HD syndication ... more on the way - Page 6  

As I understand it, it is a PeeCee running XP, with a DVB-S receiver card, Pathfire software and HDDs. It also has whatever it needs to communicate back to Pathfire. Don't know what it has as the interface for playout. The TOC guy I talked to at the Paramount stage 30 TOC is not that computer savy, but he knows his **** as far as running the gear there. That is what I got out of him a few years ago.

It isn't a real fancy box. It has been a few years since I've dug into it, but back then, if the playout glitched, or had a problem, the station could not start playback at any point in the program. One had to start that segment over. Not good. Do not know if they ever fixed that.

Ya, Pathfire does not have a lot of fans.

OK, I'm confused. HD is 16:9 digital.

And just how are they supposed to do 480i analog in widescreen? This country never adopted analog widescreen, unlike most of Europe. So, here you are sending out tall/skinny people over the analog channel. For digital, they'd have to have gear that can bump anamorphic widescreen to 16:9 and return to 4:3 pillarbar when that material is not playing out. A lot of stations can't even switch to the network HD feed, let alone buy gear and run it correctly.

No, no. I mean a not-HD picture. The same 16x9 AR just at a 480i resolution. The main block with HD syndication seems to be the HD---it's expensive and takes more space to record. So why not give the viewers a 16x9 SD picture rather than a 4x3 SD picture? Right now with separate SD/HD feeds that would mean either the tall, skinny people you mentioned. But after 2-17-09, things will get easier when affiliates send out one digital feed that is downconverted by digital cable/satellite or a viewer's CECB. Basically what I'm talking about is the HD/16x9 viewers getting a 16x9 'digital widescreen' picture and the 4x3 viewers would still see the same 4x3 picture unsquashed since the left/right sides are cut off.

I know this country doesn't have anything specific set up on 480i widescreen, but I've seen it successfully used on local newscasts. Out of studio shots are widescreen, but not HD. It's still center cut for 4:3 and it looks better on the HD channel than regular 4x3.

That would be roughly 40Mbs. Maybe they are rethinking codecs. They could probably use 20Mbs MPEG4 to get about the same quality, but that could complicate file flipping to MPEG2 playout servers. At 40Mbs I think they woud lose the time efficiency advantage compared to a linear feed that they had with SD.

The future is obviously HD. Pathfire has sent long form HD material but it sounds like they are refining the process (and the billing). Local HD syndication is still in its early stages so they have some time. It sounds like more of a bump in the road rather than abandonment. The WB linear feeds may be an interim solution.

Any feedback on how the short form HD distribution (ads and news) is working out?

That would work: Downconvert the HD to 16:9 SD, record it on SD equipment and then upconvert for playout. The danger is that it becomes a widespread practice and would lower incentive for stations to use true HD. But that would still be a temporary situation as stations with an HD channel will probably eventually move to an all HD infrastructure.

I think I've seen stations with HD news already doing this with sports highlights.

The only way that can be done right now is to letterbox the 16:9. Lots of primetime network scripted dramas are being aired letterbox. Fox just started doing it with all their scripted dramas. So that idea is not new. ER (NBC) started that years ago.


Now you are confusing me. First you want the SD viewers to see a 16:9 image, and in this part, you are calling for center cutting the image.

It seems that most cable-cos and the pizza-pan companies are going to centercut the HD image, which it why the damn networks have moved the bugs to the 4:3 safe area, even though pan-n-scanning the image will result in stuff being cut off, to wit, Smallville.


That is because they are too cheap to buy HD field news gear, instead buying anamorphic widescreen 480i gear.

So, if I understand you correctly, what you are asking for, is what is going to happen anyway.

Those viewers who will being doing OTA using a CECB, they'll be able to select how they want to see the image on their 4:3 screen: pan-n-scan or letterbox. None of the cable-cos or pizza-pan suppliers will provide that choice.

Not only that, it would royally piss off viewers who know the show is in HD and it looks like crap on their HD displays. Talk about phone calls to the station.

Warner Bros. and CBS have lots of time to send out those via Pathfire, considering they are up 24/7 and are not currently feeding 24/7. Lots of bandwidth.

Very good point. Keep in mind that Warner Bros and CBS do the actual feeding (Buena Vista uses CBS to distribute) of the Pathfire data. So, Pathfire must be charging a license fee for every program delivered. Or is Pathfire staff actually doing the work at the Warner Bros and CBS sites? I know that at Paramount, stage 30 staff was actually doing the encoding to the Pathfire file structure. Those files were then shipped to New York for uplink from the Pathfire servers. That was a couple of years ago. I haven't talked to my contact at the stage 30 TOC in a couple of years.

They better rethink their pricing structure if it is indeed pricing that caused everyone to not use them for HD delivery.

Just yesterday an engineer with the local Fox affiliate posted that they recently got their new DG/Fastchannel HD Extreme server. Funny thing is that they are a 100% analog plant, owned by Sinclair. They are way down on the priority list for getting their plant updated to 100% digital. When you are in the 85th market (I believe we are), you aren't very high on Sinclair's upgrade list.

I'm not talking about SD 4:3 here at all. 4:3 is dying a slow death and I honestly don't give two s--ts how they downconvert for it(letterbox, crop, etc). What I am talking about is SD widescreen-that would be upconverted to 720p or 1080i, like FOX widescreen or what the network news does for remote shots. Since the main block with HD syndication seems to be the cost of the equipment, and lack of interest(or caring about HD) by cheap owners, there should be an alternative to give pissed off HD viewers at least a widescreen picture. I've seen some good digital widescreen upconverted on FOX. I actually thought Hell's Kitchen and COPS were in HD(until I read otherwise here). I thought a lower quality HD on some shots, but still better than 4:3 SD.


Exactly. That seems to be the main block---cost. Especially with HD news field equipment. Even the network evening news have been broadcasting storm coverage with 480i widescreen.


That would be nice. I'd rather see Raymond and 2.5 Men in 480i widescreen(upconverted to 720p on the local MNTV) than regular crappy 4:3 SD.

OK, I have a handle on what you are after.

The station still has to deal with two forms of video: 4:3 and 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, both stored in a 720x480 server file.

Doing this kind of stuff in the studio control room is different than doing this stuff from master control.

In a typical situation, the station will take 720x840 SD video and upconvert to 720/1080 with pillar bars for HD and send it straight to the analog transmitter (OK, after conversion from digital to analog).

Now, what you are proposing requires them to figure out how to handle anamorphic widescreen 720x480 video. For HD, it means telling the upconverter that hey, this isn't 4:3, but it is 16:9, so handle accordingly. On the way to the analog transmitter, the DtoA has to be told that the video is 16:9 and to only use the middle 540 pixels for air.

That means spending money to tag these files with metadata so that it can all be done automatically, because we all know, if we leave it in the hands of the master control operators, the analog and HD viewers will end up seeing tall/skinny people.

So, instead of spending the money to handle anamorphic widescreen, handle real HD. Of coourse, what I mentioned assumed that the station was digital and was passing around HD-SDI, or worse, SD-SDI . If the station is doing HD news, you can bet that the plant is HD-SDI (or one would hope).

But what about those stations, like the local Fox affiliate, which is a 100% analog plant. They can't send metadata with the video, since it isn't digital. Now you have to rely on master control getting it right. Ya, good luck with that. Supposidly one might be able to stick the 16:9/4:3 VBI flag into the video. But, as I understand it, that flag is not FCC authorized for OTA?

Nice idea, but I think it would open a whole different set of can-o-worms.

Do you not have two Pathfire servers at your station? One to ingest the stuff from the Warner Bros mux and one to ingest from the CBS mux?

Warner Bros. has control of the Pathfire mux and CBS has control of their Pathfire mux.

As mentioned, Paramount stage 30 TOC was creating the Pathfire files for their stuff, which they would then send down fiber to CBS Televison City LA, who would then get the files to NY to place onto the Pathfire server for ultimate delivery to the stations. For Warner Bros. it has to be easier, since everything is located in LA.

What I did not find out, is if Pathfire staff actually handled the servers, or if Warner Bros./CBS staff handled the servers.

A call to Pathfire would solve that.

But BDFox18doe has mentioned getting phone calls from Pathfire regarding local affiliate server errors, so it seems that Pathfire staff is still in the loop, even though the actual uplinking is done by Warner Bros./CBS.


It is interesting that Pathfire can't keep the IP delivery table up-to-date. In case there are those here that do not know, Pathfire files use a delivery system sorta equal to the internet. Each site has a unique address, just like your computer having a unique IP address. The Pathfire servers are sent control files with a list of pitches they are allowed to keep. For example, if a station has the contract to air Jeopardy!, the Pathfire server is told that when it "sees" the address for Jeopardy!, it is supposed to save it on the server. But, if the show isn't in the list, it is just supposed to dump the data into the bit bucket.

Now, in this example. the numb-nuts at the CBS Pathfire uplink server have not been told that station A no longer has the contract and to stop sending to them, even though they were obviously told that station B now does. So, stations A and B, in the same market are getting the show.

Obviously they can be told to start delivery and if a station complains that they didn't get the pitch, the table has to be updated and the show resent. Someone must not be thinking if B is now getting it, A sure as Hell shouldn't and should find out why. The fact that you can't get anyone at Pathfire to fix your table is just plain rediculous.

And one wonders why Pathfire is so loved by everyone

Speaking of recorded HD, WKYC NBC Cleveland is showing NBC's Primetime Fall Preview show in recorded HD.

At our place we just have one Pathfire server, but have 3 receivers to grab the different feeds. I know one of our sister stations is able to transfer the video files directly from PathFire to their playout server, we, however, have to play it out in realtime...

Also, we've been experimenting this week with both the 4x3 feed and then playing out a 16x9 anamorphic feed. Eventually we'd like to figure out a way to center cut the 16x9 for the analog channel, but as already pointed out, it's a bit of a trick, especially with our master control setup to do that. For now, we're actually airing two discrete playlists, one for digital and one for analog to make it work.

I don't recall reading about Lost being shown in syndication in HD. WDCW-DT 50 in Washington DC is showing the pilot episode of Lost at 10 PM on Saturday night in HD. Checking the schedule, looks like WDCW-DT is showing reruns of Lost at 10 PM on Saturdays and in HD according to Titantv.

No HD on WBNX-DT Cleveland. I really was looking forward to seeing the beginning of Lost and Desperate Housewives in HD. Never seen them.

I wonder if CSI: NY Weekend will be HD? I've seen it on Titan TV as HD plus it is shown on the local ABC(that has HD recording for Wheel, Jeopardy and Oprah).

One can use an ARC to stretch the 16:9 SD, or downconvert and center cut the upconverted HD. Both approaches look about the same. The automation could select the ARC or downconverter as a separate source.

I don't think most would notice. HD>601>HD on alot of material is not as noticeable as one may think.

Add CSI:NY to the list of HD syndication. On in HD right now on WEWS Cleveland.

CSI: Miami in HD on WWJ-DT Detroit, syndicated,

That adds a bit more as to how they are doing this, the this being getting feeds from different sources.


And I'll bet you are loving every moment of it. What's that you say, your hair is turning gray before its time

The distributors are going to need to kick it up a notch and change their graphic positions. On tonight's CSI:NY I noticed the TV rating bug on the HD feed isn't in the 4:3 area. Looking at the SD feed simultaneously I see SD has the usual TV rating, CC bug and message about SAP at the bottom of the screen. None of that was present on HD, just a CBS-style TV rating bug in the top, left corner.

I'm surprised they're having trouble with the part in bold. That seems to be the easier route for downconversion, rather than running two feeds at the same time. Our local CW has been using that approach for SD downconversion since they went HD. Overall, I prefer the center cut downconversion to the separate feeds. The one nice thing was the CW was the first to overlay weather graphics on HD. The weather crawl would actually run over network HD programming(which was center cut for SD) without having to drop to 4:3 SD. Eventually the other stations here9except FOX) upgraded their equipment and now do the same.

There are those of us on this forum that would

To your point, you are probably right, in that those that recorded TV shows in VHS EP mode and din't notice a difference will not know this is being done either

I'd notice it, but I wouldn't be angry. I've watched 480i widescreen on FOX(Hells Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares) and I'd rather have those digital widescreen versions than regular 4:3. I see properly executed and upconverted digital widescreen as a step forward. Plus, the 'unwashed masses' wouldn't know the difference. You know, the ones who think stretchovision is HD.

CSI Miami in HD on KTVK Phoenix. Looks better than current episodes do on CBS due to KTVK's full-bitrate HD and the weather subchannel on our local CBS affiliate. KTVK's analog channel is showing it letterboxed thanks to the great work done by their engineering staff. KTVK (and sister KASW, the CW affiliate) show all HD programming in letterboxed widescreen on the analog channel, while passing through 4:3 programming when needed.