This TV Houston Worst Picture Quality Ever

DJboutit3 · Jan 31, 2013

This TV Houston has the worst picture quality ever it does not matter if I am watching it on Cable or Broadcast tv the quality is the same = to a really crappy youtube video. Anybody know what is up this tv is a pretty good channel why is the quality so bad??

rageradio · Jan 31, 2013

because that's how KPRC offers it. Standard 480p format. I think if they upped it to 720p they would have to downgrade the main channel from 1080 to 720 as well.

JHBrandt · Jan 31, 2013

Just a guess, but if rabbitears.info is to be believed (and it's usually correct), KPRC doesn't give This TV much bandwidth (about 2M bps). It's always seemed to me that an "average" SD station needs closer to 2.4-2.5M bps; otherwise you get noticeable compression artifacts, such as transient blurring/pixelization during rapid motion/panning.

I also see that KPRC is on the M/H bandwagon. That's 1.8M bps that can be viewed by maybe 500 folks in the entire Houston area :

Not much you can do about it besides complaining to the station, though.

JHBrandt · Jan 31, 2013

rageradio said:
because that's how KPRC offers it. Standard 480p format. I think if they upped it to 720p they would have to downgrade the main channel from 1080 to 720 as well.

Actually it's 480i. (I think 480p is allowed by the ATSC standards but I've never heard of a station attempting it.) According to rabbitears.info there are only a handful of stations in the US that broadcast This TV in HD (720p or 1080i).

Very few stations broadcast dual HD. Usually those are in areas where few stations are available, so they become dual affiliates (broadcasting two major networks in HD).

fredcantu · Jan 31, 2013

Maybe it's the source material. Some of these digital-only networks are fed by Internet and not by satellite.

jras20 · Jan 31, 2013

Ever since the Digital conversion I never have been able to catch Houston TV. But I'm glad I'm able to pick up Victoria TV, on their This TV,
19.3 It always looked decent, and the audio quality was good.

KTN Corp · Feb 1, 2013

JHBrandt said:
Very few stations broadcast dual HD. Usually those are in areas where few stations are available, so they become dual affiliates (broadcasting two major networks in HD).

Oddly enough, one of them is also in Houston--KTRK, the ABC O&O. ABC on 13.1 and Live Well HD 13.2 and SD 13.3.

Does This TV broadcast anything on widescreen to justify HD? It seems to be standard screen most of the time I flip through.

JHBrandt · Feb 1, 2013

KTN Corp said:
Oddly enough, one of them is also in Houston--KTRK, the ABC O&O. ABC on 13.1 and Live Well HD 13.2 and SD 13.3.

Yep - dual HD. What's weird is even that with bandwidth stretched to the limit, they're also simulcasting it in SD

I've seen stations do this with their .1 channels, so cable operators don't have to downconvert the HD for their SD-only customers, but a .2 channel that probably isn't on cable anyhow (though it may be - I don't live there so I can't check)? And I'd certainly never have expected it on a dual HD channel!

KTN Corp said:
Does This TV broadcast anything on widescreen to justify HD? It seems to be standard screen most of the time I flip through.

This TV's content is mostly movies, so I'd guess that they have an HD feed for their few HD affiliates. But none of the HD affiliates are in Texas so it's hard to check on.

tripinva · Feb 1, 2013

JHBrandt said:
Yep - dual HD. What's weird is even that with bandwidth stretched to the limit, they're also simulcasting it in SD

I've seen stations do this with their .1 channels, so cable operators don't have to downconvert the HD for their SD-only customers, but a .2 channel that probably isn't on cable anyhow (though it may be - I don't live there so I can't check)? And I'd certainly never have expected it on a dual HD channel!

The fact that it is on cable is why they do the simulcast. From what I've heard, ABC apparently made a bad deal and the contract only requires that Live Well, being HD, be carried in the HD tier, so any SD-only customers or boxes don't see it. The .3 channel, when it was Accuweather, was only carried in the SD digital tier. So, by putting Live Well on that channel, it forces carriage of Live Well on both tiers.

I would hope ABC will get it fixed in future contract negotiations.

This TV's content is mostly movies, so I'd guess that they have an HD feed for their few HD affiliates. But none of the HD affiliates are in Texas so it's hard to check on.

There is no HD feed of This TV. It is only provided in 4:3 SD.

- Trip