Raleigh, NC - HDTV - Page 439

OK, WTF was wrong with the audio last night on How I met Your Mother on WRAL? Was that a national thing or local? REally wierd. No dialog for a while then some strange echoes and tunnel sounding effects. Luckily it was still watchable, but kind of funny that stuff liek this still happens.

I found reception on 5.1 to be going up and down more then usual last night. It may have been due to rain. I would have a solid full number of bars and then it would dip down for a second or so and zero bars and picture freeze. Kind of annoying. But of course this would not cause your audio issues.

Randomly checked the site today and it showed my address as available! Install set for May 27. I'm not really interested in the TV, but trying the TV out for a month or two as part of a triple-play bundle gives you free install (saves $120) and $350 back as a rewards Visa card (have to keep service for 30 days and until reward is issued) vs an extra $130 or so (assuming 2 months), so I guess I'll have U-Verse TV for around 2 months.

Looks like the 18 down / 1.5 up (Max Plus) is the fastest available here, the 24 down internet speed was marked unavailable.

Does anyone have a pre-order on the Ceton card in the RDU area? What kind of problems can I expect from TWC getting this set up?

Did it also remove the ability to FF during a commercial? I usually use my DirecTV DVR, but had to go to the backup due to too many things recording...sucked to have to sit during ads.

Well I went up in the attic and rotated my Garner Farm antenna t0 help 5.1 reception issues. I see I already had it in the "Spring" position as opposed to the "winter" position. I guess I did not need to adjust it last winter. The leaves on trees and rain on trees seems to mess with the signal. Not suppose to but it does. But not as bad as strong winds moving the trees.

Will this help standardize codecs ?:

"At Google’s annual developers conference today most analysts were predicting Google to announce their partnerships with manufactures for new television set-top boxes built with Google's Android OS. They didn't --- but they did announce that they plan to make their WebM codec completely open source and license free. The video codec was acquired earlier this year for $124.6 million from On2 Technologies and is competing with h264 which is owned by the MPEG LA a patent pool which both Apple and Microsoft are part of. Beginning today, all videos that are 720p or larger uploaded to YouTube will be be encoded in WebM. Google has also released a WebM software developer kit and source code."

I have an older HDTV (samsung 42 inch DLP 5 years old). When i connect it to the cable directly from the wall and scan for cable i pick up 5.1, 11.1. 17.1 etc.... They appear to be in HD and the tv says its HD. I called TWC to ask them what HD signal it was (1080i or 720p) and they said it was impossible to be getting those channels without a box.

So here are my questions....

1. With a qam tuner what signal of hdtv will i pick up for free on broadcast cable? 1080i or 720p?

2. In market for new HDTV what is best for 60+ inches? lcd, plasma, led?

3. Will this stuff coming up in June cut off the free HDTV channels for broadcast cable?

1) They will be the same format as the OTA counterpart. Fox and ABC will be 720p and CBS and NBC will be 1080i.

2) Depends on your needs... each has its own trade offs.. 60+ inches is still DLP territory... but only Mits remains.

3) shouldnt

Is there a reason why TWC completely denies sending the 5.1, 11.1, 17.1 etc..... through their cable when connected directly to the tv?

Probably so that they don't have to support it and/or train their call center people to support it. Bear in mind that they sometimes move the channels around (so you'd need a rescan to get whatever moved), and they sometimes forget to pass the psip and/or CVTC info that is required to remap the physical (85.2) QAM channel to the familiar logical (5.1 WRAL) channel number.

If you can, I'd suggest just putting up an antenna and not dealing with them. That will give you more options (like getting full-bit rate ABC from WLXV 45.1 in Greensboro to replace the HD-lite WTVD 11.1), and you won't have to deal with the TV not working because TWC randomly changed something.

Drew

any suggestions on a good antenna and an installer??? i live near Lynn Rd and Creedmoor Rd in North Raleigh

i would really like an antenna powerful enough to pick up greenville nc channels so I can watch ECU football games if one exists.....

I use a CM-4228. I was unable to find a good installer, so mine is in my attic (where it looses about 50% of its gain). The CM-4228 has been discontinued, and replaced by the CM-4228HD which is not as good at getting VHF. The only VHF station here is ABC 11, which should be avoided anyway (since they throttle their main HD channel by showing a second HD "livewell HD" channel that nobody cares about).

If you find a good installer, please let me know. I'd love to get my antennas out of the attic, but I'm not good with heights.

Drew

do you think the CM-4228HD would pick up Greenville NC stations from North Raleigh?

Why don't you run a tvfool.com of your address and post the link to it ?

As a general rule, 65-70 miles is pushing it - and even then, you need your antenna outside and high (20-30 feet AGL, and for that far, higher would be even better.

Only WITN is UHF from Greenville, New Bern. WNCT and WCTI are VHF channels, so if you are looking for one of those, you need a strong VHF antenna over the roof outside. Reception is likely to be spotty, and inconsistent for any of those.

You probably want to tell the customer service person that you're installing a Tivo, since they will have no idea what the Ceton is, and about half of them know what a tivo is.

I'll probably be trying the cablecard HDHomerun.

So whats the odds that WTVD decides to interrupt the LOST finale tonight with a weather crawl the entire time, much like they did with the pilot encore last night? Keep in mind, the weather last night wasnt a big deal, or else the crawl would have ran during the commercials, right?

Yep, thinking the same thing.

I don't mind an occasional warning crawl, but a constant run is just stupid and hypocritical. If it really was in the public's best interest they would be running it during the commercial spots the advertisers paid $900,000 each for.

It's rain and thunder. If you can't hear it and have the sense to get indoors then you need more assistance than a weather crawl. Either way you can't avoid lightning.

ABC owners may have a clause in place that says no crawls will be shown during commercials. This is common for many stations beside ABC as well. I guess they get more money for the ads that way. Why can't they just put up a little map in the corner with a color code is what I don't understand, instead of running the same statement over and over for a half hour or more?

100%, it appears. Idiots.

... although they did turn it mostly off after a few minutes.

So how many of the "Sky is falling" crawls does the General Public need to see before they just do not see them anymore. Yeah you got to wonder how serious it is when commercials are not interrupted. I stretched my screen to get rid of some scrawls. I notice PBS does theirs at the top of screen.

stations in Washington Greenville New Bern area

WITN 7.1, 7.2 (UHF32)
WNCT 9.1, 9.2 (VHF10)
WCTI 12.1, 12.3 (VHF12)
WYDO 14.1 (UHF47)
WUNM 19.1, 19.2, 19.3 (UHF18)
WUNK 25.1, 25.2, 25.3 (UHF23)
WEPX 38.1, 38.2, 38.3 (UHF51)

I use a Channel Master 3228 and get stong signals on these. I also get RDU stations. However WTVD do not get, every once in a while it will come in.

Has anyone else's DVR from TWC been screwed up ever since they updated the software? Mine has a huge delay from the time I hit FF till the time it actually starts to FF now.

I'd laugh if I wasn't crying. A tech was out to do preliminary work at the street / outside the house, and I'm apparently too far from the VRAD to get service. Install cancelled. So apparently they reconditioned the lines in my neighborhood (or at least on my court) for nothing.

Now back to hoping TWC gets off its butt and upgrades to DOCSIS 3 so I can get my faster Internet.

All this hurry up and wait reminds me of years ago when a coworker wanted Cable bad at his house and he was told that they would not have cable at his house for at least 2 years.

So he went out and purchased the best outside antenna, rotor , and booster he could find.

Within weeks of his completing the install guess what was brought past his house?

Needless to say he gave me a real good deal on his OTA setup

The pilot was clean of crawls on WXLV.. And had much higher bitrate that WTVD

Drew

Drewho, Knowing you on this website. You probably have Crawl Cleaner built into your recording equipment

It looks like PBS will be having another raise money period coming up. Looks to be sometime between June 1 and the 20th as that is when they need to have moocho money raised.

I wish. I still remember how ticked I was because WRAZ crawled / SD-letterboxed the Dollhouse finale last winter.

Yeah, we're regular donors. They recently sent us a letter asking for more money, and it sounds like they're in some serious financial trouble.

Drew

Yes, mine too. The inability to sort by favorites is also absurd. Other than ruining some of the features that actually work, does anybody know what improvements TWC actually made in this software update?

Thankfully, as soon as the NHL playoffs are done on Vs. its time to cut cable for the summer.