KFOR News Set

[traxx]

The switch was supposed to happen in 2006 but they pushed it back to '09. Now a month away and they're wanting to delay it again. How could you miss all the commercials and info about the switch? I think people are far more ready than they think. They just want people to still be able to watch TV not understand the difference between HD and digital. If you're on cable or satellite, then you have nothing to worry about no matter what kind of TV you have. I think the number of people that recieve their TV over antenna and nothing else is a whole lot fewer than what the authorities think.

The confusion over HD vs. Digital was done on purpose by the industry. They wanted people to believe that the digital conversion meant that they would be recieving everything in HD.

As far as HD TVs are concerned; be careful about the 120Hz TVs. Some people don't have a problem with it but others have noticed that since the refresh rate is so fast that when you watch a movie the movement seems unnatural akin to watching a Keystone Cops movie. It can also make movies look as if they were shot on video instead of film.

Someone also noted that TVs look better in the store than they do in the home. The reason is that in the store they have the brightness pumped way up to make the colors pop and the TV area in stores often has dimmed lights to make the contrast even greater. You can achieve the same thing at home with the TV's sports setting or game setting but pumping up the brightness just means that the bulb in rear projection TVs or the backlight in LCD and Plasma TVs will wear out faster.

Also, don't buy your video cables at Best Buy et. al. They may have thin margins on their TVs to get you to buy but they make it up on their cables by selling you an 8' HDMI for $60 - $70. You can get an 8' HDMI cable at Monoprice for about $6, HDMI Cable, Home Theater Accessories, HDMI Products, Cables, Adapters, Video/Audio Switch, Networking, USB, Firewire, Printer Toner, and more! And Monoprice has quick delivery. It doesn't have to be Monster Cable to be good.

[TaoMaas]

The thing I really don't understand is why the stations can't just mix the SD content with the HD content during a broacast, or do they do that now?

What happens when we're watching an HD football game on KOCO and they air a Mathis Brothers commercial shot in SD?

That's what they're doing now. They're passing along the HD signal from the network, but playing back the commercials in SD.

Can't they shoot the local news in-studio in HD and send us that signal?

Yes, they can certainly do that now and I expect them to broadcast their newscasts in HD in the near future.

I can't imagine that they want to just keep hanging on to SD for what seem like silly reasons to me.

It's money and profitability...not such silly reasons in these times. The way I understand it, the stations will have a certain amount of bandwidth to work with. They can either broadcast a full HD signal (and use all of that bandwidth) or they can break it up into smaller chunks and broadcast multiple SD channels. Taking Oprah as an example, if the station elects to broadcast Oprah in full HD and use up all of their bandwidth, can they charge enough for the commercials they sell within Oprah to equal the amount they'd make if they broadcast Oprah in SD, sold commercials within the show, but also broadcast 5 Sham-Wow/AutoMax/Total Gym infomercials within that same time period?

[bretthexum]

Was I on drugs or was part of the 630 newscast in HD?

[OKCDrummer77]

^^ I noticed that, too. It was between the "Great State" segment and the break.

[mickinwarracres]

Yep, you are correct...I was shocked because it actually looked good! It had to have been a mistake when they did their digital test and hooked up the analago again but when they cut to a commercial and returned it was back to digital.

The HD is so much better...

[Thunder]

KFOR testing to do full HD on digital? I'm not sure I understand this.

I don't really see the difference on what is HD or not with my HDTV DLP TV. Sometimes, the only difference is stunning colors, but other than that, nothing to notice it.

[OKCDrummer77]

Normally, KFOR's newscast is in SD in a 4:3 ratio, which means either you have black sidebars on the screen, or the image is stretched, making everything look too wide (I choose to use the sidebars). For one short segment that evening, the broadcast was in 16:9 (filled the whole screen) and looked noticeably better than normal.

[Bostonfan]

KFOR testing to do full HD on digital? I'm not sure I understand this.

I don't really see the difference on what is HD or not with my HDTV DLP TV. Sometimes, the only difference is stunning colors, but other than that, nothing to notice it.

Seriously, if you can't tell the difference in HD vs. digital, then you either need your eyes checked or you got ripped off when you bought that "hdtv"...