NEW Channels 8-2 and 8-3

[Floyd]

Well, I guess ch 8 is multicasting tonight. Without any manipulation of my Samsung T-160 it started receiving the new sub-channels, and they also appeared in the guide with the program description of "regular programming".
8-1 WFLADT is the same HD we are used to. Leno looks as good as ever.
8-2 WFLA-SD is blank now.....around midnight
8-3 WFLA-SP has a weather radar picture that updates every 8 seconds. Audio is from 8-1

[Mag88]

Same here Floyd @ 5:20 PM Saturday. Wonder what's going to run on 3-2?

[bdraw]

I am not seeing this at all. I even tried to dial in, there is no channel showing up at either 8-2 or 8-3.

[teampozer]

Oh yeah..... I've got em too. I bet 8-2 is gonna be a standard 4:3 signal but in digital. So much for the "No to multicasting" huh guys? :roll:

[bdraw]

I am not seeing this at all. I even tried to dial in, there is no channel showing up at either 8-2 or 8-3.

I rescaned and there they are.
This is not good.
If anyone watch Las Vegas tonight let us know if you can see any motion artifacts when there is alot of movement.

[jaymer]

watched Vegas OTA with NO difference in visual quality that I've had for other episodes.
.. but wasn't trying to notice. Forgot about the multicasting.

[bdraw]

watched Vegas OTA with NO difference in visual quality that I've had for other episodes.
.. but wasn't trying to notice. Forgot about the multicasting.

That is good news, I need to record some of this channel so we can see what the bandwidth alocation is.

[Floyd]

They've put a 4x3 version of 8-1 onto 8-2, but mine doesn't have any audio.
I've also noticed that they play with 8-3 occasionally. If you're really bored, you can leave it on until you see the mouse cursor come creeping out and bring down a config window. I noticed they were having trouble getting the weather radar to stay in the loop mode, and all the little black dropouts are gone, perhaps because there is no weather for the screen to refresh. I've also seen a poor representation of what I guess is the wind flow patterns over this region, as well as a local map of the urban area, similar to one you might see where they mark up the accidents during rush hour.

[Floyd]

As of this morning, 8-2 now has the proper audio added. I guess they moved the cables from the 8-3 encoder, since 8-3 now is silent.

[bdraw]

Well my wife was watching friends on 8-1, the SD upconvert, and yep its there. Anytime there was alot of movement there was blocks. This really sucks. The Daytona 500 is going to be almost unwatchable, next weekend.

Lets all just hope that sooner or later NBC steps in and tells them they can't do anything to degrade the HD quality of the networks shows.

[jaymer]

oh crap - i hadn't thought about probs with the daytona 500.
talk about high speed motion... tracking a running soccer player is nothing compared to some "boogity boogity boogity"!

well, that will really stink if they don't crank up the bandwidth for this... only time will tell. Maybe BSchneider can contact Mark over there and see if they can step down the multiplexing during the race.

It sounds better when you
CRANK IT UP BABY!!!

[teampozer]

For the record SD upconvert is on 8-2 not 8-1. I saw the same program (Friends), same OTA channel (8-2) and it looked great. I saw nothing of which you are talking about. Signal was strong as ever. The only difference I hear is 8-1 audio has surround sound and 8-2 does not.

[PewterPirate]

Yeah, Friends looked fine to me also on both channels 8-1 and 8-2. I didn't notice any blocks. Are only NBC's hour long shows and Leno broadcast in HD? Thier sitcoms do not look HD, at least compared to ABC and CBS.


Matt

[bdraw]

For the record SD upconvert is on 8-2 not 8-1. I saw the same program (Friends), same OTA channel (8-2) and it looked great. I saw nothing of which you are talking about. Signal was strong as ever. The only difference I hear is 8-1 audio has surround sound and 8-2 does not.

What are you talking about?
8-1 shows the SD upconverted to 1080i and crops the top and bottom.
8-2 shows the SD not upconverted, it is displayed as 4x3 480i.

I wish my TV didn't show the detail so I didn't see the blocks. But when they were dancing in the 80's flashback, they panned the camera fast and the blocks were there.

[bdraw]

Yeah, Friends looked fine to me also on both channels 8-1 and 8-2. I didn't notice any blocks. Are only NBC's hour long shows and Leno broadcast in HD? Thier sitcoms do not look HD, at least compared to ABC and CBS.


Most of NBC's "Scripted" shows are in HD, but Friends is not. NBC by far has less HD than CBS or ABC. Only Fox does less(none) but I wouldn't be surprised if this fall they do more then NBC.

[Bschneider]

Another engineer friend of mine from another station is going to talk to Mark about the multicasting next week. He was the one that convinced Mark to stop multicasting last time. But perhaps this came from corporate and not Mark this time around. I'll get the real story some time next week.

[teampozer]

I know what the resolutions are and I know what's being broadcast. And I understand quite well that when the progam is not in HD, it's upconverted to all the digital channels. All I'm saying is that with my DirecTV Sammy 160 connected via DVI, RG-6 coax, and outdoor antenna, I've got one of the best pictures around. Either you're really really picky or you've got signal loss somewhere in your reception setup. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure all your arguments against multicasting are good ones. I guess I just can't see it at my house. But I'll keep a close eye on it and tell ya when I do.

[bdraw]

I know what the resolutions are and I know what's being broadcast. And I understand quite well that when the progam is not in HD, it's upconverted to all the digital channels. All I'm saying is that with my DirecTV Sammy 160 connected via DVI, RG-6 coax, and outdoor antenna, I've got one of the best pictures around. Either you're really really picky or you've got signal loss somewhere in your reception setup. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure all your arguments against multicasting are good ones. I guess I just can't see it at my house. But I'll keep a close eye on it and tell ya when I do.

You have an open invintation to come over and watch the blocks on my ws55711. Just pm me.

*Yes I am really picky and no it is not a reception problem*

[Floyd]

Someone at ch-8 must have seen Bdraws concerns about multicasting, since a couple of days ago the pictures on 8-2 and 8-3 have seemingly deteriorated. 8-3(the weather radar) only blocks up during the animated loop, but 8-2(the 4x3 one) is mosiac-city, to the point of being annoying.
Evidently, the majority of the bandwidth is being allocated to 8-1.
I have a couple of questions:
1. Why does the mosiac tend to appear at the bottom of the picture?
2. Who will be using the 8-2 signal? People with 4x3 HD monitors?
3. On my Samsung T-160, the "digital off-air signal meter" shows 100% on ch 8-2 while there is mosiac. I guess the meter is reading the overall signal for 8-1,2,3 combined, and is not the measure of an individual sub-channels s/n ratio?
Teamposer: please re-check to see if 8-2 still looks good on your set.

[bdraw]

Someone at ch-8 must have seen Bdraws concerns about multicasting, since a couple of days ago the pictures on 8-2 and 8-3 have seemingly deteriorated. 8-3(the weather radar) only blocks up during the animated loop, but 8-2(the 4x3 one) is mosiac-city, to the point of being annoying.
Evidently, the majority of the bandwidth is being allocated to 8-1.
I have a couple of questions:
1. Why does the mosiac tend to appear at the bottom of the picture?
2. Who will be using the 8-2 signal? People with 4x3 HD monitors?
3. On my Samsung T-160, the "digital off-air signal meter" shows 100% on ch 8-2 while there is mosiac. I guess the meter is reading the overall signal for 8-1,2,3 combined, and is not the measure of an individual sub-channels s/n ratio?
Teamposer: please re-check to see if 8-2 still looks good on your set.

I hope someone is listening. I don't understand the point of having two of the same channel.

The signal strenght has little to do with the compresion artifacts. The artifacts are in the signal. The stations transmit 19.4Mb/s all the time. They can dedicate this to one or many channels. This takes up the same exact about of bandwidth as the anaolgue station. Exactly 6mhz of frequency.

A good example to look at is ABC. Since they transmit 720p it takes less bandwidth than 1080i. 720p only needs 16Mb/s to look perfect, so that leaves enough room for another SD channel with no effect on the HD channel. 1080i on the other hand needs 100% of the 19.4 stream. I have heard that it actually needs about 21Mb/s to have perfect playback.(HDDVD hopefully) This can be seen during CBS HD football games, when the pan accross the crowd or change the graphics on the screen very quickly. CBS oringinally complained about this but the FCC refused to alot them anymore bandwidth. The FCC belives that as the MPEG compresion equipment gets better that they will be able to eliminate these artifacts. The other thing to consider is that when there is not alot of movment on the screen that they are not using the full bandwidth. This is how D* is able to broadcast multiple HD streams. If they were required to dedicate 19.4Mb/s to each channel 100% of the time like OTA works they would not be able to carry as many channels. But since the odds of all the channels needed the full bandwidth all the time, the results are great for the viewer. This is also part of the reason why BHN does not want to allow WFLA to transmit their full signal because it will use more of BHN's bandwidth. During a normal movie or drama 1080i only needs about ~16Mb/s but if they characters start running or dancing then the bit rate goes up. D* is able to successuly "Satisticl multiplex" to make the artifacts almost non existent. Eventually the local channels will also be able to do this. There is atleast one station in the US that is doing this now, and some of their viewers say the results are great. This can all be seen when you capture the transmport stream to disk.(1 min of video is always the same size) You can remove the transport steam and you are left with the mpeg2 file which is a different size dependening on how much bandwidth the show needs.

I think WFLA is just testing things out right now, trying to see what they can do with good results.

[Bschneider]

Received this email from Mark over at WFLA after I explained to him what I and everybody else is experiencing.

"Thanks for the update. We are testing the subchannels and this is the kind of feedback I need..<snip>"

We will be turning the subchannels off until we can look into the problem.

Mark"

[bdraw]

Received this email from Mark over at WFLA after I explained to him what I and everybody else is experiencing.

"Thanks for the update. We are testing the subchannels and this is the kind of feedback I need..<snip>"

We will be turning the subchannels off until we can look into the problem.


Thanks for the update Brian.

[Floyd]

They didn't turn it off (Tu eve), but the bandwidth must be turned waaay down on 8-2 and 8-3 since the resolution is about 50x70. It looks like one of the icon drawing programs, and it takes several seconds for the "picture' to draw when you first tune it in, at least on my system.

[Bschneider]

Mark just emailed me 2 hours ago and stated that he just turned off the sub-channels. So at this time they are no longer multicasting.

The local stations DO listen most of the time!

[Floyd]

Don't want this to sound like a complaint, just an observation.
I'm still getting 8-2 and 8-3 at 11:30am, same as my last post.
It's hard to tell if the weather map is updating, but it shows a front through the panhandle.

[Bschneider]

I am only reporting what he emailed me. If you are still getting something then I guess he didn't turn them off totally.

[audiolab]

As of 12 midnight, they were still multi-casting; 7-2 and 7-3 have extremely low resolution (about 40x60). ER was fine. I use the Samsung SR-TS160.