Cincinnati, OH - HDTV - Page 14

HD-one movie "Beverly Hills Cop" in HD on WKRC-DT presently (8-10pm sat) ... Guess(just guessing) they're sticking with the Sat. night once a month schedule now, which Doc mentioned a couple of months back ...

According to the AVS programming sypnosis, we get the first 6 Trek movies, the Godfather movies+raiders of lost ark from HD-one between April+December! Up until now, "the Odd Couple+Witness" have been, IMO the best 2 titles they've aired in HD ....

I caught Raiders in HD when it aired on ABC a couple years ago, it was excellent PQ+OAR .. will be interesting to see if it looks like a different transfer for the July HD-one airing ... ALL of the HD-one movies have aired in OAR BTW ...

Oh, also noticed WXIX-DT up this afternoon/tonight ..

I certianly appreciate the fine job our local stations do in providing local+national programming, news and entertainment.

It is also no surprise to me that personel from the local stations don't participate more on our local threads. Here is a link to a local thread in the info and reception area of AVSforum where the situation is better:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...light=Virginia

This thread, and this area of AVSforum is for "Local HDTV Info and reception". If you want to tell someone that you won't watch "such and such" station because of their bug, contact the station and tell them. Don't count on logos+other inserted graphics disappearing from Local or national program services however ....

I don't know what they are going to do ...I assume they're going to build 38 analog, but who knows. With the Tuner mandate and all, on the one hand, it doesn't seem to make too much sense to build a new analog plant now -- The only reasons to build analog, it seems to me, is to keep serving those analog OTA viewers which haven't switched to digital yet and perhaps, another important consideration in this case ... Cost ... On the other hand, I could be wrong, but its probably going to be ~10 years or so before analog shut off time ...

If it were a "perfect world", they'd build digital on 38, UPN/WBQC-CA on one subchannel(HD would be nice too), and run WOTH-LP programming on a fairly low-bitrate SD subchannel on the digital on 38+Run UPN/WBQC-CA programming in analog on what will be WOTH-LP 25 .... I'm not counting on a perfect world though!

Either WOTH-LP/WBQC-CA could switch to digital, but they'd have to do it on their analog assignment, meaning the analog would have to go dark. Their owner had told me a couple years back that they "will go digital when there were enough viewers who could see it" ... I do think it's great they seem to be concerned with their analog OTA viewers ...

..... There are some stations across U.S. without a DTV channel assignment which has already turned the analog off+switched the digital on ... even "cable must carry" for digital apply in those circumstances ...

I think some Class A stations did get a digital channel assignment, but the DTV "table of allocations" was handed out by FCC around the time WBQC went from LP to Class A, which may be one reason why they didn't get one .... I don't know, but I doubt they could get a seperate DTV channel assignment now(or anytime before analog shut off time), and I don't think LP's can get one at all at this time... After all things are really crowded as is .... Heck, there really aren't any "really clean channels" available around here anyway, especially not on 2-51 ...


The other exception of course being No WB HD in Cincy from WSTR-DT ...

I assume since 'Xix is doing Fox Widescreen now, they'll have Fox HD this fall too ... can't imagine why not ...

A viacom owned station just South of Columbus is BOTH a UPN AND WB affiliate, they run HD from both UPN+WB as well as the HD-one Movie package ... We'd be set(OTA people anyway) if they would have built the tower just a little closer to Dayton+Cincinnati ...

Geez o' pete. I'm just stating my opinion. I'm not trying to tell anyone what to discuss, nor am I trying to moderate. I think this thread should be open to any discussion which relates to info/or related topics concerning our local stations(not necessarily HD either) as well as info/etc on reception.

I referrenced another thread so those here could see how it works in another area where more personel from the stations do participate ... check it out, you might find it beneficial ......

I don't have any problem with discussion of bugs here either, when appropriate. I'm sure I've even mentioned a bug a time or two. What I was specifically addressing was, if you don't like the bugs+ aren't going to watch the station because of it/etc and are going to watch something else instead, contact the station+tell them. I think That's the place to address that particular issue, not here, but again, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong, but I doubt if anyone here cares if such and such is going to watch HBO instead of WKRC-DT ... If there is some tropo or e-skip going on, or TW has a new STB/etc, someone here MIGHT be interested in checking it out ...

As for the bugs, if you really want to know, I'd rather not have them either(at least not all the time), but they are going to be there. I'm not going to not watch programming I enjoy because of it. That's silly.

And actually, believe it or not, we do have personel from local stations which particpate on Cincinnati thread, I also know for a fact that personel from some other local stations monitor this thread .....

Carry on ...

Good idea Doc, I'll have to do more letter writing. Usually I've been focused on correspondance with the CE's/etc. concerning "operational issues" (and to thank them for doing a fine job occasionally), but it wouldn't take a lot of time to write a short letter to each station about their HD, or lack of it in the case of WSTR-DT.

I'm a bit puzzled by the seemingly low(to me anyway) HD penetration estimations by these stations, however. I'm not sure how many households are in this DMA, but I do recall that in Dec. 2002, TW Cincy reported having either 6,000 or 8,000 subscribers to their HD service, and I would imagine that number has significantly went up since then. OTA wise, it's hard to make an estimation, but I've seen several hundred folks with OTA HD in the area post on various forums(not just AVS), and I would imagine the number is significantly more than that, depending upon how many folks who have OTA HD actually post on a internet HD related forum. You couldn't just go by sales of receivers locally, for example since many folks purchase their stuff off the net ...

Also, my understanding is that nationally, last I heard HD penetration is something like 3-5 million households or so. Who knows, but I wouldn't think percentage wise, the number would be much different in Cincinnati area, so one would THINK that we should be at somewhere in the 2-5% range by now .... I think .5% or so would have been an accurate figure 2 years ago or so ...

Sure, it's still a drop in the bucket, but the way it looks to me, the HD thing is starting to take off now ...

And now you know my opinion, I stand by my previous comments, which as I said, are my opinion on the matter. I can't speak for anyone else.

[quote]Originally posted by WebHopperWeasel
[b]
That's good news.

In addition to Cincinnati thread(s), there is also the Dayton thread which is here ( http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...00#post3409500 ). Some of those folks post here as well, but there are a number of folks watching the Cincinnati DTV/HD stations from Dayton who post on the Dayton thread, but don't post here. We sometimes end up discussing Cincinnati issues on the Dayton thread as well, mostly because of convienance. Also, as doc mentioned, there are a lot of folks who posted for a short time asking for help/advice, and they are probably spending their time enjoying watching HD instead of posting on AVS and contacting the stations/etc.

There are of course, likely many DTV/HD viewers(OTA and Cable) who have never even seen AVSforum, as well as other viewers of Cincinnati stations in more "fringe area" locations than Dayton. For instance, I know of a few folks on a regional DTV DX mailing list I partipate on whom got lucky with "tropo", and enjoyed the 2002 HD WEBN Fireworks on WKRC-DT.

Not necessarily relating to Cincinnati, but also, the folks in Columbus have an excellent HD/DTV forum set up which may be of interest to anyone at the stations whom are interested in the "state of HD/DTV" in this area. Personel(mainly CE's) from just about all the Columbus station particpate. Each columbus area station has its own forum area :

http://www.hdcolumbus.org/forums/default.asp

One of the reasons why I posted a link to local thread in Virginia in an earlier post was, If you read some of the posts from the Engineers and the input form viewers on that thread, you'll see that some stations are doing things such as turning off SD subchannels and allocating more bandwidth for HD events such as superbowl, and the PBS affiliate is experimenting with things such as using 720p, or 1440x1080/1280x1080i instead of 1920x1080i, even though 1080i is what PBS sends them for PBS HD channel. As you may know, one of our local PBS stations, KET/WCVN-DT does this, and sends PBS HD at 720p instead of 1080i .....

There are several references to this on the thread, as well as reports from viewers on the test, generally in posts made since End of January. Here's one relevant post from yesterday :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...67#post3411067

I'm just speculating based on viewer reports, but I also noticed today that it seems the Lexington, KY CBS station may be experimenting with 720p presently :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...14#post3414114

I believe we've discussed this sort of thing before, and FWIW, thought you, and others might like to see some interesting info concerning implementation/experimentation with different ATSC formats+ possible HD resolutions ...