Mobile, AL / Panama City, FL - HDTV - Page 135

So here in Mobile, we'll have even less choice from public TV, since WSRE already carries World. And since both carry Create, that's even more wasted bandwidth in the overlapping area.

It follows the University of Alabama purchasing WHIL from Spring Hill College, giving us the APR programming that's almost exactly the same as WUWF in Pensacola. D'oh!

I sure wish WKRG and CW would lay off the subchannels. Some of the shows can just look horrible.

I understand your frustration re: WKRG. I don't know what the deal is but they definitely have some poor PQ on their subchannels. The CBS HD feed looks OK to me, though, but admittedly I only watch one show on the main channel (Craig Ferguson) so I don't log much time with that station. I did my time with MeTV though, and it could be so bad the MeTV bug would literally disappear from the screen during scenes with lots of movement. It was just a blocky mess. I don't know if that's on MeTV's end or maybe a setting with WKRG. I've seen other stations across the country with extra SD subchannels and they don't usually look as bad as what WKRG shows. Then again, some look worse. I guess it's all in the encoding equipment and the 'settings'.

Their football on 5-1 is also a blocky mess. IMO, they are by far the worst local provider for PQ (maybe 42), and it stinks because I record a lot of night time tv off WKRG this time of year, which looks like crap. It especially shows up in darker scenes, when compression tends to hit most.

55 was on of the better ones, until they added the subchannel, but now its not uncommon to see blocking during Supernatural. 3 looks great OTA, and 15 isnt bad but still has issues. Here is the bad thing, I cannot get 10 OTA so I have to get the HD feed via satellite, and it looks much better than WKRG can ever hope to do.

It would be nice if mpeg4 encoders had gotten cheap enough the locals could upgrade, then 2 or 3 subchannels would not matter. Regardless, I would rate Wkrg's PQ as poor compared to many other channels. I never thought we'd see the day where a show on A&E or USA would look better than a local HD channel OTA.

The cableco here is so bad, OTA and cable channels look about the same. Soft, fuzzy edges and some blockiness. Too many trees here for satellite, at least for now. (Riviera in Foley pulls everything off the air, so whatever they broadcast is passed on to us with express compression, no doubt.)

I can't get WALA either off the air with my current setup, even though if I got on my roof I could probably see their tower up in Spanish Fort. The few times its come in, it's been a great picture. I had forgotten about 55 adding that subchannel, and I agree it looked better when it was just CW.

15's big issue, at least to me, is they adamantly refuse to fix their audio issue. It sounds like the entire broadcast (stereo or Dolby Digital) is being downsampled to 32 or 22.05 kHz. The highs are raspy and rough. Watching news programs on the TV it isn't such a big deal, but if the stereo is on, the difference is like AM and CD. I've needled them before on it and got one response, "it sounds fine to us," then got ignored afterwards.

One question for you with WKRG, do you get dropouts on the main channel at all? Like, random glitches even if the signal is good? I get 100% signal strength on both my sets from them, and get periodic, regular audio and video "burps", only on that channel. It happens on cable (which gets it OTA as well) but not as much. I've tried attenuating for overload and amplifying, no dice.

I do get the "burps" on WKRG, another reason Ive just quit recording OTA with them. I watch too much CBS each week now, and those are annoying.

Anyone got WKFK up in Mobile?

^No (not from midtown Mobile). Did you receive programming from the station?

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=90

Based on the reception report from TVFool, decent reception of WKFK is pretty much only available west of Schillinger Road / McDonald Road / Padgett Switch Road in Mobile County... Otherwise, the reception is pretty poor or spotty depending on your location.

If it means anything, WKFK is on our Riviera Cable in Foley on the glorious analog tier. They must have one heck of an antenna setup because we're well outside the coverage area but the picture is… well, good is relative, but it's not snowy or dropping out.

WKFK also owns NCN, which sells the local ad time on Riviera Cable. I believe the whole operation is running out of WKFK's facilities in Pascagoula, so there has to be some kind of IP pipeline between Pascagoula and Foley.

Did anyone saw this on Fox10?????

Fox10 just air a Papa John's commercial... in Spanish only...

Does that mean in the future the Hispanic population in Pensacola will start their local TV business for Univision? Just hoping because have 3 subchannels here.

What program did the Papa John's commercial air during?

It probably doesn't mean anything other than Papa Johns sees an opportunity and no other TV outlet caters to Hispanics, so…

I remember years ago when I lived in B'ham, WIAT CBS 42 ran a Susan Schein Chevrolet ad in Spanish only, just one time, and it generated so much outrage they never did another Spanish language commercial. I would like to think that, these many years later, Mobile and Pensacola would be a little more, er, progressive in that respect.

Of course, Birmingham then and now has tons more Spanish speakers than Mobile or Pensacola do, I believe. Even now, post-immigration crackdown, there's still three or four fulltime Spanish music stations scattered around up there.

During from News to Jeopardy.

But I wonder what APT carries V-me on its new subchannel. It'll be B'ham second Spanish subchannel if they decide to add it

Did anyone have issues during the Alabama / LSU game? 20 minutes or so of tiling and blockiness?

My PQ OTA was a blocky, garbled mess.The windows media center recording, when edited down with VideoRedo, has multiple studders where sections had to be edited out to stabilize the video. I also recorded the game on my Directv HR-24, but have not yet tried to edit it down and observe the quality.

CBS always looks like blocky kaka on fball.

Since they're announcing that TheCoolTV's returning, can anyone call WFGX MyTV 35 and tell them that they have plans of bring TheCoolTV back?

I'm counting on you and we are too.

I don't think there's any chance of WFGX bringing back TheCoolTV. I heard the reason it was dropped was because Sinclair wasn't paid in a timely manner so they terminated the agreement with all of their stations.
With Sinclair's purchase of WPMI and WJTC....that rules them out too.

However, LIN does have TheCoolTV on some of their stations. WALA would have the best shot of ever picking it up since they don't have a subchannel. WFNA is bad enough PQ wise as it is with Bounce TV on 55.2.

And the FCC green-lighted that transaction, just the other day......

This article explains the transaction involving WPMI-TV and WJTC-TV:

"The FCC approves assignment of broadcast licenses for WPMI-TV and WJTC-TV"

I was not aware that W30BX was off the air. Actually, I found it a nuisance. I got very poor reception of it over here in Spanish Fort, but my TV would always pick it up on a scan, and I was not able to delete it. So I scanned again, and it was gone.

To anyone with Dish, I just had a Hopper install in West Mobile and installed the single tuner OTA module. Its got great strength, and is the first device I can actually watch Wala with.

http://www.thecooltv.com/ChannelGuide.php

Call Fox 10 that you want this channel.

I am in West Mobile near the airport. Lately I am getting Channel 25.1 WXXV and 25.2 OTA. 25.3 is there but has no programming. Don't know if this is a fluke, pretty consistent the last couple weeks. My TV must autoscan or something. Sometimes it adds channels on its own. Channel 25 is about 180 degrees behind me from the antennas along I10 in Baldwin county.

I miss CoolTV too. It was my dog's favorite channel.

WXXV 25.3 is "Coming soon". Supposed fo be MyN per Trip's website.

Oh, er, right, I was supposed to pull that listing a long time ago when they decided two HD plus an SD would look too poor.

- Trip