Milwaukee HDTV User Group

Looks like the TiVo guide has finally been updated with the new changes.

After rescanning yesterday, my TiVo guide still doesn't have any info for 24's or 36's programming, just "To be announced."  Not sure who's supposed to be announcing it or when.  The guide for 10-2 is also wrong.

And having all of the PBS stations compressed has really hit picture quality.  Create is now in bit-starved SD instead of bit-starved HD, and looks really, really soft. 

It both disapointing and hard to believe that we now have bg screen 4K TVs that are cheaper than their HD counterparts from a decade ago, but in contrast the quality of our over-the-air content has gotten progressively worse during that time.

Scott

Those of us growing up in the Milwaukee area during the 60s and 70s probably have fond members of Albert the Ally Cat from WITI.

This week, Fox 6 anchor Brad Hicks went in search of the famous personality.  Here's a link to the story, but do yourself a favor and watch the video first.  It's rather amusing, and a fresh blast of nostalgia from an earlier, and more whimsical era:

http://fox6now.com/2017/07/24/people-were-just-fascinated-with-a-sock-puppet-where-is-he-whats-he-up-to-in-search-of-albert-the-alley-cat/

Now, here's hoping that Brad can do a follow-up story featuring Jack DuBlon's other alter ego, Dr. Cadaverino.

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Sad to see this.  WISN was the last network broadcaster to resist the lure of multicasting.

The original promise of HDTV is but a memory now.

Scott

Great.  One useless station replaced with another useless station.

Both at the cost of HD bandwidth.

Sigh.

From the Journal Sentinel:

QuoteThe parent company of Milwaukee TV station WITI-TV (Channel 6) has reached a deal to be acquired by Tribune Co., according to several media reports.

The deal is expected to close by the end of 2013.

There's more to read about the deal from the AP, but it doesn't talk specifically about WITI or Milwaukee.

Scott

Quote from: jjallou;59185It's been The CW since 2006. :huh?:

You're right, and I stand corrected.  :blush:

Quote from: PONIES;59183I don't know how many sporting events are actually at a native 60 FPS; however of the various ESPN and Fox feeds I've viewed, CBS, SportsNet, Pac-12, NBC, etc. always blow them away in the quality department. It's no contest. I don't really notice a temporal difference between 720p60 and 1080i60 content, but the resolution difference is abundantly clear.

And this is coming from a hardcore PC gamer that can spot 30 FPS console garbage and a video game running at 60 FPS from a mile away.

Yes, sports are shot at 60 frames per second, as are many live events.  With a 720p picture, you're seeing an entirely new frame every 60th of a second, providing better motion detail.  At 1080i, you're only seeing every other line refreshed at each 60th of a second.  At that point, either your TV, cable, or satellite box is doing some kind of  interpolation (guessing) to create a full frame.  So, you're not getting 30 frames per second with 1080i, you're getting 60 half-frames per seconds, with the missing content being artificially created on the fly.  The gaming analogy doesn't really fit.

The crisp screen shot you posted here of the American Music Awards was likely captured at native 720p.  

And it looks pretty good.

By the way, we still do have one local that broadcasts 1080i without any subchannels, and that would be the WB on WVTV.  :award

Quote from: PONIES;59181This is incorrect.

Very little content is actually 60 FPS. Most of it has a native framerate of either 23.976 frames per second for scripted high budget material or 29.970 frames per second for documentaries/news/reality shows/etc.

How about sports?

Quote from: PONIES;59181Therefore, for most content, 1080i has 1080p detail upon de-interlacing. 1080i60 video de-interlaces into 1080p video at up to 30 frames per second.

720p doesn't suffer from interlacing artifacts but interlacing artifacts shouldn't be a problem for anyone with an even remotely competent de-interlacing hardware.

Deinterlacing hardware and software can do a good job, but it also compromises the picture.  The wikipedia entry on this is actually pretty good.

Scott

Quote from: PONIES;59172So, to summarize:

480i/p - terrible
720p - mediocre
1080i/p - good
4K/Ultra HD - great

Hope this helps. :wave:

I'll agree that 480i/p is bad, but 720p and 1080i are roughly equal in quality.  Sure, 720 has only half the resolution, but it doesn't suffer from any interlace artifacts.   It also delivers almost the same amount of visual information per second, since the entire frame is being refreshed 1/60 of a second, instead of half of a 1080i frame being refreshed in that same period.

The real enemy in this market is all of the multicasting, which reduces the amount of data provided for either standard.  Starving the signal is a sure way to reduce detail and/or introduce macroblocking or other distracting digital artifacts.

I would also agree that WISN's process of re-encoding ABC's 720p content to 1080i has reduced the quality.

On the other hand, 1080p is a big improvement over both 1080i and 720p, but this isn't being broadcast in any local markets, and probably never will be.  For it to be practical, stations would need to switch to MPEG4 or the upcoming H.265 encoding, and that's highly unlikely.  (Remember all the uproar and hassle during the digital conversion?)  Stations seem to be much more interested in sending us more content versus better content.  Even if MPEG4 were to be used, we'd likely see more subchannels or stations could be tempted to take advantage of the lower required bit rate and return some of their spectrum to the FCC.

Your best sources for 1080p content is Blu-ray.

While 4K would be nice, it's a long way off for average consumers.  Little content and really expensive displays will slow adoption, and you'll need a pretty big screen or sit really close in order to fully see the improvement.

Scott

Quote from: ArgMeMatey;59018Power cycling your leased modem might have had the same effect, due to their announcement about speed increases.  My speeds went from 10-12 Mbps to around 20 Mbps after I power-cycled my DPC2100.

I had tried that multiple times, but there was no effect.  

The new modem has been solid so far, but it's only been running for about 20 hours.  Speed is still registering around 14Mbps.

Scott

I had been looking at Earthlink for a while, but didn't want to hassle with changing all my email accounts.  Instead, I went through the Roadrunner chat.  The first offer was to upgrade to Turbo for an extra $10 per month, which I declined.

That escalated me to another rep, who offered me to continue with standard service at $40 per month for the next 12 months.  The first six months will be the same as Earthlink, but the following six months will be $12 less.  It's only 10Mbps, but that's enough for my needs, and I don't have to spend the time changing all my email accounts.

I also purchased a new modem (Motorola SB6121) tonight, to eliminate the rental charge.  My speed has gone from 7Mbps to 14Mbps, so I think there my have been something wrong with my old one.

Thanks to everyone for posting in this thread.  It finally gave me the motivation to take action.

Scott

Saw this on an onscreen crawl this afternoon.

   Starting Tuesday, August 7, you'll find MeTV on broadcast channel 58.2 and on channel 41 on DirectTV and Dish.  Time Warner Cable, Charter Communication and AT&T will not be affected by this change.

There go our recent hopes of seeming full HD bandwidth on CBS 58.

Scott

I'll rank and grade them:

#1 WVTV:  A
#2 (tie) WISN and WITI:   B
#3 (tie) WTMJ, WDJT, MPTV:  D.  The rampant macroblocking and artifacting due to their deciesion to multicast makes much of their programming unwatchable.

I don't watch enough of the other channels to rank them.

Scott

WISN is not the only local channel to brand their SD field shots as HD.

Unfortunately, not many viewers notice.