Mobile, AL / Panama City, FL - HDTV - Page 128

Being something of a new area resident, I get the impression that WALA is coasting on reputation. They have the worst commercial digital signal on the coast, the most outdated news set and graphics and appear to be the least HD capable. The news and weather crews seem heavy with kids fresh out of journalism school. Yet they are the most watched news in Mobile. Their parent company always plays hardball with the cable companies, too. Like anyone in Mobile or Pensacola could watch them without cable carriage!

The football game broadcast by WPMI-TV came from Cox Sports Television, not NBC, which means WPMI-TV pre-empted all NBC programming between 7:00 PM and 10:00 PM yesterday. The weather sub-channel could have been used for the pre-empted programs or WJTC-TV if it were not for the football game with the Jaguars of the University of South Alabama.

Actually, the Saints preseason games are produced by CST, or Cox Sports Telvision out of New Orleans. CSTV is now known as CBS Sports Network, which until a few months ago, was known as CBS College Sports Network.

I believe UTV44 had a hand in producing the South telecast, since Pat Greenwood was one of the people on the telecast.

I meant to type Cox Sports Television, since I typed articles about it and the games broadcast by WPMI-TV and WJTC-TV before. I get Cox Sports Television and College Sports Television mixed up sometimes due to their similar abbreviations.

Agree totally. I have lived in the Mobile area since 1981, and 10 has gone from clearly the best news operation to second or third fiddle. It surprises me they would be dominating any time slot. Which slots are they winning?

http://classic.lagniappemobile.com/a...ID=4789&sid=18

According to the "Media Frenzy" column in the current Lagniappe, it appears that WKRG has wrestled away the top ratings slot for its 5, 6 and 10pm newscasts. WALA may stll be winning mornings, and no matter what the ratings are, Studio10 will likely remain on the air as long as it keeps turning a profit.

Add to the fact that WALA's GM has "disappeared" from the station, It looks like LIN could be well aware that WALA is slipping and that major changes could be coming to bring the ratings back up.

On the flip side, the mention of WKRG's furloughs has to have an impact of them. It seems their quality has suffered over the past two years, when back in 2009, they laid off about 30 people over a period of several months and instituted furloughs that year. Their parent company seems to be in trouble, because their newspapers have been losing large amounts of money for years, and the profits from their television stations have been trying to prop up the company and pay off their debt. This latest round of furloughs has to be a major kick in the pants because I would imagine their staff is streched thinly enough already.

That I don't know. I just heard that they were #1 in for the most part with WKRG also hitting the top spot from time to time. My guess would be the 9 pm news, I think Fox affiliates' news usually beat out network programming in many markets since there's no other competition.

I did not realize the format for the old Lagniappe was still being used for new articles until esdx posted the link. Here is a link to the Lagniappe site with the new Page Turn Pro format.

wala fox 10 i dont know how they even stay around you cant even pick them up over the air i dont even watch them anymore since i cant pick them up i wish wfgx 35 would pick up fox since u can pick them up

Went to the Alabama Kent State game yesterday, and recorded WJCT OTA and MSG feed on Directv.

The good news: Nice HD Station ID in full high def. Game cleared in full high def, and the signal did not fluctuate back into standard def like I have seen in past years with the SEC game of the week network on WJCT.

The bad news: The whole game originating from Tuscaloosa was plagued with some kind of funky technical problem. It looked like a camera out of registration, but the problem persisted from all cameras. Red jumped around all over the place on the Tide's crimson jerseys, and it sometimes looked as if there were a gray superimposed border around a red area. Other colors were affected also. I will post a frame capture if anyone is interested in seeing the phenomenon.

The good news is the problem was definitely not caused locally. The MSG feed had it also. I hope this is an isolated problem, and will not be repeated throughout the season.

More good/bad news. With the WPMI/WJCT recent updates, they apparantly now have the ability to put a local crawl over a high def network feed. Good if you want a weather bulletin: bad if it persists throughout the telecast and detracts from it. The crawl area was larger than it needed to be and I tired quickly of it. It will not cause me to do business with Ashley Furniture, whose logo adorned every milisecond of the crawl.

MSG had a persistent score crawl, but it was smaller in area. Easier to live with.

Great article. Thanks much for the link to Lagniappe link. That publication may be the only alternative news outlet we have. God forbid we should lose it.

I thought the quote from the WKRG GM was quite telling:

Contacted by this reporter for comment about the furloughs, WKRG General Manager Joe Goleniowski had little to offer about the situation.

"Why should I give you any information when you've got a history of terrible journalism? You've got a garbage publication. Goodbye, Goleniowski said.

What motivated that kind of response? I do not know who pulled his chain, and maybe there is some kind of history between that reporter or WKRG and Lagniappe that would cause that kind of hostility, but if I had been the Lagniappe reporter, I would have used the quote in exactly the same way.

If Lagniappe is so horrible, then how would he characterize the Press Register? On every level that matters, I would say that the opinion leaders in this town are far more likely to be influenced by the former rather than the latter.

Another possible addition of HDTV....

WKRG's broadcast of "Tide & Tigers Today" appeared to be in HD yesterday!

As for the Alabama game over on WJTC, I originally thought it was a local problem with the colors separating....they were initially running the same crawl WPMI has been running...while keeping the game in HD. When this crawl went away, the game appeared to be airing normally on their broadcast signal.

Since the same problem happened on the MSG feed (which isn't in my DirecTV package) it could have very well have been a network issue.

The bleed on the MSG feed also disappeared into its broadcast. I was ready to pop on my red/cyan 3D glasses and see if it was a 3D experiment.

When I re-scan the channels, I see the name "WPMV-1 21.6"...

Do y'all know what's wrong with it? It works fine...

I have an HD Homerun Tuner which I run through MediaCenter. It shows 21.1,21.2,21.3.21.4, and 21.5, none of which are operational at this time, but all of which have worked fine in the past. The tuner in my Samsung plasma shows exactly the same 21.6 channel you mentioned, and only that channel, and it is working fine.

Funny thing is, I do not remember recently doing a scan on the Samsung tuner, so I can't imagine why it would be current, and the HD homerun would not be.

I am going to refrain from doing a scan right now, to see how the issue resolves. Sounds like something is going on at the transmitter.

Yesterday all the subchannels worked except for 21.1 TBN, today they're all blank for me, but with 100% signal strength.

Well... I swear I got all the channels scanned perfectly without screwing up but it's still the same for WMPV...

Does other TBN stations have the same reason yet???

A very good solution for the Semmes area is the Channel Master CM-2018 High VHF/UHF antenna (mounted outside) WALA broadcasts its digital signal on VHF 9. Electronics World in the Loop area of Mobile carries CM products.

Looks like they had an encoder go bad. TBN programming is being reported on 21.6 while the multiplex is offline. Should be a few days before order is restored and 21.1-5 come back to life.

Some good news and bad news in the world of digital and HD television here in Mobile-Pensacola....

Just checked my Insignia DTV box and WMPV is back broadcasting all 5 channels as 21.1-21.5...

Last night, WKRG pre-empted a repeat of 48 Hours Mystery at 7pm to air a 1 hour documentary on the Honor Flight program, hosted by Bill Riales. It was presented in widescreen, with certain segments that appeared to be HD. It did contain a lot of archive footage from WWII which had to be formatted in order to fit the screen properly. Judging from the program, it appears that Bill could have done it all by himself, which if that was the case, he should be commended.

Since I normally set the DVR to record 48 Hours Mystery, it picked up the airing which aired sometime overnight (likely after the Late Late show)...it's one of the few shows that CBS runs that is not in HD. I scanned through it just to see if they recorded it in HD, but it was entirely in SD, including the commercials. Since WKRG seldom pre-empts network programming anymore, it may not justify time-shifting it in HD yet.

Over on 44 today for the Auburn game, all looked really good until right at 2:30 when they switched over to another program, but switched immediately back to the game. Most likely it was a glitch in the system since the game was only scheduled to run until 2:30 but ran over...

I was watching at a friend's house with Comcast, so now WJTC is feeding their HD signal on them. I can only hope DirecTV picks up their HD signal soon, since these games themselves should be enough of a reason to warrant HD coverage. Now that more than half of their schedule is in HD, I hope DirecTV gets the message soon, despite their lack of a network affiliation.

Comcast's cable TV customers are now receiving TBN Enlace programming instead of the main programming from TBN broadcast by WMPV-TV. Here is an article with more details:

"WMPV-TV restores all programming feeds; Comcast TV customers receive wrong feed"

Comcast customers are receiving the main programming from TBN again. I noticed the programming was back by 12:00 PM.

I watched some of their broadcast OTA, and it looked just fine in hd. But not on directv. Poor quality, even in SD. The game was in a small centered box. Not sure why that is. Channel 55 is in HD on directv, I assume, becuase they are the CW affiliate. Come on directv, let's fix that!!

55 is being carried because it is the CW, but Direct doesn't carry all CW in most DMAs yet. The lack of network affliation is probably the reason why 44 isn't carried in HD yet. I think Direct has very few independent local channels in HD. We are lucky to have local CW and PBS in HD by Direct. But at least WJTC is significantly easier to pick than WALA and WJTC is showing the SEC games in HD.

I am still looking for Mediacom customers in the Spanish Fort area who are satisfied with the high def offerings on cable. I tried them in 2007, and found the picture to be unacceptable. I was told that I could have improved the PQ with a cable card, but did not try that.

I will even broaden the question. Are there any high def afficionados in Spanish Fort - Daphne - Fairhope that are using Mediacom and satisfied with the service.

Particularly interested to see if anyone is using the service with a cable card.

I had a prior post asking whether anyone is using the Ceton card, but never got an answer. Homerun HD prime comments (fat chance) would also be welcome.

Mobile folks, if you have any experience with these devices, please also speak up!

I'm curious how a cable card could change the picture quality.

I can't see how it would make that much difference either, quite frankly. I am just waiting for someone to appear who will tell me they have great service, and clean, clear high def signal.

I didn't see anything like that several years ago, using the Motorola DVR they brought me then. The basic cable signal was simply not tolerable.

But the installer told me from the beginning I would be happier with the cable card. Should have taken him up on it!

I'm going way out of my wheelhouse here, but I suppose the cable card is just the unit to authorize the device to decode the signal, right? So any quality improvement would be between the hardware of the DVR or TV with the card and the box from the cableco.

As far as I'm concerned, every cable outlet I've seen has had an inferior HDTV picture compared to DirecTV. I've never seen a U-Verse or Fios setup so I can't comment on those. Our Riviera Cable here in Foley is just awful. Everything is overcompressed and many of the channels can't be fast forwarded or rewound through the DVR without it going haywire. No channel is as sharp as off-the-air locals in HD like our local CW and ABC stations. NBC looked good until their so-called "upgrade", now it's noticeably fuzzy and has some sort of ghosting issues. When I had DirecTV there were sound dropouts occasionally and of course rain fade, but the dropouts via cable, the picture glitches and other visual "tics" are in a whole 'nother world of bad.

I think the box is made by Pace, which the cable people say is a step down from the Motorola "but it's all we have to rent out now".

Maybe the decoding circuitry is inferior in the Motorola cable box, or maybe the person who said the cable card looked better was blowing smoke. To me, cable is just not going to look good, period, compared to satellite, fiber or U-Verse, and I feel confident saying that despite having never seen the latter two in person!

uverse hd is junk, their hd streams are compressed down to about 5.5 mbps

is your a long way from the VRAD, its like watching a dodgy digital OTA signal

verizon is all fiber and their PQ is suppose to rival DIRECTV's

I make the same assumptions as you, and I would be surprised if I got a positive report from any cable user. But it never hurts to check. Sometimes we can be surprised, but probably not!!