Louisville, KY - HDTV - Page 5

Ductape,
I don't know about the same tower, but I think most of the towers are located in about the same area (floyds knobs, IN?).

I just checked Titan. They show FOX live by Nov. 1, WAVE by Dec. 15 & WLKY by Jan. 31. The best way to get a feel for live timing is to go to the FCC site and check for each stations request for an extension. You can use the extension date to get an idea, but when it gets close they just get another extension. So even that's not reliable.

I sent an email to Jim Mercer at WLKY asking if he could confirm the Jan. 1 date. Been a couple of days with no reply.

Larry

WKPC-DT IS at full licensed power.

Will,

What has happened to the HD pass through at WKPC. You guys went down in the summer to upgrade and once you came back up is only multicast. Have you abandoned HDTV? I am a PBS viewer who hopes this is just a temporary anomaly. When will HD pass thru resume at WKPC?

Just got a reply from Jim Mercer at WLKY on their estimated live date:

"It does look as through we will be on in Mid to late January. The
installtion crew is scheduled to begin insatlling our transmitter in
November and are projecting 6-8 weeks.

Jim"

Forget CSI this season.
Larry

lapplegate, yea, I gave up following the 'live' dates shown by FCC/Titan, since all they do is keep pushing the dates back. At this point I simply say it'll happen whenever it happens. From what I've gleaned about the tower/transmission building stuff, several of the stations will be sharing the tower. And until that transmitter building is completed none of them will be on air. And last I heard (from this site) it was happening Oct/Nov. Which mean right now. And give in some time to troubleshoot, I don't see anymore DTV in Louisville until at LEAST Jan 1. I was hoping to watch '24' on Fox's fake HDTV but I doubt that will happen now.

William: Trust me we haven't forgotten WKPC! We just take you for granted now

Although I too have been wondering when you might return to passing the HDTV stuff too.

We have no plans to resume the HD passthrough like we did before, All HD will be fed from the Network Center in Lexington. We are in the process of debugging the enhanced system that will feed the entire network right now.

Hang in there..

William

William - what exactly does that mean for us who would like to see PBS's HD content? Will it be played on 15-# in the future? Or on another channel?

15-4 will be the HD feed when available. KET just issued a press release on digital television last week, That's why I can't say much...

William

William, is the PBS HD feed going to be refed at a lower resolution? If you are going to have the other sub-channels and datacasting then the HD feed will have to be retransmitted at a lower resolution. If this is true, what will the resolution be 480p?

As I said I can't really talk about it, our communications department gets upset with me if I let out any information before they do.

No it won't be in 480P it will be better than that. You are not quite correct in that to reduce bandwidth we have to reduce the resolution, 1080i can be shown in 12-15 Mbps. PBS material in general is not as bandwidth demanding as most of the material on the commercial stations.

William,

Thanks (I think) for the update. At least there is still hope for PBS 1080i. Hopefully Insight will not degrade the KET reduced bandwidth signal once they get their hands on it in the cable process.

Anybody got any news on WBKI (WB) or WFTE (UPN)? Where will their towers be in relation to the big 3 in the Knobs? How soon? Anyone else send an email to these stations. I get no further reply from WBKI.

It appears that Whas HD is now on full time.

Interesting. Wonder what prompted them to flip the switch full time? Next step is full/more power transmissions.

An interesting side note, my DirectTV OTA recevier (Hughes E86) finally started displaying WHAS's guide info on the digital channel a few weeks ago. Before that it displayed the generic "Regular Programming" on the guide for all time slots. A few weeks ago the guide data reflected the actual shows for WHAS-DT, and showed "SIGN OFF" from morning until 4PM, when programming began. If still does that. I wonder how long it will take before the DirectTV advanced guide picks up the change to WHAS's broadcasting times. Not that it matters much, but it's neat to see how the local's guide info is integrated into the DirectTV guide ...

I was looking on the guide on Titantv.com and it looks like that Guide is updated, even with WKPC 4 multicast channels (no programming for it)

One this I noticed on tonight lineup was that it lists Nightline as HD, is this true?

"Nightline


ABC's incisive late-night news program, which usually features newsmaker interviews following a set-up story. The series began in November 1979 as a nightly update on the Iran-hostage crisis (with Frank Reynolds at the anchor desk)
High Definition (HD) "

I never heard of news programs being in HD.
BTW, seeing all that HD programmign on WHAS-11 brings me to tears that I can't get a signal. =(

I'll check it out tonight. That sucks that you can't even get WHAS. Maybe Insight will be our saving grace!! (Doubtful )

Stovetop,

Out of curiosity, what's your problem with WHAS reception? Are you out in the sticks? What kind of STB do you have?

Actually, if I recall, I think he's right downtown. Stuck between high rise buildings - almost no chance to get any reception.

OK - just curious because I had a STB issue (Zenith) that I thought was reception for a while....

I'm still getting WHAS DT as 55-01 not 11-01.

Is this a problem with the STB (Dish 6000) or something in the stations broadcast?

BTW, got an email from FOX:

"Our target date for digital transmission is December 1st.

This will not necessarily entail broadcasting in HDTV at first, however.
Further details regarding that will be made public as things progress
throughout the coming year."

Thanks,
Larry

Good post about the time frame for Fox Larry. All I get from WB is "we will be there in HD when the time comes" What the hey? I thought this was the time!!! May 1st 2002 is history.

DucTape was right, I'm downtown and can't get a signal strong enough to get a picture.

Also, i heard that TitanTV schedule labeled a lot of shows as HD even though they weren't, I guess that explains it.


On a side note, an update from Insight:


Dear Mr. Weber:

In recent weeks we have begun testing HDTV over cable in one of our systems. As long as the testing goes well, and receivers are available from our supplier, we hope to be able to offer HDTV by the end of this year. This is by no means a commitment, but a reasonable projection based upon current information. We will be sure to provide more information to our subscribers as further details develop.

Sincerely,



Karen Stokes

--------

Definately some good new. =) I think Insight is giong to pull through for us.

"Further details regarding that will be made public as things progress
throughout the coming year."

That's not a good thing though. Watching DTV just for the heck of it is not what I (or anyone else) wants ... what's the point of dealing with the various reception problems of DTV if the reward (HD content) is not there? None IMO. The "throughout the coming year" comment leads me to beleive that Fox's 'fake' HD will not be broadcast until WELL into 2003. Maybe late 2003. There goes any chance of watching 24 in widescreen. Or Fox's 'enhanced widescreen' NFL games that are supposed to happen this year.

I bet many of the other stations in town will follow the same tactics. Too cheap to purchase/implement the equipment for HD pass-thru. Just pass a very low power DTV signal to get the FCC off their backs.

DucTape, I think you interpreted the BS message from WDRB quite well. Also, the Dec. 1st target date. probably as good a date as the Nov. 1 mentioned last month. Know what a target is, something aimed for but rarely hit!
Also, WLKY is listed as Jan. 31, 2003 - any bets on them being on-line by May, 2003? If they make it on-line any bets on it being low/no-power with retransmit of SD signal?

Current HD status for the world class city of Louisville and its surrounding counties:

WBNA-DT 8 PAX Louisville KY Nov 1 2002 (I can't believe these guys can be on the air and the others can't - WTF????)
WKPC-DT 17 PBS Louisville KY Now Live (w/o HD though)
WLKY-DT 26 CBS Louisville KY Jan 31 2003
WKMJ-DT 38 PBS Louisville KY May 1 2003
WAVE-DT 47 NBC Louisville KY Dec 15 2002
WDRB-DT 49 FOX Louisville KY Nov 1 2002 (missed - now December 1)
WFTE-DT 51 UPN Salem IN Nov 1 2002 (missed)
WHAS-DT 55 ABC Louisville KY Now Live (Kudos, kudos - one station - besides WKPC - could get live, on time, with HDTV!)

one little minor clarification, The FCC deadline for WKMJ-DT is May 1 2003, so its not late and we plan on beating that deadline, (I have no idea what we will put on it at this time.)


William

William, kudos to you guys too - seems strange to me the the stations least able to afford it (outside of WHAS) or the ones delivering. I am sure you guys will beat the deadline and probably will beat WLKY

Michaelz,
Our funding cycle is very different than the commercial guys.
We have some folks with foresight (William and others)
That secured our funding back in 1999.
Yes, everyone knew this was coming.
Some just chose to ignore it.......

The arrogance of some TV execs just p*sses me off! There I feel so much better now . . .

Ah MichaelZ, you're hurting me with that list. I'm trying to stick my head in the sand and ignore it

Yep, I hold no thoughts that the rest of the major networks will be on time with their 'new' target dates (which have been missed HOW many times now?), nor that once the DTV signal is going that HD will be passed either. I didn't care but now NBC actually has some HD content, and Fox has 2 shows I would like to see in fake HD, NFL and 24.