[saleen351]

Watching my boys ECU crush VT and every 5 mins I get the same repeated hurricane warning, here in fort lauderdale. It goes from HD to SD then once it's done it pops back to HD... This is only a bottom scroll warning...

Really annoying!

 

[Jon J]

Network feed in HD. Local station cannot originate HD. Switches to SD for warning. Switches back to network HD feed.

 

[n3ntj]

Watching my boys ECU crush VT and every 5 mins I get the same repeated hurricane warning, here in fort lauderdale. It goes from HD to SD then once it's done it pops back to HD... This is only a bottom scroll warning...

Really annoying!

Most local TV stations lack the equipment to provide warnings, crawls, station ID, and local programming in 16:9 HD. When they need to pass along some local info, they take control from the network feed (HD or SD) and this local control (for most stations currently) will be in a 4:3 SD format.

Also keep in mind, digital does not necessarily mean HD.

 

[gregjones]

Watching my boys ECU crush VT and every 5 mins I get the same repeated hurricane warning, here in fort lauderdale. It goes from HD to SD then once it's done it pops back to HD... This is only a bottom scroll warning...

Really annoying!

It was a great game in person. We still live in the Greenville area but drove up for yesterday's game. What a way to start the season...

 

[Tom Servo]

Most local TV stations lack the equipment to provide warnings, crawls, station ID, and local programming in 16:9 HD. When they need to pass along some local info, they take control from the network feed (HD or SD) and this local control (for most stations currently) will be in a 4:3 SD format.

Also keep in mind, digital does not necessarily mean HD.

I noticed The Weather Channel did the exact same thing with the Gustav radar image at the bottom of the screen during one of thier documentary shows.

What got me mad was the picture would go back to HD within seconds of a commercial break, and back to SD seconds after the program resumed. Either SD or HD, the graphics at the bottom of the screen stayed on and looked fine. It was just someone dropping HD by mistake.

 

[Ed Campbell]

Local station too cheap to buy equipment for HD crawl. One of our "local" stations finally popped for the gear and it works just fine.

The remainder just keep popping in and out when running a crawl.

None of them originate anything in HD.

 

[inkahauts]

None of them originate anything in HD.

What do you mean by this? I have several stations in LA that originate a lot of HD... and I am sure that over the next 5 years, so will a lot of stations across the country...

 

[MountainMan10]

Our major network stations in Denver originate the news in HD. But they still drop to SD when they overlay a weather warning.

 

[Scott in FL]

Local station too cheap to buy equipment for HD crawl.

None of them originate anything in HD.

Do you have any idea how much it costs a local station to fully convert to HD? Our local CBS affiliate wasn't too cheap to buy four Ikegami HD cameras, Kayak switcher, and weather computer. It costs them millions, and the local advertising dollar doesn't go that far these days.

I applaud any local station that switches to HD and originates their local news in high def. If they still have an SD crawl around then you'll see them drop down to SD from time to time when they insert graphics. But I sure wouldn't call them cheap or say none of them originate HD.

 

[BruceS]

If your picture switches back to HD as soon as the crawler message is done, consider yourself lucky.

For the first two years after I purchased my HD TV, the broadcast program would only go back to HD after the next commercial break and sometimes not until the next show.

Some of the experts on our local HD TV forum stated that, with the equipment installed in our local stations at that time, an engineer had to manually switch it back.

Thank goodness that all my local network stations now seem to have made the necessary investment to add the crawler to the HD stream.

 

[bonscott87]

What do you mean by this? I have several stations in LA that originate a lot of HD... and I am sure that over the next 5 years, so will a lot of stations across the country...

Because most local stations do not. None of our local stations do anything in HD local and I expect only one of them ever will in the next 5-10 years. They are all too cheap.

But even if they can do the local news in HD let's say, that doesn't mean they can do school closing and weather alert info in HD. That takes some pretty expensive equipment that most locals stations beyond the top big markets just aren't going to spend the money on. Thus they drop to SD when doing the crawls. Our local NBC station though has ponied up the moola and does all their crawls as an HD overlay, thus keeping the main programming in HD. They even got the equipment to keep the audio in 5.1 during such crawls (yes, separate and expensive equipment just to do that). And the funny thing is that they don't do the local news in HD. This is the station that I give the best chance to go HD on the local news. The rest of the locals only do HD because the network forced them to. They will do nothing extra beyond that until they can be assured they can make money on HD.

 

[krock918316]

Because most local stations do not. None of our local stations do anything in HD local and I expect only one of them ever will in the next 5-10 years. They are all too cheap.

But even if they can do the local news in HD let's say, that doesn't mean they can do school closing and weather alert info in HD. That takes some pretty expensive equipment that most locals stations beyond the top big markets just aren't going to spend the money on. Thus they drop to SD when doing the crawls. Our local NBC station though has ponied up the moola and does all their crawls as an HD overlay, thus keeping the main programming in HD. They even got the equipment to keep the audio in 5.1 during such crawls (yes, separate and expensive equipment just to do that). And the funny thing is that they don't do the local news in HD. This is the station that I give the best chance to go HD on the local news. The rest of the locals only do HD because the network forced them to. They will do nothing extra beyond that until they can be assured they can make money on HD.

Amazingly, our ABC and CBS stations have HD crawl/weather warning graphics. Not bad for DMA #100

 

[drx792]

Because most local stations do not. None of our local stations do anything in HD local and I expect only one of them ever will in the next 5-10 years. They are all too cheap.

But even if they can do the local news in HD let's say, that doesn't mean they can do school closing and weather alert info in HD. That takes some pretty expensive equipment that most locals stations beyond the top big markets just aren't going to spend the money on. Thus they drop to SD when doing the crawls. Our local NBC station though has ponied up the moola and does all their crawls as an HD overlay, thus keeping the main programming in HD. They even got the equipment to keep the audio in 5.1 during such crawls (yes, separate and expensive equipment just to do that). And the funny thing is that they don't do the local news in HD. This is the station that I give the best chance to go HD on the local news. The rest of the locals only do HD because the network forced them to. They will do nothing extra beyond that until they can be assured they can make money on HD.

ha even in large markets like Orlando they dont use that expensive equipment, despite the fact that the big 4 all have local news in HD now (IIRC...CBS may not but i know Fox just started)
Theyll come along though, In my area I actually see more slimlines than 18" dishes now...so HD clearly has some profit.

 

[Tom Servo]

Because most local stations do not. None of our local stations do anything in HD local and I expect only one of them ever will in the next 5-10 years. They are all too cheap.

But even if they can do the local news in HD let's say, that doesn't mean they can do school closing and weather alert info in HD. That takes some pretty expensive equipment that most locals stations beyond the top big markets just aren't going to spend the money on. Thus they drop to SD when doing the crawls. Our local NBC station though has ponied up the moola and does all their crawls as an HD overlay, thus keeping the main programming in HD. They even got the equipment to keep the audio in 5.1 during such crawls (yes, separate and expensive equipment just to do that). And the funny thing is that they don't do the local news in HD. This is the station that I give the best chance to go HD on the local news. The rest of the locals only do HD because the network forced them to. They will do nothing extra beyond that until they can be assured they can make money on HD.

Things are the same around here, but count yourself lucky that you can get network HD from those stations. The CBS affiliate in my DMA (Greenwood-Greenville-Lake Village, AR) doesn't pass through any HD from what I've been told. Of the stations that do HD in this and the adjacent market, none pass the crawls through in HD.

To give you an idea of how low tech this area is, the NBC affiliate in Tupelo had severe weather coverage recently: a camera was trained on a laptop screen as the weather guy loaded up different screens in his program, getting his arm in the way of the picture each time he went to use the keyboard. :lol:

 

[inkahauts]

I was specifically questioning him say that NO station originates HD... Look, I'm in LA, so I am lucky, for the most part. NBC Just went to HD for their news, but abc, cbs, kcal and ktla have all been hd for quite a while, and most of them are full hd, especially cbs and kcal. (kcal is owned by cbs, and share facilities) (full as in they control everything in an hd world, then downconvert for sd) I have a feeling that anyone with a local station that is O&O or is a major broadcaster of a pro sports team has the best chances of moving to all HD equipment the quickest... but it will take some time before all channels go that route. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a few new stations pop up in full HD and put others that stay in sd out of commission...

 

[n3ntj]

As the price of HD local control and production equipment comes down, we will see more local stations providing local HD programming (like local news), but this may not be until 2~8 years for most of the top 100 DMAs (currently lacking it). Plus, these stations may need an HD-happy graphics package.

 

[BattleScott]

.

What part of Sanibel? I love that place.

 

[saleen351]

Ok, I can deal with the switch to SD for the scroll but speed it up! Who reads that slow! They should employee 14 year old girls to write the scrolls in text slang/short hand..

 

[cartrivision]

What do you mean by this? I have several stations in LA that originate a lot of HD... and I am sure that over the next 5 years, so will a lot of stations across the country...

I assume he meant that none of his local (Santa Fe) stations originate anything in HD, but yes, lots of channels in the "big city" DMAs originate HD stuff. I think that of the main locals in L.A, (on chs 2-13) six of them originate some HD programming and only one of them (ch 13) doesn't.

 

[JoeTheDragon]

WGN can show on screen scrolls with out dropping the HD.