Rochester, MN - HDTV - Page 2

Thanks for the link, I've been meaning to e-mail KTTC for a loooong time regarding their useless multicasting, their annoying multi-color bug (in addition to the opaque NBC one) and their idiotic stretching of 4:3 material. But since I watch NBC so little I haven't bothered. It doesn't help that I wrote them once before although I got a response from the general manager, he forwarded my concerns to engineering and I never heard from them again.

Now might be a good time to try again.

I finally got around to recording Leno via cable and OTA and of course tonight it wasn't in HD! So I'll have to save that experiment for another time.

On the cable front, I got my bill recently and since it shot up $20 just to get 6 HD channels: KXLT, which has no HD at all (and stretches 4x3 to 16x9), HDNet, HDNet Movies and ESPN-HD, all of which are getting squashed bandwidth, KTTC which was getting lots of breakups during Las Vegas, and SHO-HD, I had to basically send an ultimatum.

I essentially told them that I'm happy to help them debug their problems as long as they're interested in fixing them (or if they even consider them problems ), but I don't really care to pay for the priveledge of doing so. Nor do I care to pay for HD service that is anything less than the signals the content providers are sending to Charter, sent to me unaltered. I also asked them to clarify their position on their HD service, if they are committed to providing the highest quality service, or simply a "higher" quality service that they can charge a premium for.

I understand that this type of ultimatum is largely useless since I have no leverage and they couldn't possibly care less if they lose out on $20 a month from one customer who nitpicks the picture quality. My only hope is that my contact genuinely wants to help and has the freedom within the business to do so.

Two weeks ago I was optimistic... now I'm expecting to be returning my cable box before the month is up.

I did get a response from my contact today and I learned 3 things of significance:

He did finally admit that although he took FSN-HD out of the multiplexer, he never "turned the knobs" back up on HDNet and HDNet movies. So they were still being restricted to 13Mbps, which was what I was trying to tell him all along. He said he'd fix it later today or tomorrow.

He said 5C will be turned on in the next 1-2 weeks. Although we've all known it's been coming and 5C doesn't itself prevent consumers from recording content, this will pretty much kill cable HD for me, even without the PQ problems. I'm not buying a buggy tape deck to record HD after going for so long being able to schedule recordings on my PC from work or anywhere else and be able to view the recordings on any computer in my house.

The worst one however, was that in spite of my and his complaints, it's still the policy of Charter to use one 38.8Mbps QAM256 channel to provide up to 3 HD channels. As anyone can see that's unacceptable as a general purpose policy. In same cases with lower bandwidth HD channels (like SHO-HD) that could work, but at only 13Mbps I would call SHO-HD second rate to begin with. There's nothing stopping them from cramming HDNet, HDNet Movies and ESPN all on one QAM which would basically render all of them unwatchable. I told them that their goal should be to provide their customers with the highest PQ possible, which means not altering the bitrate of the content. If they get a 19Mbps channel, I want all 19Mbps. That's what I pay for after all. That still leaves them room to juggle channels since not all of them at that high bitrate.

Probably the most damning thing though was to point out even though quality is subjective and there's no minimum standard for quality or bitrate to still be called "HDTV", free OTA HDTV is obviously and significantly higher quality at higher bitrates than what Charter expects us to pay for. I said that was a pretty good indicator of which side of the quality argument they're on, and that people aren't going to be beating down their door to get what they're selling.

I don't think this will go anywhere though. They know what they're doing marketing wise and don't make money being stupid. People will pay for mediocrity and people for the most part won't go back to using an antenna to get stuff for free. Their loss I guess. I for one won't pay for this crap and hope others won't either so there might be a chance for change. Keep in mind that the 3 channels/QAM thing is corporate-wide, not just Rochester. So if any Charter customers not in MN is reading this and you think your HD doesn't look very good, it's probably not your eyes. And it's easy to verify if you have the Moto boxes. Just check the channel status and see which carrier frequency the channel is on. If more than 2 have the same frequency, they're cheating you too.

I know, hell I can even agree with them up to a point. But the whole purpose of HDTV is jaw dropping picture quality and they're going to ruin it. And it's not a case of them softening it to the point of DVD quality, they are in fact rendering it totally unwatchable in some cases due to the ridiculous macroblocking and compression artifacts.


That's the attitude that I'm afraid Charter is banking on. Most people won't know any better so they'll just accept it. And after next week people like me won't be able to monitor the streams anymore so we won't have any hard evidence of what they're doing. But my eyes know better and what they're selling people isn't worth the price.


I kind of got the feeling he was just stringing me along to try and get me to admit it looked good even though he hadn't done anything. But I can't be sure. He may have just forgot and he did finally own up to what he was doing. He said he agrees with me anyway and would rather keep the compression to a minimum but he's kind of stuck. For now though they should be able to do what I ask and give us the streams essentially unchanged.


I first saw KTTC in HD in March of '02 during the winter olypics and they were only 15Mbps even back then. The Olympics macroblocked, and Leno macroblocked. At the time I was worried that that was an necessary evil with HDTV, probably much like newbies are now with all the macroblocking on cable HD. Now I know better.


SHO-HD and HBO-HD should be the least effected since they're relatively low bandwidth to begin with. ESPN should be taking a big hit but there's so little HD on it's probably hard to tell. The HD I recorded weeks ago looked terrible. I don't know what they're showing in HD these days, baseball I presume. That probably looks halfway decent since nothing happens 99% of the time. 13Mbps is plenty for a static shot of a guy scratching himself.

Looks like HDNet and HDNet Movies have been fixed, finally. I watched them briefly yesterday and they looked clearer and didn't seem to macroblock at all. This evening I finally recorded a couple of clips and sure enough the bitrates are much higher now, averaging 17-18Mbps.

The bitrates still look different from previously recording HDNet streams however, in that they seem less variable and don't peak as high as they used to. But my guess is this is good as they're going to get and in the future will probably get knocked back down to 13Mbps when they add more channels.

So while HDNet and HDNet movies are watchable again, ESPN is still sharing with HBO-HD and SHO-HD because the locals are still both taking up a full QAM each.

I'll probably pester my contact one more time on that issue, but I think I'm going to cancel next week. It just isn't worth it. In the last 6 months I've recorded probably a dozen movies from OTA and in the 2 months I've had cable I've recorded precisely zero. Sure the OTA movies have commercials, but at least they're high quality and worth watching, plus since I can record I can skip the commercials. And it's FREE.

I finally cancelled my HD package today. I don't think I've watched anything in weeks. A few HD channels with nothing worth watching for $20 a month is way too much. That's even before all this nonsense with the PQ.

I did send one final e-mail to my contact at Charter thanking him for fixing HDNet. I also asked him about TNT-HD since the western conference finals are in HD. He said he's ask the marketing department but I haven't heard back. I wouldn't be surprised if the marketing department didn't even know TNT had an HD channel. Of course if they add it, everyone will see their PQ degrade. Sorry guys.