Mobile, AL / Panama City, FL - HDTV - Page 133

I was something of a skeptic about the efficacy of power levels on high-VHF. Here in the Dallas-Ft. Worth DMA, WFAA increased just a tad from 45 to 55 kW in April 2010 (less than 1 dB of difference). Theoretically that should have been negligible but the real world worked out quite differently.

As one metric, a television equipped with non-amped rabbit ears here some 40 miles out, went from an occasional lock on WFAA (RF-8) to a solid signal 24/7. No change whatsoever was made here at the receiving end. That slight boost in power by WFAA was evidently enough to get past the digital cliff and provide more power density.

As far as I know, everyone in the whole DMA that had similar problems also benefited with that smallish 10 kW increase.

...On many channels off the back of my Channel Master 4228 that I do not normally receive. It is in my attic in a fixed location, so reception would have been a lot better and I'll bet I could have gotten New Orleans stations and maybe more, had I been able to reorient.

WDAM Hattisburg
7.1 WDAM-DT
7.2 This TV
7.3 Bounce

WLOX Biloxi (No CBS sub-channel, yet)
13.1 WLOX-DT
13.2 24X7 We
13.3 Bounce

WMAH Biloxi
19.1 WMAH SD
19.2 WMAH HD
19.3 WMAH CR

WHLT Laurel Hattisburg
22.1 WHLTHD
22.1 WHLT DT2
22.3 WHLT DT3

WLBT Jackson (Cutting in and out, but sometimes looking perfect)
3.1 WLBT-DT
3.2 Bounce

Wow, that's pretty cool. The last couple of nights have been good for FM DX; I logged Alexandria and Lafayette, LA on Friday. The sports station on 106.1 in NO completely wiped out the station from Pensacola for the entire night last night. I didn't think to check the TV too.

WPMI-TV will be getting a new set.

Not sure it has been mentioned, but I just read on WALA's Facebook page that along with the new set they will be upgrading their graphics package for the HD switch. They said the completion date is late April. Their old package is at least 7 years old, I think.

Man, I've been wrong about everything lately.

Are y'all surprised that WAWD finally made it to southwest Alabama when Dish Network added it on their local channel list. It happened last night and now we got 12 on Dish.

I hope Dish Network adds WBQP-CA.:-D

Meanwhile over on DirecTV, WPAN is back on channel 53.

Just what we need, another channel of nothing but infomercials.

WLOX's CBS subchannel is up and running
http://www.wlox.com/story/17360048/w...s-cbs-addition

From what i've heard, it's only in SD.

Thanks for the update, Mario!

Local 15 was off the air for a while this evening for some reason. Around the time they went off we lost all the digital tier locals (in the 800s) on Riviera Cable here in Foley and they're still not back on. :-(

With WALA's launch tonight, with it comes HD spots, spots stretched to 16x9, and on WFNA, zoom-o-vision (taking the 4x3 frame and zooming in to where the sidebars are half the size they normally are, and cutting off the frame in the process....Access Hollywood and TMZ were doing this.

The most definitive sign was the late night repeat of Alcatraz in HD, normally it is in letterbox...hopefully our prayers of WALA/WFNA FINALLY running HD content in HD are soon to be answered!

There's always some teething when a station debuts HD news. I recorded it and just watched it. Everything looks pretty good and some of the field reports appeared to be HD or near to it as well.

WALA is not my #1 news choice but I'm happy they're making the effort . That old graphics package was cringe-inducing because it was so out of date.

Now we cross our fingers and hope Local 15 makes the switch tomorrow!

I second that emotion!

A picture of the new set for WPMI-TV is on their Facebook page now.

I've been a fan of Local 15's news presentation since moving down here a while back, so maybe I'm biased, but I think their HD setup for news is head and shoulders above Fox 10's. WALA has a nice giant touchscreen the hosts can play with, but the weather graphics still look a little clip-arty. Both stations appear to have gotten their hands on HD field cameras, which many early HD-adopters failed to do, probably due to cost.

Between these two events and Pensacola's talker WCOA 1370 taking over 100.7 FM, it's been an eventful media weekend on the coast.

Agreed, WPMI really outdone themselves on their move to HD and WALA was a disappointment. Outside of their HD launch, many of their spots are airing in stretch-o-vision and it seems that they are still working out the bugs that can come with a HD switchover while WPMI/WJTC chose to upgrade their master control months ago and was ready to handle HD content.

Still, we can only hope that WALA/WFNA can FINALLY pass through syndicated HD content! The first test is Nate Berkus at 9am....will they pass?

Yep!

Cudos to both stations and their owners for finally going HD in news and local production.

I would like to see less stretch-o-vision as the HD concept further matures.

Unfortunately, Nate Berkus was probably the ONLY non-news show on WALA in HD today. Most everything else, including Dr. Phil, People's Court & Jeopardy was in stretch-o-vision!!!

I'm sure they're working out the bugs, but this has to be the roughest HD transitition i've seen so far...

WALA-TV broadcast "The Wendy Williams Show" in high definition and the 16:9 aspect ratio today.

I wonder why some syndicated programs are in HD but some like Jeopardy! are still in SD, stretched, on WALA? Wouldn't they all pass through the same satellite receivers and HD board equipment?

am glad i moved away from there and moved to dallas tx here everything is in hd and here the kdfw fox 4 i can pick up here unlike wala fox 10 i couldnt even pick them up and i love the news here the sets are wonderful

The professionalism and quality of your local newscasts should be better because you're in market #5. Mobile-Pensacola-FWB is market #60.

From my perspective, I think Local 15 punches a few markets above its weight, if that makes sense. WKRG is probably average for this size, and WEAR and WALA lag behind in professionalism, quality of reporters and presentation. All the stations seem to suffer more technical glitches, misspelled words and screwups than I think is appropriate for this market size. Local 15 might be the worst offender in that respect.

Having said that, all the stations are a breath of fresh air compared to the four years I lived in Mississippi, where my TV stations were split between three markets and only two stations had "local" news. WABG Greenwood (market #187) and WTVA Tupelo (market #133) were the only ones relevant to my region, and WABG was like watching a bad high school media class each night. WTVA was much better than you'd expect in such a small market, though, and also went HD for news ~3 years ago.

If Dallas did not blow Mobile away, considering the market differential, there would be something badly wrong. Larger audience=greater ad revenue=better news department budget.

But there has been a tremendous decline in the quality of local news and the amount of money that station owners spend on their news departments in the past several decades.

It is just a sign of the times, unfortunately. And it followed the decline of newtwork news operations.

I hate the decline. I may be relatively young but I prefer the local news and national news on the old three networks to getting everything off the internet.

Don't get me wrong, I spend hours a day reading and commenting about news online, but I still like to settle down for the news on TV each day.

No arguement from me on that!

A step closer on WALA...Jeopardy and Wheel are now in HD!

How is WALA/WFNA coming across on your cable or satellite system in SD? DirecTV is letterboxing the 16x9 frame during local news shows and any 4x3 content that is being displayed properly is now window-boxed and stretched content is letterboxed in 16x9. Is this one of the added perks of the Fox "Splicer"?

I've yet to see any HD on WFNA other than CW programming, and at least they're back to airing content in properly pillarboxed SD instead of zoom-o-vision.

I can only hope that stretch-o-vision is a temporary problem and that it's not going to be like it is on cable and satellite channels in the attempt to "fill the screen" with as much "HD" content as possible. If they are really sending out a special feed to all cable and satellite providers in the market, then their OTA viewers are REALLY at the bottom of their list!

Speaking of window-boxing, I see it on WFBD on Directv (channel 48). The channel claims that they are putting out shows in HD, even though DirecTV is only carrying them in SD. For anyone who can actually pick up WFBD, are they really in HD? It seems to me that they are only capable of producing HD content in their facility, but not able to air it.

Good to hear about Jeopardy! and Wheel. That's progress. Now if they can just fix the stretch-o-vision issues we'll be doing good.

I get Blab TV on Riviera Cable's HD locals tier and it's windowboxed. I don't know if they are able to get WFBD directly off air or they're getting Blab via WHBR 33.3. On 33.3 it's SD.

And now WAWD is on channel 58 of DirecTV. It only comes up on my HD boxes (it's probably an MPEG-4 channel) and it's in 720p HD, but the picture is about 10 percent smaller than the frame and it's in the 16x9 ratio. Is the same thing happening on Dish?

I wonder what's keeping DirecTV from providing WFGX and WJTC in HD now....