UPDATE! 12-21-05 Dish Transmitting CBS-E HD in 1440x1080i

[AdamGott]

I think every channel in 1920x1080i is simply not in their plans now, or ever. With the HD LILs coming on they are going to suck up a ton of bandwidth. IMO I have no idea why you would want local HD LILs to begin with heck the only thing in HD in my area is the primetime shows which could be dealt with my haveing simple E and W feeds, and have the remaining programming as SD LILs. Last I checked the local news/programming was not in HD.
I am guessing it must be some type of FCC regulation which if it is, its a bunch of crap that only cripples the SAT Cos.

I have been saying this for years! Why can't they just do a couple of national feeds and then uplink the local commercials in SD and plop them in at the right time. THIS would save a ton of bandwidth for both SD and HD locals on satellite. Is there really a need to broadcast 37*4 different (or whatever it is) east coast SD feeds all at the same time when they are probably only about 10% different.

Hell, with the national commercials we are probably only looking at 5% difference for each market. They could just uplink the commercial breaks and use some crappy bitrate.

 

[AdamGott]

Thats a good idea but I'm sure there is something were missing as to why it would never happen. Good thinking though, thats the first I've heard of that idea.

Well I think that it could work. If congress is going to keep spending my tax dollars to worry about such trivialities as HDTV and giving handouts to the poor so that they can buy converters and still watch tv (note to my congressmen - this is TV, give them food or clothing instead of DTV converters!) they should at least give me some kind of option for getting actual OTA HDTV. Being in market #138 I don't think that I will see HDTV networks for a long long time and they won't give me a waiver. That 2009 stuff is bs... four of our five local networks broadcast DIGITAL signals which will qualify but only one is HD and it is PBS which only actually broadcasts HDTV for a couple of hours a day.

Quality is always an issue for our locals, if they don't care about a clean video feed with no ground loop hum they certainly aren't too concerned about sending me an HDTV signal.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

How could you make it work?

If you are getting the national feed, let's say off of 119, and your SD LiL spotbeam is on 121, how does the receiver know to switch channels for the duration of the commercials? Remember, during a commercial break, you've got to be using all of the SD transponders and spotbeams to carry the commercials.

And you'd still have the advertisers screaming bloody murder for not carrying their HD commercials.

 

[tnsprin]

How could you make it work?

If you are getting the national feed, let's say off of 119, and your SD LiL spotbeam is on 121, how does the receiver know to switch channels for the duration of the commercials? Remember, during a commercial break, you've got to be using all of the SD transponders and spotbeams to carry the commercials.

And you'd still have the advertisers screaming bloody murder for not carrying their HD commercials.

Software to make it work was demoed but the Networks didn't buy into the idea.

 

[dlsnyder]

Just called and spoke with Dish, you are only allowed 1 CBS from either 61.5 or 148, they would not activate 148 for me being I have 61.5 already
Sorry that means I am of no help to you guys on 148 CBS
-Gary

Gary -

Thanks for tipping me off to this. I called Dish on Saturday and after a couple of tries found someone who changed me over from the west coast feed to the east coast feed for no additional charge. Since I already get KCBS OTA it is great to now have WCBS on satellite for free!

 

[dlsnyder]

I have been saying this for years! Why can't they just do a couple of national feeds and then uplink the local commercials in SD and plop them in at the right time. THIS would save a ton of bandwidth for both SD and HD locals on satellite. Is there really a need to broadcast 37*4 different (or whatever it is) east coast SD feeds all at the same time when they are probably only about 10% different.
Hell, with the national commercials we are probably only looking at 5% difference for each market. They could just uplink the commercial breaks and use some crappy bitrate.

This will never happen because local TV is all about protecting your viewership area. According to the model started in radio back in the 1920s, the FCC grants a station a license to serve a particular community or region. Each station signs exclusive contracts with programmers or networks to be the sole provider of a particular program or network in that region. The station in effect "owns" the viewers in their service area and they are extremely unlikely to give up any control over which programs and which commercials that "their" viewers see. Some stations have network programming on a slight delay, or use compression software so that they can insert more commercials into a program. They may also choose to show alternate programming when the need arises, or change airtimes altogether. A national distribution system such as this has been proposed many times and, although it would be highly efficient, it would take away some of the control that local stations have over their viewers. They will not give this up willingly. Over time IMHO the current broadcast model will slowly go away and ABC, CBS, and NBC will be programming multiple satellite/cable channels and be out of broadcasting entirely. Then some of these things may come to pass.

 

[SimpleSimon]

local TV is all about protecting your viewership area.

Correct.

Quite a shame it's not about providing good TV, but you're quite right - ALL they care about is survival, not service, and as such they do not deserve to survive.

 

[Gary Murrell]

Just to update guys, CBS HD is still 1440x1080i with bitrates not hardly fit for 480p

with HD content bitrates are running around 12 Mbps

this is the worst case I have ever seen on Dish, 1920x1080i/17 Mbps one week and then a total Cluster you know what the next

where oh where is my beautiful CBS that I enjoyed for so many years ??

-Gary

 

[BlackHitachi]

Correct.

Quite a shame it's not about providing good TV, but you're quite right - ALL they care about is survival, not service, and as such they do not deserve to survive.

This is SO true!! I am tired of these strong arm tactics of you can have our station and no one else. I feel i will watch my local station if your product is worth it!

 

[waltinvt]

Correct.

Quite a shame it's not about providing good TV, but you're quite right - ALL they care about is survival, not service, and as such they do not deserve to survive.

:

I'd say, since this digital transition is such a "national crisis", the whole affiliate system needs to be looked at.

As I see it, their main concern is got to be local ad revenue followed by public service in the form of local news and weather.

Taped ad spots could be inserted at the national level by computer and the national feed could be replaced with an uplink for local N&W twice a day. That leaves pre-empting national programming for rinky-dink local programs, which they should not be allowed to do anyway.

 

[jmcgee_jr]

<-----------Pinches Walt. Wake up walt wake up. Your having that dream again you know where things were making sense and how to benifit the customers and not the providers.

 

[waltinvt]

<-----------Pinches Walt. Wake up walt wake up. Your having that dream again you know where things were making sense and how to benifit the customers and not the providers.

"blink"......sorry, I'm ok now. Must have been a morning brain fart.

 

[Sharper]

Gary -
Thanks for tipping me off to this. I called Dish on Saturday and after a couple of tries found someone who changed me over from the west coast feed to the east coast feed for no additional charge. Since I already get KCBS OTA it is great to now have WCBS on satellite for free!

I've got CBSHD East and West both. I'm in an CBS O&O area, so the waiver was easy. Once I had that and a 148 and 61.5 (added for Voom), I just called and had them add the East version for me. The CSR checked with someone, but basically said they didn't see why I wouldn't be able to get them both after I asked for them.
If they told you you can't have both, I'd start some CSR roulette.

 

[HokieEngineer]

Watching the SD - DEN game today.. Notice some blockiness during camera pans / motion. Average bitrate on cbs-e 10.5Mbit/s. What I don't get is there is a spare 2.5Mbit/s on TP 17 which is just transmitting null packets. It would be nice if they would adjust their mux's to use all available bandwidth instead of wasting it.

 

[gdarwin]

Watching the SD - DEN game today.. Notice some blockiness during camera pans / motion. Average bitrate on cbs-e 10.5Mbit/s. What I don't get is there is a spare 2.5Mbit/s on TP 17 which is just transmitting null packets. It would be nice if they would adjust their mux's to use all available bandwidth instead of wasting it.

OTA is looking great!

Edit: To back up HokieEngineer

 

[BrettTRay]

CBS OTA is looking great here to. From the way it sounds it looks like when we get Local HD off satellite we can look forward to it getting compressed to hell and back, great. At least all my locals are HD except UPN. Don't really matter since I don't watch UPN anyway.

 

[dfergie]

Strange, I have the Broncos/ Chargers game on in the Living Room on the CBSHD west feed on my 921 and in my PJ room on the HD feed from D* on an H10... the 921 is still about 4-5 seconds ahead of the D* feed even though it is going thru the buffer... ( I can hear it from in here)

 

[Gary Murrell]

Just to update
CBS East is still 1440x1080i with horrid bitrates

-Gary

 

[T2k]

1280x720x60fps = 55,296,000 pixels per second.
1920x1080x30fps = 62,208,000 pixels per second.
So 720p has ~11% less pixels per second than 1080i.

Incorrect. You're comparing 1080p to 720p yet you're talking about 1080i (which is 1920x540).
Calculate again and you'll agree that pixel count is the least important when we're talking about such small amount of pixels but we have to deal with half the frame numbers and even that is interlaced, on top of the 540 vs 720 line 'deficiency' in case of a 1080i frame.

I agree if it HAS to be one or the other, i'd go with 720p over 1280i anyday. However, the bandwidth argument still hasnt explained why they currently fit 3 1080i channels onto a TP.
Also, only two of the networks broadcast 1080i. Currently they have CBS, ABC, NBC on one TP and FOX on its own TP. Switch it around so you have NBC, ABC, FOX on one TP (2 720p and 1 1080i) and CBS (1080i) on another TP.
If this situation doesn't change, I'll definitely have some good questions for the tech guys at the Dish CES booth

Amen.

 

[T2k]

Just to update guys, CBS HD is still 1440x1080i with bitrates not hardly fit for 480p
with HD content bitrates are running around 12 Mbps
this is the worst case I have ever seen on Dish, 1920x1080i/17 Mbps one week and then a total Cluster you know what the next
where oh where is my beautiful CBS that I enjoyed for so many years ??
-Gary

12 megabits is a sh!tty crap for HD, I fully agree.