DISH improperly zooming on letterboxed SD NBC broadcasts in Chicago

[raysmith]

Several NBC shows (e.g., The Office, ER) are broadcast in standard definition in a letterboxed format – with black bar above and below the picture. When I watch those shows on WMAQ in Chicago on my Echostar Dish 508 (not HD), the picture is zoomed with both edges cut off. I can tell because the translucent logo is cut off, titles and credits are cut off, and some scenes just look weird. For example, some of the interview scenes from The Office show the right or left side of the persons head cut off. This is NOT the case for the over the air SD transmissions. Those are displayed properly, with a black bar above and below the picture.

I have noticed this for several weeks now, but I don’t know if it is only Chicago or have other markets seen something similar? This happened a couple years ago – then went away. I don’t know whether it is a WMAQ problem or a DISH problem. I believe DISH gets its own feed from the local station, so WMAQ could be sending a bad feed. Or DISH could be taking the feed and zooming in on its own. I do not believe there is any thing set on my 508 or my television to cause this. All the non-letterboxed shows on WMAQ display correctly. I have not seen this problem on any other network.

Maybe someone is doing it on purpose because they think people prefer it?! Personally – I find it unwatchable. Things get cut off and you never see the whole picture. It just looks weird.

I was going to send WMAQ and DISH an email – but I suspect it will never get to the right people – unless someone here has a better suggestion of getting someone’s attention.

Ray Smith
Batavia, IL

 

[primetimeguy]

Dish isn't zooming the content. It's either the station or the aspect ratio (zoom) setting your receiver or TV.

 

[cocoon]

They are using the HD source from WMAQ and down rezzing to SD and sometimes zooming it. Part of the NBC HD logo is visible on the dish network WMAQ SD channel. I know they are doing it but do not know why.

 

[Pepper]

if they don't zoom the HD content, the alternative is that all SD 4x3 content would have black on all four sides.

Unless dish pays somebody to monitor it and push the "zoom" button at the appropriate times when it's 4x3 content.

 

[primetimeguy]

They are using the HD source from WMAQ and down rezzing to SD and sometimes zooming it. Part of the NBC HD logo is visible on the dish network WMAQ SD channel. I know they are doing it but do not know why.

Do you have a picture showing the HD logo on the SD channel? I find it hard to believe Dish has the capability to take an HD feed and zoom it and put it out as an SD channel. I don't live in the area but I think this is all station related and has nothing to do with Dish.

 

[Pepper]

Not hard to believe at all. All they have to do is have an ATSC tuner receiving the digital channel and feed the S-video or composite outputs into their uplink encoder. Poof! Instant downres HD -> SD.

 

[raysmith]

Here are three images from ER from 11/29/2007. (Hope I did this right!)
On the first, you can see the rating logo cut off on the upper left and a black bar on the bottom. In the second one you can see the NBC logo is not shown completely in the image with the Friday Night Light promo. The last one shows the HD logo on the left and a black bar on the bottom. These came from my Echostar 508. Not that the logos and ratings are important to me - but it shows the way the image is zoomed.

 

[primetimeguy]

Thanks for the shots. However, it does not prove either way if Dish is or is not doing the zooming. I'm 90% sure it is your local station. If Dish is doing it, it would be the first I have heard. If Dish could do it, they'd be better off doing that will all SD/HD channel combos and saving bandwidth. Something tells me, by agreement, that they would have to carry both the SD and HD feeds separately.

 

[Barry Erick]

Push the * button on your remote. YOU select the zoom per channel. You should be in NORMAL.

 

[LosingPatience]

It's the local station. We have the same thing with WBND (ABC) here in the South Bend area: the SD channel (from either Dish and OTA) shows the HD feed cropped to 4:3. It's not zoomed (how would you ZOOM a 16:9 screen to fit 4:3?), it's not squished (no tall, skinny people), it's cropped: the "extra" image on the sides are missing: exactly like raymisth's images show. WBND is a low power station that runs on autopilot most of the time (few staff, no news dept, engineers are in Chicago), so I'd imagine there just isn't anyone around to flip whatever switches take the HD feed from the network and format it for SD transmission (or if there are separate HD and SD feeds, then WBND just stays on the HD feed all the time, since no one is there to toggle).

 

[Hall]

Dish and the local NBC, WDTN, are doing something similar here. Speculation is, and a little investigation or comparison of the channels, seems to confirm that Dish is receiving the digital SD channel and re-transmitting it in place of the old, standard analog channel. They do NOT carry the "HD" channels for this station (or Dayton OH) yet.

 

[bjthadj]

Watching the Thursday night comedies from WMAQ on the DVR today, I noticed the same thing as the OP. The zoom is incredibly annoying, and it isn't on my end. Every other channel, including the other locals, look fine. Is this worth a call to Dish, or is it just something we have to live with?

 

[raysmith]

The consensus here seems to be that this is a WMAQ problem - but a call to both Dish and WMAQ ought to help. It might be easier to get through to a technical person at Dish, than at WMAQ. If they get multiple calls, they might not assume that the caller has a problem with their own set. I am going to try to call them both today. I'm not sure what will get their attention. Maybe we need to send an actual letter.

 

[goaliebob99]

I checked out WMAQ's OTA Analog signal as this is a Dish Network Problem. WMAQ-TV does not have this. WMAQ-DT shows HD obviously. Im thinking this is a problem at the Dish network POP, or uplink. They have a reginal uplink in monee which could be were chicago LILs originate from if they dont have a pop in the city. But the problem is not WMAQ, as I have not seen this on there analogue counterpart.

 

[primetimeguy]

I checked out WMAQ's OTA Analog signal as this is a Dish Network Problem. WMAQ-TV does not have this. WMAQ-DT shows HD obviously. Im thinking this is a problem at the Dish network POP, or uplink. They have a reginal uplink in monee which could be were chicago LILs originate from if they dont have a pop in the city. But the problem is not WMAQ, as I have not seen this on there analogue counterpart.

But what about the SD Digital counterpart?

 

[raysmith]

I spoke to DISH today and they reported that they had an open problem - a "video issue" with WMAQ that was reported on November 13th. (three weeks ago). There was nothing about the fact that it only affects letterboxed programs, but the rep said she would add that notation.

Then I called WMAQ and talked to one of the heads of engineering who was very helpful. He stated that this is strictly a DISH problem. That there is no link from WMAQ to Dish. Dish gets its signal off an antenna on Pulaski Avenue. He recognized the problem and he gave me his name and said to call Dish and tell them to contact him if they need to. He also said he would contact them himself to see what was going on.

I would urge anyone who is seeing this problem to call Dish and report the problem. I think this may be a case where we need to complain loudly - or it may not get repaired.

Ray

 

[Pepper]

I expect to see this issue come up a lot more, as Dish transitions from using the analog signal to digital feed, especially where a station only has one digital channel that is (sometimes) HD. I know that in my market only one of the big 4 has a separate subchannel for SD.

Unless they find an ATSC tuner box that is smart enough to automatically stretch 4x3 content to full screen while leaving the 16x9 alone except for downres.

 

[Paradox-SJ]

Is this a way for E* to get more bandwidth? In my DMA ALL the stations of DT and one has already drop their analog....

Drop all the analog and just send down the digital DH

 

[lxngtnguy]

It's not just there...

I live in Lexington, KY.....my local NBC station has been broadcasting 1080i for almost 2 years now. The other locals are at 720p. The perfect test that I can suggest to anyone who has this problem is to watch the Today show in the mornings on NBC, watch for a Tylenol commercial, the Today show is captured in 1080i in NY and transmitted to your affilliate, it looks completely in proportion on Dish but when the Tylenol commercial comes on it will stretch off the screen and be clipped. If you hit the * on your remote as someone suggests and go to "Normal" rather than "Stretch" to fill a 16:9 screen it is still cut off. This is a problem that Dish is having, you can switch to your internal ATSC/NTSC tuner and the picture is perfectly proportioned on the screen. I was told that dish is picking up the HD feeds of the larger markets however they do not have the necessary equipment to automatically detect the change in broadcast resolution and therefore it stays zoomed in all the time on their equipment so by the time it gets to us some of it is clipped. Kinda $h!tty if you ask me if I put it on my ATSC tuner built in my tv it stretches the picture in and out to fill the screen just fine whenever it detects a change in the resolution of the broadcast...sounds to me like Dish is using old equipment...Another good one Charlie....I'm getting so disappointed with Dish I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

 

[primetimeguy]

I live in Lexington, KY.....my local NBC station has been broadcasting 1080i for almost 2 years now. The other locals are at 720p. The perfect test that I can suggest to anyone who has this problem is to watch the Today show in the mornings on NBC, watch for a Tylenol commercial, the Today show is captured in 1080i in NY and transmitted to your affilliate, it looks completely in proportion on Dish but when the Tylenol commercial comes on it will stretch off the screen and be clipped. If you hit the * on your remote as someone suggests and go to "Normal" rather than "Stretch" to fill a 16:9 screen it is still cut off. This is a problem that Dish is having, you can switch to your internal ATSC/NTSC tuner and the picture is perfectly proportioned on the screen. I was told that dish is picking up the HD feeds of the larger markets however they do not have the necessary equipment to automatically detect the change in broadcast resolution and therefore it stays zoomed in all the time on their equipment so by the time it gets to us some of it is clipped. Kinda $h!tty if you ask me if I put it on my ATSC tuner built in my tv it stretches the picture in and out to fill the screen just fine whenever it detects a change in the resolution of the broadcast...sounds to me like Dish is using old equipment...Another good one Charlie....I'm getting so disappointed with Dish I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

A channel does not change resolutoin on the fly. A show may be in 1080i, and the commercials are 480i and upconverted to 1080i and shown zoomed or with black bars by the station. The actual resolution of the signal does not change to 480i, it is always 1080i. Your TV is not seeing a resolution change during a broadcast, maybe on different channels but not the same channel.