"Whoa Dell! You got a KVOS!....."

[Bongwater]

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/12/02/2295742/bellingham-television-kvos-to.html

 

[SeattleObserver]

Always thought KVOS was going Spanish. Then again, this was before (Ackerley) Clear Channel sold all their TV properties to Newport Television.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-7299671/KVOS-to-be-sold-may.html

 

[IndigoCoyote]

Observer, you are observant! KVOS was going to go Hispanic- however, this was tied to a successful move in to the Seattle market. IIRC the new COL was to be Granite Falls, a small town in central Snohomish county. The digital contour did reach close to Bellingham to the north, but much more importantly, south of Tacoma. FCC dismissed the app- so no Tacoma, no taco.

Thus, Channel 12, yet again, failed to become the Voice Of Seattle (VOS)

 

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

How's ME-tv doing for them from a business perspective? I like the programming .. hope they keep it. But on the flipside, it's disheartening to drive by that little historic building and see one or two cars in the parking lot as the "total staff".

 

[Bongwater]

KVOS is doing OK with MeTV. Not sure from a $$$ perspective, but I get the vibe people locally in the Bellingham area seem to like it a lot better than the daytime talk/infomercial/C-list movie mania they had a year ago.

Their OTA DTV sub-channel, The Cool TV on 12.2 is starting to get attention too. It's a surprisingly good video music channel.....

 

[Jay Peninger]

I too hope they continue on the same course with MeTV I recently gave Comcast or Xfinity or whatever they are calling themselves these days the boot to save some coin and I installed a nice powered exterior Digital Antenna and KVOS is one of the signals I most watch these days.

 

[toonces2u]

I too hope they continue on the same course with MeTV I recently gave Comcast or Xfinity or whatever they are calling themselves these days the boot to save some coin and I installed a nice powered exterior Digital Antenna and KVOS is one of the signals I most watch these days.

Interesting. What do those antenna's run? What kind of reception do you get and what's the channel selection like? I too would love to give Comcast the boot.

 

[Jay Peninger]

I too hope they continue on the same course with MeTV I recently gave Comcast or Xfinity or whatever they are calling themselves these days the boot to save some coin and I installed a nice powered exterior Digital Antenna and KVOS is one of the signals I most watch these days.

Interesting. What do those antenna's run? What kind of reception do you get and what's the channel selection like? I too would love to give Comcast the boot.

Mine is approx 2 sqft and I mounted it on my eve like anyone would a satellite dish, is ran $80 plus the cable so I think at the most I spent $120 and I get 34 channels mind you a handful are hispanic and asian...

But what I learned was the HD Quality is much better because unlike cable the HD signal is not compressed over the air so the picture is perfect... You get all the locals x2 they all seem to have a second digital channel... At first I thought I was going to hate not having cable but so far I have not missed it...

 

[Bongwater]

OTA DTV is still hit or miss when you're outside the market coverage area of any over the air signal.

The best transmitting site for DTV is Gold Mountain (KCPQ and KTBW are the only Seattle DTV signals I can get without a local translator.) I get nothing from Queen Anne or Capitol Hill. However, Gold Mountain signals NEED Eastside translators (KCPQ uses their KZJO 22.2 signal on Capitol Hill to repeat Channel 13 to the Eastside. Not sure what KTBW uses.) Downtown hi-rise buildings create a wall between Gold Mountain and the Eastside.

The programming on some of the DTV sub-channels leaves something to be desired. KCPQ 13.2 is all weather. KBCB 24.3 is a mere SD version of it's main ShopNBC channel.

KTBW, though all religious, is curious enough - it has FOUR sub-channels. I'm not sure what the maximum number of subchannels one DTV station can technically transmit simultaneously. But I've heard 8 total were possible, at some expense of video quality on all the other channels.

 

[w9wi]

KTBW, though all religious, is curious enough - it has FOUR sub-channels. I'm not sure what the maximum number of subchannels one DTV station can technically transmit simultaneously. But I've heard 8 total were possible, at some expense of video quality on all the other channels.

There is no hard-and-fast maximum. I suppose if you try to do more than 999 streams you run out of digits for minor channel numbers.

Each station gets a 19MBPS "pie". They can carve that pie up into as many slices (and as large slices) as they want, as long as it all adds up to 19MBPS or less.

The tradeoff is, the smaller the slice, the more heavily the picture must be compressed to fit. (and the poorer the picture quality) HD requires a larger slice for a decent picture.

Most engineers feel two HD programs are the maximum for decent quality. One HD and one SD seems to work pretty well. One station here (Nashville) is running one HD and two SDs -- two of them look pretty good but the other SD is pretty ugly. Trinity (owners of KTBW) are using the same five subchannels on all their stations. IMHO all five look pretty good. There are stations running as many as ten SDs -- I've not seen one & I suspect they're kinda ugly.

Programs without much motion compress better (and can deliver decent quality with a smaller slice of the pie) than those with motion. One Milwaukee station runs three channels that are essentially radio stations. (audio requires FAR less bandwidth/"pie" than video) There is video, but it's a still describing the musical selection currently being broadcast.

_________________________________________________

"TheX-KXRX": it's not that OTA HD is not compressed at all -- completely uncompressed HD requires about 1500MBPS of bandwidth, more than is available from all TV channels put together. However, it is more heavily compressed on cable & satellite.

 

[chokesman-review]

Excellent points.

During my time with KHQ-TV, they had the primary NBC in HD and two SD feeds.

One of their secondary SD 4:3 feeds was their own produced channel SWX while the second was the Universal Sports network - also in 4:3 SD.

Both SD feeds looked awful. SWX ran sports frequently. The pixelation was so horrendous that sports on both channels just weren't watchable.

KHQ has since abandoned Universal Sports and just runs a HD and a SD stream. Good move. They were pushing the SWX channel hard. Cleaning it up and improving the quality was a necessary step.

It seems after the initial experimentation with adding multiple streams, many have realized if you split the pie enough and it leads to the non-HD people are complaining about how bad it looks - it was time to dial it back.

KTBW, though all religious, is curious enough - it has FOUR sub-channels. I'm not sure what the maximum number of subchannels one DTV station can technically transmit simultaneously. But I've heard 8 total were possible, at some expense of video quality on all the other channels.

There is no hard-and-fast maximum. I suppose if you try to do more than 999 streams you run out of digits for minor channel numbers.

Each station gets a 19MBPS "pie". They can carve that pie up into as many slices (and as large slices) as they want, as long as it all adds up to 19MBPS or less.

The tradeoff is, the smaller the slice, the more heavily the picture must be compressed to fit. (and the poorer the picture quality) HD requires a larger slice for a decent picture.

Most engineers feel two HD programs are the maximum for decent quality. One HD and one SD seems to work pretty well. One station here (Nashville) is running one HD and two SDs -- two of them look pretty good but the other SD is pretty ugly. Trinity (owners of KTBW) are using the same five subchannels on all their stations. IMHO all five look pretty good. There are stations running as many as ten SDs -- I've not seen one & I suspect they're kinda ugly.

Programs without much motion compress better (and can deliver decent quality with a smaller slice of the pie) than those with motion. One Milwaukee station runs three channels that are essentially radio stations. (audio requires FAR less bandwidth/"pie" than video) There is video, but it's a still describing the musical selection currently being broadcast.

_________________________________________________

"TheX-KXRX": it's not that OTA HD is not compressed at all -- completely uncompressed HD requires about 1500MBPS of bandwidth, more than is available from all TV channels put together. However, it is more heavily compressed on cable & satellite.

 

[Jay Peninger]

KTBW, though all religious, is curious enough - it has FOUR sub-channels. I'm not sure what the maximum number of subchannels one DTV station can technically transmit simultaneously. But I've heard 8 total were possible, at some expense of video quality on all the other channels.

There is no hard-and-fast maximum. I suppose if you try to do more than 999 streams you run out of digits for minor channel numbers.

Each station gets a 19MBPS "pie". They can carve that pie up into as many slices (and as large slices) as they want, as long as it all adds up to 19MBPS or less.

The tradeoff is, the smaller the slice, the more heavily the picture must be compressed to fit. (and the poorer the picture quality) HD requires a larger slice for a decent picture.

Most engineers feel two HD programs are the maximum for decent quality. One HD and one SD seems to work pretty well. One station here (Nashville) is running one HD and two SDs -- two of them look pretty good but the other SD is pretty ugly. Trinity (owners of KTBW) are using the same five subchannels on all their stations. IMHO all five look pretty good. There are stations running as many as ten SDs -- I've not seen one & I suspect they're kinda ugly.

Programs without much motion compress better (and can deliver decent quality with a smaller slice of the pie) than those with motion. One Milwaukee station runs three channels that are essentially radio stations. (audio requires FAR less bandwidth/"pie" than video) There is video, but it's a still describing the musical selection currently being broadcast.

_________________________________________________

"TheX-KXRX": it's not that OTA HD is not compressed at all -- completely uncompressed HD requires about 1500MBPS of bandwidth, more than is available from all TV channels put together. However, it is more heavily compressed on cable & satellite.

Thanks for the clarification not my area of expertise, all I know is there is a difference that you can see...