Washington, DC / Baltimore, MD - HDTV - Page 16

FiOS is adding CSN Philly HD to its DC area channel lineup in addition to the analog CSN Mid-Atlantic which it has always carried.

I have never heard of a out of market RSN being offered on Cable. Are you sure about this? I can see CSN-Philly being added to... well Verizon's Philadelphia markets (East PA, South NJ, DE, Maybe NorthEast MD). But DC is way out of Philadephia's turf, not to mention that Comcast owns way too many pieces of this puzzle.

It does seem strange to get an out of market RSN but that's what the Fios mailing says. Last month I got a new Washington Metro Channel Lineup in the mail from Fios for the upcoming channel switcheroo and it's got CSN Mid-Atlantic on channel 66 and CSN Philly HD listed on channel 829.

This was already discussed as an obvious typo. Verizon almost certainly would not be allowed to show Philly teams in the protected Baltimore-Washington markets.

As for Comcast Sports Network Mid-Atlantic HD, as far as I know, it is carried on all the Comcast systems in the Balt-Wash area that pre-date the recent Adelphia acquisitions. Comcast is just taking their time in adding CSN-MA in SD & HD to the now ex-Adelphia systems.

Frederick Adelphia posted in the Frederick News Post this morning the following programing changes effective 3/21/07:

New Channels- Service Level-
97 MASN2 Basic
184 CSPAN2 Basic (digital converter required)
297 ESPN Desportes Adelphia en Espanol (only applicable in Mt Airy)

Deleted Channels-
289-296 Latin Digital Music Adelphia en Espanol

Sorry, I'm a new poster and haven't read thru the entire thread.

The only reason I can think that Comcast would allow another RSN to be shown is because they lost the O's games to MASN. But even if that's true the Phillies games would be blacked out in the DC/Baltimore areas. So we'll chalk it up to a typo.

Looks like I've got the same issue here in Howard County. I used to have the channels you listed on those channel numbers on my TV, but they just stopped coming in and a rescan won't pick them up. I had posted a couple weeks ago that I lost the signal, then it came back, now it is gone again as of a few days ago.

I've been tempted to see how my TiVo S3 tunes them (as opposed to the TV's tuner) but I've got a great OTA setup going with it and I don't want to mess with it. And if I can't get reliable clear QAM from Comcast, then why bother? I do still get random ON DEMAND channels ironically enough.

What I was saying is that that is what happens on my Sony - when I put in 34.1 or 9.1 I get WUSA.

My sister works in the call center and I sent her your post. Hopefully they will fix it.

Oh sorry, it sounded like you were saying the reverse when you said earlier:

"When I put in 39.1 (or any other digital ch) I get a No Signal (even tho in the menu I get the signal strength of the WJLA ch)."

So we both can key in 34.1 and get WUSA just the same as if we had keyed in 9.1, and we don't see the same for any of the other remapped channel pairs (that is, we get a "no signal" indication for them)". Well I have no clue whether this is an oddity of Sony TV sets (at least yours and mine) or something not quite right within the PSIP information for WUSA, but at least it doesn't sound like my set is defective. Good - thanks for jumping in and letting me know this!

Another matter... You mentioned earlier that you read a signal strength for ch 39.1 even when the set said "no signal". If your Sony is similar to mine, I assume you're referring to the bar graph signal strength display shown on the diagnostics screen. If so, I have to wonder about the validity of the data on that screen (signal strength, AGC %, signal to noise ratio, etc.) when the set is tuned to a channel it cannot lock onto and displays "no signal". In watching my diagnostics, it looks like the strength number is stuck at around "41" for all "no signal" channels. In general, it would be nice to know more about that screen, how it works, how accurate it is, etc., but for now I suspect it shouldn't be taken too literally.

I should have said "or any other ch besides 34.1".

My signal strength meter is not a bar but simply a number up to 100. On 39.1 it hovers around 90, the same as for 7.1. For any ch that truly has no signal it's at 41 or lower.

Correct. On days when the Nats and O's are on at the same time, one of them will be on MASN and the other will be on MASN Plus. I suspect that MASN Plus will be dead at all other times.

Comcast channel numbers for MASN and MASN2:

http://www.masn.tv/programming/index.cfm?ID=124

In Baltimore City, MASN 2 will be on channel 17, which is normally CSPAN2.

Question... I am moving from Alexandria to Frederick next week. My DirecTV mover's connection won't be there to hook me up until March 2nd. Any chance I will be able to tune in some stations (analog or digital) with an amplified indoor antenna in the meantime? I don't want to miss Jack Bauer scream "DAMMIT!" any more than I have to!

jasonblair, I'd be very surprised if you could pick up WTTG-DT or a strong analog channel 5 signal with any indoor antenna anywhere in Frederick Co. That is, unless you go to the woods of Burkittsville...

HD is dropping out during The Office OTA on WRC.

Thanks for your input. WRT your questions, it's the Washington digital stations (4,5,7,9,26,50) that dropout. It's usally not all of them at once, however, unless the wind is very strong. They all lie between 42 and 47 degrees N except 50 that lies at 55 degrees. I rarely pick up 50.1 without lots of dropouts. I do not have a rotator. I rarely get 22.1 from Annapolis at 80 degrees with the rooftop antenna. However, I have a smaller antenna in the attic that I can go to (via A/B switch) that often picks up 50.1 and 22.1 without dropouts when there's no wind. It's pointed more to the South (around 60 degrees) than the rooftop antenna. It's still affected by the wind, though. I am not very successful at picking up any Baltimore stations with either antenna. I was hoping to find the optimum antenna to bring in everything without dropouts and without a rotator since all the stations lie between 42 and 55 degrees and are within about 10 miles. Is it likely that a better tuner that the one in the Sony WEGA could solve this problem?

Quick question for those who already have CSN HD.

Beside the home games, is there anything else that is shown in HD, like talk shows or programs?

NFL Network HD rarely does stuff in HD, I mean what is the point? You would think for an organization with so much money and so many followers who care about the HD content they would be the first to anything that has to do with HD.

I've never seen anything other than games shown in HD on CSNHD, and they don't even show all the FSN-HD network games in HD (certainly not college football anyhow).

I just got my HDHomeRun yesterday. This thing is the holy grail for HTPCs: Works with MCE, SageTV, MythTV, can be made to work with anything. It's a dual-tuner network device, so any number of HTPCs can share both tuners on any number of units. It can do OTA, but the real killer is the ability to remap QAM channels to ATSC. This allows systems that only support ATSC (Windows MCE) to finally use QAM!

Well, anyway, I scanned with this thing and discovered the program data now appears to be correct. 101.1 is "67-1 WMPT SD", 101.2 is "13-1 WJZ HD", etc.. Wouldn't matter if it wasn't tho, because you can set up the channel map by hand. Even found TNTHD and CSNHD in the clear. I haven't had a chance to rescan with my TV, but if it still can't find them, it must be a limitation of JVC's tuners. (From what I've gathered here, it seems Sony and Panasonic have the best QAM support.)

Even if the Tivo S3 can find them, I don't know how well it would map the QAM channels to their OTA equivalents. I thought you needed a CableCARD to make the guide work.

SportsNite/SportsRise are also shown in HD.

It is funny that you mentioned FSN HD because when I first received a letter from FiOS to let me know it is available, they had FSN HD included. After getting it and not seeing FSN HD in the line up, I called and asked about it, and they said it is only available in other FiOS markets, like Tampa and San Fransisco.

Unless you get a reply from someone who lives next door to where you are moving, you're probably going to have to wait and see what happens. It all boils down to location, location, and location.

I live a few miles outside of Frederick and I'm up on a hill with a roof antenna and I get get everything in DC and Baltimore just fine. Not that this success will help you much as you situation sound very different, but have hope!

They're actually WS SD.

I don't know how much your set and mine have in common, but it sounds like the signal strength indicator is handled slightly differently. No matter though, the more important issue was hearing how your Sony handled WUSA and channel 34.1. Again, thanks for passing that info along!

As others have said, it depends on excatly where in Frederick you are, and your elevation. I've gotten WBFF DT 45.1 (HD) as well as WTTG-DT 5.1 (HD) via a Silver Sensor. For me, 45 comes in stronger. According to Google Earth, my house is at 525 feet above sea level....

-Mike

This has to be why MTV2 is no longer on analog channel 58 in Prince George's County. Can't get a straight answer from Comcast on the topic.

At least it is in WS format, that way you don't see the sidebars. I don't understand why most stations don't do that with their HD broadcast even if they don't have the HD equipment.

Fox has been doing that for the last two years with their Saturday baseball games.

The thing that killed me today was as I flipped through the channels, I noticed The View is actually in HD. Why is that stupid show, at least IMO, is in HD and ESPNEWS and Total Access on NFLN are not?

Please - I hope the station managers and engineers spare us from these type comments. I don't want my SD fare stretched to fit someone's 16:9 display, and lose a significant portion of the available display via station cropping. Let them (viewers) stretch it on their own it they don't mind the distortion.

We need more STB's with native passthrough. I bought equipment that senses the input signal and properly adjusts aspect ratios. I don't want to be fed a 16:9 down chopped display of a 4:3 field. My displays can upscale and display 4:3 material fine.

If it bothers you buy equipment that is more capable of displaying 4:3 material.

This is a natural consequence of many folks blindly buying 16*9 "HD" displays and not considering what those will do to the fairly more common 4*3 material - which will be around for hundreds of years.

No - I don't want a a 4:3 HD Imax movie cropped to 16:9 so please don't suggest that the stations do this.