[dalepray]

(please excuse my error, I intended to post to the Southern Maine thread)


It is great to find a group of local DTV enthusiasts.

I have had a HiPix card in my home theater PC since Chistmas. I have had great success in getting decent locally broadcast DTV programming from my home in Oxford Maine. It seems that the non-HDTV programing (lower bit-rate stream) I am getting from WGME this week is giving some mild macro-blocking/pixelation. We have a DTV receiver where I work in Lewiston and I am seeing the same symptom. Reception has been great until this week. My signal quality levels are the same as it always has been.


Has anyone else noticed a deterioration in WGME regular programming stream? Their HDTV stream in the evening seems to be just fine.

Later,

Dale

 

[arxaw]

If you've notice it in more than one location, it's likely a station problem. Perhaps the station was getting complaints about poor quality HD due to multicasting, and lowered the bitrate on the SD subchannel.


Our local CBS affiliate multicasts a live radar image on a subchannel. To improve PQ on the HD channel, they reduced the bandwidth a couple of weeks ago on the radar subchannel. The radar image now appears "jumpy", and occasionally macroblocks.


I was told by the station that this was done to get the highest quality picture possible for the Super Bowl (possibly at the urging of CBS, which in the past has discouraged affiliates from attempting any multicasting during HD programming). I'm glad our station did the bandwidth swap, because HD PQ did improve, especially on live sports with lots of action.