Phoenix, AZ - HDTV - Page 12

Live or taped, that should not matter. FOX delivers the signal the exact same way in either case ("live" satellite distribution to the affils), so if there is a local or a distribution issue, that would not make any difference. There have not been any quality or pixellation issues with the DT signal as it leaves KSAZ-DT for some time, although they have been on a bit lower power for a couple weeks while a main transmission line is repaired. If you are seeing a problem it is very likely a reception issue, which the engineering staff at KSAZ-DT has no control over. IOW, if you are seeing anything beyond the occasional dropout, don't expect that to go away, because KSAZ-DT can't fix a problem they don't have.

I find it ironic that some of us consider the PQ of AI to be among the best, as AI is shot with budget HD gear, compared to what is used for most HD. I guess that's a testament to the quality of budget HD cameras.

To my eyes, the "live" shows always look better than the shows that are "filmed." I don't notice a huge jump in quality for the weekly crime dramas, sitcoms, etc. - not even for a movie like Minority Report last week. I do notice the "wow" factor on sports, American Idol, and Leno - might just be me though, but it sounds like there are quite a few others out there like that as well.

I didn't get home in time to watch Tuesday's American Idol, so I watched the LA feed. Man, I don't think I've ever had more problems with a broadcast. The audio was not synched and would drop out for about 5 - 10 seconds at a time. Serves me right for watching the HD version instead of my SD tivo version.

I'm not so sure it's the "live" factor as it is the "non-filmed" factor. While film has the potential for HD resolution, few film producers go there, and instead, through choice of lenses, shallow depth of field, color gamut choices, emulsion development choices, and transfer issues, rarely realize that potential on film. The result is that much of filmed content has a muddy, soft look to it, such as shows like "The West Wing" and "Gilmore Girls".

Time was that this was still a superior choice over NTSC video, but the worm has turned, and HD video can and often does put conventional film techniques to shame. It doesn't have to, "Charlie's Angels" (the first movie) and "Fastlane" (produced by the same folks) are examples of film processed in ways that makes images appear just as glorious or more so than HD video images can appear. It's not a technical limitation as much as it is an artistic choice, and there is still a lot of inertia to continue to do film in a way that makes it feel inferior to what can be done with HD video, even budget equipment.

As far as the live/taped thing, back in the day of analog video I always felt that live video had better color rendition than recorded video, and that was probably the case, due to the restrictions of recording analog video, which were less-forgiving than the cameras of the day. Today, things are quite different. HD (and most SD) is typically recorded directly as encoded MPEG-2 files, meaning that there are no restrictions on recording and no inherent limitations, or benefits of being live, because the file that is recorded is the same as the file that is transmitted live, which is the same as the file when played back from tape. And the same bandwith reduction rules apply to both processes by the time it reaches your set, so live vs. taped HD looks fairly identical (because they are identical), all else being equal.

Thanks for that explanation TomCat - very insightful.

And for the record, I wasn't blown away by the NCAA games today either whereas a lot of people were amazed by it. It looked better than SD, but I didn't really realize it until they cut to games that were in SD. Anyone else have problems with KPHO feed? I kept getting distortion at the top of my screen - wondering if it was my reception (OTA) or something else. I assume it was something else since this distortion wasn't the pixelization and/or freezing you normally see with bad reception.

Live vs taped can make a huge difference in the way the content is produced PRIOR to its distribution. It seems I wasn't clear about the fact that I was talking about Fox and not KSAZ in my previous post.

Since the audio dropouts that I've been hearing have seemed to correlate with camera angle changes, I think they might be introducing some problems in the mpeg stream when they do real-time editing vs off-line editing.

Was anyone watching CSI:Miami last night? I was watching it on the HD Cox Feed and it dropped out of HD after the last commercial break. Did this happen to anyone else?

Also, has anyone heard if and when Cox will be adding more HD content. Currently TNT and some of the movie channels are available on HD but they aren't available on Cox.

Thanks

Yes, I did notice this myself. After checking some other stations to see if I was still receiving HD, I then just figured CBS must be having some kind of problem.

BTW, I was watching an ota feed.

Don

Yes, it happened to me while watching OTA. I haven't seen a thread about in the programming forum, so I would assume that it was a local affil problem.

It did not "drop out" of HD, it was taken out. KPHO did it on purpose so that they could run a popup promo for their news (they have no HD graphics generator, so they have to upconvert to do popups).

They've been doing that a lot. There's nothing like dumbing down the quality just to sell you more info about stuff you never tuned in for or cared about, which just goes to show you that they don't really care about the viewer at all, only about the two or three extra sets of eyeballs that they might get by doing that. I wonder how many other sets of eyeballs they lose by doing that? The really annoying thing is that once the popup runs, they typically forget to return to the HD feed, compounding the crime. Disgraceful behavior, and typical of broadcasting promotions sluts, who rank even lower than salesmen.

Did someone at channel 12 forget to turn on HD for the West Wing?

It had the stretch and the horrid blue bars for the entire prime time lineup. Somewhere during The West Wing it came back from commercial in HD, had some audio problems and then switched back to SD. It looked like maybe they were having some problems, as opposed to forgetting to throw the switch.

I tried to watch American Dreams in hd last night and 12 did not have it in hd. I called the station and was told that they got a call from NBC earlier in the day saying that there was a problem with the hd signal from New York and that NBC would not be sending out hd.

I would think if that were true there would be any number of threads about it in the Programming Forum.

You're right. I didn't check the programming forum last night so I just took the guy's word. Bad mistake on my part.

I was surprised there wasn't anything in the Programming Forum. I looked at some of the other local forums though and people are mentioning issues that they had with NBC last night, so it looks like there was a network problem.

I'm wondering if anyone has noticed that Fox 10 when in local mode (not HD national feeds, these are perfect), has a severe RED push, in fact almost pinkish hue to their OTA feed.

I've been watching HD in Phoenix since I moved here 3 months ago and have noticed that on my sets (2 ISF Calibrated) show FOX has a severe red push to it. I've even taken my color temp and upped it from 6500 to 8500 and it still won't get this station looking as good as any other local station.

This also seems to be very high on station promos on their VTR's, again just wondering if I'm the only one that has noted this or even cares. I've emailed their engineers but curious to know if I'm the only one that has noticed.

Miguel

I haven't noticed, but then again I tend to turn the station during commercials.

You don't have to worry about it during HD Network feeds, again these are perfect, Idol is a clear example of the quality that the network is capable of. This is only on the local content, the news, commercials, station promos, some live shots etc., the colors have a heavy red push. I've even compared their signal to all the other stations and even 51 (PAX) which is well known for low quality PQ in many markets doesn't have this problem on their OTA SD signal.

I guess that it's just me... I did email the station, maybe it's something that they will check.

I guess that being from a market that was doing this stuff and now being in one that isn't prompts me to ask this question.

Is CBS 5 known for not multicasting events like the NCAA playoffs? I recall that for the last 2 years in Orlando we were treated to 1 HD and another game in SD on the CBS feeds for the games, doesn't appear that this is done here. Has anyone ever spoken to the station and requested that they allocate some multicast bandwidth.

I'm seeing that Phoenix isn't as progressive with their digital setups as Orlando was, however that was a smaller and very bush league market compared to this a bigger and more professional market. Back there, all 3 major network affiliates broadcast an HD channel and had a news channel on their x-2 feed.

I know that we're not ready for a true progressive HD station like the great WRAL in Raleigh where even the local news is HD, I've only seen that there and nowhere else, but a little extra sports action never hurt anyone.

Just curious...

Nothing good has ever come from multi-casting.

KPHO CBS-5 has the best PQ of all the Phoenix stations due to the fact that they don't multi cast and they keep the bandwidth wide open.

Now if Ch-15 would learn this they would stop transmitting their HD channel at DVD bandwidth (7.5mbps).

I totally don't agree with you on this, in Orlando we had great stations that multicast daily and added some creative local content on their x-2 feeds. In the AM drive all the stations put up weather graphics and DOT traffic cameras along the major routes. I can't tell you how many times I was able to avoid total dead stop traffic chaos because I saw something on the cameras on my route. They also simulcast local news audio content on the 2nd channel which Good Morning America or the Today show was on the main channel giving the local team a whopping 5 minutes of local insert time.

The 2nd favorable offering was a situation like NCAA Basketball, there are several games being played at any time and the local CBS station offered up to 4 of them by way of multicasting.

There was also a great deal of cooperation between the strongest cable company in the area (Brighthouse) and the local outlets where everything broadcast was also on cable, so if channel 6 Orlando put up 2 digital feeds, both would be on cable as well (see http://www.orlandodigital.tv/index.htm ).

Which brings up my next point, this was in the latest edition of broadcast engineering;

[quote]
Brinkley is back for a DTV update
Mar 13, 2005 8:00 AM, Beyond The Headlines e-newsletter
In 1997, New York Times reporter Joel Brinkley (son of pioneering TV anchorman David Brinkley) wrote Defining Vision, a definitive history describing the birth of digital and HDTV. It has been widely acclaimed as the definitive account of how the DTV transition began.
Now, Brinkley is back with an update that appears in this month's Ultimate AV Magazine. In the column, Brinkley chides FCC Chairman Michael Powell for leading a vote that struck a blow against innovative use of digital television by not requiring cable companies to carry local broadcasters' DTV multicast programming.
Brinkley said the logic for DTV multicasting is two-fold: First, no matter how many program streams a station chooses to air, the total bandwidth consumed can never exceed 6MHz the space allotted to each TV station the space a cable operator is required to carry. Second, almost three-quarters of the nation's TV viewers receive their local TV stations from a cable system. If a TV station offers five programming streams, and four of them are not available to 75 percent of its viewers, how long will the station continue multicasting? Not long, obviously.
Brinkley suggests the battle for multichannel must-carry is far from over. He smells a compromise in the air.
When will the digital transition end? The broadcasters have said they would agree to an early end to the transition if they could be assured that all of their digital channels would be carried by cable. Congress remains determined to end the transition soon. At the same time, it is vulnerable to lobbying from the broadcasters. Congress is unlikely to change the date for the end of the transition if the broadcasters are dead-set against it. So I can foresee some sort of trade: A hard and fast end to analog broadcasting, in exchange for a comprehensive, Congressionally mandated must-carry rule.
[quote/]



It appears that many cable outlets are resistant to delivering secondary or tertiary feeds from the local media outlets and unless they do it and educate the public that there is more with digital TV resistance is going to continue. My neighbor came over the other day and saw my HD setup and never knew about extra multicast channels, he was also shocked to see that only PBS offered a true multicast solution in our market. He made it clear that if he had known about this sooner, he would have jumped on the digital tv bandwagon earlier and now feels left out. I can only wonder how many other Americans have no clue about this.

Ok just my 2 cents

Problem is that the PQ drops like crazy when you multi cast.

Look at Fox 10. They are a single cast 720p channel and they are using a clean 14-15mbps bandwidth pipe. Their PQ is pretty good when they use the full 15mbps and its quite good when they are on the normal 13mbps.

On the other hand, ABC 15 is a multi casting 3 channels (15.1 HD, 15.2 SD, and 15.3 is vacant but they still have the bandwidth tapped) and their HD channel is a lousy 7.5-9.0mbps and it looks lousy. Compared to the Atlanta ABC channel (call letters escape me) which does not multi cast and has 5.1 audio 100% of primetime, they are pumping out 14-15mbps.

The multi cast works great in theory but PQ drops when the stations drop the HD bandwidth to allow for the additional channels. That is why CBS 5 and NBC 12 look so good. They are both using almost their entire allotment of 1080i bandwidth on their single HD channel. If they start to multi cast you will see HD channels showing 1080i at about 12-14mbps and everyone will complain about macro blocking and lousy PQ.

The local news in HD may becoming to PHX sooner then you think...

It's not just you. I've noticed a red push on a couple of stations. But, off the top of my head, I can't recall which stations.

Red push typically refers to a color decoder problem. IOW, it happens only in your set. Red push is not something that can happen anywhere else in the signal chain.

That is not to say that color calibration can't be off somewhere within a TV station, because it can. But it is highly unlikely. First, there would be about 50 engineers who have been trained all of their professional careers to keep an eye out for that jumping up and down and pointing, and immediately wanting to correct it (that's their nature). Secondly, as is the case at KSAZ, most recordings arrive through calibrated receivers and are recorded as server files, meaning that the only place they could be manipulated as far as color balance is concerned would be at the receiver itself. Since KSAZ uses some 30 different receivers to receive programming on, it is highly unlikely that all of them are uncalibrated in the same improper direction of "red push", and normally receivers can't be adjusted for color balance anyway...they and the transmission chains that carry them to the servers sometimes can have a hue or chroma issue, but color calibration is pretty much fixed.

Some local content other than that does have the handles to manipulate color balance, but the first thing an operator learns on day one is how to calibrate to SMPTE color bars, which in every case should correct any imbalance in hue, phase, I, and Q, meaning what might be incorrectly perceived as "red push" would not really be possible. Also, the infrastructure at KSAZ is about 95% digital, and digital video signals rarely if ever become uncalibrated and typically do not have any way of being mis-adjusted in that regard.

Bottom line, there is no single point of possible mis-calibration that could result in this phenomenon occurring as a general defect in color balance. My best guess would be that your display would be the first place to look, but it is indeed puzzling that KSAZ is singled out here. If you are seeing this OTA it is truly puzzling, and certainly is not something apparent to the engineers at KSAZ. If you are receiving from cable or from DBS, that's a whole other can of worms.

I'm not sure you should rely on consumer gear to measure this. I agree that KSAZ looks pretty good and primarily because they don't multicast, but they are fixed at 14.5 and have been for some time. I can't account for the difference you are seeing unless is it due to VBR in your recorder or statmux or some other manipulation from your content vendor.

But that is not the whole story. FOX sends a lot of null packets in their ASI feed to the stations. Why, they aren't saying, but my best guess is that they want to keep the sat feeds at the limit, bitwise, to make sure they can handle a full 68 Mb/s stream if and whenever they might decide to add more streams to the aggregate. This may account for the brief macroblocking some of us are seeing on scene changes on FOX HD. IOW, 14.5 Mb/s doesn't mean all that much if 6 Mb/s of that is null packets. But for MPEG-2 at the profile and level used for HD there is no visible difference on static images delivered at 9 Mb/s and those delivered at 90 Mb/s anyway. Otherwise, a HD signal that begins life at 360 Mb/s could not fit into a 19.3 pipe.

I don't see this as a signal issue, a bitrate issue, or an HD issue, strictly happens when they are in local mode so if the bitrate is constant, why such a drastic color shift between SD and HD.

Most stations spend a ton of time to keep their analog transmitters on the air, many don't care one iota about the digital side of the house. Not knowing they do here in Phoenix, I can only compare them to Orlando where the Fox and UPN affiliates were one in the same and the UPN side of the house suffered due to the engineers only spending time on the output of the FOX signal.

What I'm seeing is very obvious, 2 sets, one projector and one lcd panel both showing the same result, I invite anyone to come over and see this, provided that you can give the feedback to the engineers at SAZ. I've opted to create a new color preset for 10.1 SD content where the color drive is at -10 and with a green push of +3 and a color temp of 8500k to get them to look like other stations in the market, however on HD I can run them on the normal calibrated preset. Really annoying but atleast I can watch them if there is a show on that I want to check out.

Regards, MIGUEL

Well, then someone should tell Jude Lacava to back off on the blush makeup cause he sure was a nice bright shade of red last night (I was watching more critically than normal last night due to this discussion).

The thing I found interesting, was that it only seemed to be Jude's center camera last night. All the taped stuff looked ok.