Lexington, KY - HDTV - Page 3

http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/hdrec...grounding.html has good info on grounding antennas.

I'm curious, with the antenna elevated, do you get a signal for WTVQ and KET without the pre-amp? The pre-amp will amplify the signal (ideally to overcome losses in your lead line and connection devices such as splitters combiners, baluns, diplexers, etc.), but it will also amplify the "noise" floor as well. I've heard the number 15.2db thrown around as the minimum signal to noise ratio required for a DTV receiver to lock onto the signal. So if you don't have this 15.2db of head room between the noise and your signal, the pre-amp isn't going to help. For my educational purposes, I'd like to know if you need both height and the pre-amp, or was the height by itself good enough to provide signal lock? (What pre-amp did you end up using?)

WTVQ was having some problems last night when I peeked over there early in the evening (all black video signal, audio only)... So they may have been tweaking things later in the evening which may explain the 4:3 you mention. I ended up watching the football game on the analog station. They have been providing a 16:9/1280x720p signal on their DTV channel since early August. They upconvert and center the SD NTSC signal when they don't have 16:9 content to source.... but this is still a 16:9 signal with black "pillar bars" on the right and left sides.

I wish they would send the native ATSC (18 modes, 6 that are SD, 6 ED, and 6 HD) equivalent for 4:3 so my TV's wide and zoom modes would function for this 4:3 material... but they don't. I don't know if this is a technical hurdle or not. Maybe William Smith can comment and shed some light on this subject? But from what I've seen in the past, KET is doing this "right" in my book... WKYT and WTVQ are doing it differently.

WTVQ-DT was black between about 8:20 and 8:30, but came back in plenty of time for the game. (Is it just me, or are the colors on WTVQ-DT really washed out?)

Still having trouble with WKYT(27). Any news?

Ryan

I've only had my TV now for less than a week... although I've been watching stuff on a 19" VGA monitor since February. I have not had a chance yet to calibrate my TV yet using Avia. The HD I've seen on WTVQ has looked great to me so far... the SD PQ is all over the map. The football game last evening was in SD...

I've pinged them via e:mail and have not heard back... WKYT-DT is still glitching audio and video approximately 3-4 times a minute on my end. Hasn't changed since last FRI evening. Last night's HD lineup on CBS was a bust, I was able to salvage the UK vs FL game on SAT by muting the TV and listening to the game via the radio broadcast. But regular TV isn't viewable as long as this problem remains on WKYT-DT.

Thanks. I sent them an e-mail, too -- we'll see what happens.

Ryan

Ryan,
Your eyes do not deceive - WTVQ's SD feed has always been somewhat color deficient (even on analog) - often times just increasing your color saturation can bring some of the life back. However, to date, the HD feeds from ABC have always looked great. (Except, of course, when they are completely black )

As for WKYT, I suspect the monsoon last week had something to do with their problems - I'm going to e-mail them today on this and another matter.

HDC

Just heard back from WKYT:


Sounds like they're running on Windows XP.

Seriously, though, it's good they're aware of it and are working on it. I'm sure there's a learning curve for this stuff for the tech staffs at a lot of these smaller market stations.

Ryan

Here's my reply from WKYT:

I think I see where the problem is... right here!

... the flux capacitor just needs a little more POWER! ;-)

Good news. That darn Flexicoder again...

BTW, I checked out the HD signal on WTVQ tonight -- it does look *much* better colorwise than the SD stuff (and not just in the ways you'd expect it to).

Ryan

Yes, I did receive signal lock without the pre-amp on WTVQ and KET. However, I could not get all three LEX stations at a strong level together. When I added the pre-amp, it boosted my signal for WTVQ to match that of WKYT and KET. So now all three are showing excellent signal strength! I have not experienced any "noise" from the pre-amp.
.
I bought a Blonder-Tongue (sp?) from Radio Electronics in Lexington. They were really nice people and very helpful. That is also where I bought my Channelmaster antenna.

Does anyone know if WLEX is on schedule for a November debut??

I recieved an e:mail from WLEX this week indicating that it will be 1Q03 at the earliest for WLEX-DT.

I wouldn't be surprised to see WLEX DTV on local cable before they do OTA... time will tell.

Boooooooooo .... hissssssssssssssss

Yet another nail in the coffin for "Must See TV"

HDC

I believe WLEX doesn't have a construction permit for its proposed DTV station yet, Last I heard they were planing to be on Channel 39 from WTVQ's tower but I haven't heard anything lately.


As to why stations are using SD Upconverted material as a filler an HD program stream, current generation tuners do not make clean switches from (HD to SD or the reverse) in the same program service ( it has to do with re-sizing the video buffers on the fly), at KET we chose to live with it for now and plan to make the switch to PBS HD about 2 minutes before each HD broadcast, we know it will be ugly.


HD is coming to KET soon.... just hang on...


William

Excellent! Can't wait! Thanks William!

Did anyone notice anything different today with the WKYT-DT CBS football game? WKYT-DT turned off their two additional multicast channels and re-directed the bandwidth to the single HD channel on 13.1 which my HiPix reported as 19.1Mbps. The PQ in regard to motion artifacts was much improved, including the CBS "It's all here" promo. To date, when they're multicasting on all three channels, my Hipix reports 15.1Mbps on 13.1, 3.0Mbps on 13.2, and 1.0Mps on 13.3.

My understanding is that CBS provides a 45Mbps feed to their local affiliates and the local affiliates actually produce the compressed MPEG-2 stream we see via our HD tuners. I wonder if WKYT-DT could possibly give us 720p for sports programming?

Thank you WKYT for the extra quality today! It made a huge difference to my eyes! Could we possibly see this 19.1Mpbs rate during primetime as well?

ragamuffin,

Yep I noticed .... I was going to send them an e-mail suggesting that they nix the 480p (.2) simulcast channel when they have real HD programming. I really don't see the point in simulcasting the same program on .1 and .2 ..... Now if we can just get them to throw the switches on time ......

As for 720p - I wouldn't hold my breath. My receiver would just turn it back into 1080i anyway - two conversions vs. none ..... hummmm

HDC

William,
You may be right there ... the latest filing in the FCC's online database is dated in fall of 2001 and status is "approved for filing." There is no actual "CP granted" entry to be found.

HDC

Anybody else here excited that the beautiful Commonwealth will be shown in HDTV this weekend. I only wish I was going to be home to see it. But alas, I will be at the game!

I had to drive by the stadium today so I went and checked out the CBS trucks. They had HD on the sides from "Core Digital Technologies". Here is their website.

http://www.coredigitaltech.com/

Somebody give me an update of how it looked.

There could be another chance when LSwho comes to town.

pjohnscpa,

I'm excited too... my wife gave my tickets away... so I'll be camped at home taping it on my HiPix. I'll post some screen shots!

Go Cats! Beat them Dawgs!

Rescan your channels! We have a new signal in the air tonight!!!

Ok ... who? WDKY? WLEX? give us a clue what to look for ( I might have to put up my VHF antenna ...)

HDC

who? that's too easy! ;-)

a clue... it's not on the VHF band... so it's not WDKY-DT! clue#2, it's a UHF channel between ABC's and CBS's DT.

"they" were on last night and I caught them for the 10:00pm-11:00pm hour... they signed off after 11:00pm. No sign of them yet again this morning.

Go Cats!

 

uk_florida.zip 276.12109375k . file

Interesting .... I assume this is an actual Lexington station and not a bounce ?

I notice WKYT seems to have reconfigured to one subchannel just in time for the game this afternoon ...

HDC

PS. I originally asked because I have to be careful with doing rescans on my E86 - can cause wacky problems with the local program guide data.

Oh, OK .... I found it ... at least maybe the 2 stragglers will be shamed into getting off their butts now

HDC

Are you talking about Pax on Ch 21?

A little bird told me there was tower work at WDKY's analog site last week and WDKY's proposed new tower was denied by LFUCG.

As I've said before WLEX can't do anything (even buy the equipment) until the FCC gives them a construction permit so its not really their fault.

Yes! It's PAX on DT-21, WUPX-DT out of Morehead/Lexington. Sorry for the elusiveness, but just wanted to get everyone into a "rescan" mode mindset here in the next few weeks so that we can alert each other as to when new stations come up on DT as we approach the Nov. 1st date!

I had heard the LFUCG info on WDKY several months ago. I thought I had heard that they had a secondary gameplan? If I'm reading between your lines, maybe they'll be doing the DT thing from their analog tower soon? I'll keep channel scanning! Thanks for the chirp, William!

I've e:mailed just about every station in town at some time or another... Everyone has been very helpful and informative in their responses, even WLEX. However, with that said, WLEX appears from my perspective to not be very aggressive on the DTV front. I'm sure if they really wanted to be up on Nov 1st, they could have been... makes one wonder if the CP issue is just a dance with the FCC? Is there any way to find out why the CP hasn't been granted by the FCC? It's a shame too, from what I understand, WLEX has all new digital facilities and could possibly provide the first locally originated live HD content, if they really wanted to.

Well folks ... 11 hours to go and still not a peep out of WDKY-DT Ch4 ... Sad when PAX beats two of the "Big 4" on the air ....

HDC

WDKY has until Dec 1 per the documents on the FCC's web site..

Whoops .... I must have been baffled by the mountain of extensions to the extention requests

But sheesh ... even PAX managed to get on the air ... Oh well I guess we're still doing better than L'ville.

HDC

Ok Guys. I've been lerking for months now, and am finally jumping in. I've got a problem with my reception of WKYT-DT. I've got a channelmaster 4228 in the attic with a 100ft lead to the receiver (Toshiba DST-3000) and generally get a signal of 100. From time to time, it goes to 51 or even 20, but picture is usually still ok. No matter the signal strength, when I press menu while tuned in to 13-1, it immediately switches off the digital feed and picks up the analog signal and says no signal strenght available. I switch the source via menu to local digital and select channel 13 and a 100 strength. Any thoughts?

Also, Last night during CSI, while tuned to DT, it switched to the analog signal on its own. Any thoughts?

I get no trouble with KET, TVQ or PAX.

By any chance, have you enabled the local program guide by entering your zipcode? If so, you may have to clear the zipcode entry. WKYT has been having trouble with their PSIP info conflicting with what DirecTV is sending out.

HDC

I do have my zip programmed in. I am having the same problem tonight during hack. I'll remove it right now and see how it works.

Lb2k