Is your local news in HD? - Page 2

As far as I know, that's what KARE-11 is claiming ... "Minnesota's First HDTV News," they proclaim on www.kare11.com, even though they won't be until April.

Keep in mind, there is a MASSIVE, nationwide, market-by-market effort to relocate the frequencies TV stations currently use for remotes (live trucks, newscopters, etc.) The new frequencies for these will all be digital, and stations will have to upgrade for that reason. But I don't see any station replacing any of their remotes until the transition reaches their particular market.

At this time, nobody in Iowa is doing local HD except Iowa Public Television, which has produced some HD shows, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of the Des Moines stations switched in the next year or two. Every time I go there, it seems 8 and 13 are in a fight to the death.

Hell no...this is Dead Moines, Iowa. I'm lucky I'm not still on candlepower.

Nothing here in Chicago.

Gannett seems to love saying they're the first in HDTV.

Here in DC, W*USA9 claims to be "The First and Only Local News in HDTV"

I put the KARE11 press release announcing this in this thread

KSL (channel 5) in Salt Lake City is broadcasting the local news in HD.

http://www.gannett.com/map/television.htm

KUSA-DT Denver, CO; WUSA-DT Washington D.C.; WXIA-DT Atlanta, GA; and (soon in HD) KARE-DT Minneapolis, MN are all owned by Gannett. It seems the theme "First in HDTV" are bannered on those station's HD newscasts.

OK, I just saw this, but now the whole newscast on KABC-DT's Eyewitness News is in HD, not just Air 7 HD. Ken, you can add KABC-DT to having news studio in HD now.

Yep, ABC7 in LA is now in HD. Tony were you watching when it started at 4:30?? I don't remember it being in HD yesterday so I think either this show or the morning show had to be the "debut".

Some of the remote camera's seem to be in HD now instead of just the copter.

Dave

I'll post screencaps later. I don't remember it being HD earlier this morning, so I believe 4:30pm was their first HD newscast. This goes in conjunction with their new set, graphics, and bumper music. Prior to all this, they were in the newsroom doing the newscast. It seems all remotes are SD, but they are 16:9. 4:3 SD videos are OAR with side bars. Weather graphics are 16:9 SD, only the 7 day forecast graphic is HD, along with any in-house graphics.

From my novice eye it looked like one of the remote reports (think she was down in Cerritos) looked much better than the stretched shots (especially the feed from Detroit). Glad to see one of the LA stations finally made the jump, I was figuring KTLA would be the first...

KABC-DT Eyewitness News HD 4:30pm & 5:00pm newscast screencaps

KABC-DT Eyewitness News HD 4:30pm & 5:00pm newscast screencaps

Last one.



Looking at the newscast, it seems that the only stuff in HD is the in-studio camera shots and in-house graphics. Stuff in 16:9 SD are truck and helicopter remotes. They didn't use Air 7 HD today, the SD copters were set to 16:9. It probably won't be until Monday before we see Air 7 HD being used with the new HD studio for the first time; meaning that overlay graphics will now be possible with Air 7 HD.

Remember, you heard it here first.

I remembered that post; I kept that in the back of my mind and hoped that their new set would include equipment upgrades. I didn't expect to see this until Monday. I was surprised to see them debut it this afternoon, albeit without much fanfare, unlike Air 7 HD.

WOW the KABC screencaps look nice. Too bad I only get about 52% signal strength on KABC down here in Huntington Beach. Too bad, I really want to admire the lovely Michelle Tuzee and the beautiful Ellen Leyva in high definition Now that you have the local news in HD, KABC, turn up the transmitting power!

KABC newscasts now in HD. Caught the last 15 minutes of the 6pm newscast today. Outstanding.............

Tony, may I use one of your screenshots for a blog post? You will be credited.

And on the original subject: woot. This will get me watching my local news again until there is CNN HD or something of the like. I was confused about the promo for the 11PM news during the Harry Potter movie 'til I check AVS.

The Montclair live looked like it was SD analogue - with lots of lovely multi-path, or some very dodgy analogue video gear somewhere in the path. There are also NTSC composite artefacts. Certainly not HD, not even SD digital!

The ringing on the verticals is pretty bad - I know many transmission managers who would question whether such a source was suitable for broadcast - though news values obviously inform this decision.

The Detroit live shot also seemed to have NTSC artefacts as well, and was pretty soft (low bit rate SNG, or low bandwith microwave ?)

The studio shots look very nice though.

The 11 p.m.newscast saturday night and the 5a.m.newscast sunday morning on kabc in los angeles were also in HD. I guess all their newscast are in hd not just the primetime news cool !!

Montclair is way east of LA, so I can see why there might be some analog microwave issues from there. Digital links will likely be common soon, so we can enjoy new artifacts. Detroit is certainly a low bit rate satellite feed. But the studio, HD helicopter and roof camera video is beautiful. It'll probably be a while longer before the field material is all HD. None of the nightly network news broadcasts are in HD yet.

Hopefully this will open the floodgate to convert all the network O&Os in the larger markets. I wonder how far off WABC is from conversion.

I guess we'll know that HD is truely mainstream when we see Cal Worthington's dog Spot in HD.

WJW (FOX) does the same here. All live shots outside of the studio are upconverted 16:9 SD - actually, analog, I presume. They do have one HD camera during drive time news shows, pointed out their roof at the nearby I-90 traffic. They have a nice view of it there, since their studios are right along I-90 just east of downtown Cleveland.

And if Gannett likes to use "First in HDTV", they won't be able to do it whenever they convert WKYC/3's local news to HD, due to WJW.

I heard rumors that the Albuquerque stations will be going HD for local news in 2056. Can't wait !!!

Yeah the anchorpeople have been talking about the new HD studio for a few weeks and it's up and running. Tonight's broadcast after the Superbowl had a spot that explained what they were doing, showing the HD cameras in-studio and showed off the new widescreen standard-def cameras that they're now using in the field on location shoots. They also explained the blue pillarbox bars (they call them "wings") added to 4:3 feeds from other sources. They make it sound like all the broadcasts throughout the day will be in HD from now on. That would be cool to have local news in HD when i get home from work!

Yeah I saw this and thought KABC did an excellent job explaining the surface of an otherwise confusing subject matter. The "wings" reference also made me laugh too. The studio shot wasn't all that impressive IMO though. Pretty good, but not great. Although I did watch from D* so...

KABC in Los Angeles started their HD news yesterday after SuperBowl.

KABC has probably taken it one step closer. Virturally all local news reports shown on Good Morning America are presented in 16:9 format, as well as the weather cut-aways. Still a few bugs during that segment, however. This happens mainly because of the half-a-second delay in the ABC 7 digital feed. Hopefully this will improve once they figure out the timing structure. If other stations are doing this as well, I wouldn't be too surprised. All in all, kudos to them for making our mornings blissful.

I liked the explanation and demonstration of HD that they provided, but they also said that an HD feed will look better on a non-HDTV. Is that really true? Doesn't make much sense to me.