Phoenix, AZ - HDTV - Page 346

IIRC, Fox reuses the East Feed to send out an extra feed during DST for the 3 Fox stations in AZ(KSAZ, KMSB and KECY).

I believe that KHON Honolulu is the only Fox station that is permitted to reuse the HD feed to timeshift for its timezone.

Alaska would have stations in the same boat. No feed for them either.

Alaska time is -1 from Pacific, so they just air primetime 7-10 local live from the Pacific feed, the same as Central does from East.

^^^ Good point. Should have known that

Anyone else hear this weird metallic sound coming out of tonite's ongoing ABC Oscars? Pretty bad.

Ya, it's there. I'll have to check the backup feed to see if it is there. I suspect that it will definitely be there. Wasn't there earlier.

Unnecessary comments deleted.

It changes regularly. During SD the east coast feed was delayed at the stations. During SD/HD they sent a special feed live for AZ in DST. Recently they went old-school again and installed delay servers at the AZ stations, which they use for Fox News Sunday during MST and for prime during DST (my best guess it that the equipment costs seemed a better choice than the transponder time, financially). During DST the west coast feed is in sync, but the commercials are regionalized so it is not used for AZ.

Doesn't cost Fox an extra dime for transponder time to have a separate AZ feed during DST, as the transponders are up 24/7. More than likely it was the pain in handling 4 feeds during DST, instead of the normal 3.

Pacific primetime runs 8-11, Arizona runs 7-10. Even though the clocks in Arizona match the clocks in California when California is on DST, Arizona TV stations are still running primetime an hour earlier and thus can't use the Pacific feed.

While Cox has not submitted their own filing regarding the FCC request for comments on Basic Service Tier Encryption. Cox has signed a filing submitted today by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association in favor of Basic Service Tier Encryption.

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=6016996305

What this filing, and others, fails to address is the convenience or necessity of ClearQAM along with the limitations of a 2-tuner DVR. Using both DVR tuners for recordings would mean NO TV if not for ClearQAM and/or ITC analog transmissions. Want to record two simultaneous programs? OK, but I hope you have a good book, because there won't be ClearQAM or ITC analog TV to watch.

Currently: Record two programs. Watch a 3rd ClearQAM or ITC analog.
After the change: Record two programs. Brush your pet.

Has the FCC been made aware of this problem?

Or you could always watch a prerecorded show, isn't that what DVR's are for?

I often watch a sporting event of some sort, or the 10pm news while recording two shows on my DVR. With ClearQAM or ITC analog, this is possible. If the FCC allows the encryption of all of basic - causing ClearQAM and ITC analog basic to disappear - my two tuner DVR will become a "watch one channel - record one channel" DVR. Or perhaps Cox will provide an HD STB for my TV at no charge? Stop laughing now.

I did this all the time when the DBacks were playing. I had to watch them in SD, but it was better then nothing. I am so looking forward to this season with my new 4 tuner TiVo. Up to 3 channels recording and the DBacks in HD.

I think you will see all digital before basic is encrypted if at all

Indeed. 2-tuner DVRs will turn into 1-tuner DVR with an additional STB. Hello Ceton.

Although the press releases don't specify the affiliate, process of elimination reveals the station to be KEJR-LD 40, tambien KMOH 6 Kingman.

A Latin Heat Media press release states that Hero Broadcasting is an affiliate partner. Hero owns only three stations: KBEH 63 Oxnard/Los Angeles, KMOH 6 Kingman and KEJR-LD 40 Phoenix. KMOH is a simulcast of KEJR's primary subchannel. Since we already know that the Los Angeles affiliate will be KWHY, that leaves KMOH/KEJR as the new MundoFox affiliate in Phoenix.

FYI, I just recently made the switch to DTV and the *only* holes in walls I got with new installation was to get a single cable out to the dish. Everything else was re-run through the attic and fished through walls.
Not that I'm completely happy mind you, there is certainly a change in the way things work switching from Cox to DTV, but it's getting better...

I kept Cox as my internet provider as well. No issues there. And, no, I paid no extra to have the cables fished through the walls.

I guess cox's preferred internet went up by $4 to $53.99. Just found out today after making it back stateside yesterday.

Has anyone else noticed a problem with ABC 15 HD mpeg blocking in the last week or so? It's happening on every show I've seen, including all the commercials and local stuff, so I'm pretty sure it's a local KNXV 15 problem and not a ABC network issue (might be a COX issue, but they don't re-compress do they?). It's very noticeable when the image is moving or very busy, especially on the top on the screen, where the image will break up and then repair itself on the keyframes.

I've reported this problem, but as usual have gotten no results nor feedback. Can anyone here contact the people at KNXV 15 and get them to look into it, like with the FOX 10 problem we saw a few weeks ago?

Thanks,
-JimmyHDTV

It is possible. Because it is, before you blame the station, you really need to watch via OTA and either verify the issue also is there OTA and not just via Cox.

Yes, I have noticed it and reported to both Cox and KNXV, Cox says they do not see a problem and wanted to roll a Tech, I declined, as there are also a few other reports online of the same issue.

You are quite correct; I misspoke, and I apologize for that. It is during Standard time (winter) when the schedules for the west coast and AZ are in sync, even if the clocks are an hour apart. But the reason for not using that feed then is partly based on the same issue of regionalized spot sales. Advertisers want a more targeted demographic, although I am not sure what the perceived differences might be between viewers on different sides of the Rockies.

Also slipping my mind was another reason why it makes more sense for AZ stations to use server delays for prime, which is that the codes to control the branding (which consists of the corner bug and the top-of-hour legal ID) are in the bitstream as it comes from FOX. The bugs themselves are generated locally from those codes as part of the ROSA MPEG splicer system.

The problem was that even though AZ stations used to demux out a separate program stream from the multiple program transport stream, the branding codes were not always specific to the feeds.

Some FOX stations on the west coast for whatever reason carry the Saturday late night stuff at 10 PM AZ time for part of the year, while KSAZ carries news at that time. I think this is for west coast stations that don't mount an 11 PM newscast on Saturdays.

Because they claimed that "the script can't be changed" this would mean that KSAZ would get the branding for FOX late night inserted over their local news, even though KSAZ did not carry that programming until 11 PM AZ time, an hour later, which meant bugs on KSAZ's air over the wrong programming every Saturday night for half the year. It also affected stations that opted to carry an earlier feed of Fox News Sunday.

It would appear to be simple matter to fix this by muxing in separate code sets for each program stream, but FOX never could seem to find the handle. I think it might have been one of those embarrassing situations where a master plan has an unfixable flaw that is only noticed once the system is deployed. The auto industry deals with this with recalls. The broadcast industry is a 24/7/365 proposition, so fixing such flaws would be the equivalent of replacing your faulty fan belt while you are still driving down the freeway at 75.

There was never a clear explanation why FOX could not fix this, or even why it was problematic in the first place, but their solution was to place stream servers for delay at the stations that did not carry programming in step with the rest of the stations. That allowed the stations to delay the programming and the codes equally, putting everything back in sync.

Wacky, but true.

Maybe it's fixed by now, but I am not seeing this at all in Central Phoenix.

It may be less than Cox-specific; it may be regional-specific. This could depend upon which side of the broadcast ring your local head-end or node is on. The broadcast ring is a VOIP network that is structured in a ring among local TV stations. and the signal is fed both directions from each station as a backup so that the signals will still appear everywhere within the network ring even if the ring is broken by a backhoe fade or other unexpected event. But the links in that chain may still have a soft failure that could affect only part of the Cox distribution.

Cox also uses OTA as another backup, and if KNXV is or was off the ring completely, they would be brought into Cox in that manner. If there were reception issues or problems with the specific decoder used for that, this could be the source of the problem, although from your description it does not sound like a reception issue. And this would manifest for all Cox viewers, not just some.

And no, I don't suspect that Cox recompresses; my best guess is (and the logical thing to do is) that they demux to a baseband digital stream and remodulate that to QAM, although they do that probably from the VOIP network on the broadcast ring, and do it in multiple places (another potential for a regional soft failure). This means that the PQ remains as it is for OTA since the information never leaves the digital domain and there is no necessity to perform binary math on the signal. Assuming no equipment problems (and for this problem we probably should assume that is exactly what it is) this means your PQ should match whatever is received OTA.

Another way to track this down is to see if the channel that shares this QAM channel also has similar issues, which would point to an issue with the remultiplex process that places the two (sometimes three) HD channels together as the signal to be modulated onto that particular QAM channel. That also can be regional specific.

Is this still happening at your location?

You are still incorrect. During standard time, when it is 8pm in the west, it is 9pm in the Mtn zone. The only way anyone could use the Pacific feed and have it start at 7pm local time is to be in Alaska or the middle of the ocean. That is why some networks have a Mtn feed (ABC, Fox and NBC).

Only the Central and East zones are in sync.


I wonder if part of the problem might also belong to Motorola. It is very possible that their design for sending out the data was via a separate PID, as is normally the case, because they never thought that anyone would ever finely control an external box like Fox does. That resulted in the Motorola encoders not having built in a data stream PID that was assigned to each program stream. Come to think of it, does any encoder manufacturer have the ability to have a separate data stream for each program stream? I'd have to look at the various network feeds to see (other than the CW which is a single program stream). But I believe not.

This might not be a fault of Fox engineering, but the technology in general, hence the need to capture the complete stream in order to feed it back into the splicer system.