[Pagali]

I wasn't able to tune in KCRA's HD channel at all last night for Crossing Jordan. Was anyone else able to receive it? I wasn't able to tune their digital channel in at all with my Dish 6000. Tried rescanning, manually entering 03501, etc.


The show doesn't attract me enough to watch if it isn't HD, so I finally gave up and watched a movie on my UltimateTV.


Mary

 

[ajd]

Hi Mary,


I watched it for a little while. I'm afraid if the HD signal is all that's going to pull you into the show, you're going to be disappointed... When I first tuned in the scene was outdoors (The Jordan character was talking to some homeless guy), and the quality was really fantastic, making me think they had significantly improved it over last week. However, as soon as thing moved to indoor scenes the quality degraded horribly! I mean really bad, it look far worse than most of the digitally broadcast 480i stuff. The were frequent pixillation artifacts (which is bad enough), but the worst problem was that the picture becomes really grainy with spotty color and lots of dot-crawl. Basically it looks like a REALLY bad upconversion. It makes me think that the show is not being shot consistantly, ie. they're shooting the outdoor scenes in HD, and indoor in SD and doing a very poor upconvert...(But who knows?)

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

I am sorry to disagree. OK, story is ok. But the Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, translated by my Theta Casablanca 2 to Circle Cinema, is really nice, as good a sound track as I've heard from any regular tv show. And I find the picture to be quite nice and clearly HD. No, not the same look as some stuff on HDNET. But how and where and what lens and camera they shoot with all give it the look that it has. I like it! I do think one's display device, whether you have both color filtered and color corrected lens, how its setup and calibrated, all this is a big factor in how it looks to you. Likely that "Crossing Jordan" is one of those HD video products that perhaps challenges the defects of a display device and how its setup.

I had no pixel breakup and just didn't notice any of the above defects in the picture.


I apologize, I'm not trying to disparage anyone's display in particular - I'm just trying to come up with some basis for explaining why it looks quite good in my setup and clearly HD. SO I APOLOGIZE and please don't get too defensive!

 

[ajd]

Hi Steve,


No need to apologize just for disagreeing! I think you're certainly right that differences in display quality/setup can result in widely varying image quality, even displaying the same HD signal. I don't think that that's the main problem here though, because other HD broadcasts don't suffer from the same problems. In fact, in my area, of all the shows I've seen CJ has been by far the worst. (The only one that I would actually say looks even remotely bad.) My impression (and I could be wrong) is that there is wide variability from region to region/station to station in the broadcast quality. I'm not sure why that would be, because I assume that they're all rebroadcasting from a single national feed? But that's how it seems from surveying various posts on pic. quality. Perhaps someone else from the Sac. area could comment on the show's PQ if they've seen it...?

 

[Pagali]

Very interesting comments regarding HD picture quality in general and Crossing Jordan in particular...


I still would like to know, however, if I'm the only one in the Sacramento area who was unable to lock on to KCRA's HD channel last night. If so, Why???? What do I have to do to correct this problem?


I'll stay up late tonight (I work at home tomorrow ) and see if I can bring in Jay Leno.


Thanks!

Mary

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

By the way, the first ten minutes here in Phoenix were mere 14:9 with blue bars at sides, as the station was apparently having some problems, but then magically it became full screen HD. Now I did notice that I thought the picture looked better this week than the prior two weeks I watched it -

but maybe I'm getting used to the "look" of how the show was filmed. Also, when you mention that indoor scenes look poor, remember that may go to

transmission problems and/or display device and setup and/or power noise (quite amazing how PS Audio P600 and Granite Audio power cord powering my Dwin 7" projector have made a difference on all this).

 

[jjesq]

I agree completely with ajd. I am a new purchaser of an hdtv set. I use a Samsung set top box. Last week I saw the tonight show in hdtv and was absolutely stunned by the quality of the picture. However, when I tuned in Crossing Jordan last Monday I was very disappointed. As ajd said, the initial outdoor scene wasn't too bad, but when the scenes moved indoors the picture quality deteriorated and became so grainy that it really did look worse the the 480 stuff I see when that station is not broadcasting HDTV. I was all the more disappointed because I had kept telling my wife how great the tonight show had looked, and talked her into watching Crossing Jordan with the promise of an increible picture. She now thinks I am crazy.

 

[Bruce Embry]

CJ just sucks! After watching about 30 Mins of it on Monday night we switch back to Family Law on CBS.