Des Moines, IA - HDTV - Page 138

God I hope they won't try to squeeze 3 channels together. 13-1 already looks bad enough.

Sorry, my bad. I just assumed they were giving Weather Plus the heave-ho. According to this website, WHO will keep Weather Plus and Antenna TV will occupy 13.3. You may have to click the WHO-DT link to expand the information. We'll see for sure come January.

http://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?mktid=89

And for that matter, the same page says that Fox 17 is/will offer The Country Network (All Country Videos. All Day Long) on 17.3.

I don't know for sure either. I just listed it there because I wanted to list it without deleting the Weather listing.

- Trip

i am from omaha and we have 2 stations owned by TV45 inc.

and was wondering what is the story with their des moines area owned stations

K45KD-D channel 45 and K46EY

are either of them still on the air or are digital or are they dead like the 2 TV45 inc. owned stations in omaha

Mediacom converts most, if not all Des Moines stations' signals to IP at each station and puts it on fiber to their head-end, so it could be Mediacom's fault.


Good point about cheap. Winegard's stuff holds up pretty well. We have some Winegard booster amps at work that are still getting the job done after almost 30 years in service.

Compared to what?

All the stations have compression artifacts...take a 1.5 gigbit-per-second HD signal and cram it into a 18 megabit pipe, and something's gotta give (if a .2 is running, the .1 program bit rate is probably down to 15 or 16MB.) Run it into yet another pipe (cable or sat) and it gets a little worse.

Problem is, WHO doesn't fully utilize their available ATSC bandwidth. For example, Thursday's airing of "The Office" was broadcast at about 12.5mbit.

What are you using to read bandwidth usage...TS Reader?

I use mpeg2repair post-capture to analyze bitrate and errors, but yeah, basically the same thing.

Using TS Reader, I measured 14.8MB during WHO's 5pm news, with 2.7MB for 13.2. Other stations were pretty comparable. Looks like 11 and 39 are ranging from 10 to 11MB for their .1's, so I suppose 13.1 will use similar bandwidth if/when they add a .3.

NorthPine.com recently reported that the FCC is weeding out silent analog LPs -- and they mentioned one in Omaha, which was cancelled at TV-45's request -- but the post didn't mention any in Des Moines.

At this point K45KD-D is listed as "CP OFF AIR" and K46EY is still listed as "licensed."

Cool TV would be alot more cool if we could receive it in stereo. Curious if MTV produced videos in stereo before 1986 ?

Come on man, you're talking about KDSM here -- what makes you think you'll ever get it in stereo? Ha

Dear KCCI,

There is absolutely no reason for your Storm Warn 8 scroll to have an empty blue space two times the height of the actual scroll taking up screen space.

There is also no reason to cut off part of the top of the picture AND fatten the image to boot to fill the screen.

This is simply broadcasting done wrong.

I agree with this statement.

However, I will give KCCI credit for using the old Storm Warn system on 8.2 to keep watch/warning info current since they don't bother to update the local weather spots much.

So here we go again with another corporate retrans dispute that holds customers hostage to the corporate interests of what is marketed as "local TV." This time it is KCCI and DirecTV, with a 12-31-2010 deadline. I am not much for government regulation, but I for one think that the FCC should consider this garbage of KCCI (Hearst) posting "consumer information" stories and TV crawls about "losing KCCI...contact DirecTV" as an automatic "negotiation in bad faith." While they are negotiating they ought to be doing it behind closed doors with both side's mouth's shut.

KCCI has a "new story" on their website now about this, with a quote attributed to Fredericksen @ KCCI. If you Google that quote, you will find that it is a news story template for every single one of Hearst stations around the Country with the exact same quote attributed to every single station manager.

KCCI has also turned off comment capabilities on that particular story only - something that I could not find another example of in the posts that I looked at.

It is this kind of propaganda that I personally think will drive people further and further to streaming media like Hulu, Netflix, the network's websites, ESPN3 and other online media
options. Hollywood wants their content viewed. In the end, they could care less, I think, if there is a KCCI in the picture or not.

It seems like a real losing strategy long term to use your customers as pawns. Make no mistake, if KCCI goes dark on DirecTV it will be KCCI that pulls it.

Well said.

Though I will argue until my dying day that satellite retransmission of locals is a complete needless waste to begin with.

Maybe in Iowa. In the mountainous rural areas, it's the only way to get locals.

- Trip

And these idiots (corporate TV execs in general) wonder why they keep losing numbers, and why more and more people are just using things like Hulu to watch shows.

The general TV viewer DOES NOT CARE who's right and who's wrong in these situations. All they care about is being able to watch their shows. When this type of stuff happens, neither side wins.

Is anyone seeing K41DD-D on the air? It's not carrying anything but home shopping, so nothing to go hunting for; I'm just curious if someone can confirm it's operating.

- Trip

MTV was available in stereo even before stereo became part of the TV signal.

In the early 80s, many cable companies -- including the then-Heritage system in central Iowa -- had a cable FM service for your stereo system. When MTV first came on, a stereo simulcast of it was offered as part of the FM service, and MTV actively promoted that option.

(I remember those "if you're not getting MTV in stereo, you're only getting half the picture" promos, which kind of dates me a little.)

Here's a Broadcasting & Cable web piece on the KCCI/Hearst situation.

The piece also notes that a one-year extension between Sinclair and Time Warner is about to run out. I haven't heard any rumblings about the one-year extension between Sinclair (KDSM owner) and Mediacom yet, and I live in a market with a Sinclair "virtual duopoly."

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/art...TV_Fallout.php

Channel 13 news on Fox 17 is in HD tonight! 'Bout damn time - it looks much better and the scroll across the bottom is easier to read.

Is anyone else having reception problems with KCCI 8.1? It has been terrible for me. Very weak if I can get a signal at all. Many times it is just black. Very frustrating!

And yet, the sound is still mono.

Mind boggling.

What kind of setup do you have? I haven't heard of any reception problems lately, and we also haven't had transmitter problems.

I'm pretty certain the link between WHO and KDSM is set up for 2-channel audio.

Wouldn't matter anyway...most news content is gathered in a way that makes mono audio the norm. On a camera with two audio channels, typically one track is used for the shotgun mic on the camera to gather "nat"(ural) sound, and the other track is used for the reporter's mic. The tracks will be mixed down to a single track in editing. Stereo techniques are sometimes used for special stories, but it's not necessary for day-to-day stuff.

A lady I know in Ankeny just got a converter box, and mentioned she couldn't get 5 or 8. I asked her what kind of antenna she had. She sheepishly replied "none". I suggested a properly-deployed set of rabbit-ears should work for her top-floor apartment location.

Rooftop Winegard (I think) antenna connected to my TV. Just a basic setup and I get HD off the air. I quite often have problems getting 8 to come in.

Is it a "yagi" antenna (with a bunch of long horizontal rods)? Do you have any amps in the system?

If you look back several pages, you'll find we ask lots of questions. Antenna design is a big factor in getting in the VHF channels well...some of the new-fangled antenna designs have poor VHF performance. Older antennas could perform poorly if they have missing antenna rods. Since you're so close to the transmitter sites, having amps in the system could cause overload problems, so we ask about that as well.