Raleigh, NC - HDTV - Page 106

Sorry, ratings period is over. Thursday night is a Special two hour Apprentice finale. (SD) As posted several months ago, my bad cable connection was just a loose cable at the box, and it only affected 217. It is frequency dependant, and can just as easily be caused by too much signal, but that has not been the case with 217 as far as I know.

NBC17ENG,

A while back, you indicated that you might have some "improvements" to your HDTV picture quality by the end of the year. Any updates??? If not we may have to change your moniker from "NBC17ENG" to "Mr. Softee". Just funnin' with you.

A little OT:

I just replaced my old HD-ready RPTV with a LCD Integrated HD TV (cablecard ready). It has the TVGOS feature on it. I have TWC cable line straight to the tv (no cablecard) and I'm using my city zipcode (Pembroke, 28372) for the TVGOS but after three weeks I get no match for a cable service to select. Anybody on the Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville system with TVGOS get guide data. If so what zip are you using?

It worked during the first week when I tried it using my OTA antenna but after switching (I did redo setup to select cable connected) to my cable line I get nothing.

The new racks are going into place now, and the last "shipping date" was tomorrow Dec 14th, but not sure of arrival date. Manufacturer is coming in to start up the new system, but it's not clear if that will be before the end of year. They have a "swat team" installing it at all the O&O's, so they should have it figured out by the time they hit our building. Weather Plus was fired up in one day by a similar team, but it was only their second system, and they had "challenges" with new equipment that had no manuals printed at that time. This stuff has been around long enough the bugs should be worked out of it by now.

That's great news. Is this supposed to fix some of the motion issues? What should we look for after the install?

As always, thanks.

I don't have cable, but I get my guide data off an antenna. One thing to check is to make sure you have analog channel 4 (WUNC PBS) in your guide - if you remove it (I did because I only wanted to watch the digital channels) TVGOS doesn't seem to be able to find it. Once I enabled it the guide downloads overnight.

Not sure that it helps in your situation tho,

-Jim

I didn't get a RP LCD though, I got the flat panel Sharp LC-26D7U LCD. I know I downsized from 57" to 26" (had to for certain reasons) but I like it. I has a beautifully sharp picture (especially with HD). It has 3 RF inputs, 1 for either air or cable analog input, 1 for digital cable, 1 for digital air. I connected my SA8300HD DVR into the HDMI input then switched to the DVI-I input to connect my Toshiba XS52 DVD recorder to the HDMI input.


pyedog,

Actually it worked fine when connected the way you have yours. But I removed OTA from the equation and replaced it with Cable on the input.

NBC17ENG,

Thanks for the update!!! Maybe you can donate your old equipment to Sinclair!!! Cheap bastards.

Along with a hefty rate increase, I noticed the stunning announcement in my cable bill yesterday- TWC is adding channels. 2 religious channels. Boy, I know you're all as excited as I am (not).

So ... no new HD channels (it's been well over 1 year with no HD additions), and no decent channel additions (ex. NFL Network, ESPNU, etc.). Good 'ol Time Warner is just counting our money.

In defense of Time Warner, they are one of the first operators to roll out digital simulcast of analogue channels in order to eventually reclaim needed bandwidth for future HDTV and VOD programming. They have corporately signed deals to roll out a variety of HD content in the near future. These deals are technically and legally complicated. All providers, cable and satelliite, are aggressively moving toward the future. This is all very expensive. If you want it, expect to pay for it. And don't expect things to happen overnight.

PS, no, I don't work for TWC, but I do respect their commitment to being a leader in the industry.

What religions are they planning to offer?

Incase nobody noticed yet. I just found 2 interactive channels on ch.591 (TWC News and Information) and ch.592 (PassTime Games).

Awesome! Not much but new things to play with is always good. And you still get PIP in the gaming window. Nice find.

Suprisingly fast reaction time as well. They play very smoothly.

What HD content? Dressler (Corp VP of programming) has implied that we'll get ESPN2HD "within the 1Q of 2006", and Universal HD was signed. Keep in mind, just because they strike an agreement, it can take months for the local TWC's to launch it (ex. Universal HD).

What if you operated a cable system and only 10% of your subscribers subscribed to an HDTV package, and the HDTV programmer insisted that his minimum compensation was based on 25% of your subscribers, and you knew that you wouldn't reach that point for a couple of years. These are the kind of issues cable and satellite operators have to deal with. That's why things take time. What would you do????

Univeral HD's programming is weak. Their distribution is limited. How much should they spend, and when. HDTV is an evolving product, and it has not yet reached the critical mass that is required for it to get all the focus and attention you would like to see. Quite frankly, at this point there's probably a whole lot more money to be made off standard definition video on demand than HDTV. And it requires a whole lot less of the precious bandwidth that is currently available. Patience, my friend, patience.

Chicken and egg problem. If *I* were doing it I would charge below my costs to get people on the service to start with and add channels as fast as I could and ramp prices as quickly as I could manage. What TWC (and, frankly DirecTV too) does is try to get people to pay way too much for way too little so that they can get all the money they need to add more channels by bilking their current subscribers. They don't want to invest because that affects the money given to shareholders and bonuses paid to the decision makers.

It's a complicated and expensive process with a built-in "catch 22". If TWC had more HD content, they would probably get more HD subscribers, and if they had more HD subscribers, they would carry more HD content. Can't answer that one, but every time I go Circuit City or Best Buys, the only TV's I see walking out the door are the HDTV's. So in my unofficial opinion, TWC should be positioning themselves in that direction a little faster than they are now.

Believe me, I understand that HDTV represents a very small percentage of subscribers. However, it is undeniable that ALL other cable and satellite providers are being much more agressive with their HD content carriage agreements- realizing that more and more consumers are buing HDTVs. That's my problem with TWC- they are so monolithic and non-progressive. I recently visited some friends, one of whom had Cox and another who had Adelphia. Both had a much fuller HD line-up, and a much better SD channel assortment. For example, did you know that TWC is the only one of the top 5 cable providers who does not carry the NFL Network? Their reasoning is that "only real fans" want it, and that it would not represent something that is "widely appealing". So ... using that logic, I suppose the Speed Channel, the Golf Channel, the numerous shopping channels, etc, etc-- do represent channels with wide appeal?

As for Universal HD ... I agree. It's worthless. I'm in no hurry for it, but, at least it would be something. Read through this and other forums-- TWC HD subs are fed up with getting absolutely nothing for almost a year and half, while every other provider adds and adds.

I'm just so sick of TWC saying they are an innovator and are responsive to their subscribers. They just are not-- in fact, they use their cable division to subsidize their other corporate interests. No wonder we see Comcast commercials constantly.

I haven't seen anything on satellite that makes me want their HD service. Sure they have some Voom castoffs if yo uwant to pay but local stations? Do DirectTV actually send an HD signal or are you still required to have a OTA antenna for those? The cost of most Sat HD packages I've seen is higher than TWC and includes content available for free with TWC Digital.

Sure some other cable providers have more channels and some have less available but I've yet to see one cableco who is providing every channel available to all markets.

Not a "catch 22" yet. My guess is that most HDTV owners are gobbling up whatever programming they can find, not, as you argue, waiting for more choice before they subscribe. HDTV still has not yet reached the magic "CRITICAL MASS", which I predict will occur somewhere in the 30% of TV household range. Comments???

Once again

1) There is still a paltry amount of HDTV programming available
2) A lot of it is recycled bulk
3) A relatively small percentage of viewers have HDTVs
4) HDTV channels are bandwidth hogs, bandwidth that can be used for more lucrative programming, like VOD

The bottom line is this:

The cable industy's near term strategy is to recover bandwidth allocated to analogue channels, which represents around 75% of the available bandwidth, but this will require set top boxes on ALL outlets in ALL households, not a cheap undertaking. Secondly, "switched video" will dramatically improve efficiency, but that also requires two-way capability at every outlet. But it will happen.

At some point in time, HDTV's or EDTV's will be in most all households. (Not sure, but I don't think that they even make analog TV's any more.) At that point, consumer demand will drive what the cable companies carry. My guess would be, mostly HD content. Sure HDTV is a bandwidth hog, but so is high speed Internet. Are you ready to go back to dialup?

The amount of available bandwidth is not the problem-- you're right, those degenerates out there downloading their porn using RoadRunner, get plenty of allocated bandwidth. But, TWC is unwilling to add bandwidth capability for the "paltry" (see earlier post) few of us HD customers. Therefore, they're not in any hurry to add HD channels, no matter how much we gripe.

Time Warner does not have as much downstream bandwidth assigned to both Road Runner & Digital Phone combined as one HDTV channel requires. Truth be known, high speed internet requires very little bandwidth, hell, you can send it down a phone line!!!!! Internet traffic is on a "time-share" basis. Each user shares the same small amount of bandwidth with all other users.

Anybody else not getting UNC stations on TWC-Cary? Channels 4, 201 to 204 are dead.

Robertmee;

All TWC UNC stations are fine here in Durham 201 thru 205 and Channel 9 is the analog UNC-TV and it is OK too.

Anyone else noticing WTVD's 5.1 audio change drastically about two months ago? I recently spoke to WTVD's chief engineer, who confirmed they had installed the Octimax 5.1 (www.linearacoustic.com). This box has many features, mainly an AGC to control audio levels from commercials, local news, and network feeds. It can also synthesize stereo into a 5.1 mix. Apparently, many stations are buying them.

In the last two months, everything airing in true DD 5.1 on ABC HD has comprssed dialog and audio that ramps up and down in the front and rears as the dialog comes and goes. For example, the lineups on Monday Night Football are absolutely unintellgible as the rear channels swell when the announcers lay out.

The dialog in the center is also so compressed it has a crunchy, borderline distorted quality. It really is quite noticeable on LOST.

I guess I am just looking for confirmation that my recordings don't lie and that WTVD needs to not process true DD material or do some serious callibration on the magic Octimax box.

Lemme know.

Re: WTVD HD audio processing

I agree 100%. I do not have DD 5.1, I just listen to WTVD's HDTV audio in stereo, and it definitely is overprocessed to the point of minor distortion. Very harsh, especially in music cresendos. I glad someone else has noticed this. Now, how do we get WTVD to fix it???

Me too.