Salt Lake City, UT - HDTV

Anyone know if Fox 13 is going to be ready to go when Fox starts feeding us HD?

NFL is my concern.

Not sure where Ken went. He helped me quite a bit when I first got into HDTV. I think he got pissed off about something though, although I don't know what it was.

Comcast in Salt Lake will be launching DiscoveryHD on July 15 .

ne1 watching the mets/yankees game on fox right now? what's up w/ the HUGE black bars on either side of the screen? i don't understand why the picture would be so narrow. ne1 have an explanation?

kpoon,
I have also noticed the huge bars. I have e-mailed channel 13 to inquire and I recently received a e-mail indicating that they have turned the information over to the engineering department.
In my e-mail I also inquired about the future of HD at the Fox networks, but did not get a reply about that as of yet.

Little bit lost with the number of antenna type available.

I am located on the east bench - 81st south and 1300 east - no major obstructions in my area.

If have been to antennaweb and the HDTV stations are 18.8 miles away. Any suggestions as to the type of antenna I should start with. I have seen the ZHDTV1 mentioned several times but it only seems to be for those under 14 miles from the stations.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Richard

That's great news. Do you know what channel it will be on?

Jeff

I'm quite new to HD, having just bought my TV and reciever a week ago.

Most of the channels look great, except for KSL, which seems to be both zoomed and cropped? I was watching Conan O'Brian the other night and the NBC logo was cut of at the bottom, but there were also slim bars on the left and right of the picture. When I put my TV into service mode to tweak overscan (I've got a Sony 32HS420), I noticed that the full logo/picture seems to be there, but it's down in the overscan area on my set. =(

Actually, that brings up another question I've had. I would just adjust the set for minimal overscan (1-2%), but the picture gets badly distorted on the TV at around 3-4% at the bottom of the screen (the picture veers sharply off to the left). Has anyone else with a sony tube TV noticed this problem?

So far I've assumed that it's not my reciever (a LG LST3510a ATSC/QAM tuner/DVD player), as I don't have the problem on any of the other channels I can get in HD.

Thanks!

Steve

if you want an indoor antenna, try a zenith silver sensor. i believe you can find them at circuit city, best buy, or rc willey.

if you want an outdoor antenna, try a radio shack vu-90xr. that's the one that i have, & it works well for me for stations that are over 21 miles away. other good outdoor antennas include channelmaster & winegard brands. stay away from terk. good luck.

Here's my guess about Fox here in Salt Lake with the wide bars. They are receiving the network signal in a compressed format, that is meant to be displayed as 16::9 480p, at the local station they run it though a machine that stretches it out and then pass it along to us.

It is a similar picture to having a anamorphic Dvd, which is then unsqueezed before it's displayed.

I further quess( and it's only that) someone is not manning a machine that needs to be triggered, or they are working on equipment that has to do with going HD, instead of 16:9 480p.

We used to have a Fox engineer here as well as Ken, maybe he'll drop by and let us know.

I don't watch much Fox programming, but I did tune into NASCAR, the past 2 races and it was the squeezed programs both times. Somebody that watches more regularly, say prime time evenings, where some of the programs are in 16:9 can chime in and let us know if those shows are being displayed the way they should. If it's only happening on the weekends, then I would speculate it's a problem with somebody forgetting to do something. It it is happening on all the shows Fox broadcasts in 16:9, then it's a hardware or upgrade issue.

As far as KSL is concerned, they strech and zoom on 5-2, instead of just showing a 4:3 picture with black bars. Personally I would rather them show 4:3 programming as 4:3, that way it I want it streched I can set up my TV or HDTV tuner to do it, if I want to watch it with bars I can do that as well.

There are a few shows which KSL does deliver in HD, and when they do it will not be zoomed and streched, that occurs on SD programming, or on a KSL edited program, such as Las Vegas, which NBC produces and sends to affiliates in HDTV, but with it's risque content, KSL edits and deletes scenes, which they can only do in SD.

Thanks buffster! I was starting to get worried about KSL, since I've really been looking forward to watching the summer olympics in HD.=) It's annoying that their 4:3 material is mangled, but at laest I can still watch it on 5-1.

As for FOX, my reciever is claiming 720p for the Bernie Mac that's on right now (7pm)! It's definetely widescreen (it fills the entire screen width) and looks quite a bit better than the picture on 13-1. Since I started writing this, Method and Red came on and it's also widescreen.

It will be on channel 663

Has anyone noticed that the black bars on the side of 4:3 programming on channel 2-1 has changed to gray in color. I just noticed this within the past week but it was hit and miss (sometimes on sometimes off) but now it seems to be permanent. I have heard that gray bars are much better than black in regards to burn-in of rear projection televisions.

If this change is permanent than I would like to give kudos to channel 2 for once again being the leader in the area for how to get things done with digital television.

You have inside info? I couldn't get any specifics whatsoever from anyone I spoke to at Comcast.

did ne1 notice last night that abc's signal strength was unusually low? i tried watching it around 11p & saw that the signal strength was only 20-25%. there were a ton of dropouts & breakups, which made the channel unwatchable. is this my equipment, or is it the station? cbs & nbc showed solid signal strengths at 87-93%.

In regards to Fox, it may be showing up in 720p, on but I don't think they are yet producing the shows in 720p. I might be wrong, but many of the local Fox affiliates take the 480p ws feed, and up-convert it before sending it out into the air. Even with that said, the 480p ws produced versions are much better than 4:3 480i. If I remeber right the Fox shows produced for the fall will be the first true HD material Fox is sending out to the affiliates.

The good news is that if Fox is already sending out the 720p signal upconverted they must have all the equipment in place to send out the 720p signal when it finally comes from the Network in the Fall.

Has anyone else noticed that 9 out of 10 HD transmission on ABC appear to have no center channel - it appears to be mixed into the right and left main speakers. I know it is not just my system now since I was just at my dad's house and his does the same thing.

Has anybody let them know or do they care? It really is a distraction. Unless you are sitting dead center in the room you only hear it out of the closest speaker. Have been experiencing this for about a month. Finally couldn't take it any more and have to complain. Nothing like stepping back to pre pro logic! Haven't listened to anything this bad for about 13 years.

Anybody out there from ABC that could look into this?

EDIT> sorry, have not been on for a while and must have messed up and hit wrong button. Meant to post this on the Salt Lake Summer thread, but it seems to have landed up a level.

Thanks,
KB

The latest word on Fox13 increasing their signal strength?

Anyone have any info? With the fall HDTV season coming we need to get this taken care of FOX!

Michael.

I have yet to pull in any kind of signal from Fox in Murray. Rather than mess around with another antenna, I went the Comcast HD route via cablecard. These guys really need to boost their signals, and I'm not specifically talking about Fox either.

NVboy, I have no problems whatsoever picking up FOX13's signal in Murray. I use the Silver Sensor antenna and I'm consistently getting 90-95% for FOX.

FWIW, I can get KSTU with 50% signal (no dropouts) on my sirt165 with my Silver Sensor in the attic at the base of "Y" mountain in Provo. I could get everything else fine (no Fox though) when it was just on my cabinet (albeit on the 3rd floor).

I'm using the Silver Sensor also, or at least I still have it hooked up to my tv. But, the best reception has the antenna pointed toward the bathroom & through about 4 other condo's next to mine. I'm hoping that has something to do with it. I also lost 5-2(I never watch network tv, so I'm not sure what station that is) a few months ago & was never able to get that one back either. Oh well. I just hope that as time goes by & more people purchase HDTV's, that signals will be increased.

I was excited to check out DiscoveryHD on Comcast today but I get the "Not Authorized" message on channel 663. It is labelled DHDTV so hopefully it will be available soon.

Jeff

I was told that it will be available "shortly," according to 2 different Comcast sources.

For some reason several/many boxes missed the data transaction which added Discovery to the lineup. Call the call center in Sandy and ask a CAE to "hit" or refresh the box and it will pop in. We are atempting to do it manually for all DCT's ,but it is slow.
Sorry for the inconvienence- We are not sure what happened.

I accidentally posted this somewhere else, however here it is...

KUWB just received a couple pallets of equipment to carry WB Network programing in HD, the bad news is the last pieces needed to interface it to the mountain site have been placed on back order by the manufacturer. (About 2-3 weeks out for delivery, another 2 weeks after that for installation, testing and commissioning. So hopefully in 4 weeks).

Installation and testing of the equipment that has arrived has been going very well thus far.

Programming that will be in HD will be Reba, Smallville, Gillmore Girls, Summerland, One Tree Hill, Everwood and in November in 5.1 the first installment of "The Lord of the Rings".

I can honestly say I have never watched WB, but I am very happy that someone else has jumped on the HDTV bandwagon.