New Mexico Broadcasters Lack HD Equipment

[emathis]

I can live without Albuquerque stations broadcasting their news in HD, but none of the local network stations (which means the whole state) have invested in HD tape machines. This means that none of the syndicated shows now in HD (Oprah, Ellen, ET) are shown here in HD. But the worst problem is they also don't have any HD overlay capability, so when the weather is bad and there are warnings scrolling at the bottom of the screen they have to switch the current shows in the evening to SD to overlay the ticker. Is this normal for most local stations or are we just lucky to live in such a poor state?

[dettxw]

That Albuquerque DMA covers a lot of area doesn't it?

The weather crawl thing drives me crazy, and we get lots of 'em! At least one station here did finally update their equipment but not all.
No news in HD either, though some of the Tulsa stations up the road have modernized.

[LarryFlowers]

I live in one of the largest DMA's Atlanta... and we still have major network stations who can't do an overlay without switching to SD... and there is no excuse for it.. so you are really not alone.


I can live without Albuquerque stations broadcasting their news in HD, but none of the local network stations (which means the whole state) have invested in HD tape machines. This means that none of the syndicated shows now in HD (Oprah, Ellen, ET) are shown here in HD. But the worst problem is they also don't have any HD overlay capability, so when the weather is bad and there are warnings scrolling at the bottom of the screen they have to switch the current shows in the evening to SD to overlay the ticker. Is this normal for most local stations or are we just lucky to live in such a poor state?

[scooper]

Keep in mind that the DTV transition does not MANDATE HDTV. As long as they are broadcasting using ATSC, the stations ARE in compliance, even if that means 1 SDTV subchannel (yes, I have one channel here doing exactly that - a shopping channel) The CW station does one HDTV subchannel (but I'd bet most of their programming is upconverted), the MyNetwork station the same (both of these are run by Sinclair). Ion stations typically have 4 SDTV subchannels (Ion, QUBO, Ion Life, and Worship). The major stations here usually have 1 HDTV sub and 1-2 SDTV sub. 2 station owners are doing local HDTV news (resulting in 3 HD channels of news).

[arxaw]

... when the weather is bad and there are warnings scrolling at the bottom of the screen they have to switch the current shows in the evening to SD to overlay the ticker. Is this normal for most local stations...?For now, yes.

[Scott in FL]

I can live without Albuquerque stations broadcasting their news in HD, but none of the local network stations (which means the whole state) have invested in HD tape machines.

No tv stations use tape to record incoming HD programs. That's all done with servers.

I don't think many viewers realize how expensive it is to convert to HD. In addition to the servers, there are cameras, switchers, graphics, weather computers, distribution amps and cables. I worked for our local CBS affiliate during their conversion to HD and I was amazed at how much equipment had to be replaced, and how much one HD camera cost. They did the whole conversion, so now crawls and graphics are in HD. It costs them millions of dollars. With our economy and the shrinking advertising dollar, this is a huge investment.

You may have to live with Oprah in SD for a while.

[Rob-NovA]

I live in one of the largest DMA's Atlanta... and we still have major network stations who can't do an overlay without switching to SD... and there is no excuse for it.. so you are really not alone.

Same thing happens in the DC DMA, so it's not isolated to the rural states... :( WRC-TV in DC still does this. It's really noticeable watching the Today show, whenever they switch from the national feed to the local feed for news and weather. I don't profess to be a broadcast engineer, but I would think this cutover should be somewhat automated, no? It seems that they (WRC-TV) screws this up pretty regularly and instead of switching back to the national HD feed, we get black screens for a period of time until they realize they goofed. Annoying to say the least.

[rudeney]

Yeah, our local NBC affiliate (WVTM-13) has a hard time switching between national and the local HD broadcasts. There's no excuse for it during "The Today Show" because it's delayed an hour, so there should be no issue with needing to keep up with a live broadcast. Of course it's better than it was. When they first went HD, they had these annoying, "pops" whenever they switched between national and local feeds of any type and they were loud enough that I was concerned for the health of my speakers!