. It looks terrible on my large HDTV screen. Looks fine on a 20" CRT with converter box though.

Thanks for the info on WHIO.

Another question. A friend of mine is moving to Clearkcreek Township in Warren County (just outside of Springboro, but right across from the Montgomery County line). Apparently if he goes with Time Warner cable he will get the Dayton locals in HD and a couple of Cincinnati locals in SD. But DirecTV is telling him that he will get the Cincinnati locals in HD but no Dayton locals at all. At the end of the day it probably does not make a difference as if he really wants one or the other, I will help him put up an attic antenna. But is this right -- the locals one gets depends upon the provider or is he getting bad information?

All of Warren county appears to be in the Cincinnati market area (although some would dispute Springboro is really a suberb of Dayton). But shouldn't residents of Warren County get both markets in HD instead of just Cincinnati on both DirecTV and Time Warner? There seems to be some precedent to do this (e.g., areas of Wisconsin equidistant between to tv markets with commuters going each way).

As an aside, it really doesn't make sense to me to put all of Warren County in the Cincinnati market as alot of those people work, shop, and otherwise consider themselves as residents of greater Dayton. With all the growth in Warren county, it really does inflate the Cincinnati metro population at the expense of Dayton's.

Whats even more ironic is time warner in Butler County (cities of fairfield and hamilton -carries dayton channels ) but time warner Doesnt carry dayton channels in mason (kings island) (warren county) which is significantly closer to dayton than fairfield. Whats even stranger is if you have time warner you only receive the cincinnati stations but if you sign up with direct tv in our area if you live on the north side of fields- ertl rd (3 miles south of kings island on 71)( you get both the dayton and cincinnati stations but if you live on the south side of fields ertl you only get the cincinnati stations. )(by the way fields ertl rd is the dividing line between Cincinnati hamilton county-south side and warren county- north side).

I don't know the specifics of what the cable and satellites must do, or what they actually do, but the vast majority of people in both Warren and Butler counties would be considered greater Cincinnati residents. The DMA line has been drawn for a long, long time. I understand there are residents in the northern areas of Butler and Warren counties who "feel" more like part of Dayton, but that "line" is getting more blurred every day.

In fact many believe that after the 2010 census, Cincinnati-Middletown and Dayton MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Areas) will become one "Cincinnati-Dayton" MSA. The Cincinnati MSA is already the largest in Ohio, and adding Dayton will put it probably around 15th in the nation.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/2...e-one-city-now

The bottom line is that Dayton is just a suburb of Cincinnati. (kidding!)

I think cablecos are allowed (?) to carry neighboring city's channels -- is it part of "Significantly viewed" rules ? One thing to note, when someone on TW gets stations from both Cincy and Dayton, during prime-time, the out-of-network stations show syndicated programming, not normal prime-time shows.

Satellite providers have different rules. They also have mistakes, or did, in their "maps". I seem to recall a story in the paper about DirecTV customers in certain parts of Miamisburg who D* considered in the Cincinnati market.

The "significantly viewed" concept was explained in detail by Nitewatchwan here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post14811247

I have to say I disagree with you jimp about where people in Warren county would be considered residents of (or would consider themselves as residents). I would say most people who live north of Lebanon (e.g. Springboro, Waynesville, Corwin, Red Lion, Five Points, Lytle, Ridgeville, Utica, Dodds) consider themselves as part of, and are in fact part of, the greater Dayton community. Those in Lebanon either simply say they live in Lebanon or "between Dayton and Cincinnati," and those in Mason/Southern Warren County consider themselves as living in the suberbs of Cincinnati. So the arbitrary DMA/MSA line really needs to be revisited, or as has been suggested, simply combined altogether.

Anyway, just look at local news coverage. Dayton TV stations tend to cover Springboro exclusively. Cincinnati TV covers Mason/Loveland, and just about everybody ignores Lebanon altogether unless there is some big news there.

And, last I heard, the Dayton Daily News still delivers and covers all of Warren County (including Mason) has a very significant subscription base there (which may have declined a bit now that Hal McCoy is gone). Heck, the Dayton Daily News Distribution center is located in Warren County.

45458 was one of these "Cincinnati" ZIP codes. I think that's been corrected.

Oh yeah, I'm sure it has. This was a few years ago... The sad part was, customers in the affected area seemingly got NOWHERE when calling D* to tell them about this error. I recall they were just told over and over, "our system indicates your zip code qualifies for Cincinnati stations" and none could escalate the issue, look at a map and say, 'yeah, that looks wrong, let me notify people...', etc, etc.

Back then, Dayton didn't have locals on DirecTV, so I was OK with that. We are now solidly in Dayton territory, though it would be nice if you could get Cincinnati's locals via satellite and Dayton's OTA. Due to the high terrain to the southwest where we live, we can't pull in Cincinnati. We could probably get Columbus with a tower mount (I have occasionally gotten "broken" 4 and 6 from the attic) but the locals here have been good enough, I haven't had enough incentive to bother with it.

You can, call D* and tell them you've "moved" to the Cincinnati DMA. Tell them everything's installed and you can see the right satellites already and no service tech needs to visit. Make sure they leave your billing address as-is though... Oh yeah, you'll need a valid Cincinnati address too.

Has WHIO stopped supplying the TVGOS info?

I've lost EPG/TVGOS in all three of our our tuners as well in the last week or so (7.1), first time in months.

Whats up with 7.1? Are they having VBI difficulties? Anybody know who to talk to?