WTMJ - HD Track record stinks

[FreQi]

Tonight, NBC continues to hold the title as the worst HDTV provider among the networks, at least in the Milwaukee area.  The same problems persist and show no signs of being eliminated.

Tonight's episode of Coupling started out as a pleasant surprise: it was being shown in HD.  Their web site had advertised that this series was in fact HD, and even last week it was -supposed- to be shown in HD, but the previous two episode were SD and 4:3.

Toward the end of the second segment of this third episode, the signal abruptly switched to the SD feed and they started showing a commercial earlier than they were supposed to.  A few seconds later they returned to the show still in progress, but it was not HD (so some dialog was missed).  During the commercial break that followed, there were several long periods of silence and a black screen with an animated NBC logo.  At one point, even the affiliate logo appeared for several seconds before eventually returning to the episode.  The third segment then began in SD 4:3, and remained that way long enough for WTMJ to spray their NASCAR graffiti at the bottom of the screen, and then an abrupt switch back to HD (albeit thankfully).

:guns: NBC

C'mon NBC.  You're better than that.  Stop making fools of yourselves.  This seems to happen every week with all of your prime time programming.  How many of your shows actually make it 100% HD ?  Well, if we're counting the end credits that are raped for promotionals, none of it does.  But discounting that, I would wager less than half of NBC prime time programming that is supposed to be HD actually makes it without a glitch from NBC HQ.  Even the people at our affiliate expect you to mess up, and they are ashamed of it.  Do Better.

And btw, has anyone else noticed that the american version of Coupling is only 18mins long?  That's 4 mins shorter than the average length of "30min" tv shows.  That means 40% of the time slot allocated for this show is not the show.  And if you think 4 mins isn't a big deal, then maybe you don't realize that if they used only 4 more minutes, they would be using more than half of the time for commercials and not the show you're tuning in to watch.  It's ridiculous.  Especially since this series is word for word the exact same script as the British series it "is based on", and that version is 10mins -longer-, even after you remove commercials.  Why is this ok?

[oflaherty]

Tonight's problems were mostly local issues; wrong times and a new version of master control software.

According to master control there were two sets of time sheets from NBC. We guessed wrong and entered the wrong times for program lengths and commercials in the master control computer.

Then when the commercial breaks played at the wrong time it was not possible to abort the operation and recue the server. (We used to be able to do that with the old software.)

It sounds like while we were missing commercials and loosing money on the SD station, trying to manually switch the HD feed took a back seat.

I've copied this tread to our chief engineer and to our new station manager.

---
Sean at TMJ

[oz]

It's that damn "HD button" again. The intern must have been out late drinking last night.

[Matt Heebner]

Sean,as always,  thanks for the explaination  and for being on top of the concerns expressed here.

Matt

[techguy1975]

Originally posted by oflaherty
Tonight's problems were mostly local issues; wrong times and a new version of master control software.

According to master control there were two sets of time sheets from NBC. We guessed wrong and entered the wrong times for program lengths and commercials in the master control computer.

Sean at TMJ

Aren't computers grand?    I was wonderin if I was goin crazy or if someone was asleep at the switch...  (and yes, I am going crazy, but thats a seperate issue)

[FreQi]

@oflaherty

Thakn you for your insight.  It's great to know that some of our affiliate stations pay attention to what their viewers think ;]

Here's to a hopefull week of full HD :drink:

[GS kid]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Why don't they have a auto-switch to HD bit-flag that can be sent in the network HD feed to turn the station from SD to HD ? As far as I know.... no network has this ability. I can't believe that this could have been left out of the HD boadcast standards. Home surround systems have had Dolby Digital / DTS auto-detect, TV's like mine have 3:2 pulldown and widescreen detect, computer modems detect the speed of the carrier over the phone lines and lock-in on that speed. I've been just stunned at this oversight in the HDTV arena!:bang: