RTV has gone HD in Miami, FL's TV market

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I'm glad I'm in the South Florida area to receive the broadcast over the air. Everytime there is an upgrade on my AZBOX it's a hits or miss getting the RTV Mux at 87W because of software bugs.
 
I don't care how they do it, I am just glad they leave it so us backyard guys can get it, they know we get it, they come here and explain technical stuff to us even. And given the state of things in the broadcasting industry, that is damn refreshing and a great thing.

C-Band would be missing something should RTV go away. I'd like to again thank the RTV folks for the fine programming for us. And if they need us for anything, we'll be here. :up

Agreed 100%. These guys gave been very cool, even to the point of giving us "shout outs" on the air. Having a good alternative to TVLand is, in itself, a wonderful gift.
 
Currently looking at it here in Ft lauderdale broadcast at a resolution of 720 on channel 9.1 (WHDT)
The original programming is not high resolution so I really don't see any difference showing any of the old shows in HD. In fact it shows worst at 720
 
The feed is delivered as a 720p/60 HD signal at a variable data rate > 25 mbps on AMC-7 to the entire North American continent. The two stations in Florida are the first affiliates for the custom feed. The high data rate requires use of nearly a full transponder, so the HD feed is currently available only on AMC-7. Sorry.

I'm showing the feed on AMC 7 currently running at approximately 12.2 Mbps 960 x 1088i 29.97 fps.
 
I got a chance to check out the AMC 7 feed Sunday night and I was receiving it at 1080i also. I watched a couple of BW shows, Hitchcock and Jack Benny, and I thought the picture quality was good if for no other reason than it has far less compression artifacts than the SD feeds on the other sat. No it's no going to be some kind of miracle awe inspiring knock your socks-off HD experience as the source programs may just be SD up-scaled into 720 or 1080 but again the PQ looks OK and that's the good news.

The bad news to me is the "The conversion from 1.33 to 1.77 aspect ratio is done without visible distortion". I'm very unhappy with their decision to do this rather than broadcast the old shows in their native 4:3/1.33:1 aspect ratio, as Jim S. noted earlier it doesn't take more than a few seconds to notice the picture is stretched on the left and right sides. I think this is common way to make 4:3 shows look wide screen as my HDTV can do that, my TV calls it "Panoramic Mode" where the image is stretched horizontally on the left and right sides to fill the TV screen while the center of the image is not stretched. So if an actor stays in the middle of the screen they look normal but if they move to the left or right they become quite fat or in a close-up their head is stretched on the sides.

I can't imagine that "burn-in" is that serious a problem to justify this. If someone is watching a 4:3 program on their plasma HDTV and worried about burn-in or maybe someone just doesn't like the black bars on the sides it's fine with me, I'm sure most HDTVs have some sort of picture viewing mode to zoom in the image and fill the screen, but with the current 1.77 aspect ratio there's no way I can adjust my HDTVs display back to 4:3 and get rid of the "panoramic mode" with those awful stretched and distorted sides.

I don't like being too critical, I'm just a vintage TV and movie nut and I really enjoy RTV and their vintage programming very much!
 
Original aspect ratio is important to me as well. The problem is, there are so many aspect ratios theatrically, and now we have two different television aspect ratios. This multiplies the possible screen modes, and presents even more problems. Factor in the digital projection theatrical ratios used by 2K and 4K, and there are even more possible screen modes. The only CORRECT way to watch a film or television show is OAR, and if that means bars on either my display or projection screen, so be it.
 
The black bars have no visual impact on the programming for me either. I personally hate the stretchovision appearance and would always prefer the native resolution.
 
I'm now showing the feed on AMC 7 currently running at approximately 12.2 Mbps 960 x 720 59.94 fps.
 
With all this discussion of the bitrates of this HD channel, I don't think I saw it mentioned whether it was MPEG2 or MPEG4? All the channels on AMC3 are MPEG4, so I just assumed that this HD channel would be also, but at the bitrates being mentioned here, that's almost network feed quality, and better quality than OTA and all but a couple of the DN/DTV channels. If it's MPEG2, then it's comparable to DN/DTV quality, but then I wonder why they would send that one channel out in MPEG2 when they have the capability for MPEG4 demonstrated on AMC3. I can't see AMC7, so I don't know what they do down there. Maybe AMC7 is for stations that can't handle MPEG4?
Anyway, is this channel MPEG4 or 2 ?? I'm guessing 2, but why.
 
It's 960 instead of 1280 and it's stretch-o-vision? Does that look as bad as it sounds, or is the quality of the source material sufficiently low to hide the lack of resolution? I could understand only using 960 lines horizontally if it was 4:3.
 
With all this discussion of the bitrates of this HD channel, I don't think I saw it mentioned whether it was MPEG2 or MPEG4? All the channels on AMC3 are MPEG4, so I just assumed that this HD channel would be also, but at the bitrates being mentioned here, that's almost network feed quality, and better quality than OTA and all but a couple of the DN/DTV channels. If it's MPEG2, then it's comparable to DN/DTV quality, but then I wonder why they would send that one channel out in MPEG2 when they have the capability for MPEG4 demonstrated on AMC3. I can't see AMC7, so I don't know what they do down there. Maybe AMC7 is for stations that can't handle MPEG4?
Anyway, is this channel MPEG4 or 2 ?? I'm guessing 2, but why.

It's H.264 just like the channels on AMC 3.
 
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