Minneapolis, MN - OTA - Page 60

I've had good reception using "Digitenna" for both UHF and VHF. They are sold locally by Ness Electronics.

http://digitenna.com/

Good luck!

These antennas have very good build quality and are optimized for digital TV reception on channels 7-51. The balun has a well designed circuit board in place of a matching transformer, and the large DUV element is omnidirectional for both UHF and VHF reception. Although on most models, the overall antenna is higher gain on UHF. But the XF Extreme Fringe version reportedly performs well and is smaller than most other large antennas. A bit pricey, but well constructed and made in the USA.

My Tivo and Windows Media Center just got listings for 29-3.

zap2it now shows 29.3 listings

Which is why Tivo and WMC now have them as well.

Anyone else think the Timberwolves game in HD on 29-1 last night looked remarkably good for a station with two subchannels? I didn't watch a lot of the game, but thought what I did see actually looked a bit better in some regards than past NBA games broadcast by ABC on 5-1. I guess there's actually a reason to watch 29-1 now.

agree with you there, one reason to watch it anyway....
In regards to ABC(KSTP), IMO their picture quality, especially macroblocking has really gone down the toilet! With any fast motion or things like strobes on live events the picture gets so blocky as to be almost unwatchable Static images on 5.1 look fine but just no way using <4GBs/hr is going to give you acceptable motion, even with 720p.

2 1/2 men reruns (the ones with Charlie) are another

But yeah the picture looked real good...much cleaner than watching college football on ABC 5

With the Twin Cities served with Mobile DTV and Elgato EyeTV Mobile now released, is anybody here considering this for Mobile DTV?

I am new to the forum. This may be a dumb question. I just bought HDHomerun dual HDTV with eyetv for my mac and did the autotune. I got all of the channels I have on my visio TV except no KARE11. It doesn't see it. My TV is hooked up to the same antenna and I get perfect reception (and have for the last two years). Am I missing something? I could try to manually add it but I can't find what frequency/atsc to try.

New sub-channel on the air -- 41.4. It comes up as "IShop" -- however seems to be airing Ion Life programming on a 3 hour delay.

^^^^interesting.....I hope it won't be another QVC type of shopping channel!
A quick search yielded nothing other than a few other markets with ISHOP that showed Ion Life...

Thanks for the tip. I almost forgot that this is RF channel 40. I went to my DISH 722k and selected RF 41 and nothing, but then I remembered to go to RF 40. I have a number of other receivers to scan this into, but I guess there is no big hurry for this channel!

1 1/2 months later and KARE is having issues with DirecTV........kind of ticks me off that being OTA I have to watch these latest scrolls, KARE can't seem to even get it right. Last night as they went to the scroll not only did the picture black out but lost audio for several seconds

Well, we won't be getting to see Jimmy Kimmel in HD when the show moves time slots next month. I just saw an ad touting that the show would be on at 11PM, after an hour of news from 10-11. So unless KSTP has quietly finished upgrading their equipment by then, both Jimmy Kimmel and Nightline will be tape delayed and, by necessity, broadcast in SD. I was traveling recently and the local ABC station where I was not only broadcast Kimmel in HD, but the prime time network content that was also in HD looked notably sharper and more detailed than what we get here. I do appreciate KSTP's commitment to providing a large variety of OTA content, but as time goes on the lackluster HD presentation on the main channel is becoming more and more noticeable. I know there are long-term plans to completely upgrade their equipment to allow delayed HD broadcast, but I wish ABC and/or Hubbard would hurry those upgrades along a bit and hopefully improve the picture quality on the main channel in the process..

The picture quality of Kimmel is really pathetic, if all three talk shows(Fallon, Craig and Kimmel) look interesting to me(at least once or twice a week) I always skip Kimmel because of it's awful picture quality
I also totally agree with your second point and like you said it's not just tape delayed that looks bad. Even live programs like DWTS(with it's fast motion and storobes/confetti) look really bad on KSTP. Makes me wish I had access to another markets ABC feed, I even looked into FTA but didn't see that they had a ABC HD channel available.

Zap2it.com now has listings all the way through Jan. 8th, confirming that not only will KSTP be airing Jimmy Kimmel at 11PM rather than 10:35, but in addition Nightline will start airing at midnight. That surprises me a bit, since according to numerous reports like this one Nightline has been a significant ratings winner for ABC. Oh well, just thought I'd post a heads-up for those who would otherwise be rudely surprised by the time change.

I really dont know where to put this since we really dont have a Directv thread but KAWB 22 (Bemidji/Brainerd) is now in widescreen on Directv. Its in SD only but noticed the other day black bars on the side when watching red green. Use to be 4x3

For those who didn't watch last night, at the end of Almanac on 2-1, it was announced that the Almanac studio is being completely reworked and the show will be making the upgrade to full HD. There was even a short pre-recorded HD clip at the end of the announcement. Between this and the upgrade of 2-3, I'm glad to see TPT putting what funds they have towards giving us the best presentation possible!

I agree it's nice to have 2.3 life in HD. I always dreaded watching repeats on 2.3 because of the SD picture quality, not so anymore

How's the picture quality on 2.3? Last time I saw it in October, the bit rate was running around 9 Mbps, which I'd say is too low for 1080i (and only slightly higher than KSTP's rate).

Looking at the reported program size on my Tivo, an hour program on 2-1 takes up about 5GB, and an hour of programming on 2-3 takes anywhere from 4-6GB, depending on the show. In contrast, An hour of programming on 5-1 is approximately 3.5GB. How those numbers affect one's opinion of the picture quality is of course completely subjective.

Nothing subjective about the two 1/2 hr sitcoms I watched on KSTP last night..... Both Last Man Standing and Malibu Country looked barely better than SD, all I could think of was if this is what they call HD things are getting pretty bad It wasn't so much macroblocking(although that was visible) but the overall softness of the picture. Luckily the majority of the programming I watch is on WCCO which is night and day between KSTP. I sure hope CBS doesn't decide to jump on the subchannel bandwagon(although I really do like KSTPs subchannels like Antenna, MeTV and occasionally THIS), just wish they allocated more bandwidth to their HD channel. I can live with macroblocking or just OK SD on shows like Dragnet or Adam 12 but I want better quality on ABC HD.

No argument from me (or anyone else here I would wager) about the surprisingly poor HD quality on KSTP. Getting back to agus0103's question about 2-3 though, I'm not so sure the variations in bitrate/file size make such a clear difference in the picture on 2-1 and 2-3. From my subjective point of view, the native HD programming on 2-3 looks really good. I was surprised to see such a variation in file size from 2-3 on my Tivo, though I suppose it makes some sense that upscaled SD content would take up less space than the native HD content. Either way, so far (unlike KSTP) I've no complaints about the HD picture quality on 2-3,.

Does anyone know if Comcast will start encrypting local digital channels on basic cable in 2013? (2.1, 4.1, 5.1, etc.) The recent letter sent to Comcast customers in the Twin Cities indicating they are upgrading to all-digital on March 28, 2013 states the following; "QAM tuner TVs will continue to receive Limited Basic channels without a digital device unless signals are encrypted".

It might be time to go OTA!

You might want to post your question in the MSP Comcast thread but I guess one could read that as Comcast will continue to provide SD channels since they are the only ones someone with Limited Basic is supposed to get....
I'd think with that wording they'd have to at least provide SD versions of the locals but not necessarily HD versions.
If your at all able go OTA I'd really suggest it, currently their are several sub channels available OTA but not on Comcast clear QAM and it sounds like in the future that number could increase

Well did anyone else watch last nights Jimmy Kimmel? IMO the picture quality was atrocious as usual
Apparently KSTP is still SD time delaying the broadcast I had hoped with the time change we would have been finally been able to watch it in HD, guess that was too much to expect....
Not that I guess we are missing too much, at least 2 others in different markets(which I assume broadcast Kimmel in real HD) thought it was on the "soft" side of HD.
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1450669/jimmy-kimmel-live-pq-soft#post_22807067

Yeah, I watched it. Both Kimmel and Nightline are now delayed SD broadcasts, as I predicted here. KSTP must be in bad shape financially to still be doing this when every other major channel in the market (including the two local PBS channels) are fully HD capable now. I know they've publicly said they will upgrade their equipment eventually, but the inferior picture is becoming more and more of a distraction now that everyone else is airing stuff in proper HD.

In most markets, ABC is pushing Kimmel's move to the earlier time slot to compete directly with Letterman and Leno. So surprising he is taped delayed there in a major midwest market. I think 35 mins of the late news is enough. And SD is even worse, as the HD version has very soft pic quality, as is typical of ABC in 720p. Too me, CBS and NBC programs in HD look much sharper in 1080i.

The problem I have with KSTPs timing of Kimmel is that it overlaps the 4 other talk shows. If I chose to record Kimmel I can only record 1 of each other program(3 total) but if I skip Kimmel I can record all 4 other HD talk shows. Because of this and the fact that Kimmel is SD I don't see myself recording much Kimmel.
Case in point tomorrow(Friday) when all 5 talk shows look interesting, as much as I'd love to see Sofía Vergara I'll skip Kimmel and catch the other 4