HD Locals in San Antonio

dendox said:
Just signed up for dish service. I am getting it installed on the 11th. Has anyone heard when WOAI (nbc) will be in HD? How about KSAT not being in super stretch?

Was hoping to know what the issue was before the guy showed up. Not that he could do anything about it, but at least for my own metal well being.

Hopefully NBC will become available soon. Nobody knows when. I have called Dish and they do not have an answer either. Apparantly, they need to sign the rebroadcast agreement withthe local NBC affiliate to get things finalized.
 
I have tried emailing the Local NBC affiliate for any info regarding when NBC HD will be available here in SA. It has been on TWC since 2004. I have sent 3 eamils and have not gotten a response.

If you want your NBC HD in San Antonio, please email the engineering department of WOAI and explain that you want the service, and you refuse to watch their channel until they offer it in HD on DISH. Don't forget to explain how bad the reception is with an OTA antenna, and how ABC, CBS and FOX all offer the service.

billheimbuch@woai.com - Engineering Department
gregderkowski@woai.com - Comments/Complaints
 
What do you expect them to do? Hijack a Dish satellite? Apparently WOAI wants to shake down E* (or vice versa). Ping on WOAI management all you like but the poor saps in engineering don't have anything to do with it. And of course you would not get "the channel" in HD, only selected programming.

playmaker7206 said:
I have tried emailing the Local NBC affiliate for any info regarding when NBC HD will be available here in SA. It has been on TWC since 2004. I have sent 3 eamils and have not gotten a response.

If you want your NBC HD in San Antonio, please email the engineering department of WOAI and explain that you want the service, and you refuse to watch their channel until they offer it in HD on DISH. Don't forget to explain how bad the reception is with an OTA antenna, and how ABC, CBS and FOX all offer the service.

billheimbuch@woai.com - Engineering Department
gregderkowski@woai.com - Comments/Complaints
 
ThomasRz said:
What do you expect them to do? Hijack a Dish satellite? Apparently WOAI wants to shake down E* (or vice versa). Ping on WOAI management all you like but the poor saps in engineering don't have anything to do with it. And of course you would not get "the channel" in HD, only selected programming.

I understand, but on the WAOI website, it says to contact the people listed for questions/comments on HDTV programming. Secondly, if nobody expresses their desire to have the "selected programming" offered in HD, it will not be a priority.
 
Does anyone else have crappy HD reception from Fox? I have given it a few days and several different programs to make sure I was not just misinterpretting what they show in HD.

I noticed, in particular, that the BoSox and Yanks game was awful. They had it broadcast over a full screen but it looked like something I would catch using rabit ears out at my deer lease on a 10 year old 19inch PoS.

Am I missing something?
 
dendox said:
Does anyone else have crappy HD reception from Fox? I have given it a few days and several different programs to make sure I was not just misinterpretting what they show in HD.

I agree FOX's HD programming does not look very good. The only thing I watch is "house" and there always a lot of artifacts in the picture - especially in mid-to-dark areas of a scene.

I almost always watch "House" via DVR - and record it off the sat feed, rather than OTA (which I reserve for the channels I can only get HD OTA, to help with conflicts), but maybe I'll try recording it OTA one night and see if it's any better (is it FOX's fault or Dish's fault).

On the other channels, I barely notice a difference. For example on KENS 5 (CBS) the only place I can tell a difference is in the CBS logo, which is jagged on the sat feed, but smooth on the OTA feed - the rest of the picture looks the same to me - at least on a 50" screen.
 
Is it something that Dish would come out and look at if I called and complained? I am not through with my 30 days yet so I am thinking they may.

Funny you metion "House." I watched it for the first time tonight and I wasn't sure it was actually filmed and broadcast in HD because it was so not hd looking. I seriously looked more grainey than a lot of SD stuff I used to watch on fox with TW.

I don't have an OTA that works, and I guess that would be my next step. At this point I have the terk antenna that fits on top of the dish but I can't catch anything with it. I had the dish installers put it up and I assume they did it right. I have never dealt with OTA so I am not sure what to do to check it out. At this point I have it running directly into the back of my 55 mitsu on antenna A. It catches a couple of things but they aren't watchable. It is actually worse than the old bunny ear days.

Any suggestions?
 
Fox Hd

I too have bad reception for KABB (FOX) HD and emailed Dish about it. They took some info from me from my two boxes the 211 and 622 and said they would forward it to engineering to solve the problem quicker. CBS and ABC look good so I wonder if it is KABB fault. Has anyone else contacted DISH about this or are some of you getting good reception of FOX HD?
 
I just contacted Dish about the local Fox HD feed. I have a good comparison b/c I switched from DTV when I moved from Housotn to San Antonio in May.

Fox NFL Sunday, and both NFL games looked so bad, that I got a better picture when I changed channels to the non HD Fox in the 8000's. War at Home came on at 8:30pm, and it looked bad too. Nothing looked like an HD show.

Dish took my complaint and forwarded it to engineering. It seems like an issue at the local FOx station. Maybe their dish needs to be properly aligned, according to the tech I spoke with. So if you are receiving bad reception, please report it. Otherwise, it may take months to get this resolved.
 
The problem must be on the KABB side - and I agree the difference between the OTA and SAT feeds is crazy. Even SD content broadcast via the SAT HD feed looks worse than it does on the SD KABB channel. I watched The Simpsons the other day on the HD SAT channel and it looked WORSE than it did on the SD KABB channel.

That's bad when SD content on a HD channel looks worse than it does on an SD channel!

Now, I've talked a bit with the KENS5 HD enginner at the AVS forum. He says that KENS5 provides their HD signal in its pure (mpeg2?) form to the cable and sattelite providers via fiber. So, when Dish gets the signal, it only gets recompressed once into their mpeg4 format.

My guess is, if KABB does something similair, is that they compress the signal themsleves before they send it to the cable/sat providers in order to save bandwidth on their fiber (or they use some other medium that requires them them to compress it further) so it get compressed by them and compressed again by Dish which equals lots-o-artifacts!

Last night I changed all my KABB timers to the OTA tuner.. Fotruneately there was no conflit with any of my WOAI (4, NBC) timers which is the only major network I cannot get HD via SAT.
 
The problem is 100% on the KABB side, and there is nothing Dish can do. I have called Dish for the third time in 5 days, and they are only rebroadcasting what KABB is sending them. They are probably not receiving that many complaints b/c the current Dish subscribers have nothing to compare it to.

Currently, the only solution is to get an OTA antenna.
 
That is B.S. We need to let KABB know that this sucks and needs to be corrected. OTA sucks for a lot of people and is a pain in the butt. I got DISH about a month ago and dumped TWC because DISH had HD locals and had KABB and TWC did not. The KABB signal is unacceptable and we need to let KABB know.
 
I am all for complaing (I do lots of it seeing as how I am an aspiring lawyer), but how should we go about it? What is the suggestion?

I will call them on my home from work today and I will call dish. I personally don't think anything we do will help, but if DISH gets pissed - thats a different story.

Any suggestions folks?
 
I just sent of an email to both KABB (engineering and general) and Dish asking about it. If they reply I will post what is said.

I also plan on calling them later today. Maybe if enough people complain something will get fixed.
 
I just called KABB's engineering Dept. They took my phone numbers and said they would get back to me. They were unaware of the problem. He said he would contact DISH to see how they were getting the signal. I say anyone who reads this forum should call KABB engineering Dept. just like I did and also keep contacting DISH until one of them figures out the problem.
 
response

Message edited - shouldn't post what I did.

The reply I got basically said that it was on Dish and not on KABB. He mentioned that he was in contact with Dish in an attempt to correct the problem. Sorry for violating any rules.


I guess it shows that he is trying. He misinterpretted my concern about OTA here at my house, but he got the just of my problems. I have not heard back from Dish re: my email, but when I talked ot them on the phone they said it was KABBs issue and to contact them.

I hope they get this figured out soon. I hate getting the run around.
 
Last edited:
After getting some clarification from KABB, here is some more accurate information I found out today....

DISH does not have a direct fiber optic line to obtain the signal directly from the KABB Master Control. They are rebroadcasting KABB's OTA HD signal. Anyone with an OTA tuner can verify that the OTA signal is not poor quality. It is very obvious who has the problem. Secondly, KABB seems very willing and responsive to help DISH and the viewers with this issue.

I have called DISH 5 times, and get the same b.s. from the customer service rep, and can not get anyone form the DISH engineering department to talk to me. I have no idea how seriously they are taking this issue. On the other hand, after one email to KABB, I have received 3 responses in less than 4 hours with very explanatory information.

The part that upsets me the most is that DISH gets my $120+ every month, and I can not get a decent response from the company I personally fund.

I would recommend that everyone continue to complain about the quality of service DISH is providing. Tell other DISH subscribers to likewise call and complain.
 
I am with you - as best I can tell it is on Dish. I have been very pleased with the response from KABB.

I hope that they can get it figured out. I too think it is crappy that the company we pay so much $$$$ to doesn't appear to care one bit about the quality of service they provide.
 
It does now sound like it could be DISH but remember our feeds of KENS and KSAT both look good. It just seems weird to me that if it was DISH why is KABB's signal the only one that looks crappy. I wll keep calling both KABB and DISH until we get this resolved.
 
***

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)

Latest posts