Let's discuss how the Milwaukee stations failed hard with election coverage tonight

[WPXE ION]

You can't take the heat get out of the kitchen. What's someone who can't handle a few curse words on an Internet message board doing running a TV station? :confused:

ION Television continues to grow! WTPX-46 in Wausau, WI launched on Charter cable May 28th, adding 60,000 new subscribers. Also, look for ION Television HD on your cable system, which has now launched in all station markets.

This is a quote from our corporate web site. I am in charge of WTPX in Wausau and for the reason above that is why I work here. Simply put I GET THINGS DONE!!!

[WPXE ION]

I must say I see many posts bashing the broadcasters here about bandwidth and pixelation. I watch TV off air at home, no cable or satellite. I NEVER see any issues with pixelation or drop outs. So most likely the issues are at your end or with your provider that you are paying $100/month for service. Here are a couple things to check/consider:

1. Check your connections.
2. Get the antenna up as high as you can. Dont place it behind the TV and blame the broadcaster for pixelation. Placing the antenna near anything electrical is a mistake.
3. How old is your TV or STB? If you have an older chipset it will not work as efficiently as a newer chipset.

See Ya!!!!

[murdoc]

I must say I see many posts bashing the broadcasters here about bandwidth and pixelation. I watch TV off air at home, no cable or satellite. I NEVER see any issues with pixelation or drop outs. So most likely the issues are at your end or with your provider that you are paying $100/month for service. Here are a couple things to check/consider:

1. Check your connections.
2. Get the antenna up as high as you can. Dont place it behind the TV and blame the broadcaster for pixelation. Placing the antenna near anything electrical is a mistake.
3. How old is your TV or STB? If you have an older chipset it will not work as efficiently as a newer chipset.

See Ya!!!!

1.  My connections are water tight
2.  I've got a Channel Master mounted on a 30' mast pointed at the antenna farm.  I can turn my antenna and pick up almost all the Madison stations, and most of the Green Bay stations (though those tend to breakup more often).
3.  My main TV is 6 years old.  My spare is 3.  The picture looks better on the 6 year old TV (DLP vs LCD).

NBC, ABC, and CBS are by far the worst picture I have on my set.  FOX is pretty good but looks bad at times as well.  CW and MyTV look outstanding.  Do you see a trend here?  The stations that look atrocious all have subchannels.  Watching NFL Sunday Ticket confirms a crystal clear picture being broadcast and that's being compressed to hell from D*.  The uncompressed signal OTA looks awful.  

Don't have Sunday Ticket?  Watch the Packers game on CBS WDJT this Sunday.  Watch the highlights later that day on the NFL Network or ESPN and then HONESTLY tell me you don't notice a difference.  :rolleyes:

[SRW1000]

Study up on the ATSC standards before you talk about bandwidth!!!

Some of us have spent a lot of time reading about the ATSC standards.  The format was developed with the intent of showing one HD channel or up to four SD channels.

Of course, there's no hard and fast rules on what stations can do with multicasting, so some have chosen to allocate their bandwidth to multiple HD and SD stations, but that was not the intent of the standard.

The next great thing will be MPEG-4 OTA in case you want to know.

I would welcome that with open arms!  There are a few problems, though.  How many current sets include an ATSC MPEG-4 decoder?  How many stations are set up to encode and broadcast OTA MPEG-4?  It took a lot of dragging to get people to go digital.  Can you imagine what it will be like to tell them that they'll have to replace their new OTA converter box with another new MPEG-4 converter box?  

Scott

[jjallou]

NBC, ABC, and CBS are by far the worst picture I have on my set.  FOX is pretty good but looks bad at times as well.  CW and MyTV look outstanding.  Do you see a trend here?  The stations that look atrocious all have subchannels. Watching NFL Sunday Ticket confirms a crystal clear picture being broadcast and that's being compressed to hell from D*.  The uncompressed signal OTA looks awful.  

Um......ABC (WISN Channel 12) doesn't have any subs. Their HD looks good but the local stuff is soft.

Since FOX (the network) uses a MPEG2 Splicer system all affiliates get a 15Mbs signal that the local station can't mess with. So adding the sub didn't change the 6.1 bitrate or alter the picture.

I will agree that 58.1 & 4.1 do look like crap though. You can now also add 10.1 to that statement as well. 720p at 10Mbs what's up with that?

[SRW1000]

I must say I see many posts bashing the broadcasters here about bandwidth and pixelation. I watch TV off air at home, no cable or satellite. I NEVER see any issues with pixelation or drop outs. So most likely the issues are at your end or with your provider that you are paying $100/month for service. Here are a couple things to check/consider:

1. Check your connections.
2. Get the antenna up as high as you can. Dont place it behind the TV and blame the broadcaster for pixelation. Placing the antenna near anything electrical is a mistake.
3. How old is your TV or STB? If you have an older chipset it will not work as efficiently as a newer chipset.

See Ya!!!!

The problems most of us are seeing are not a result of faulty connections, interference, or old equipment.  The rampant artifacting is readily apparent on any of the multicasting stations during high-movement scenes.  It's especially evident during sports.

The bigger the screen, the easier it is to spot, and the more distracting it is to watch.  At times, the pictures will dissolve into a mess that looks like it should be hosted on YouTube.

This discussion has gotten far away from the election coverage, however.  It may be best to continue it on one of the other threads or start a new one.

Scott

[Xizer]

Um......ABC (WISN Channel 12) doesn't have any subs. Their HD looks good but the local stuff is soft.

There's only so much you can do with 720p. All the bitrate in the world can't solve the problem of ABC being half the resolution of The CW, CBS, PBS (not our ****** affiliate) and NBC.

[trev57]

Could we please not get into the discussion on whether 720p or 1080i is better like we did on the TMJ4 HD thread?

[murdoc]

Um......ABC (WISN Channel 12) doesn't have any subs. Their HD looks good but the local stuff is soft.

Since FOX (the network) uses a MPEG2 Splicer system all affiliates get a 15Mbs signal that the local station can't mess with. So adding the sub didn't change the 6.1 bitrate or alter the picture.

I will agree that 58.1 & 4.1 do look like crap though. You can now also add 10.1 to that statement as well. 720p at 10Mbs what's up with that?

Whoops. Didn't mean to include ABC in that statement. The rest stands though.

[WPXE ION]

1.  My connections are water tight
2.  I've got a Channel Master mounted on a 30' mast pointed at the antenna farm.  I can turn my antenna and pick up almost all the Madison stations, and most of the Green Bay stations (though those tend to breakup more often).
3.  My main TV is 6 years old.  My spare is 3.  The picture looks better on the 6 year old TV (DLP vs LCD).

NBC, ABC, and CBS are by far the worst picture I have on my set.  FOX is pretty good but looks bad at times as well.  CW and MyTV look outstanding.  Do you see a trend here?  The stations that look atrocious all have subchannels.  Watching NFL Sunday Ticket confirms a crystal clear picture being broadcast and that's being compressed to hell from D*.  The uncompressed signal OTA looks awful.  

Don't have Sunday Ticket?  Watch the Packers game on CBS WDJT this Sunday.  Watch the highlights later that day on the NFL Network or ESPN and then HONESTLY tell me you don't notice a difference.  :rolleyes:

When the wind blows you will see break ups. Go out and shake the antenna and see what happens.:wave:

[murdoc]

When the wind blows you will see break ups. Go out and shake the antenna and see what happens.:wave:

2. I've got a Channel Master mounted on a 30' mast

I can't move the antenna mast.  I haven't had a single breakup even during the 50MPH winds we had recently.  Nice try... :p  My D* dish is also mounted on there (obviously after the pic was taken).

[murdoc]

http://www.rabbitears.info/search.php?request=zip_search&zipcode=53221&miles=40&address=&lat=&lon=&height=

Something to nibble on... Click on the station callsign, then tech data and screencaps.  Look at the allotted bandwidth per station/subchannel.

WTMJ 4.1: 12.15Mbps
WITI 6.1:  14.55Mbps
WMVS 10.1:  7.8Mbps
WISN 12.1:  17.45Mbps constant
WVTV 18.1:  17.8Mbps constant
WCGV 24.1:  17.8Mbps constant
WDJT 58.1:      9.45Mbps

WBBM 2.1:  16.15Mbps (Chicago CBS)

Are you still going to tell us bandwidth doesn't affect picture quality?

[WPXE ION]

The problems most of us are seeing are not a result of faulty connections, interference, or old equipment.  The rampant artifacting is readily apparent on any of the multicasting stations during high-movement scenes.  It's especially evident during sports.

The bigger the screen, the easier it is to spot, and the more distracting it is to watch.  At times, the pictures will dissolve into a mess that looks like it should be hosted on YouTube.

This discussion has gotten far away from the election coverage, however.  It may be best to continue it on one of the other threads or start a new one.

Scott

Get a smaller TV then

[Xizer]

Get a smaller TV then

lol, now you're just actively trolling.

[SRW1000]

Get a smaller TV then

That's what the promise of HDTV was all about, huh?