Jacksonville, FL - HDTV - Page 65

What's the chances that anybody at 30 or 47 is even aware there is a problem?

How would you like to be a salesman at worstbuy showing customers how great football looks in HD?

ESPN-HD should be fine tonight. All HD, except our two locals, are working. I'll be curious to see if WJXT owns any HD equipment. They do digital on ch 42.

Actually our analog signals are effected as well, but we discovered a work-around. There has been a major problem with the fiber we lease from Comcast. Techs have been working on it all weekend. It seems to work for an hour or so and then go south. We have never had a fiber failure like this that even effects our backup paths. We have used this system since 1997. Our digital signals have a path and a backup. Analog has a path and two backups. All but the last backup has failed.

Nothing is taking a back seat.

Jerry

someone's head should roll for this crap.........major network affiliates waiting on parts=pathetic

So I'm wrong that they aren't aware of it. My apologies to Jerry etal.

I did notice something really strange just now. On WAWS, which is currently OK on both SD & HD, the HD signal on ch 32 is about 1.5 secs behind the SD signal on ch 30.

And I should point out that although I like to bash WTEV for all the "asleep at the switch" we have to endure, WTLV has been less than stellar in the last few weeks. I think Don L is right in that HD doesn't add to the station's bottom line at this time, so management DGAS.

No relationship to the audio dropouts at all. We found out that the only place with audio dropouts was with our in-house monitoring. It did not effect the viewers. It was fixed the next day.

This problem, however is much worse and first showed up Friday night. Trust me, Comcast is on it as hard as they can be and have been since we first noticed it.

I know you that have been around since the early days (like Gator) know it, but my few posts here are an attempt to keep you informed as much as possible when we have technical issues.

Jerry

thanks Jerry for keeping us up to date - as some of us know - when you do post it is for a very good reason and this sounds like you guys have and will be very busy to fix the problems, Thanks again for the heads up.

by the way - you are on top of the posts today - you must have been replying to my post while I was deleting it.

Jerry,thanks for all the work and info.

I noticed that both 47 and 30 DT were off the air yesterday afternoon.

As for pixelization and loss of audio on CBS, I think this may be a network issue because the same issues are present on the national feed from NYC WNBC. Time to send Bob Ross a note if anyone cares to. He used to monitor this forum for PM's. I'm sure he is aware of it but you may get an explanation. I haven't checked the HDTV programming threads yet.

I watched briefly, FOX WAWS late yesterday after they came back on the air and the signal looked fine, including good DD5.1 as well.
added- Thanks Jerry for the update- I should remind others that I receive locals by antenna, not Comcast. So my comments are just related to OTA broadcasrt and not Comcast Fiber. It is likely that similar symptoms could surface in multiple locations.


ESPN Jag's game was just perfect last night. Very nice quality!

Scolumbo- I would hesitate to rate one station against another as to which station has the most issues with switch flipping etc. IT may just appear that way if you watch more of one than another. What I see is a commonality of problems among all stations doing HDTV including reports from other cities where forgetting to flip the switch, a human error, seems to be a continuing mistake. Equipment breakdowns will always be the case but a quick recoverey will hinge on a budget for redundancy. Human errors will happen until technology can develop a way to automate a recurring process. IMO, failure to broadcast a program the way it was intended once is one time too many and needs to be investigated for ways to prevent it.

Can't speak for WTEV channel 47 HD right now, but SD on channel 47 does not look good at all. Picture is washed out with no clarity.

Masti - or anyone else, have you found a good antenna for CR-210 in St John's county?

I also live about one mile east of I95 on CR-210. I have tried the terk HDTVi and the radio Shack 1880. They are both miserable. I get 2 channels with those. 25 and 30. I get more channels with $5 rabbit ears. 4, 12, 25, 30, and 47. Takes a lot of manipulating, but it works.

The problem is 47 is the worst and that's where the football is on Sunday.

Has anyone had any luck with the Terk TV5, TV55, or even that big square antenna you can buy at circuit city...the HDTVS?

Would an amplified set of rabbit ears work any better? I'll gladly trade my chaep 5 dollar set for a 10 dollar amplified set if it works better than these so called HD antennas.

Has anyone noticed that Comcast has moved the PBS DT channels to 190-193 and added HDSE on 165 that shows PPV HD (not new), NFL HD and other misc. HD programming?

Yes, but they announced that before they did it. I hope they add something at 174. We still need to get ESPN2 and WB. For me Comcast is in a race with Direct TV to who can add the most HD channels the fastest. Right now I am with Comcast but waiting to see what Direct TV will do with the new birds.

Time Warner Cable

Digital Free to air QAM channels I've found so far:

102-1 ESPN-HD 720p
103-1 WTLV NBC 1080i
103-2 WTEV CBS 1080i
104-1 WAWS FOX 720p
105-1 Previews 480i
105-2 FL Knowledge 480i
105-3 WUFT PBS 1080i
105-4 WUFT alternate 480i
106-1 DiscoveryHD 1080i
113-1 TNT-HD 1080i

I'm hoping it's a sign we'll get ESPN2 on 174 next. Following ESPN on 173 makes it logical, although I'm not sure logic means much.

You may be right, it could be because I probably watch more HD content on CBS than other networks so it just seems worse. Certainly, no one station has a monopoly on problems.

Wow, I wish I found this thread 2 months ago. Someone from the Tivo Community pointed me here.

I live in Ponte Vedra off of 210. I have DirecTV, and after purchasing my HD equipment, I did the antennaweb thing and it said I was within 15 miles of all the towers.

So after reading the last few pages, the reason that I cannot get 47 or 30 in OTA HD may not be the antenna I have? I get 12 and 25 fine, plus PBS. I have a Turk indoor antenna now, and after seeing that I get some but not all channels I thought it was the antenna, so I tried a Samsung (which didn't improve at all).

The problem MAY be the orientatation of the antenna. For me, the angle difference between picking up 30 and 47 vs picking up 12 and 25 is extremely narrow. An inch either way and I lose the signal.

Also, what may or may not be a factor is that 12 and 25 are VHF at 13-1 and 10-1, and 30 and 47 are UHF at 32-1 and 19-1. Unfortunately, most of this is trial and error.

Could you please explain to me how you manually select channels 32-1 and 19-1?

I have a Mitsubishi WD-52525 and there are no "-" or "." buttons on my remote. I can enter 19 and 32 but only get snow. I can't find a way to manually enter the -1 or .1. So aside form scanning for channels, am I out of luck?

Thanks!

From page 65 of your manual:

For a two part digital channel, you may press SUB/CANCEL on the remote to enter a separator after the first, second or third number, depending on the broadcaster's channel information.

For digital channels, when the broadcaster has sent a virtual channel number, the virtual channel number is shown in the text box and the original digital channel is shown below on-screen, as a reference.

Thanks Gunny!

Nice of them to put that in the "Antenna Menu" section instead of the section on the remote control...

I must have ADD. I lost interst on page 60

No problem. I hate the manuals too. My trick has been to use the electronic versions and search for keywords. Flipping through the hard copies, trying to find the right info can be a PITA.

No, he is not right. I record from all the nets and WTEV is the hands down winner in messing it up. In the last week they messed up w/o a trace, cold case, & the movie. A normal week for them.

Just curious, if its so bad why do you continue to watch them? If they are bad and no one watched maybe it'd force them to improve. I've not been around long but haven't seen all the problems you mention.

When I expect something in HD, and it turns on not to be, I'll often turn it off. When I do that I also like to mention it here on AVS somewhere in hopes it has some effect and helps to apply a very small amount of marketing pressure. Broadcasters are in the business of delivering eyeballs to advertisers so it's good to mention whenever they lost a few viewers for some unnecessary reason.

- Tom

What Tom said, and it's easier than getting the show from the net.

Plus bad management irks me.

Also, when the show you want to watch or the football game is on that station, you put up with it. It's not as if there is more than one station broadcasting the same show in the Jacksonville market. The only choice to complain to the station directly, and make your voice heard on forums like this. If you haven't experienced the problems, you don't watch much HDTV. Unfortunately, if the few of us watching HDTV turn it off, it won't make a bit of difference.

For those of you with Comcast out there struggling with the poor quality analog channels I found a solution. I have one of the original motorola 6412 boxes that came out last October now they have a 6412 III (phase 3) which includes much better analog channels, I went down to southpoint yesterday and swapped my box the analogs do look MUCH better.

**Also for those waiting for Digital Simulcast they are starting that here in the next 30 days and will be doing a channel for channel swap so hopefully by the end of the year we will be 100% ADS on the channels below 100.

Actually I sometimes exercise another choice by just downloading the show later when a station forgets to throw the switch and is lazily showing SDTV of some network HD show. Even the moderate quality downloads these days at least match SDTV quality and also have the advantage the commercials are already stripped out. And the hr.hdtv (1/4 rez) and HDTV downloads are much better.

So I hope that stations start trying a bit harder to show the full quality network versions with their advertisers content still in them.

- Tom

Did you need to give Comcast any reason to switch boxes other than the lousy analogs? I assume it's the same remote?