Knoxville, TN - HDTV - Page 53

Yeah, looked good. I also give them props for not stretching 4:3 file footage, showing the old shots pillar boxed (proper AR). Even within a 16:9 package.

I hope they stick with this decision.

They have already aired at least one promo about being the only station with an HD newscast in Knoxville and from what Alan Williams said at the top this will be the way they are going from now on.

Of the three stations I've seen convert to HD (WCYB/WEMT, WJHL and now WVLT), this is the smoothest first broadcast. And the only one to have a live shot in HD.

Channel 7 beat 'em all at doing local HD first but then they sold out to RTV and no more high school football games in HD. I was impressed by 8's debut. I'm so sick of sidebars. I'm gonna watch most of my news on 8 till the others follow suit.

I agree, looked very good actually and not too many glitches for the first go around. However, I would say this is because they have been practicing with most of the new stuff for a while before flipping on the HD part of it. If you will notice, they're using the same graphics, had the set for a while, etc.

The live field shots and pre recorded packages looked much better and had a sharper picture than the studio cameras I thought. This could be easily corrected of course and also, I think they could get more creative with camera angles now and show off the nice studio and not just tight shots all of the time. This would help with the clarity of the studio cameras as well as the more lights from the screens and walls you show off, the better the camera likes it and. Also, you may not have took much notice, but the weather maps all looked stretched to fit the 16:9 ratio. The logo at the top was the big thing that gave it away. Again, not a big deal as it could be a small upgrade later down the road to get a 16:9 doppler system.

Overall though good stuff last night! Congrats WVLT-TV!

Dang it, I missed it. Will have to check it out tonight.

My friend at WBIR said they are looking into making a switch to HD soon, they now have a 46" LED TV in the control room. Money will be the main issue.

Speaking of WVLT, I noticed there was some macroblocking during yesterday's football game. I thought that was supposed to be history with the move to 720p.

Their new muckroblocking seems to just happen in random pulses rather than the old motion induced problems.

My antenna isn't getting channels 10 and 43 this evening. Is it the same for everybody? I watched channel 10 this afternoon, no problem, then.

My Samsung T-165 tuner has gone loco. It's working except it's stopped picking up 43 and 10....

astrohed......are you sure your antenna is pointed correctly? what kind of signal strength do you get with the stations you are picking up? Your tv should have a signal strength meter built in. WATE-DT broadcasts in UHF so you should be getting it.One thing you may want to check and it might make no difference is to make sure your antenna isnt mounted backwards.

Could anyone verify if analog WFEM-12 Heiskel (I-75N and Emory Road) is still broadcasting.

The owner passed away a few years ago. The LPTV station has not been on the air for sometime. I got a tour of the station at one time. It had the biggest studio in town. It was much larger than Ch 10,8, or 6.

Sounds like an investment opportunity if you can swing a digital conversion, and if the license is still current.

Anyone else noticing a subpar picture on WATE? For weeks, it seems the picture isn't all that clear and the colors seem to be a tad dull.

I don't guess WATE will be going HD any time soon since they fired two weather people and brought in two others that would work for less.

Anyone know why the LSU-UT game was not in HD last night? It couldn't have been from the station because their local commercials were in HD, at least the ones that are supposed to be. Very disappointing.

I thought that the UT vs. LSU was in HD but very poor HD. I've noticed that the PQ varies substantially from game to game. I figur some of their cameras are better than others. The PQ is never as good as ESPN or CBS's network games. My HD Tivo was locked to Full (screen) and the telecast was 16/9. It was grubby looking barely HD... ...as far as I can tell.

On my TV both via OTA and DirecTV, I had less than 1" of black bars on both sides. It wasn't full screen and it wasn't 4:3. The PQ was awful.

I don't believe the Wednesday night SEC Network games are shot in HD, as the Saturday ones are. WVLT has had the Saturday SEC network games in HD, whether they've been on 8 or 8.2, but none of the Wednesday games. I know last year most of the Wednesday night SECN games were not in HD.

The aspect looked 16/9. HD or not, is debatable. Under the rules of HD, 16/9, 480i is HD (lite). Could the broadcast of been that?

WVLT zoomed the feed instead of stretching it. Spoke to someone with SEC Network today, most of the Wednesday night games, including the TN-LSU game, are shot in 4:3 SD. Same production crew typically does the Sunday Women's SEC Network game.

I'll buy they zoomed it for a dollar. Zooming ain't pretty but I'll give 'em that the aspect didn't look kooky as all this wrong aspect bits you see in newscasts. It was grungy. SEC TV has started a broadcast fad, Grunge-casting. It's not like even the saturday games look all that great. They look nowhere near as good as CBS or ESPN games do, not even close.

That's on WVLT, the HD games look perfect out of this market, as well as when they're replayed on ESPNU. They are produced and owned by ESPN.

There's some sort of disconnect between the ESPN signal and what WVLT transmits out. I travel quite a bit this time of year, and the difference in other markets is quite striking.

That's a big disservice to SEC hoops fans. I kind of wished now they had stayed with Raycom. Thank goodness no more of the UT games will be on the Wednesday game of the week.

I've seen what, 1080i, CBS really looks like down in Dallas at my brother's place. He even has the same TV as me. WVLT looked poorly in 1080i from the start. It seemed like that when they went to 720p, they just traded for a new set of problems. They still have a poor looking signal...except on their local news. It looks better than the HD they bring in from networks. Is their problem processing and/or storing CBS and their Basketball jones'es? Those pulses of interference or whatever it is that plagues their games and CBS shows, I don't see it on their own productions, yet....

I think the issue is that they have more Saturday affiliates than they do for Wednesday men's and Sunday women's, and the ones that do exist are mostly subchannels that don't pass thru HD at all so little is lost.

Remember that Raycom didn't do the SEC in HD until the final year, and they only did about a third of the men's basketball games in HD, instead using their HD truck to produce games for ESPN for profit, which they still do.

Apparently WVLT's issues are even bigger than we know. For two of the last three weeks, they have had trouble getting the SEC Network game onto MyVLT. I don't think it ever came on last night. Two weeks ago, it came on late and the audio was horrible.

The weekend games are on WCYB's CW4 subchannel and they are in 4-3. Even being on a subchannel the quality is still a million times better than MyVLT.

And forget about watching MyVLT on DirectV. They still have it set for 4:3 and when the SEC games are shown the picture is badly cropped on the sides. As in 1/3 of the scoreboard/graphics is cut off bad.

Let me count the ways that WVLT can ruin their PQ. Yesterday afternoon when I watched Andy Of Mayberry there were electrical hum-bars rolling up the screen.

I saw the hum bars too. In the world of digital I thought they would be gone.

Those things never left, we never get to see them. My TV has a zoom feature on it. When it's zoomed out, you can see those things on some channels, even on WBIR when they have their school closing scroll at the bottom of the screen.

Here's one more way WVLT can screw up their signal. A couple of nights ago when I was finished watching shows off my Tivo, I hit the Live TV button. It was after midnight and one of the tuners was on WVLT. They were showing Criminal Minds and it had sidebars. All the actors were stretched skinny. Just then it was time for an ad and the sidebars came in even farther. Fully 40% of the width of my widescreen TV was black bars for the ad. Turning 16 x 9 shows into a 4/3, stretched mess is channel 8's latest sin.