What's going on at ABC tonight?

[Joseph S]

Alias is popping even on OTA at 85 signal strength. It dropped into a some Times Square shot and then a Monster's Inc trailer in HD. Now it dropped into a black screen?

Hope this isn't something that happens in a few Sundays.

[R1CK]

i saw that same thing happen about 3 weeks ago. oh oh.

[kjnorman]

I figured it wasn't just cable last night, now this confirms it.

They really don't have their act together yet.

I am beginning to agree with Mr Cripsin, and think that HDTV is still just experimental... http://www.milwaukeehdtv.org/ubb/rolleyes.gif

[P a u l]

If you saw the shots of New York followed by the monsters Inc trailer, then something happened over at ABC not us here at WISN. That video of New York is the ABC test signal, there is also some pretty cool shots of a Shuttle Launch in HD. Maybe the Alias HD tape broke or something. Again I will say this, we are only re-broadcasting what is sent to us from New York. If something happens at their end please don't say that we don't have our act together. After all we were the first to bring you HD broadcasting 24x7.

And from now on if anyone takes a cheap shot at ABC I will retaliate in the forums. Negative comments will get you no where, and will discourage the staff at the stations from providing you with info here in the forums!!!!

And thats all I have to say about that!

[Kevin Arnold]

Whoa here fellas. Paul, don't take this stuff personally. It looks to me like the comment was more of a generic highlighting of a problem along the line - where was not specified. That's reasonable. Don't think you have to "retaliate" rather just set the record streight. We appreciate the input.

And in the interest of keeping the record streight (since this will be pointed out to us) WISN was the first 24 x 7 in relatively high power on the air. WDJT was 24 x 7 but at low power first.

[kjnorman]

Yes, don't take this personally Paul, I was not taking a cheap shot. I realise that this was an ABC national feed problem as this was reported on AVS Forums nationally.

However when I say they still do not have their act together yet, I mean that it still has to be said, that the technical performance of the digital feeds are not 100% reliable.

Be it a national problem, like the other night, or a local affiliate issue (such as forgetting to hit the switch) I have seen numerous issues crop up. It is difficult to sell the virtues of high definition programming to my wife, when whenever we switch on a digital signal we find some technical issue spoiling the show.

People who do not necessarily care about digital (like my wife) will remember the times when something fails in the broadcast chain, rather than the times when everything is right.

I accept that we are still early in the transition, but this is my second over-the-air digital transition I have seen; having gone though the UK's move to digital widescreen in 1999. Now the UK's broadcast model is quite different from that in the US and their technical challenges where not as great so I will not try to draw comparisons. One thing that can be seen is that everyone has their issues and challenges. Its just that on our transition to HDTV, we seem to have a few more!

So please don't take offense when I say you (a generic you aimed at all broadcasters) do not have your act together, because you are not 100% perfect. Neither am I.

[Tom Snyder]

This does illustrate the problem of HDTV seeming to be regarded as the illegimate step child of the Networks. What if the "tape had broken" for Alias on the regular national feed? I suspect the entire combined resouirces of ABC/ESPN and Disney would have been rallied to restore the feed immeidately. How long was the HD feed down?

[Kevin Arnold]

Good Point Tom, it does seem as if much less attention is paid to the digital feeds by all the stations. How many posts here and on AVS talk about calling stations to get them to "flip the switch" or get back on the air. What business would put out a product without enough quality control to montor its presentation and error checking. That's sloppy.

[Tom Snyder]

When I was in radio, the engineers had monitoring equipment that set off the equivalent of smoke detector alerts throughout the entire building after 3 seconds of dead air. When that thing went off, it was alike the air force responding to incoming missiles...everyone came running... engineers, sales people, interns, receptionists... and eventually the DJ who had been in the bathroom when the tape jammed or the CD machine broke.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but based on the number of times I've personally had to call newsrooms to tell them to run down the hall and tell engineering to "flip a switch," I wonder if any of the local TV stations have ever been the first to discover a problem with their HD boradcast.

[Joseph S]

The cut was very abrupt and advertised a November Monster's Inc. DVD release that had already happened. It interrupted the show at key point. In addition, the entire feed was popping similar to the TW issue, but just minutes prior during "Willy WonKa" nothing was going on. I still hope this sort of issue doesn't happen again, especially during the Super Bowl, but I understand technical problems will occur.

This was not intended as insult to anyone, including Sinclair. ;) It was a response to two rather odd problems I've never seen before with OTA HDTV.

Other than a few "flip the switch" problems and the misplaced bug on SDTV, I haven't had any problems with WISN now that they have made the switch. The bug is probably the biggest gripe with the station. It belongs to the true left of the ABC logo instead of middle of the screen and should fade after 1 minute so as to avoid burn in.

[kjnorman]

Well, switched on th WISN-DT tonight and I got a black screen at 7:20 pm.

Went and watched The Others on showtime instead.

I switched back to WISN-DT every now and then, and mostly found a black picture with no sound. This carried on past 8pm and cross checking analog channel 12, found that The Bachelorette suffered with no sound, no picture, but the commercials came in with sound but also no picture.

I thought the station may be off air for engineering, but the fact that the commercials came through (sound but no picture) leads me to suspect another problem.

Don't know if this is a national ABC issue, WISN's issue, or our cable feed (do suspect this as all other channels are fine), but somebody dropped the ball tonight. BIG TIME!

Don't take offense Paul, but was no one at WISN monitoring this, so you would atleast broadcast an upconverted analog feed?

[borghe]

I would assume it was TWC related. I didn't watch digital 12 last night, but my wife watched the Bachelorette on Tivo and had no problems at all with it. So WISN was good and DirecTV's signal was good. Again, I don't know about WISN-DT OTA as I didn't watch it, but analog 12 over DirecTV came in beautifully. Seems to be TWC.

[Todd Wiedemann]

We watched 'The Bachelorette' last night OTA on WISN-DT. No issues at all.

Nice upconvert, actually ! I compared the OTA analog with the upconvert. A significant difference.

[kjnorman]

I should clarify that the analog channel 12 was fine as normal. The problem was only on TW channel 512 (WISN-DT).

So Todd, you can confirm that WISN was good OTA from 7pm to past 8pm (after about 8:05 I gave up checking as focused on other stuff, so I do not know if it corrected itself).

Kerry.

[Todd Wiedemann]

Originally posted by kjnorman
So Todd, you can confirm that WISN was good OTA from 7pm to past 8pm (after about 8:05 I gave up checking as focused on other stuff, so I do not know if it corrected itself).


Well, we watched 'Star Search' upconverted OTA on 1-1 from 7-8pm. Perfect. No drops, audio or video.

Switched to 12-1 at 8pm for 'The Bachelorette.' Perfect, there too. No drops, audio or video.

9pm we went to the laundry tubs and bathed the dog ... :rolleyes:

[sp44again]

Todd, I notice you have ReplayTV. Do you like it? I always hear that it's slow with changing channels.

[Steve Mann]

Originally posted by Todd Wiedemann
9pm we went to the laundry tubs and bathed the dog ... :rolleyes:

Hey! Now that your in that mode, you can come over and do my two tonight! ;)

[Steve Mann]

Originally posted by sp44again
Todd, I notice you have ReplayTV. Do you like it? I always hear that it's slow with changing channels.

TiVo, man. Tivo. It's the only way to go. :D

[Todd Wiedemann]

Originally posted by Steve Mann
TiVo, man. Tivo. It's the only way to go. :D

Oh, dear. Here we go. ;) Tell ya what [admin hat on] I'll start a new topic in the on/off topic chit-chat area [admin hat off] and we'll take it up there. :eek:

... and Steve, it looks like you have two BIG dogs. I have a little Bichon Friese and Michelle and I can barely contain him for his bath. I'd love to help, but will pass :D

[veyj]

12-1 was fine from 8pm - 10pm. I didn't see any issues with 12 analog or 12 DirecTV either. I was flipping between these 3 channels and other OTA digitals to figure out a different issue with 12-1 that I'll start in a new thread.

John

[kjnorman]

As for WISN-DT being off last night, TW confirmed that they had a hic up at their headend. Got it fixed by around 10pm by all reckoning.