[Allen Fleener]

I live in So.Cal and HATE what KABC does to their upconverted SD material. It's time to get this off my chest. They stretch the image to try to fill the screen but, not quite all the way. It looks awful. What they need to do is leave it alone. If I want to stretch or zoom the pic I can do this myself. I don't need Big Brother to decide for me how I should watch TV.


Anyone else have anything that rubs them the wrong way? Add your two cents to this thread.


Allen

 

[hphase]

A while ago I posted a message to use this forum as a clearing house for botched DTV presentations. I suggest that everyone with a beef post here with station info and show/time.


Things that occur most often are:


Forget to throw the switch

Bad audio (no dialog or channels swapped)

Pops, clicks, or thumps in audio at transitions or during programs

Excessive blocking or tiling

"Fixing" the aspect ratio on upconverted programs


Post 'em here and name names. We'll try to contact the stations and find out what their problems are (or tell them about them if they don't already know.)


Thanks to all in advance.

 

[Juan]

Allen,


I dont like it ither, I wish they would just leave it alone. I think KTLA does the same thing.

 

[Pagali]

KCRA (NBC) does the same distorted horizontal stretching of their non-HD digital signal here in Sacramento. Looks terrible.


KOVR (CBS) and KTXL (Fox) zoom their digital non-HD signals to fill a 16:9 screen, so they look fine. ABC displays at about 14:9 with black bars on the sides. At least it is zoomable with the 6000's aspect ratio control.

 

[mmburke]

I'm sorry but I watch DTV on a 16:9 screen. I think stretching the SD signal to fill the screen (with some cropping) produces a much more watchable picture. Unfortunately, those of us with the good old DTC-100 cannot alter HD signals to fit our screens.


DTV/HDTV to me is about watching a widescreen picture. I can understand that those with 4:3 TVs, would prefer the old style aspect. But then why don't you just watch the NTSC signal.


Then there is the issue of burn-in watching the foreshortened picture on widescreen sets.

 

[John Mason]

Earlier someone suggested using this forum as a clearinghouse for programming glitches. This seems to have occurred during the several years I've been reading posts here. But it's sometimes difficult to extract patterns. Different threads covering glitches within the same show often appear.


I wish some of our programmers familiar with the forum software could help computerize the process--assuming the administrator et al would go along with such a forum upgrade. Essentially it would be a modification of the new
forum polling feature . A standard polling form, more elaborate than the current one, could be used to log programming evaluations and both individualize and summarize entries.


That is, by logging zip codes for entries, the software could rapidly pinpoint glitches to one location. A summary could be in graphic form, such as a U.S. or state map with 3D-type bar graphs. May sound elaborate, but such statistical/plotting software has been around for decades. I have vintage Systat DOS software that can do this, including a U.S. map, but I'm not a programmer. -- John