[Jim Ferguson]

I watched WRC-HD in D.C. live last night for "Ed" and "The West Wing." I usually don't catch these shows digitally since they're just upconversions. However since the seasons are almost over I thought I would suffer through a few commercials instead of watching via the Tivo as I usually do.


I have to say I was very impressed with the quality of the upconversions. I remember in previous years that WRC used a stretch technique that looked very bad, and even when they stopped that, the upconversions had lots of artifacts. Last night's shows were very good. Also I had no dropouts or other reception problems all evening.


This really has me excited to see some actual HD content in primetime next fall, in addition to the nearly unwatchable "Crossing Jordan" (sorry fans.)


Between the new HD shows on NBC, and WJLA hopefully following through on their promise to start carrying the network HD feeds from ABC, it looks like this coming fall will be a great season for the couch potatoes

 

[Scott Gammans]

WRC has just about the best non-HD upconverted picture that I've seen. ER and West Wing certainly don't look like HDTV, but IMHO they rival the quality I would get from watching a good DVD. (Of course, my system is only XGA resolution, so other Washington-area viewers with higher-rez monitors might disagree with me; YMMV...)

 

[Gerald C]

I'll add my agreement that WRC-DT's upconversion is the best out there. But they do have very frequent problems with lipsync. I seem to recall some information a while back saying that they expect to get a new encoder system sometime soon to solve this.


Gerald C

 

[John_D]

I agree - I will watch WRC over my local affiliate WBAL.

 

[carltonrice]

I certainly concur. As I've mentioned before, given the difference in picture quality between WRC-DT and WBAL-DT, it's hard to believe that they are both even receiving the same feed from NBC.

 

[Hampster]

Gotta agree as well.


Plus, News-4 has the best picture of any of the Balt/Wash stations for local news.


I never have any problems at all with WRC-DT, except for the occasional lip sync problems someone already mentioned.


I can't stand watching WBAL-DT for non-HDTV stuff. The stretch/zoom picture looks like absolute crap. Also, I tend to have dropouts on WBAL-DT which I don't get on WRC-DT, especially during Leno.

 

[Jim Ferguson]

I went ahead and watched "ER" live again on WRC last night. It was great compared to the DirecTV standard version I usually watch on the Tivo. It just happens that most of the network TV I watch is on either NBC or ABC, neither of which have been good to us in the D.C. area so far. Here's to a great new year!

 

[jmschnur]

Does anybody know the technical differences in the upconversion between the DC stations. WRC is certainly the best at the moment. It would be great to see some competition developing based up PQ. Of c ourse going to HDTV will solve a lot of PQ sins.



What about Redskins on Fox next fall?


Joel

 

[Jim Ferguson]

Hi Joel,


The Redskins Fox broadcasts actually looked pretty good last year. They looked a lot better than the AFC upconversions shown on WUSA.

 

[Tim McCune]

Quote:

Originally posted by jmschnur Does anybody know the technical differences in the upconversion between the DC stations. WRC is certainly the best at the moment. It would be great to see some competition developing based up PQ. Of c ourse going to HDTV will solve a lot of PQ sins. What about Redskins on Fox next fall? Joel

I too would like to know what accounts for the pq delta. Perhaps, as with other stations, we will get a station engineer to participate. What about it WRC?

 

[Gerald C]

I suspect the quality differences in SD upconversion boil down to:


(1) the line doubler - for those stations that upconvert, and


(2) the MPEG-II encoder


Many stations are still using first generation equipment, which is probably less capable that the simple line-doubler built into the Dish 6000. I'm sure many of us remember WRC's previously awful look.


Gerald C

 

[Paul_M_Brown]

Another upconverted program that looks pretty darn good on WRC-DT is Saturday Night Live -- especially when it is, in fact, LIVE. (Apparently, even the broadcast quality video tape equipment used by the networks introduces some degradation in the picture quality.)


I'm using a Samsung SIR-T150 to feed a Sony 32XBR400, which will display 480p and 1080i (but not 720p). I can configure things so that the 480p output fills up 100 percent of the 4:3 screen on my TV, or I can display the 1080i feed at 16:9 with black bars all around. Both setups look equally good to my (admittedly) untrained eye. So I go back and forth. I agree that WBAL-DT's stretched picture looks lousy.