Channel "Protecting us" from Confusion

[Tom Snyder]

The other night, TitanTV listed "Peter and Paul" as being shown in HDTV.  I tuned in to 8-1, and lo and behold, there's some goofy Kid's program on. So I switched to their analog channel 10, where they were showing the program I had hoped to watch in HD in widescreen. But because it's the analog, they were showing it in the tiny letterboxed format. So it was either watch a small picture, or chnage the mode to full screen and lose resolution.

I wrote a complaint letter to Karen Copper at WMVS, the person there who sends us the monthly listings. Turns out that Titan TV was wrong and the show was actually Wide Screen Standard definition, but I found her reply worth sharing here for another reason:

Hi, Tom!

I've done some research on this, and our programmer says
that this program was not really taped in High Definition...
it was only wide screen.

To keep the confusion down, he isn't scheduling any wide-screen
programming, except for that which is completely taped in HD.

From what you saw (or didn't see),
did what we actually have on the air match that philosophy?

Thanks.

--Karen

I guess I should be thankful... I wouldn't want to be confused!

[Skipjack]

Um.. I swear I watched part of that show on Sunday on TWC's 510 (flipping back and forth from the Masters on 505).  

And... if it was only in SD, it looked damn good.

I did notice the same show was rebroadcast on 10 later that day.

[Tom Snyder]

It appears that they feed the national PBS feed to Time Warner for 510, but utilize a multicasting vortex of mystery  strategy for us OTA folks.

They wanna stop the confusion? I'll give them a place to start. :bang:

They somehow believe that the market LOVES multicasting... I've offered to post a poll for them here to find out the truth.  

I suspect they can't handle the truth...

[StarvingForHDTV]

This is so ridiculous.  Give us the widescreen shows!  The only confusion is tuning to their channel and not finding what should be there. :bang:

Starving

[davezen2]

Avoiding Armageddon is on in widescreen standard definition right now.  Does that mean that now they're trying to confuse us???  :bang:

[Gregg Lengling]

It was simulcast on channel 8...but I thought they fixed their audio problem...but no audio on channel 8 tonight.

[Tom Snyder]

Audio on 8 last night sounded like a strobe effect... unwatchable.

[Gregg Lengling]

I watched the loop from about 5 to 6:30 and the audio was great.  But at 8:00 when I tuned in there was no audio on the RCA so I went to the computer and used the HiDTV card and it was there but horrible.  I think it may have to do with how they have the simulcasting feeds hooked up or something.  I'll get ahold of Mike B. and see what he has to say.

[Gregg Lengling]

Here's some info from MPTV about the channel redirect and audio problems from Mike B.

Two weeks ago a multiplexer went out and they did not have PSIP data for a day or two...this is why we are showing channel 8-1 ect....if you rescan it should be working now (I'm not at home so I can't try right now).

Regarding the audio:  At the NAB Mike was told about the audio problems being a relocking of the 27MHz clock in decoding the Dolby Digital audio.  He is trying to find a way to eliminate this relocking need.  It is primarily a bandwidth issue with needing 384 Kbs for 5.1 and 192 Kbs for stereo or surround.


So there you go guys the latest update from MPTV (WMVS-DT)

[StarvingForHDTV]

Originally posted by davezen2
Avoiding Armageddon is on in widescreen standard definition right now.  Does that mean that now they're trying to confuse us???  :bang:

LOL I was pleasantly confused.  Maybe in the future if they decide to send us widescreen standard definition they will send it out as 480p.  Who knows though.  Tuesday  night AA wasn't on 10-1, I had to watch analog 10.  The night before it was in widescreen on 10-1.  Confusing.

I did hear a bit of minor clicking on the audio track, but it was hardly noticeable for me.  I watched on 10-1 not 8-1 FWIW.  In the audio post there is a mention of DD 5.1  I have never gotten that from PBS yet.  Maybe they can get it up and running since they are working on audio problems these days.

Hopefully AA will be on in widescreen tonight again.

Starving

[Tom Snyder]

I sent Karen this reply to her email...

Sure it matches the philosophy, but I have to disagree with the philosophy.

Confusion? I think the only confusion is that on the part of WMVS's programming department who believe that those of us who have spent thousands of dollars on our HDTV gear did so to give ourselves a choice 4 or 5 more channels of low resolution content. If your programming department would choose to pay attention to the market by frequenting MilwaukeeHDTV.org and AVS Forums, you'd have no doubt that the market HATES multicasting, and would prefer that you offer your programming in its originally intended format at the the highest resolution.  

I don't intend for this to sound like a rant, but as a former Radio Station Program Director, Research director and GM, I would have given my right arm to have had community Web sites available to get real-time feedback on my station's programming...especially from the most loyal audience members. I find it surprising that you guys have that and chose to disregard it.

I'll be happy to set up an online poll for you guys at milwaukeehdtv.org to see what our members prefer...  multicasting, SD widescreen when available, just HD. I'll even word the questions exactly like you want them be worded so you can get results you can use. Let me know.

Here is her response:

Hi, Tom!

Thanks for the quick response.
I am copying my reply to our program manager so he can see your kind offer of doing a survey.

However, given the technological choices available now, even a survey has areas of concern.

For instance, those who live in the Milwaukee area, and who have subscribed to cable's Digital Service, can already see every single HD/wide screen offering being fed by PBS, because the PBS feed (with some of our local additions pre-empting their "loop" material) is fed directly to the cable system for broadcast. It is never pre-empted for the multi-casts, which are fed to the cable system separately.

To receive the service, people must pay the additional monthly fee, and have an HD converter box provided by cable,
and some sort of wide-screen receiver or HD display or TV to be able to see the complete HD picture and quality.

The point is that, for all those people subscribing to the digital service, the question of what is appearing in the strict broadcast mode is moot, because they can receive it all through cable.

We can report that the request for the best "originally intended format at the highest resolution" is interpreted many ways by viewers, and that people get upset when only wide screen is offered, but when it doesn't appear in true HD; thus, the decision to present only the pure HD programs.

The other part to the story is what we can manage here, given personnel, training, and technology restrictions.
HD offerings and schedules do not yet have the safety nets  built into them, as our other programming has. Every month brings us closer, but we are working with many people and many internal and external systems,  so it is still very much a "work in progress."

We appreciate being informed of what people are looking for, and are striving to get closer and closer to those goals.
I am constantly amazed at how much our engineers are accomplishing. But sometimes we must rely on other systems (for instance, we'd really like PBS to publish & commit to a formal loop schedule) and sometimes, even internally, there are differences of opinion on the best ways to prioritize the choices of what can be done, and when.

Thank you for hanging in there with us.

--Karen

[Kevin Arnold]

We can report that the request for the best "originally intended format at the highest resolution" is interpreted many ways by viewers, and that people get upset when only wide screen is offered, but when it doesn't appear in true HD; thus, the decision to present only the pure HD programs.

I read the above several times and am not sure what it means.  This implies that viewers have different ideas of what the "highest resolution" is.  For all I've read on AVS and here I think that statement is 180 degrees out of sync.  Viewers want HD, pure and simple, and resent the dancing that stations do when they can't or won't pass through HD.  I still think that a select few in the MPTV family call the shots for what HD will be on Chs. 10 and 36.  They may be totally out of the loop, but they have the ear of management.  Karen, we are your viewers, and there are quite a few of us.  You have a free ongoing survey here that would be a terrible thing to waste.  Unless those few insiders with HDTV's give a ton of money, you need to focus on us and what you hear here.  We don't take to obfuscating very well.

[StarvingForHDTV]

Oddly enough, given their policy on standard definition widescreen, 3 out of the 4 parts of the Avoiding Armageddon series were shown on 10-1 this week in widescreen at the scheduled time.

I was pleased, but after reading the communication above, I expect this was a rare instance of confusion on their end.

Starving