Grand Rapids, MI - HDTV - Page 216

Does anyone know if W42CB is going digital before June 12th?

Swung my antenna their direction last night and found that since they've switched I can no longer pick up their digital signal, which I could without difficulty while they were on 57...I guess rotors will become obsolete!

Rduce,

Did you do a rescan to try and find them on channel 10? I only ask because one of my local friends was telling me that he couldn't see channel 10.1 now, and he didn't understand that he needed to have his TV rescan to find them on their "new" channel.

Once again, if it's Sunday night WWMT can't get a lock on their audio to save their lives... 5.1, then nothing, 5.1, out again, 5.1 wash, rinse, repeat...

I am so freakin' tired of this. I'm this close to sending them a bill after the relay gets fried in my audio reciever because of all the switching . It's already been noted upthread about the problem so all I can guess is they just don't give a rat's ass about it.

GREAT, just looked at the screen and the HD has gone away as well. Perhaps a note to the network telling them about WWMT's lack of maintaining performance standards might help.

Idiots.

It shows that it's there, just too weak to come in; a pixel here and a pixel there, but no substainable picture.

Kib, if it was during CBS, the metadata from CBS controls the Dolby encoder and switches it automatically. Seeing WWMT dropped to upconverted, I would say it was a CBS problem.

WWMT's audio was horrible last night...something can't be working properly!

I don't know, Gassy... I called the station and, although I talked with the newsroom, the gal answering the phone said she seemed to believe they have had a lot of calls about problems on Sunday.

If given the choice believing the CBS Television Network breaks down in East Coast time zone distribution during the hidiously profitable "60 Minutes" or WWMT Sunday night swingshift Engineering can't handle their duties right, 'fraid I'd have to think the folks in New York are not the source of the problem.

That said, it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong... We'll see

I also get the problem during Letterman quite often... maybe they should just turn everything off after the sun goes down? or hire a better swingshift crew

A recent collabration between WOOD TV and Comcast has resulted in the passage of P.S.I.P. data for all local stations on QAM channels. This means no longer will WOOD DT1 be displayed as 91.3 but as it should be as 8.1. No longer will an extra channel translation list be needed or committed to memory. QAM channels for all local digital channels are available on Comcast's most basic tier at about $15.00 to $20.00 depending on your locality. For the first time the QAM channel will be more logically displayed than the cable box channel.

In addition when you press the guide button on your remote control no longer will it say "no guide data" it will display our program information direct from Tribune Media guide services.

Now the bad news, some STB digital tuners sold in the past (Toshiba being one of them) do not pass P.S.I.P. data when in cable or QAM mode. Only antenna mode will pass P.S.I.P.

I was watching WWMT on Charter and the audio was fine. How are you all receiving them and having these problems?

Nice! It's about time!

Actually, ALL of the local digital channels are passing PSIP data now via Comcast QAM. None of the non-local channels appear to be doing so, however.

As reported.

Reading never was one of my finer skills.

I watch OTA...

This seems like a problem that WOOD TV would have sometimes, but WWMT has no center channel audio. It is all background noise and the laugh track during the beginning of Big Bang Theory.

EDIT: Three minutes in, and it's fixed.

Mine was that way via D*. Had to turn on CC for the first 3 minutes.

yah same here, sucks big time

I'm told the switcher went to CBS Net but the Dolby encoder did not switch from stereo to surround - same closure but the box did not respond. An engineer manually moved it.

So everyone understands the occasional problem of "missing" audio......

A typical AES encoder such as the Dolby DP569 when set to stereo expects the following:
Left/Right AES audio to input 1 of the encoder.


However, the AES encoder when set to Dolby 5.1 expects the following:
Left Front/Right Front AES audio to input 1 of the encoder.
Center/Sub AES audio to input 2 of the encoder.
Left Rear/Right Rear AES audio to input 3 of the encoder.

As you can see, if the encoder doesn't switch the mode to 5.1 when the signal changes 5.1, you would only hear the Left Front and Right Front channels which likely only contain extraneous noise and not dialog.

The change between modes (presets) is usually triggered by a GPI (contact closure). This is a typical failure point. As you can see on the Dolby DP569 there are buttons on the front to manually change the preset however, if the master control operator isn't monitoring the audio or is only watching a VU meter they may not know the encoder didn't switch. Additionally, some broadcast facilities may not allow their master control ops to manually change the encoder instead requiring a call to the engineer to do so. This may also result in a delay for the needed switch.

I lost WWMT on Charter at about 4:30 - 4:40 on Sunday afternoon.

I have 2 televisions and 2 stereo's receiving locals (and FM) OTA using a splitter. The one television, a Sharp Aquos LCD, does extremely well. The other a Samsung DLP, can rarely pulls in WWMT-DT. I have checked all connections and have even tried a signal amplifier to no avail. it is not a distance or LOS problem as I am in GR Township, off Leonard and E Beltline.

I am thinking of running 3 separate runs down from the antenna, 1 directly to each TV and another with a 2 way splitter to the stereos. Another possibility is 2 lines down, 1 TV and receiver, with a 2 way splitter as the receivers are located near the TVs. Does anyone have any thoughts or experience? Would there be any signal loss from 2 lines coming off the antenna?

The Sharp is 32" and the Sammy is 61". You can see why I would like to resolve this ASAP.

Thanks,
Dominic

Try taking all splitters off and run one coax directly from the antenna to your Sammy and see it that works. Each splitter reduces the signal by at least 3db or in other words, cuts the signal in half. I suspect that the OTA receiver section on your Samsung is not as sensitive as the Sharp. I live about a mile from you and have always had problems with WWMT-DT. The receiver on the Dish VIP722 typically won't give me a sustainable signal but my Pioneer receiver will - go figure.

- Chuck Miller

Yep, while I loved uverse, I dropped the TV and went OTA only just mainly due to I hated paying for stuff I never watched anymore and the few I did watch didn;'t justify the price.

One things with HSI is I believe you have to have the 10meg or higher package to have HSI only, but still for me, they way att has the network setup, the service is much faster than I had with charter. Just wish they would up the upload's a bit on uverse. 1.5 is nice, but I would like 2meg.

I also wish that the HSI only customers had to option to use all the available bandwidth on their line since they aren't using it for TV.

What does Uverse charge for just HSI?

I don't have it here, but I am curious. I have spent the last week crunching numbers on the best way to get TV/internet, and ended up sticking with Charter (they gave me a 6 month deal for expanded basic + 5 Meg for about $58/month - and this includes all the HD channels that have analog equivalents in the 2-99 range).

For just HSI, they wanted about the same amount! Even AT&T DSL is $45 for their 6 Meg service without phone service.

According to their website 6/1 "starts at" $35

I signed up in Dec for Uverse, had it installed in January. I signed up for all 3 services to check them all out but ended up dropping the TV and just keeping the Internet and Phone. I lost out on the "3-3-3" deal which was a $14/mo discount for having all 3, but no big deal. Before I dropped the TV service, I called and asked if the price for Internet or Phone would change if I didn't have the TV and they said no and that is the case on my most recent bill. I ended up moving to the lowest price phone and internet services which are each $25 so that is great.

Stuck with dish network + OTA because all the rooms in my house are split from my ViP622's TV2 output so it was cheaper to have those rooms on dish versus getting a Uverse tuner for each one ($7/mo per extra tuner). Although with my Dish setup they all have to watch the same channel, but that hasn't been a problem yet.