Cedar Rapids, IA - HDTV - Page 2

There were some hurt feelings regarding the thread title when Myrtle Beach's population surpassed Florence, SC's population and Nielsen swapped the order within the DMA.

Don't know how the populations of Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Iowa City-Dubuque compare, but it's fairly rare to have the primary city change like it did with the DMA formally known as the Florence, SC DMA.

No need to worry about that anytime soon:

- Cedar Rapids: 120,758
- Waterloo: 68,747
- Iowa City: 62,380
- Dubuque: 57,686

(No offense intended to Waterloo, Iowa City or Dubuque, all fine places.)

Speaking of Iowa City (and trying to get back on topic):

It looks like the Hawkeye game this Friday will be coming from an HD site, Auburn Hills.

Unfortunately the UNI game after it will not, and it looks like the Panthers will have to get to at least the semifinals to be in HD.

All the more reason to root for 'em.

Source: http://cbs.sportsline.com/cbssports/...legebasketball

Mr Owens - didn't mean to misstate. As I used to tell Jerry, I find your HD signal fine; in fact, on the national board, when others across the country complain about NBC picture quality, I always speak up and defend KWWL-DT - I think you are doing an excellent job.

I just don't get enough radar out of Weather Plus; likewise, for me, there is too much national weather - which I have been getting from Weather Channel since day 1. I would have to sit down and watch, and time it to get hard numbers, which I'm sure you have - it is after all, your station - but the percentage of time when live doppler radar is on seems small to me. Wasn't trying to get personal or anything, I just watched CFU channel 11 a LOT more back when it was KWWL weather; now that it is a national feed - Weather Plus - with bits of your weather personell dropped in, it isn't as compelling. So when I said "waste of bandwidth" I could have as easily said waste of effort, or energy. Not to say that it noticeably degraded 7-1, but that I don't find WeatherPlus nearly as useful as your old, original offering.

Still appreciate your time and effort. Thanks.

Ok - was sitting at computer, nothing on the box, so just finished watching Weather Plus from 7:40 pm CST to 8:00 pm CST. 59 seconds of radar, of which only 20 seconds was actual real-time local radar (SKYtracker 7@) with, as you know, the other 40 seconds being a 12 hour NWS regional loop. That tends to support my main premise - Weather Plus only gives radar 5% of the time, with realtime radar on only 1.5% of the time. Sorry, but again, IMHO, Weather Plus does not deliver what I want or need.

Dick,

KWWL is still freezing starting between 9-9:01pm each night.

Obviously exceptions to the above are being made in this forum. For example:
Dayton / Lima, OH
Mobile, AL / Panama City, FL
Washington, DC / Baltimore, MD
Jackson / Meridian, MS
Springfield / Joplin, MO
Omaha / Lincoln, NE
Harrisonburg / Charlottesville, VA
Indianapolis / Terre Haute / Lafayette, IN
Waco / Bryan, TX
Lafayette, LA / Beaumont, TX / Lake Charles, LA

It's not that big of a deal, but it appears like someone just doesn't want to be bothered making the change. So be it.

KC, CFU
Cedar Falls, IA

You only quoted the first part of my post, and conveniently left out:




If all Nielsen cities were listed, Mobile, AL / Panama City, FL - HDTV would become
Mobile, AL ; Pensacola, Ft. Walton Beach, FL / Panama City, FL - HDTV

EM -

Since you mention installation, I assume you're talking about an outdoor antenna. Depending on your location, you might do okay with an indoor model.

I've tried a couple different outdoor antennas from Radio Shack and have had pretty good luck with them. I'm just using a 16' mast mounted on a tripod (Menard's), so I did the install myself. I don't know of any installers though. You might try some of the small TV/Radio shops like Darrel's or Valenta's. Good luck.

They can't even get the right feed to eastern Iowa........then Iowa losess and cbs/kgan cuts away while the broadcast crew is still talking about the ending for only 10 sec and KGAN/CBS cuts away to Bucknell/Ark. WOW talk about piss poor KGAN/CBS coverage.......

Geez, and I thought they were safe when I turned off 2-1 and left the house at around a quarter to 1 to watch the SaPaDaPaSo parade downtown. I thought, ten or twelve points up -- I'll watch the parade today. I can catch the Hawks in HD in the second round.

Sheez!

As for the switching, I missed it, so I can't hazard a guess as to who's at fault between KGAN and CBS. It's possible that they may have had to go through Bucknell/Arkansas to get to UNI/Georgetown and that CBS might not have had a convenient way to get between the two. They've got eight games to juggle this afternoon alone -- four HD/SD, four SD only. I don't pretend to know how they do it, but I'm sure some combinations are easier to program than others.

Thanks for the reply.

This makes no sense.

Mediacom has a free HBO preview from the 17th to the 20th or 21st, but they didn't include the HD channel in the preview. I called Mediacom and he reset my box. When that didn't help he told that HBO must not have included it in the preview.

If they want to lure me in they better include the HD channel or I won't even bother checking it out.

Mediacom pulled the same stunt today also with the Iowa women's game. Mediacom switched the espn2 feed to carry the game, but didn't switch the espn2 HD channel.

I didn't even think to look on the analog espn2 for the Iowa game. We wondered what the deal was.

Is anybody else not getting KCRG in HD through Mediacom? I noticed the Sixth Sense was not in HD last night, and Desperate Housewives is not in HD tonight. I tried both the Mediacom HD box (channel 809), and the QAM tuner in my tv (channel 115-2) and both give a 480i resolution. KWWL and IPT HD channels are coming in fine.

Kevin

I noticed Sixth Sense last night, but hadn't looked tonight. I'll check it out.

May have to see if I can pick up Moline if there HD is down...

DH is a rerun tonight, however Grey's Anatomy is a new episode. If it isn't in HD, then there's a problem someplace. I called Mediacom and as usual they had no idea of a problem.

OTA also.. KCRG's problem.

Their HD encoder broke Friday afternoon and will be down until parts come in, possibly on Monday. They only have SD capability until then.

Grey's Anatomy is in HD from Quad Cities station but SD from KCRG.

I can now adjust the aspect ratio again on KCRG-DT, so they've obviously been doing some work this morning. (On my setup, they were "full only" while they were on their backup.)

BTW, if anybody's home at this hour, KFXA is running that NASCAR race -- IN HD -- which was postponed yesterday. 76 laps to go at this time.

Thanks for everyone's patience. Our HD MPEG encoder went toes up on Friday afternoon so we had to go into bypass mode and use our SD MPEG encoder to keep 9-1 digital on the air. Luckily they were able to ship the part quickly and the HD MPEG encoder was back online on Monday afternoon. Although it just wasn't the same watching Grey's in SD digital. :-)

Thanks,

KCRG Engineering

Kirk.... You able to spill the beans on 9.2?????

I can't really give you any specific information on the 9-2 subchannel. We are looking at a few really good options. We are in the testing phase and you will probably see content pop up occasionally, so we can make sure the encoder and PSIP information is working correctly etc..

What kind of content do you think local viewers would like to see on a local station's subchannel? I would love to hear from anyone who has ideas or opinions and I would be happy to pass that information along to others at KCRG involved in the design phase.

Enjoy your HDTV,

KirkTV