Charlotte, NC - OTA - Page 50

Issues with "sun outage" might be affecting the NFL Games today (going from HD to SD and back): http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=919426

The Miami-Houston game on WSPA-HD was affected about a half-hour or so ago.

Pop is correct.

For those using Clear QAM - Sun outages may also affect Music Choice channels causing brief outages - these usually occur Late Sept through Early Nov usually during specific time periods (first week 4pm till about 4:10, Second week 4:10 to 4:20 etc)

I'm looking for something more specific, but I haven't seen this year's usual email about it

Is WCCB passing 5.1 DD on syndicated programming? I was watching King of Queens in SD last night and my sound system said it was in 5.1, and it sounded great. If so, any plans to show HD syndicated programming?

We're "upmixing" to 5.1 all our local programming and have been for years.We have the ability, and have for sometime, to carry syndicated programming in HD. However, at this time, NONE of the syndication we carry is available in HD. The exception is wheel & jeopardy, which we air on WOLO (from WCCB).

Why is the fox bug so big, red and irritating on WCCB, yet on WSFX its not ? Well it was that way on WSFX in the past, but not now. Just curious since I cannot really handle that bug on WCCB.

http://charter.com/Visitors/Support....ArticleID=1896

Here's a little more detail on Sun Outages -apparently they skipped sending tech ops the usual email in favor of just putting it on a Charter Support page - it does give dates (10/16 is the last one listed) and what transponders are affected.

Ok, I'm completely illiterate when it comes to antenna setup (directional, omnidirectional, where the broadcast antenna setups are for each station, etc.)... so is there someone out there who can easily recommend what I would need to receive OTA here in Cornelius from the second floor of an apartment? My porch faces east but I do have attic access if someone can tell me what I would need up there. I'm looking for the cheapest solution but also one that isn't going to be a lot of hassle.

Just hoping there might be someone here from Cornelius or Huntersville who has already been down this road and can offer tips based on experience.

see www.antennaweb.org

Is there an actual person at the controls when NFL football is on FOX? I was enjoying the Redskins game yesterday when the play by play announcers was added slowly to the sound just before the 'Game' update from New York occurred and then just after the game came back the announcers voices disappeared.

Like someone slid the play by play track up volume then out again.

I only mention this because while watching the game on the sub-channel, I will crank up the volume to get the 'stadium effect'. The switch makes the announcers get loud requiring a repeated adjustment or mute button on my part.

Thanks,
Tom

That's all handled by FOX, since we use MPEG splicing to pass the network HD, we have no ability to alter the audio or video locally. Other than putting in one big honkin' logo.

Well at least is does not attract attention like the WCNC's animated bug or the 'burn in your screen' puke green logo from CW.

I think of all the logos and station identifications, the one that ticked me off the worse was MTV's habit of putting a overlay bar with the logo and the show name (particuarly with Video Mods & Pimp My Ride) - but yeah, the color logos are the worst... I realize they want their logo so if someone records it they know where it came from, but please, make it transparent and fairly unobtrusive... otherwise it's just that much harder to get into the show.

Sometimes it's not fun being on the cutting edge. Halfway through "Heroes" last night the dialog went out like the audio had gone out of phase or something. I remember this happened once last year too. I was recording it on a DVD recorder with it's own ATSC tuner. It was also doing the same thing on a second ATSC tuner that I have. However going to an analog TV with and analog tuner it was fine, no audio problem.

What could have caused this and why? Are the engineers in league with the writers who've gone on strike? Oh and the commercials came through just fine. While we're on the subject I'd like to know why some commercials on both of my HD tuners have a really annoying echo? Anybody?

Happened here on TW (old Adelphia). The Dolby Digital went out as I understand it (from a little light research). That's why you could hear everything BUT the dialog. The dialog was in a separate channel, if I understand correctly, and that's what went out. As for the commercials, I'm guessing they weren't in Dolby Digital, thus they worked fine.

I'd love to know who was responsible (local station, Time Warner, or NBC) so I could fire enough a complaint to the right person.

Not quite.. if DD went out you'd have no audio. Center and sub are sent as a pair, which is what it sounds like WCNC lost. TWC (nor any other cable company) don't have the ability to affect the audio in that manner. I'd suggest you give WCNC a call, they may not even be aware of the problem.

We lost more than that. The only information that was being transmitted were the surround tracks, and they were being shunted to the front speakers. We lost center channel (dialog) information, yes, but also the majority of the rest of the sound which typically come from the front L&R speakers. So, we got to watch the last half of the show hearing only the background effects sounds. Weird, to say the least. Thank goodness for closed captioning.

Seems like this would be a network-wide problem stemming from the head end in, I guess, Rockefeller Center in New York. But when I posed the issue in the 'Heroes' thread in the HDTV Programming Forum, nobody else mentioned it, so I guess it was a local issue. How can that be?

Check PM Archiguy

WSOC was showing their election results in HD tonight. It really looked nice. They shifted the picture up and in but kept it in 16:9.

I was able to watch the HD locals by Directv recently, and was wondering if people that use LIL's in the Charlotte DMA think the picture quality is very good. I didn't think much of what I saw, especially NBC and ABC. The NBC picture was the worse, artifacts, micro-blocking on those Mpeg4 channels. I really couldn't call what I saw on NBC with Hero's a good HD picture. Boston Legal on ABC is just a little better. CBS appears to rather good, but I really hadn't watched it much.

They looked fair in bright scenes, even if there were some clay type faces. I really don't watch that much in Charlotte, but that is the only LiL's I've even seen. I also cannot compare them to OTA there. But I do watch OTA quite a bit in other locations, plus the DNS Mpeg2 HD channels, and they both look better than what I saw with Charlotte LiL.

The DNS mpeg2 channels, while they had more noise, they didn't have near as much block aritfacts. It was on a 1080P projector so of course the larger the picture, the most can be seen. But I'd seen that on about any size. Everything is adjusted correctly.

The dark scenes sometimes would almost smear in certain area's of the screen, where the Mpeg2 would just be noise. I know the OTA in other area's I've seen didn't look anything like that, or the other Mpeg4 nationals on Directv.

So I was mostly wondering if the Directv LiL's in Charlotte just look that way, since I've heard it varies widely from one market to another. It appear's to me they don't have things right with those charlotte channels, unless the stations are that bad also. I wonder how the Raleigh market compares.

D* can't improve the OTA signal they receive. WCNC Charlotte provides OTA viewers (and D*) with a horrible bit starved picture.

What? you don't care to know what the weather in Topeka is?

I see WSOC has joined in the Topeka weather game with an Accuweather-based channel on 9.2. I wonder how long it will be before WBTV does something similar.

I noticed on my Sammy LDC that 3-2 is showing back up on the list when channel surfing, nothing but a black screen though.
I guess it only a matter of time for WBTV to put the sub-channel back online.

For Charter customers in Hickory and surrounding areas:

As of last week, WBTV-DT1 (HD) has been moved to a new stream and frequency, which has cleared up many of the compression issues involving "shifts" in color. WBTV's signal now uses up more bandwidth though, so keep in mind recordings off WBTV-DT now take up more HDD space than before on Moxis or DC? 64?? boxes. However, there is a much better, higher quality picture than previously.

Now that I think of it, right now we don't need a weather channel to get Topeka weather. It's making the national nightly news! It's bringing back memories of the big ice storm we had a couple of years ago. Quite a contrast to the shirtsleeve weather we've got right now.

The geek that I am......

Due to tropospheric bend, I got the following digital signals when I was turning the antenna on 12-8-07...

WXII - Winston Salem
WFMY - Greensboro ( I get this pretty often)
WTVD - Durham
WRAL - Raleigh
WITN - Washington NC. ( My wife was not impressed that we could watch the weather on the Outer Banks from 260+ miles)

I normally get all Charlotte stations and all Columbia stations with the exception of WLTX due to directional signal and WSPA in Greenville.

I have also gotten:

WBTW - Dillon
WTAT - Charleston
WLOS - Asheville

For some reason WSOC is not showing the Disney Christmas Parade in HD this morning. Bummer. I am sure it would have looked great in HD.

ETA: It finally sent HD at 11:45 for the last 15 minutes of the Parade.