Des Moines, IA - HDTV - Page 136

Ok, I bit... I had to check out the two stations newscasts tonight. 13's video and in-studio shots are MUCH crisper now then the fuzzy mess they've been. Except for my gripe that the weather isn't full widescreen yet, I'm very impressed how good this looks for an SD production.
Although overall I'm still a loyal KCCI viewer yet for my news... I still find their overall presentation and staff are the best*. (With the exception of Keith Murphy - I still have some video tapes of "Murphy's Law" back when he worked Channel 5 with the likes of Dennis Douda, Gale Nye, Don Novak, Pam Daale, Jeff Grummel, and Rod Bodholdt)

Murphy's Sound-Off promo for Sunday refers to it as "the final standard definition" edition.

So I guess WHO-HD is coming next week sometime.

tomorrow might be a good day to watch channel 13. especially around the noon hour....or more officially at 5pm

Wow! It looks SO good! They're even doing HD remotes. And the new HD weather segment is amazing! Great job, WHO!

I agree... looks very good.
OK, KCCI. As is heard many times during the NFL Draft... You are on the clock.

I'm sorry, but WHO's news set has GOT to go. It just looks ridiculous.

The faux paint effect is actually hurting the image. An HD set should have a nice desk, some nice trim, and lots of solid NEUTRAL color that doesn't make the image bit-heavy. They can enhance that with graphic overlays the way NBC Nightly News does. The current set is just a mess.

And the uneven lighting...YIKES.

And is it just me, or are they softening the image on specific on-air talent?

Graphics and the new weather look are great, though.

It may all converge okay on an LCD, but on my 61" DLP, there's some serious work to do here.

How ironic was it that Wheel aired in SD right after the 6:00 news?

(I know...it can only get better, right?)

Perhaps Bachman has wrinkles to hide and there's just not enough make-up around. Maybe it's in his contract to be HD friendly with him so we're not subjected to HD liverspots like Ted Koppel and Stan Blather have treated us too.
So, did anyone else think when Keith Murphy did the sports at 6 that it looked more like a green-screen shot than a physical wall behind him?
And yes, I got a laugh out of the fact something went wrong and Wheel was in SD again. Not to mention they still have trouble with it in places where the playback is choppy, slows down, then speeds up like 4x speed to recover.

Are you suggesting that your DLP RPTV shows more detail than a modern LCD? LOL

Anyway.. yes, I do agree there were a couple of kinks that need to be worked out. But overall, after dealing with SD news broadcasts for so long, it's so nice to finally have something local in HD.

OK.. something that needs to change: The cheesy sound effect that plays when the story headline comes on the screen during the anchor shots. The first few times I heard it, I kept thinking it was some sort of glitch. Then I realized what it was. It's more annoying than anything. Just my two cents!

Yes. It sounds like a power surge protector alarm is going off. Who in the WORLD felt THAT was necessary?

I also question why they're still airing a standard definition 4:3 promo tag that says "The following program is brought to you in HIGH DEFINITION" (for example, in front of 'Wheel' tonight).

Come on. That's just sad.

Anyone having trouble bringing in KCCI tonight? I am getting about 20-30% signal where 13, 5, 17, 11, etc are all 90-100%. Made me miss NCIS

NCIS came in perfectly for for me...save for brief disruptions during a couple of nearby lightning strikes.

OK, so KWWL was the first newscast in the state to go HD. WHO looks like they set the bar higher with most of their remotes being in HD too (KWWL's aren't in HD, yet, nor does KWWL show syndicated content in HD).

KCRG is supposed to be going online with their HD newscast in June, so where is KCCI at? Everyone has always assumed that KCCI will be right behind WHO since it's a cat-and-mouse game, but I haven't heard anything firm on KCCI's plans yet.

There's been no sign of KCCI making any moves toward HD. At this point, they can't even show syndicated programming in HD that I know of, though they're doing the SD anamorphic widescreen thing with some of their shows.

It's gotta be driving their programming staff nuts. Even WOI can punch in an HD Entertainment Tonight.

Actually Dr. Phil and Oprah both air in HD when it's available.

WHO TV is beeping off too much durring their new HD broadcasts. Noticed the high pitch beep every few minutes, and yesterday too. Hope they don't go blind.

KCCI's new HD weather crawl looks good. I like the enhanced county maps they're using that show the name of the county seat but still show the areas of the minor cities as well. I really like how the "StormWarn8" and "kcci.com" fill in the dead areas outside of the 4x3 safe area too.
--- Edit
Must be having some troubles with it though, because they just switched back to the older SD one now. Must say though, advantage to the old one for not blocking off as much of the screen with a solid boarder.

OK...so....

13's news is in HD now (why isn't 13 on Fox at 9) and Channel 8 is still stretchy-vision, but they at least have HD weather bugs and crawls.

What the heck is the deal with Channel 5? They go to SD during the commercials of the NBA playoffs to scroll weather? Their news is horrible, blurry and unwatchable. Are they ever going to do anything to make themselves better?

HDA

Short of going off the air? Probably not. Citadel hasn't really improved much of anything there in the time they've owned the station... Broadcasting a viewable signal seems like a waste of money to them.

From the Des Moines Register:

"Officials at KCCI and WOI have said they plan to make similar switches to HD in the coming year."

It's the very last sentence in this online story, which is otherwise about the results of the May sweeps:
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/d...ay-tv-ratings/

I don't claim to know much about "13 News at 9 on 17" (or whatever it's called now), but while it may be produced at WHO's studio it still must be transmitted down Fleur Drive to KDSM and still has to go through KDSM's plant to get on the air. So KDSM's plant may need an upgrade (last I checked, they didn't do HD beyond what's on Fox; is that still true?), and that's up to a completely different station owner, Sinclair.

I wouldn't call what KCCI does "stretchy-vision"; I reserve that term for what KDSM used to do: take a 4:3 picture and stretch it to 16:9 making everything fatter. KCCI news is more like SD resolution in widescreen -- not HD (yet), but it doesn't look horrendous.

Media com has me kind of PO'd at them right now because of increased charges and poor service fixing outages for me. I am considering switching from them for internet and cable TV to DirecTV and Qwest DSL.

I like to watch TV in HD and want good picture quality. In general I go for all the premium movie channels (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax) and not the premium sports. I do make heavy use of the DVR, and my motorola DVR from mediacom does seem tweaky at times. I also like my high speed internet.

Does anyone out there have experience about the differences in quality of picture, quality of DVR, service and internet speed?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

DirecTV's picture quality is superior since they use the MPEG-4 format instead of Mediacom's MPEG-2 format. They also have far more HD channels than Mediacom, particularly in the area of the premium movie channels. (Mediacom has what, four total?) MPEG-4 allows you to deliver a channel at a lower bitrate than MPEG-2, but deliver superior quality. Just looking at Mediacom's HD today, it certainly looks bit-starved (insufficient bitrate) compared to DirecTV.

Mediacom's HD selection has SIGNIFICANTLY improved, but still lags behind DirecTV's.

I also find the DirecTV DVR superior. Greater capacity for storage, and it just seems more responsive and reliable.

However, I will definitely say that I found Mediacom's internet offering far superior to Qwest's. My DSL connection with Qwest was nothing compared to what Mediacom offers.

Mediacom's HD and DVR offerings just aren't that good compared to the competition. Their Interenet, on the other hand, is very competitive, given the lack of solid competition out there.

Also, on a completely different note...

I was watching WHO-TV in Des Moines today and they ran a bumper that stated, 'WHO is the FIRST and ONLY station in Iowa broadcasting the news in HIGH DEFINITION."

I even DVRed it to make sure I heard it correctly. I figured they would've qualified it with "Central Iowa" but no, it said straight up IOWA.

I am sure that statement is news to KWWL out of Waterloo. Their HD broadcast was several months before of WHO's.

WHO's comment is probably based on being a pretty much complete HD newscast, whereas it's my understanding that KWWL's HD newscast didn't include field reporting in HD...at least initially...making it no more fraudulent than KCCI's ridiculous "Live Super Doppler HD" positioning statement.

It's all a bunch of marketing weasels thinking they can make any wild claim they want and their target audience will buy it.

I don't think KCCI's "Super Doppler HD" was ever meant to be related to HDTV, but rather a claimed higher weather resolving power in the radar.

Usually even marketing goons remember to include some sort of caveat / qualification if necessary. I was expecting something like, "The only COMPLETELY HD newscast in Iowa", but they didn't say that either.

Field reports in HD would be nice, but having the studio shots, and particularly, the weather maps and graphics in HD would constitute enough HD to make the claim legitimate to me. KWWL's newscast is nicely done. WHO's has more HD, sure, but crapping all over KWWL's newscast like that because it's in a different market is disingenuous by WHO.

see my comment on the CR thread

Point of interest from the CR thread...

What's the deal with WOI reception? During the morning the station keeps cutting in and out. I only watch WOI at 10AM for "The View" so not sure how it does during the rest of the morning and afternoon. At night it comes in. When it was raining almost everyday the reception wasn't the best but yesterday and today it is sunny and no storms (yet) anywhere in Iowa. It is so frustrating. Since all the other channels come in (except 39) my husband says it can't be the antenna. We live in Osceola and after the switch to digital WOI has been our biggest problem. This happened last year in July and Aug after the switch.

It could be the antenna. If you have a typical outdoor VHF-UHF yagi antenna, there are separate elements for low-band VHF (channels 2-6), high-band VHF (channels 7-13) and UHF (14-50). There could be damage to the low-band elements that would kill reception of 5 while leaving the rest OK. The low-band elements are longer than the others and more susceptible to wind damage.

Some new-fangled antenna designs don't even include coverage for low-band VHF. There are very few DTV stations operating in the low VHF band. The reason why is the low-band is more greatly affected by electrical interference and atmospheric issues (which may explain why your WOI reception is better at night).