Madison, WI - HDTV - Page 175

In the city, the broadcasters should have more than enough power to overcome the interference. There's less power to be had in the Dells, so the cell towers can cause interference. I don't know the ERP of cell towers off hand. Where it gets interesting is who would have to reduce power? The cell companies or WMSN/WISC. I'd like to see the cell companies complain about channel 45+ broadcasters interfering with their cell sites.

I haven't had abnormal issues with either station. I'm less than 3 miles away from both towers, but there's a huge hill in between me and the candelabra. That plus multipath plus low ground plus a relatively poor antenna equals dropouts. They're infrequent, but they happen.

I don't know why you'd be having issues with WMSN but not WISC. They're transmitting from what is for all intents and purposes, the same antenna. (One on top of the other if you want to get nitpicky.) WISC is triple the power, but it shouldn't matter where you are. I think WMSN is circularly polarized, so it's probably not multipath. It's not overload either, otherwise WISC and WKOW would overload even more with their higher powers. What about the other stations? If your antenna is directional, where is it pointed?

Yes, directional and right at the candelabra and not at the WMTV 15 tower, which is off to the side. Yet WMTV and CW 57 have been perfect since day one. I too am behind a hill though which is likely my main problem. If I was higher, I'd probably be able to get by with an attic antenna or separate tuner bowties. I had trouble with WPT (DTV UHF 20) for years, but now they're good most of the time for some reason. I haven't modified my antenna setup for years.

I assume there is some sort of interference that comes and goes.

A rooftop antenna would help me too. My antenna's at the back of the house relative to the towers so I'm primed for multipath.

WMTV and WBUW are slightly closer to you, and I assume they appear higher from your location. WHA is the lowest power full power station here in Madison. 140K IIRC. That shouldn't matter in the city, but you never know. They haven't done any upgrades that I'm aware of.

Posting a TVFool report wouldn't hurt. Here's mine: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...60b563175257eb

Well, rescanned and now Fox 47 comes in fine. Go figure. Sorry for the false alarm.

Hi,

I live outside Madison (New Glarus) and I'm considering purchasing a HDHomeRun Prime and subscribing to Charter. The trick is that I use MythTV and I'll only be able to record shows marked as copy-freely. Does anyone know what channels Charter has marked copy-freely in this market? Any other gotchas that I should be aware of with respect to Charter?

Thanks,
Joe

Good Morning,

All basic and expanded basic channels are copy freely. There are also some channels on higher tiers that are also copy freely. Were you looking for a specific channel?

George

Hi George,

Thanks for the reply. It looks like expanded would cover most of my needs (History, Disney, USA, TNT, BigTen, ESPN, HGTV, Discovery, Comedy Central, CNN). Am I correct to understand that each of these is available in HD and marked copy-freely? I'd also be interested in NIKJR, DIYHD, and BBCA if they are marked copy-freely. They aren't listed under the expanded column on Charter's site.

Thanks,
Joe

The first set of networks are available in HD in your market and Copy Freely.


NIKJR and DIYHD are available on the Digital View tier and Copy Freely

BBCA is available on the Digital View Plus tier and Copy Freely

A subscription to the Digital View Plus tier also includes Digital View.

George

I have the HDHomeRun Prime and subscribe to Charter's HD expanded basic service. I'm using Windows Media Center (W7), not MythTV. I was under the impression that WMC was the only app that supported CableCard. You might want to check at the Silicon Dust forums to make sure people are using MythTV successfully with the HDHomeRun Prime.

Charter requires a tuning adapter to work with a CableCard setup. Not a big deal, you can pick one up from their local offices. When you pick up the TA, it should also include the cablecard itself. If you are fairly tech savvy, I'd recommend doing the install on your own. The techs they send out rarely have any experience with CableCard installations and they might just complicate things and delay getting everything to work.

Good luck.

MythTV supports the HDHomeRun Prime for copy-freely channels. I believe the SiliconDust owner is actually a MythTV user. WMC has the ability to handle stuff beyond copy-freely, hence my question.

I plan to handle the CableCard install myself. I wouldn't expect the tech to understand my non-typical setup. However, we recently had new buried electric service put in and they dropped a coax cable in the trench for us. I assume I have to pay for an install in order to have Charter come out and actually connect the coax to the utility pole.

Good morning,

Your assumption is correct if you have never had active service at your location. Did you have any other question or concerns that we can assist with today?

George

Charter needs to add the Rockford HD locals for us in the Janesville area. I assume must carry doesn't apply for HD since they've been in SD since the 1980's

I am sorry to hear we don't carry the local channels in HD where you are at. What zip code do you live and I can take a look to see if we have any plans to add them. If we don't I will certainly pass along your feedback to our marketing team.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Good morning,

I wanted to follow up with you to see if you would like for me to looking into this for you! If you send me a zip code I can see about future plans.

If we do not have any plans to add more HD I can certainly submit any request that you have.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Today I found out that Fox is actually looking the other way when it comes to stations pulling the HD video from the feed and doing the weather overlay on it, instead of having to use the Fox provided SD analog video.

Officially it is still a no-no to connect station equipment to the Fox provided gear. But, because so many stations complained about having to use the analog SD, Fox looks the the other way when stations connect to receiver A's ASI output so that they can obtain the HD video to use within the local plant for weather overlays and recording programs for delayed playback.

Ascent Media (now Deluxe Media after a buyout) is the Fox contractee to go around to affiliates and fix issues, They've been out to my contact's stations a few times now and have not told them to remove the connection. As long as it isn't causing issues, it is ignored.

Unfortunately the Fox blind eye doesn't help local Fox47 watchers in the Madison area, because Fox47 is still analog. As previously noted, Fox47 is going to be upgraded to a digital plant. So, they can either buy the device to connect to the splicer or put in gear to use the ASI output from receiver A.

Interesting info. Learn something new every day.

I'm a little surprised and obviously pleased. I didn't think they'd let them do that, but it's the simplest way to do it. Assuming ASI to HD-SDI converters won't break the bank.

If they are only using the output from Receiver A, does that mean that HD weather warnings will go away during sun-transit outages, since as I understand, the sun-transit outage backup bird routs into Receiver B? Not that it matters, since sun-transit outages are only ~30 mins a year.

Side note: the national EAS test is today, if you're going to be near a TV/Radio at 1 PM CST.

Can't be any more expensive than putting in a way to do weather crawls downstream of the splicer rack. That still doesn't allow stations to record the network feed for delayed playback.


Why would there be a weather warning because of a sun outage? Both IRDs are connected to both dishes, H & V. The DSR-6000 IRD has 8 inputs, four of which are used by network affiliates.

You can put a hi-gain antenna up on your broadcast tower, and TiVo the station from the next market over. (FOX 47 would probably TiVo WQRF-Rockford.) Then hook the TiVo into your MC switcher using an HDMI to HD-SDI converter, like the one BlackMagic has. It's 2 systems of equipment instead of 1, but it works and it's cheap.


I see. I was talking about the coincidence of a weather warning during a sun-outage. I thought Receiver B was hooked up to the sun-outage backup satellite and gets routed to air during sun-outages. That may be old info.

And very likely illegal, without permission from the station.


I just looked at the powerpoint that Fox provided the stations. Nothing surprising in what they are doing.

Both IRDs have their inputs from both dishes and both LNBs (four total inputs of 8 used).

You are right in that during the outage week, Fox has it configured so that the splicer will see G3C when IRD B is selected. While IRD A has G3C as two of the inputs, the station is locked out of the front panel, so they can't change which of the four inputs to choose. IRD A is set for G16 usage.

But, with TWO ASI converters, one attached to each IRD, they could easily select IRD A or IRD B for local use. Then they would select the appropriate stream (1 of 4).

FYI, G3C is affected before G16

Since all WQRF is during network programming is a translator for the network (essentially), FOX would have more issues than WQRF. It's not going to happen, I know. But, still, it's a novel idea, if I do say so myself.

Yes, but it's not really feasible. QRF could have their own overlay graphics (weather alerts, station ID bug, etc.) on the screen. MSN would not want to re-broadcast those, especially if the goal is to get their own overlay graphics on-screen.

- LoopinFool

I was responding to the point of delaying broadcasts due to preemptions. Not weather warnings and related graphics. All that FOX47 would have to cover up would be the bug the splicer puts in, which is simple enough. Again, this is all wishful thinking.

I think I ought to write the GM a letter. It's bad. I was watching Once Upon A Time tonight and thinking to myself that it looked like a compressed DVD rip. Terrible compression artifacts.



Brilliant. Fox47 news looked pretty sorry on an SD set, as I recall. On an HD set it's unwatchable. It's funny, because when they passthru HD from Fox they're one of if not the best looking station in the area for OTA.

Pass through for FOX network programming is different than local content. Network content never touches their master control except when Fox47 forces SD for weather warnings or other content. The satellite feed gets the local PSIP data (electronic program guide/virtual channels etc) added to it and goes straight to the transmitter. No local control whatsoever.

Yes, I knew that. I was commenting on the fact that Fox47 is at times the worst and the best looking channel on air in Madison depending on whether it's local content or pass through from the network. It's about time they got an upgrade to their news plant, as it's long overdue.

WKOW27 on the other hand is consistently poor looking across the board. I don't know why they can't do great looking pass through from the network. I drafted a letter last night and as soon as I can pen it out in a legible fashion I'll send it on over to the GM. I figure a hand written letter might actually get noticed, rather than an email.

I agree, their upconverter is horrid. As you noted, they are upgrading soon. WMTV's upconverter was horrid (I'd argue worse than WMSN's) before they upgraded to an HD plant. Now any of their local content looks great.


WKOW's problem is not a horrid upconverter. (WKOW is HD in the plant/studio so they shouldn't have to do any upconverting anyway. Their old upconverter looked nice.) It's a bitstarved encoder. The FOX network bitrate that gets passed to the transmitter and your TV is ~15Mbps MPEG-2. That's enough for *decent* 720p video, depending on who you ask.

WKOW does not "passthrough" network programming, per se. Last I heard, the ABC network video WKOW gets off the satellite is 22.5 Mbps H.264 which is comparable to 45 Mbps MPEG-2 (what ATSC uses). Mr. Video may have to update this. That is more than enough for beautiful HD video. WKOW takes that, decompresses it to 1.5Gbps (uncompressed HD video) and compresses it down to ~10 Mbps, which goes out to your TV. (Charter may compress it even further. I don't know.) That is NOT enough for decent 720p. The most common symptoms are macroblocking and overall "soft" pictures.

The lower bitrate is due to the MeTV and ThisTV subchannels, as well as some null packets that are supposedly reserved for Mobile DTV. Before the subs launched, WKOW looked great. They were running the main channel at ~17.8 Mbps, the maximum bitrate allowed by the ATSC standard.

In theory, WKOW could upgrade their encoders. (Either buying new ones or just a software upgrade.) The newer your encoders or software are, the better they are at allocating bits. Some stations manage to look OK with bit rates comparable to WKOW.

Yep. WCIU-DT in Chicago on RF 27 is using a state-of-the-art, almost experimental encoder. They are running FOUR subs, and a 720p HD on their .1 channel. The picture quality is very good on their main channel. It used to be poor on their bit-starved subs, now it generally looks good.

@cgmv123

The bitrate you quoted for ABC Net feeds is correct. It has not change. NBC is in the same neighborhood.

Fox47 doesn't have a news plant/news studio. Sinclair/Fox47 has a contract with WKOW's parent to do the news for them.

Funny thing is, once Fox47 can handle the HD news feed from WKOW, it will look better than WKOW, since the video won't be overcompressed before it hits your TV set.

Is CBS/CW still ~35 Mbps MPEG-2?


That depends on how it's getting over from WKOW. If it's fiber, which for some reason I think it is, than yeah, it will look great. If it's tape, that depends on the tape. Microwave should look OK, too. But, if for whatever reason, WKOW is giving them already overcompressed video. It will look as good or worse than WKOW.

BTW, WMSN's PSIP clock is off again.