Johnstown, PA - HDTV - Page 6

Sitting in front of my TV right now they aren't on yet. My last bill shows HD Plus as $0.00 but I do have an HD/DVR lease at $7.95.

I wish I knew when Adelphia was going to get it done.

As far as football is concerned, there's problems beyond Adelphia's failure to complete the upgrade in a reasonable timeframe, neither ABC nor CBS have any facilities to pass HD from network at this time in our market. ABC last said they plan to by mid-January 2006, whether that means before NFL playoffs, before BCS bowls, or just before the Superbowl is anyone's guess. Then, since it is unlikely they'll pass is OTA, we have to get Adelphia to pick it up on fiber and pass it to the cable network.

I wonder if Penn State's BCS berth might motivate the ABC station to get the upgrade done before the end of the year in an attempt to showcase HD to a significant portion of the households in our market, that followed by the Superbowl a month later would be a great way to launch and promote their HD service.

A poster above has a response from our CBS indicating a hoped-for June/July HD date, based on funding approval.

Adelphia could have FOX in HD right now but I'm not sure what's holding them up. My last check with the QAM256 tuner showed one more HD streams than channels available from the cable box, I'm thinking FOX is on the wire but being hidden at the moment. I don't know for sure tho.

I don't think you'll be much better off with DirecTV. You might be able to get HD waivers but that could take up to 45 days. I have D* right next to Adelphia at my house and Adelphia overall picture quality kicks DirecTV's butt. D* simply overcompresses everything to the point that the motion artifacts on SD channels are more annoying than the degraded analog picture from Adelphia. For HD its no contest, as far as I know Adelphia does not rate shape or re-encode anything, and the bit rates I've seen on the wire seem to show that they only place 2 HD streams in each 38 Mbps QAM256 channel.

Speaking only in theory and only for OTA it is possible with halfway decent picture quality to put both FOX-HD and ABC-HD on the same ATSC channel as they are both 720p. Now, before you go wacky on me, I admit up front that this is not an ideal situation and the resulting picture quality may at times leave much to be desired, but in many cases I would bet the picture quality would be more than acceptable, assuming that the rate shaper in front of the encoders favors whichever stream is showing sports or action at the time.

This would be a good way to get OTA HD out to people who wouldn't get it otherwise, together with a full rate 720p feed for the cable companies and DBS via fiber.

It might suck to see artifacts now and then but I'd take that over no HD to begin with.

I certainly agree it is about freaking time but I don't know how successful they're going to be with WATM-HD at this point.

My understanding is the fiber to do this isn't in place yet and that they're hoping to have it in place by the Superbowl. I don't know if WATM even has an HD encoder yet but I'll find out. I have a meeting with WATM/WWCP next Wednesday to see if the ISP I'm partnered in can help. A nice DVB/ASI over IP solution would be great for the area cable companies and TV stations.

And WTAJ-HD doesn't exist now, and only could exist in June/July based on the email another poster said he received if all goes well in the budget process.

It will be nice if WWCP-HD is up so that we can get 24 in HD. My guess is this is dependent upon the same fiber as WATM-HD as they originate from the same location in Johnstown.

I think the 12 new digital channels are already on the wire, I spent some time last night with the QAM256 tuner and looked at where things appear to be laid out.

When I last did it most of the high def channels were in the 520-550 MHz range, now they're in the 570-600 MHz range. Things are moving around so they're definitely preparing for this. The new HD didn't appear to be on the wire yet, I still counted the proper number of streams. Dunno, could be wrong, its *all* encrypted except for the audio channels, so I'm eventually going to have to ask why the locals are encrypted. ARGH!

But we're not going to see the BCS bowls in HD even if Adelphia were prepared as WATM appears to be rushing to meet a Superbowl deadline.

You could go see it in person, I plan to go to any bowl but the Rose. The ticket/hotel package from Amex for Orange or Fiesta are both under $550, the package for the Rose is $1675 pp. Ouch!

EDIT: Here's the ad from Adelphia: http://newspaperads.centredaily.com/...14687&cat=3315

American Express Platinum Travel Service is who I spoke to about it.

Sounds fancy, basically its the often overpriced internal travel agency for Platinum card holders. They have an external group they work with for tours. I'll see if I can get the phone number from them and send it to you in the morning.

I spent about 90 minutes on the phone with them to put together a air/hotel/car package that was going to be about $1250 pp for four of us, I built my own on Orbitz for $956 pp, two rooms at each hotel too.

I ended up getting on StubHub tonight and bought four tickets for what worked out to $360 per. When I add in for the beach hotel we're staying at in Miami we're at $535 per person, about the same price for the components of the Amex package, but I'm also spending 3 days in Tampa near my best friend's place, flying down, and getting a rental car for a week for the $956 number.

I learned an expensive and valuable lesson... When Penn State locked up a BCS berth I knew I wasn't going to pay to go to the Rose and that Orange or Fiesta were my choices. If I would have bought tickets then I'd have paid only $675 for four for the Orange Bowl and probably about $750 for the Fiesta. And its not like I wouldn't have been able to sell the ones I didn't need.

Is it any surprise that the new channels on Adelphia in State College didn't go live as one of the members here was told?

Wonder what the next excuse will be.

I'd drop in to their office on Benner Pike and ask one of the CSRs to speak with a manager and ask them directly what the story is.

As to HBO, it comes in fine on my regular old TV on channel 2. Sounds like they never came to your house to change the filters.

WPSU appears to be on the wire at 717 MHz, vid 0x31 aid 0x34. I'm going to finish working my way through with the QAM256 tuner.

Unfortunately it looks like its the OTA feed from PBS, 1080i at 14-15 Mbps. :/

Unfortunately that probably means no FOX in HD yet.

Without thorough testing it looks like HD streams at:


717 MHz vid 0x31 aid 0x34 WPSU
711 MHz vid 0x20 aid 0x21 unknown
711 MHz vid 0x24 aid 0x25 unknown
705 MHz vid 0x23 aid 0x20 unknown
591 MHz vid 0x20 aid 0x21 unknown
591 MHz vid 0x26 aid 0x24 unknown
585 MHz vid 0x24 aid 0x20 unknown
585 MHz vid 0x26 aid 0x27 unknown
579 MHz vid 0x21 aid 0x24 unknown
579 MHz vid 0x31 aid 0x34 unknown
573 MHz vid 0x20 aid 0x21/0x24 unknown
573 MHz vid 0x351 aid 0x354 unknown
567 MHz vid 0x22 aid 0x20 unknown
567 MHz vid 0x26 aid 0x24 unknown


That looks like 14 to me, the number we should be getting according to the ad. I need to sit down and map out a little better what is what. It looks like its all on the wire but hasn't been added to the guides yet.

There's also a ton of unencrypted audio channels at 699 MHz.

Everything else is encrypted. After they get this pushed out to the guides I'm going to call and ask why WJAC-DT is encrypted.

Once they finish this the DCT will tell me what frequency each channel is on so I can map the encrypted streams to channel at least but not to individual pids.

It looks like the modulators are in place for channels 61-65, the new analog channels, but nothing is on them yet. Maybe they'll get this done over the weekend, who knows, but unless they're just testing WPSU-DT I'm surprised it isn't in the guide yet.

EDIT: Adelphia has a big ad in the paper today with the new lineup. It is WPSU only, no WWCP yet. I'll have to dig into this more to find out when they plan to get WWCP and if they plan to have WATM at launch.