Raleigh, NC - HDTV - Page 495

Am I the only one who can't get more than the basic channel 4 for WUNC via TWC QAM? There's no 4.1 at all.

 

Do you subscribe to analog cable or to digital cable?

A while ago I asked whether anybody knew what the QAM channel number for WUNC was, and nobody knew.

 

I just watch UNC-TV via antenna, where 4.1 is the main channel (with most programming in HD), 4.2 is the kids channel, and 4.3 is the Explorer channel.

 

I think UNC-TV also provides a channel called MX (a "mix" of programming), but that is available only on digital cable, not OTA.

I see UNCTV on these channels on TWC QAM (I am in Alamance County, technically out of market, so take it with a grain of salt... but here goes):

UNC TV HD: 26.1, 87.3
UNC TV SD: 114.2
UNC-Kids: 26.2
UNC-EX: 26.3
UNC-MX: 4.4

 

I thought it was a bit strange for your cable system to have two different unencrypted channels (26.1 and 87.3) of UNC-TV's main channel. Then I looked at the OTA channels available for the Burlington area. I would guess that 26.1 is WUNL (RF 32, virtual channel 26), licensed as Winston-Salem, and 87.3 is WUNC (RF 25, virtual channel 4), licensed as Chapel Hill.

 

Most of the UNC-TV stations throughout the state carry the same programming, don't they?

In some states there are several public broadcasting stations, each carrying its own programming lineup.

 

I have not been impressed with the way cable companies handle QAM channels.

If they are going to offer unencrypted channels, then they should give them reasonable channel numbers and stop moving them around all the time.

While I do agree with you on the not moving them around, from their standpoint, the clear QAM channels are to entice you into subscribing with a box. Moving them around is also meant to "encourage" you, as well as routine maintenance.

Last time I checked (I'm using TWC for internet only) - I could get all clear QAM except channel 11 and it's subchannels..

I can't get WUNL, my "true local" UNCTV OTA, but WUNC comes through 100% on my AM21 signal meter. The only other 100% is WGPX, Burlington's Ion. I find it odd that people in the Raleigh DMA don't have WTVD on QAM, yet I have it out-of-market on ch. 87.2

All that hiding the QAM channels or moving them around a lot does is give people the opportunity to discover how easy it is to get the stations OTA. That causes people to wonder why they should keep subscribing to cable.

Frankly, that's what people should be doing anyway... IF you can put up an OTA antenna you will be much happier with the signal you get from there rather than the re-compressed one delivered via cable.

All is OK now. I'm now getting 4.1 and other WUNC channels via Raleigh TWC QAM with no problem, so it was evidently a temporary situation. Thanks to all who responded.

The hard drive in my 8300HD died and the Atlantic Ave center only had 8300HDC's as a similar replacement (according to the nice lady at the desk). I've been unsuccessful getting my 500GB esata drive to pair with the 8300HDC (details here). Are there other service centers in our area? How do I contact them directly to see if they have 8300HD's before driving out? Anyone have an 8300HDC with the black guide that is working with an esata drive? The only reason I went for the HDC is because I use the RF out to run to another TV. Any ideas for solutions to broadcast television from a single DVR to multiple TVs? I haven't looked into the price hit for the "whole home DVR" option yet.

Thank you,
Chris

Directv has Ch 40 Univison HD and Ch 28 WRDC HD up in testing, should launch next few weeks.

Nice. Does anyone know if there is a place in the Raleigh DMA that has the following sports on Directv:

MLB: Braves, Reds, Nationals, Orioles
NHL: Hurricanes
NBA: Bobcats.

I "moved" to Lexington from Burlington get the Bobcats games to be not blacked out. I would rather "move" to somewhere in Raleigh, but I would also like to keep WSOC and the Bobcats! I also discovered that the Braves are not shown much in the Raleigh DMA. I guess I am hard to please. I do use the AM21 tuner to get the Raleigh locals but I would rather have them be the primary locals and let the Greensboro locals be subject to the antenna's occasional fluttering.

The Braves are often shown on TBS, ESPN, and Fox Broadcasting. The Orioles and Nationals are on MASN, which is carried by DirecTV but not by Time Warner Cable. The Hurricanes are on Fox Sports South/Fox Sports Carolinas.

I don't know who carries the Bobcats. The NBA is not very popular in the Triangle. College basketball gets more coverage.

 

If you're asking which local stations broadcast major professional sports OTA in the Raleigh market, those would just be the network affiliates. Fox Broadcasting (WRAZ) has major league baseball on Saturdays. WRAZ and WRAL (CBS) have the NFL on Sundays, and NBC (WNCN) has the Sunday night NFL game.

 

The Durham Bulls minor league baseball games are shown on WRAZ's subchannel 50.2.

Regarding the topic of public television, I think UNC-TV does a very nice job, and has good programming, both local and PBS. I enjoy that NC Weekend program that features interesting events, attractions, and restaurants in NC. Although I live in SC, I get UNC-TV on 33.1 from Asheville, as well as 17.1 from Linville which has a very good signal. I also get SC ETV on 3 different channels, so I get a very good public TV selection here in Greenville, SC.

I think I worded my question incorrectly, and didn't provide enough detail:

I have Directv. For all sports references, I am referring to RSN coverage, not national or local channels. I live in Burlington (Alamance County).

*Braves, FS-South (ch 646) and Sportsouth (ch 649) : I see that the Braves territory ends near here and pretty much (or maybe entirely) excludes the Raleigh DMA.
*Reds: FS-Cincinnati (ch 661-1): Do the Reds games make it to the Raleigh DMA?
*Orioles/Nats: MASN (ch 640 and 641-1): I think all of NC gets their games.
*Bobcats: Sportsouth-alt (ch 650 or 651): Directv only carries the Bobcats within 75 miles of Charlotte. I live in Burlington, but "moved" to Lexington to be within 75 miles of Charlotte. It is still in the Greensboro DMA, but gets WSOC sig. viewed. I could not find a place to "move" to in the Charlotte DMA to get the Reds games. I personally don't care about the Bobcats, but I like to watch the Celtics, Bulls, Thunder, and boo the Lakers when they play the Bobcats.
*Hurricanes: FS-Carolinas (ch 645). I assume all of NC gets this!

Currently, I have Greensboro locals via Directv, nearly all Raleigh locals with the AM21 off-air tuner, and WSOC Charlotte because I "moved." I would like to have the Raleigh Locals via Directv and use the AM21 for the Greensboro locals. WLFL and WRDC can be temperamental in the summer heat (the channels are prefect 80% of the year). I like to watch Big Bang Theory reruns, which are on My48 in Greensboro, which is not HD (My48 is not available on Directv in HD, but the OTA/TWC signal is only HD 2 hours per day, 8-10pm). WLFL shows the BBT shows in HD and MyRDC is a real HD channel, unlike My48. Since I really only watch Fox8, the WGPX Ion stations, and the CW20 from Greensboro and those are my strongest Greensboro channels OTA, they'd be fine with the AM21. I watch WRAL for CBS now as it is. I am also currently watching the Bulls on 50-2, which I totally enjoy! If I "move" to some town within the Raleigh DMA to get the locals, I don't want to lose the local RSN coverage of the teams listed above. I can't find such a place on the directv website with my limited knowledge of the southern part of the Raleigh DMA. I was asking if anyone knew of a magic sports-friendly place within the Raleigh DMA. I can totally deal with it the way I have it set up now, I just wanted to have a more stable WLFL and WRDC, and with WRDC coming in HD, I was curious.

I realize that Time-Warner, the world's most anti-sports cable provider, does not provide MASN or FS-Cincinnati. Or NFL Network. Or Universal Sports. ...

Thanks!

The regional sports networks that are available in the Raleigh area are Fox Sports Carolinas (available on cable and satellite) and MASN (available only via satellite, not on cable).

FSC carries the Hurricanes and also (I think) the Bobcats. MASN carries the Nationals and Orioles. The Reds and Braves are not carried on the RSN's in the Raleigh area.

Major league baseball may have a rule that prevents other teams from infringing on territory assigned to the Nationals and Orioles.

 

I was surprised to learn that the Reds are carried on DirecTV in the western part of the state.

Why is that? It has been many years since the Reds and Braves were in the same division, so I wouldn't think there would be much interest in the Reds in North Carolina.

The Bobcats are on SportSouth. It's surprising to me that Raleigh doesn't even have the Braves on FS-South. In Alamance County, we have Reds, Braves, Nats, and Orioles for MLB and Hurricanes for NHL. We don't have the Bobcats (only within 75 miles of Charlotte on Directv) so i "moved" to Lexington to be within 75 miles of Charlotte, as discussed earlier.

According to MLB, Raleigh is an Orioles/Nationals market so the Braves games can't be carried on Fox Sports in the Raleigh market. Amazingly Greensboro and Charlotte are in Braves, Orioles, Nationals and Reds market. Here is the MLB blackout/market map. There is a big push right now to get MLB to change this but so far nothing has changed.

http://www.bizofbaseball.com/images/MLB_Blackout_Map1000x733.gif

 

What about Toronto? The Blue Jays have the coolest uniforms in MLB. They should be on TV more often.

Anyone using WD My Book AV 1TB to expand SA8300HD storage in north Raleigh?

I have the Navigator software on my box here in North Raleigh. I checked the compatibility table here http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/xnappo/navigator, but the only listing for this drive is 2 years old from Kansas City with no navigator version given.

So if anyone has tried this drive in the area please let me know your experience. The model number is WDBABT0010HBK-NESN.

BTW, how do I find my navigator version?

Thanks,
Sooke

Anyone do a self-install cablecard with TWC recently locally? Go okay?
I'd been OTA-only for about 18 mos but decided to hop back onto TWC for a good promo deal and using my own equipment... not too expensive. Got scheduled for install 1-3pm today, took a half-day off work.
I just got a call from the technician, he's about to come but they don't have any cablecards at the warehouse. Seriously? So I'm going to have him come out, make sure my wiring is right and signal levels are correct, and then I'll try a self install.
Kind of annoying, really sad that they wouldn't know this until the day of the install.
On another note, I got three calls from TWC this week "We've got an important message for you, stay on the line..." and after five minutes of "Our people are busy, we'll be right there", each time they ended the call with "Our people are still busy, we'll try you another time." Click, hangup, spend 5 mins of my time and cell phone minutes for no reason each time.

So if anyone had a really bad (or good) self-install experience, I want to hear so I know what to demand... another visit from a tech, or do it myself and get financial compensation.

Update: after the (nice competent apologetic) technician left, I spent two hours on the phone with various TWC reps passing me around, final word was that TWC doesn't allow self installs. Major fail.

Not sure if this is good or bad for OTA tv:

http://www.wral.com/business/story/11388115/

Before my 8300HD died earlier this month, I used a 500GB esata drive with it for years. I suspect the drive you sited will work fine, just be aware that the 8300HD is the only TWC DVR that will work with large capacity external drives. When I replaced my 8300HD I was forced into a different model and was told at both the Raleigh and Cary offices that they're not allowed to hand out 8300HD's anymore, even if they have them in stock.

If you have the black TWC guide, you are running the latest MDN software available for the 8300HD.

Chris

Hey, thanks Rollcage.

I'm going to give it a try so I can record Olympic stuff during the day.

Yeah, well I had no luck with a "self-install". I was like you, coming from OTA to CC. I think if you already had digital service, then maybe you could show up and pick up your tuning adapter and CC, but if not, they have to send a tech to your curb and your house. The guy that came to my house had no clue what he was doing, never did a CC install. I called ahead to make sure they bring a tuning adapter, but that didn't work either.

He showed up, did the work at the curb, brought in the CC and asked me where the TIVO was. I told him its not a TIVO but a network cable card tuner (uh oh). I asked him where the tuning adapter was, and he said, "what's that?". So I took him in my media closet, showed him the setup. Slapped in the card and showed him how I could only tune a handful of channels without the adapter (although he liked my TV interface). He called someone and of course, they didn't have any tuning adapters in the "warehouse". So he left. I called, got credited for all of the install charge. The manager of the contractor called me and said he would send out his best guy that does a lot of CC installs in a day or two with the adapter. A guy did show up, but another guy with no CC experience. I just asked him if I could hook it all up and to call and make sure the adapter ID was authenticated. About 15 minutes later, up and running.

Good luck!

 

Mobile broadcast DTV could be a mixed bag for TV stations. On the plus side, it could allow the stations to generate more advertising revenue, and it could remind people that free OTA TV still exists, and that could spur interest in OTA TV reception at home, giving stations and station groups more leverage in retransmission negotiations with cable and satellite systems.

 

On the negative side, the mobile signals could take bandwidth away from the regular OTA signals, even though the mobile signals are lower resolution. People could also be confused by the idea that the mobile DTV broadcast is different from the station's regular DTV broadcast.

 

And if there are only two local TV stations (WNCN and WRAL) participating in mobile DTV, it could be hard to get much consumer interest, especially if the only mobile-DTV-equipped devices have only small screens and do not make it easy to switch been mobile DTV viewing and internet surfing.

 

I also wonder how many people would be willing to pay a few hundred bucks up front in order to get the ability to receive free mobile DTV signals when they may already be paying for an internet data plan for the phone.

A couple of mutterings:
1. With the Olympics on presently I am reminded how much I miss the OTA sub channel that was Olympic sport oriented sports. You would have thought it would bring in revenue all around but I guess it was politics that killed it.
2. I miss at least one subchannel broadcasting Weather Radar. I liked going to it to watch the storms cells moving thru. - Yes I can do it with my Smart phone, and other such devices but it was a quick choice on my remote. And yes I know it sucked bandwidth but so dont those two MTV type subchannels that I never watch.
3. While we seem be discussing PBS - does anyone know why they don't supply OTA info about the shows? I believe every other network does.

 

 

1. NBC Universal needed sports programming for the cable sports channel that it bought. It used to be Versus, now it's NBC Sports Network.

 

2. So do I. WTVD should replace the SD LiveWell channel (11.3) with a weather channel.

 

3. If you go to the UNC-TV web site, you can get program listings. There is also some program info included in the PSIP.

Why not ask the locals to include a radar map in the corner of the screen on the main channel during severe instead of the crawl saying the same thing over and over? The FCC I believe allows either a map with affected area painted in, and or a crawl or both.