[jhyska]

Hi all. Excuse my ignorance, btu I have never had the opportunity to see a Fox enhanced broadcast. Does it offer anything above and beyond widescreen format?


Does it broadcast in progressive instead of interlaced at least?


Thanks in advance,

Jay

 

[dg28]

Yes it's 480p widescreen. The quality is much better than SD, in some cases as good or better than a DVD.

 

[jhyska]

thanks dg, I appreciate the quick response

 

[sccofer]

I thought the last two playoff games fox did were outstanding. Not HD outstanding, but much better than SD.

 

[bdb]

Lets not forget, the only real difference (other than the width) is progressive vs interlaced. Unless you're seeing interlacing artifacts with SD (which I seriously doubt), its basically the same. FWIU, its even shot with the same cameras, with some sort of a lens adapater.


That being said, widescreen counts for a lot in my book, and either 480i or 480p digital looks considerably better on my set than NTSC. If a show is on Fox widescreen, I'll watch it instead of the cable counterpart.

 

[ed2day]

I have been amazed by the quality of SD with my OTA tuner and find that it is comparable to FOX' 480p. Of course with a plasma screen its converted to 480p anyway, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. I'm convinced now that much of the problem with SD is that they compress the heck out of it on cable and dish.

 

[HDURFTV]

SD OTA does look quite good but its still 4:3 unless you stretch it where as 480p wide is 16:9.

 

[Marissadad]

Not in Portland, it looks as bad or worse than SD. Our station has a bluish ghost that follows action, like video smearing and the picture isn't anywhere near the quality of a DVD. They are passing the signal directly from the LA uplink center but I have no idea what they do to it locally, but it really stinks. When they show a commercial, the picture improves quite a bit.


Our local ABC upconverts all SD to 14:9 1080i so in the case of their SD, it looks very good all the time, much better than Fox 480p.

 

[Shygnome]

I agree with dg28.


FTR - I'm running a Toshiba DST3000 to a Toshiba HD Pure Black Flatscreen. 1080i is flawless. 480p is far superior to SD.


Probably a post for HD Hardware, but I went the toshiba route to have "Colorstream" technology from Receiver to Monitor.

 

[scowl]

Sports sure don't look very good with whatever KPTV in Portland is doing (tons of smearing and edge enhancement) but for some reason movies look very good in EDTV. I thought the widescreen PQ of "Die Hard" a few weeks ago was pretty close to the DVD. It's also nice the KPTV isn't bothering to air local commercials on the EDTV channel.

 

[bdb]

Are we all talking about the same things?


SD = 480i standard definition received via a digital tuner

NTSC = analog/traditional


There is absolutely no reason that 480p should be "far superior" to SD/480i, but it is definitely far superior to NTSC.

 

[Josh Z]

Quote:

Originally posted by bdb Lets not forget, the only real difference (other than the width) is progressive vs interlaced.

It also benefits from the extra resolution of anamorphic enhancement, just like an anamorphic DVD is superior to a non-anamorphic DVD.

 

[ThePrisoner]

I can't wait for Fox to go 720p. Hopefully I can catch a baseball game or two. I know they have The World Series.

 

[John Mason]

Quote:

Are we all talking about the same things? SD = 480i standard definition received via a digital tuner NTSC = analog/traditional There is absolutely no reason that 480p should be "far superior" to SD/480i, but it is definitely far superior to NTSC.

There are tables developed by Greg Rogers (horiz. & vert. resolution), about 2/3 down the page) that outline these terms. The table provides format resolutions, limiting resolutions, and the text near the tables defines terms.


My 2 cents: Terms are often intermixed. IMO, it helps to mention the signal source, although it's not always easy to pin down. Analog NTSC has often been called "standard" TV and is ~448X480i full 4:3 screen width. It's a composite signal with the B&W luma interleaved with the color after filtering to fit broadcast channels (6 MHz, all signal components)


Rec. 601 is 720X480 digital video (667X480 limiting resolution) from studios and programmers but compressed to varying degrees for DBS and cable delivery. During compression both luma and color resolution may be lost. Could be called SDTV, but should be distinguished from analog NTSC. Rec. 601 is a digital signal (YCbCr) with separate luma (Y) and color components that become analog (YPbPr) after home processing. But if it's derived from NTSC originally, the original jumbled composite signals can't be completely separated into component video again, nor can the filtered fidelity be recovered.


ATSC also has various 480-line formats (plus 720p or 1080 HDTV) shown in table 2.1 . These signals, in the Rec. 709 format, are broadcast from digital-TV stations. Rec. 709 has slightly different 'weightings' to red, green, and blue signal values than Rec.601. Also, broadcast stations and cable or DBS sources assign more bandwidth to ATSC. A station doesn't need HDTV's full ~19 million bits per second (Mbps) during the day for 480 interlaced or progressive ATSC signals, but it's available for its evening HD programs. Upconverting 480i to 720p or 1080i (some Fox ATSC stations) requires higher bit rates, and stations may 'fill out' their full ~19-Mbps signal with zero or null bits. Widescreen (704X480p, progressive) ATSC is also known as extended or enhanced-definition TV (EDTV). By contrast, a cable company may assign 8 or more Rec. 601 channels to each 6-Mhz cable slot, with

 

[Ken H]

601 is what Fox uses for Widescreen.

 

[John Mason]

Yup, Ken, figured Rec. 601 was the original source of some ATSC H/DTV. But assume there must be some type of conversion to put 601 into the required ATSC format for broadcast. Perhaps someone who works in this area could outline what takes place? -- John

 

[jhyska]

To clarify my original question:


Can I expect superior quality from FOX EDTV when DirecTV adds it later this year as compared to my current FOX local on DirecTV.


I assumed the FOX local I now have through DirecTV was in standard defenition.

 

[spwace]

Quote:

Originally posted by jhyska To clarify my original question: Can I expect superior quality from FOX EDTV when DirecTV adds it later this year as compared to my current FOX local on DirecTV. I assumed the FOX local I now have through DirecTV was in standard defenition.

The DirecTV feed of your local Fox station is usually decoded from the NTSC composite over the air signal and is heavily compressed. The Fox widescreen feed is component and should have a higher bitrate than DVD. The difference between composite and component alone is quite noticeable.

 

[bdfox18doe]

Quote:

Originally posted by John Mason Yup, Ken, figured Rec. 601 was the original source of some ATSC H/DTV. But assume there must be some type of conversion to put 601 into the required ATSC format for broadcast. Perhaps someone who works in this area could outline what takes place? -- John

At MOST FOX affiliates:


The 601 (75 ohm coaxial serial digital, 270 mb/s) "ED" (anamorphic) feed from FOX goes through an upconvertor, or as some call it, "format translator".Basically; a "scaler/line doubler" , usually made by Teranex or Faroudja (some Snell's & Leitch's as well). This outputs the signal as smpte 292 (75 ohm coaxial serial digital @ 1.5 gb/s) in 16:9 aspect ratio

in either 480p,720p, or 1080i format. This signal is then fed to the ATSC encoder, usually Tandberg, Harmonic, or Harris/Lucent. The encoder outputs the "compressed" signal as SMPTE 310m.. (75 ohm coaxial serail digital @ 19.39 mb/s) which is then fed to the microwave link (if used)

which then feeds the exciter, or modap for transmission.


Audio is another story...

 

[herdfan]

I was able to watch 2 NFL games a week broadcast in FOX ED via the NFL Sunday Ticket on D*. I was impressed with the picture quality, and in some cases, I preferred the picture to the game that CBS was broadcasting in 1080i.