Huntsville, AL - HDTV - Page 7

Well the glitches were not the precursor to HD on Fox last night. Switched over and checked the O.C. and no luck, of course there was no luck on ESPN-2HD last night either on Directv. Anyone tried calling WZDX this week and get a status?

I'll be calling them later today.

Edit:

Just got off the phone with them. They have a specialist coming in Monday to get all the equipment working correctly together. He said the playoff games won't be in HD this weekend, but more than likely they'll be good to go for next weekend.

One more week isn't so bad.

Damn, worse then the playoff though is the start of 24! Crossing fingers for HD next week. Want to check House out and get into 24. I just can't bring myself to watch SD on an 7 foot wide screen, just looks crappy.

Good news about Comcast and ABC!!

I got the Motorola DVR from Comcast a few days ago and the next day I called them back to have them give me back my regular HD box. The DVR box is terrible. In the few hours that I used it, it locked up several times. Finally it wouldn't even display a picture. The technician also said that the boxes are bad. He said that in a month or so a new DVR will be available. He thought that it will be called a Moxy Box (sp??). I would recommend NOT get the current DVR box if you actually what to watch TV.

Moxi is the spelling. Look around on some of the other areas of the forum for some more info. It should be a radically better piece of equipment than the motorola box. The software will be much more robust and easier to use. It was developed be people with experience with PVRs unlike the major cable box suppliers.

So what was the good news about ABC?

Wonder if there is any chance WZDX would be up tonight for the seconde episode of 24? I'll keep my fingers crossed the specialist is showing up to work today instead of showing up and checking into a hotel today......

Ditto Taz is there some word on ABC. I'm a firm believer right now that there isn't a snowballs chance we see ABC in HD until 06 or beyond.

I'm really hoping that they can get it fixed today. We've had people fly in several times to troubleshoot equipment, and even if they didn't even make it into town until 3:00pm or so, they still came straight to the station and got to work. My fingers are crossed.

And I personally don't see WAAY going HD unless someone buys them, but you never know.

As for us (WHDF), we're kinda getting the shaft from what I can tell. We'll be digital by the end of the month and they've purchased the HD-encoder. What they didn't purchase was the HD-router, HD-upconverter (for SD), and HD-frame sync. These three pieces of equipment are mandatory to do HD, though they don't cost that much in the larger scheme of things. My thoughts on this is our owners will never let us go HD before their 'Main station' in Richmond goes HD. I'm betting they'll order the remaining pieces next year when we go full-power and move the transmitter to the main tower (antenna is already there).

Though you never know, they could surprise us within the next few weeks.

Suggest WHDF be used as a test bed of sorts for your 'Main station.' You know, so you can work out the bugs and get it all working -- to serve as a troubleshooting entity, to make the 'Main station's' transition a rapid one, once they decide to do it. ;-)

So close yet so far away from Enterprise HD......

FYI. Called WZDX to check on HD, usually send me back to engineering but said they were tied up installing the equipment. That was all the info she had but we have reason to hope......

I got the DCT6412 right around Christmas and, while it has a few quirks (see below), mine is doing all right. Because of those quirks, I was excited to read about the Moxi box in this thread, but when I went to read about it in the Moxi thread, now I'm pretty scared.

* No DVI output.
* Can't use the 4:3 override to push SD analog and digital to 480i (which means the box stretches it to 1080i)
* Just about as many tuner/PQ/DVR problems as have been reported for the DCT6412
* Complaints about the program grid
* Most of these problems (but not all) are supposed to be fixed in the next firmware revision which has been promised since August but now seems to be 'no earlier than March 1st'

If Huntsville's Comcast goes to the Moxi box, are they going to support both? I'm pretty close to getting my DCT6412 to behave properly and I don't want to have to redo that. I'm more likely to boot Comcast and go satellite.

My currently problem with the DCT6412 is that it seems to have developed the "no tuner feed when you power on until you play a bit of DVR'ed show". This is just an annoyance now because I usually leave it on. Supposedly, removing power and restoring it "fixes" this, but at the cost of having to redownload the program guide and losing your scheduled recordings, but I'm going to try it tonight (around bedtime) and see if that works. It *may* be caused by my 480i 4:3 override setting. If that is true, it goes from annoyance to seriously broken (but the Moxi box would still be unacceptible to me if the above problems aren't fixed).

Support for external USB2.0 drives would be *real* nice, tho'. Even if DRM prevents them from being used if the drive was connected to a computer, it would still be nice to boost my record time, particularly for HD.

Called yesterday afternoon didn't get routed back to engineering but was told by the front desk that they would be up in a matter of days.

FOX54 is now HD capable. The dual channel WB was required in order to move cable systems, which use the digital signal for distribution, from 41-3 to 41-4 so Fox could occupy 41-3. FCC new rules make programs 1 and 2 illegal as of 1/1/05. (is WAFF listening?) The 'specialist' was a scheduled install and not directly connected to the HD install problems but with the PSIP information system. Blame late orders for equipment due to owners reluctance to let go of the funds, the WB distibution system and mostly the FCC for making certain PIDs illegal and requiring full PSIP by 2/5/05!! This weekends games will be in HD.

That's great news; I'm out of the country and can't wait to get back and watch some Fox in HD.

Update on my antenna situation - I *finally* got a Dish installer to install my OTA antenna yesterday. Once he found out I wasn't interested in moving from D* to Dish, he wasn't very interested in going thru with the install. But - another story for another day.

I installed a CM 4228 outside. It's picking up everything beautifully! Even FOX looked great last night.

Thanks again for all of the input. Looking forward to FOX in HD : D

That's good to hear, well, the part about being HD-capable now. Looking forward to this Friday night (Johnny Zero).


Excellent, welcome to the club.

Thank You Joe and all who was responsible for getting the HD feed up running.


Are you ready for some football? IN HD??


Thanks Again FOX 54!


Barry

Yes, I'm ready for some FOX-HD football!!! I'm not a big fan of the OC, but I did check it out for a few minutes tonight and it looked great! And with Dolby 5.1 audio no less!

Great job Joe and 54 crew!

I watched a few minutes of The OC last night and wasn't impressed with the PQ. Fox's presentation of the NFL in 480p widescreen last year looked better. But, this is not WZDXs fault, I analyzed the stream and the Fox stream was a poor 9.8Mbs on average, with 3.75Mbs going to the WB, and another 3.75Mbs for nullpackets.

I've read that The OC isn't Fox's best production, so before I bash, I'll check out Johnny Zero tonight. Also, I've already seen Fox's NFL production, and while it's not top-notch (like CBS), it is a lot better than what The OC looked like last night.

DD5.1 was nice though!

TV programs that are non-HD video tend to be hit or miss. Looking forward to the live sporting events and then shows like House and 24!

Thanks Joe and WZDX.

My audio is a little "lip-synced" for Fox's HD feed. This is through a Knology set top box. Funny thing is, it seems to only be on SD material. Not really a problem, becuase I don't watch much SD stuff anyways, and even less SD from Fox. Just an FYI in case someone else has noticed it too.

I posted this over at the Tennessee Valley HD forum, and I thought I would post it over here since I'm still baffled by it.

I called Comcast recently to ask about ESPN2HD, and of course, was told at this time they do not plan on adding it. That did not surprise me. HOWEVER... I was told that they are in the works to add WAFF's HD feed (known already), but also that they were in the works to add another CBS HD feed. I know there is a SD feed from WIAT-CBS already, which is located in Birmingham, so it is possible that this is the additional CBS HD feed, but I thought it would be required that WHNT would need to give permission for this to happen.

IF it's true that it's WIAT's HD feed that will be additionally fed through Comcast here in Huntsville, and it's also true that a waiver was not required from WHNT, then we should begin calling Comcast on a daily basis to request a HD feed from another ABC affiliate. (Knology subscribers would be encouraged to call Knology as well)

Who else is with me?

Mr Zoid

I'm getting severe audio dropouts on WZDX during primetime only (video is fine). Whenever the splicer is not being used, ie, during the day, there are zero audio dropouts.

During the Football game last night everything seemed to be fine for me as far as audio. Too bad the game was a blowout. I did not try my OTA feed, I was using Comcast HD.

Does anyone else believe that the CBS HD looks better than FOX HD?

OG

Yeah, the ballgame last night was perfect, not a single audio dropout. Weird.

And yes, CBS-HD does look better than Fox-HD. Hopefully in the near future Fox (network) will give a little more bandwidth to their 720p material, IMO, 10Mbs average is not enough.

Sorry about the open ended statement. I was talking about WAAY 32 having an agreement with Comcast. I do not have any info on when WAAY will actually be broadcasting in HD.

OG