My experiences with ATSC HDTV

[ChrisW6ATV]

MRX37-

Thank you for your fair and balanced descriptions of your digital TV reception experiences.

One big reason that an NTSC signal can be strong but its ATSC equivalent weak is that many digital stations are still using lower power (sometimes much lower) than their analog counterparts. In a way, we cannot blame them for not wanting to have a double power bill. This should change next year when the NTSC stations go off the air, and is one of the less-known benefits of the analog shutdown.

It used to be common for stations to not have their digital signals on the air full-time, and also for them to just go away for days or more at a time when there were antenna problems (imagine NTSC stations getting away with that!), but it is rare now.

[MRX37]

Chris: Signal strength is not the issue. My TV card software is. The signals are out there nice and strong. I have most of the bugs with my new TV card ironed out now, and I have a few things to add to my experience of Digital TV:

As I stated, a digital High definition channel has excellant quality and a smooth framerate. I can see no juddering. Motion is nice and smooth. However, even on the CBS sports HD channel, I do notice some compression artifacts in the video, especally when there's fast motion. I am viewing this on a 19" flat screen CRT computer monitor, which is a pretty small screen size for HDTV. I think the artifacts may be more noticable on the 50+ inch displays. I may be wrong, as I have never looked at a 50+ inch display too closely.

The colors look great. Reds, greens, and blues look like they're supposed to. The picture doesn't seem to be oversaturated or too dark/too light, etc. Quality on both PBS HD and CBS HD seems to be equal. sound is also great. It's like I'm watching a DVD. I think if you see an HDTV where the colors look too cold or somehow not right, it may be due to the TV itself and not to the signal. I am hoping that after the switchover, stations will have more bandwidth and can improve the quality further.

Standard definition channels are getting only a small piece of the bandwidth pie. Their framerate is still smoother then analog NTSC, but compression artifacts are more noticable, and on WDIV, the audio sounds like an MP3 that's undergone too much compression. Colors don't look as good as they do on the HD channels. For standard def, Analog is still better. I don't know if this will change after the switchover, but that's how it stands now.

[KingBubba]

I've had a digital receiver for years, a Samsung, and I have found reception as variable as the wind. Night time reception is always better, except sometimes. Digital stations you got last night are always available the next night, except sometimes. Stations you received at night are always available during the days, except sometimes. Reception in town is better than suburban reception with a roof antenna, except sometimes.

I hope you are seeing the trend here. My receiver, when picking up a station, gave a quality picture with a strong signal but there were times when signal strength was strong yet there was nothing but a black screen. With my high powered roof antenna and 20db+ signal amplifier I could get stations all over the central part of Florida, except sometimes. The receiver would scan and memorize stations only to forget them tomorrow and re remember them the day after. This would be irregardless of whether the station was watchable or not, except sometimes.

I think anyone who is limited to watching OATV is going to be very upset and disappointed in what they can watch and when. It will end up being like the old days when all you could get was one or two stations. I have that receiver at work now in the heart of Orlando and at present it is able to watch one or two digital stations at best, except sometimes, and that is with a roof antenna at 30' off the ground. The receiver was a top of the line Samsung from a little over two years ago. It was so undependable that my wife refused to use it. I don't blame her. Receivers will develop and get better with time but I doubt that any of them are much better than the one I have. Digital TV is going to be a flop for the poor and non technical and may be a flop for the rest of us too. I for one am unimpressed, except sometimes. If it is true that the stations are running at less than full power, then maybe this will all change.

[whsh93a]

I, on the other hand, have exactly the opposite experience. My over the air digital seems to be stable as a rock. It is far better than the analog. I wonder if there isn't a problem with a connection or with the antenna amp?
I use an amp as well as a motorized antenna rotar - but they were there before I went digital. And I live in area with mountains, too.

Also, I've heard that the early Samsung stuff had some problems similar to what you are having - mostly heat related. That's one reason I went with a different brand.

DH

[Carmine]

I don't understand complaints about NTSC frame-rate? Unless this has something to do with watching TV on a computer monitor, which I have never bothered with.

On a regular TV, I've never noticed frame rate problems...?

[MRX37]

Originally Posted by KingBubba

I've had a digital receiver for years, a Samsung, and I have found reception as variable as the wind. Night time reception is always better, except sometimes. Digital stations you got last night are always available the next night, except sometimes. Stations you received at night are always available during the days, except sometimes. Reception in town is better than suburban reception with a roof antenna, except sometimes.

I hope you are seeing the trend here. My receiver, when picking up a station, gave a quality picture with a strong signal but there were times when signal strength was strong yet there was nothing but a black screen. With my high powered roof antenna and 20db+ signal amplifier I could get stations all over the central part of Florida, except sometimes. The receiver would scan and memorize stations only to forget them tomorrow and re remember them the day after. This would be irregardless of whether the station was watchable or not, except sometimes.

I think anyone who is limited to watching OATV is going to be very upset and disappointed in what they can watch and when. It will end up being like the old days when all you could get was one or two stations. I have that receiver at work now in the heart of Orlando and at present it is able to watch one or two digital stations at best, except sometimes, and that is with a roof antenna at 30' off the ground. The receiver was a top of the line Samsung from a little over two years ago. It was so undependable that my wife refused to use it. I don't blame her. Receivers will develop and get better with time but I doubt that any of them are much better than the one I have. Digital TV is going to be a flop for the poor and non technical and may be a flop for the rest of us too. I for one am unimpressed, except sometimes. If it is true that the stations are running at less than full power, then maybe this will all change.

Well, My current setup is a small homemade antenna that stands about 6 feet off the ground. This is connected to about 50 feet of coax cable, spliced together with coax connectors. It has been raining today, and has been windy and overcast.

I have not had one hiccup on any of the channels today.

Perhaps my TV card has a better tuner then your receiver, perhaps the stations in my area are broadcasting at full power. Either way, signal dropping hasn't happened today.

I'm not convinced that Digital TV will flop. It's not a silver bullet, but so far it's not as nightmarish as I expected. Improvements do need to be made, and I think they will be made in time.

[KingBubba]

I hope it was purely an issue with the Samsung receiver. I applied to the FCC website for two $40 coupons, which I have yet to receive, and plan on buying two receivers when they become available. I sincerely doubt the claim that they will cost $70 or less as the government is claiming. I also foresee a huge backlog of demand for receivers that won't be met till well after the January, 2009 deadline. I would love to see all this work the way it is planned but I have real doubts. I'll wait and see.

[MRX37]

Originally Posted by Carmine

I don't understand complaints about NTSC frame-rate? Unless this has something to do with watching TV on a computer monitor, which I have never bothered with.

On a regular TV, I've never noticed frame rate problems...?

NTSC framerate is 29.97 FPS as far as I know. Very smooth, but ATSC seems to have a smoother framerate. Maybe 60 FPS. I'm not sure. The framerate just seems to be smoother.

Perhaps it has to do with the deinterlacing my TV card does for analog. i don't know.

EDIT: To clarify: I've been studying things like arms swinging when people are walking, motion while a car or other vehicle is driving, golf clubs swinging, and the HD channels seem to have more fluid motion then analog.

Also, WKBD 50 had an HD channel, but they seem to mostly have analog programming, and the motion is a bit less fluid.

I notice framerates because when I install a new game or videocard on my computer, I turn on the framerate counter and examine the movements. I start to notice juddering at around 30 FPS. DVD has this juddering as well. It seems to be gone for some of the ATSC channels I'm receiving.

[MRX37]

I just watched Channel 7 action news in HD. Interestingly they talked about the 2009 switchover. They said basiclly what I've heard. You'll need a converter box, and the government is giving away coupons, etc.

More interesting is that some of the news footage is 4x3 with computer decals on the sides of the 16x9 video. Also, some of the 16x9 news footage was rather low resolution... Kinda disappointing as this is supposed to be HDTV...

Oh, and the channel logo was on the bottom of the screen, but it's pushed over far enough to fit on a 4x3 screen, despite the logo saying HD under it.

[andy]

720p channels, and SD (480p) channels are 60 frames per second, but 1080i is 30 FPA interlaced, just like NTSC. A lot of tuner cards to a really bad job of de-interlacing, so that's probably the problem.

I was playing with a tuner card recently and it allowed you to see everything that it was receiving on a channel. Most channels were using a good part of their bandwidth for SD multicast channels. Some channels were not even using the full 19 Mbits for video. Only one channel was using the full bandwidth for a single HD feed.

[MRX37]

Originally Posted by andy

720p channels, and SD (480p) channels are 60 frames per second, but 1080i is 30 FPA interlaced, just like NTSC. A lot of tuner cards to a really bad job of de-interlacing, so that's probably the problem.

I KNEW the motion on the sports HD channel was too fluid to be 30 FPS. My card actually does a good job of deinterlacing, it's just that I can notice a difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS.

[dr.ido]

We are on DVB-T in Australia.

I've played around with a few HDTV STBs that I found recently. They are starting to hit the curb fairly regularly around here lately in some areas.

When it's working right the picture is good, but when it glitches it gets annoying.

The most frustrating problem I have found is that they all ignore the aspect ratio setting. The aspect ratio will change from program to program (and from ad to ad sometimes) regardless of what the box is set to.

This leads to 4:3 content being shown with black bars on the sides when viewing on the 4:3 set even though the box is set to 4:3 fullscreen. I can live with letterbox or center cut on 16:9 content, but why do they need to mess with existing 4:3 content?

Sometimes the picture appears with a black border on all four sides, so even those with 16:9 sets lose!

So far every box I've tried has been made by DGTEC, so I hope this is just a problem with their boxes.

[markthefixer]

Originally Posted by dr.ido

We are on DVB-T in Australia.

I've played around with a few HDTV STBs that I found recently. They are starting to hit the curb fairly regularly around here lately in some areas.

When it's working right the picture is good, but when it glitches it gets annoying.

The most frustrating problem I have found is that they all ignore the aspect ratio setting. The aspect ratio will change from program to program (and from ad to ad sometimes) regardless of what the box is set to.

This leads to 4:3 content being shown with black bars on the sides when viewing on the 4:3 set even though the box is set to 4:3 fullscreen. I can live with letterbox or center cut on 16:9 content, but why do they need to mess with existing 4:3 content?

Sometimes the picture appears with a black border on all four sides, so even those with 16:9 sets lose!

So far every box I've tried has been made by DGTEC, so I hope this is just a problem with their boxes.

No, it isn't .... I have some Panasonic DMR-EZ27 dvd recorders with the atsc tuners, and run an s-video & rca l/r audio into an older 4:3 tv and I get those double letterboxed pictures all the time, It has been bad enough that at times that I estimated that the vertical coverage of the screen was 1/3, in otherwords, 1/3 black, 1/3 pix & 1/3 black from top to bottom.

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by MRX37

I just watched Channel 7 action news in HD. Interestingly they talked about the 2009 switchover. They said basiclly what I've heard. You'll need a converter box, and the government is giving away coupons, etc.

I forget which channel I was watching, but they all have been talking about digital switchover lately during their nightly 2 hour block of info-tainment (I mean "news"). I suppose this is because the date is now less than a year away.

Anyways, they are cross-promoting with a local appliance chain (ABC) and they cutaway to a display at the store that showed two TV screens behind a piece of plywood labeled "digital" and "analog". Guess what happened? The digital screen froze, then pixelated!

Needless to say, they cut back real quick while acting like that just didn't happen!

[MRX37]

Originally Posted by dr.ido

The most frustrating problem I have found is that they all ignore the aspect ratio setting. The aspect ratio will change from program to program (and from ad to ad sometimes) regardless of what the box is set to.

This leads to 4:3 content being shown with black bars on the sides when viewing on the 4:3 set even though the box is set to 4:3 fullscreen. I can live with letterbox or center cut on 16:9 content, but why do they need to mess with existing 4:3 content?

Sometimes the picture appears with a black border on all four sides, so even

Ah yes. I have come across this as well. The program may be in 16x9, but the commercials are 4x3. Sometimes my screen is surrounded by a black border on all sides of the video.

That is one glitch they need to work out.

Originally Posted by Carmine

I forget which channel I was watching, but they all have been talking about digital switchover lately during their nightly 2 hour block of info-tainment (I mean "news"). I suppose this is because the date is now less than a year away.

Anyways, they are cross-promoting with a local appliance chain (ABC) and they cutaway to a display at the store that showed two TV screens behind a piece of plywood labeled "digital" and "analog". Guess what happened? The digital screen froze, then pixelated!

Needless to say, they cut back real quick while acting like that just didn't happen!

They didn't talk about the switchover very much on 7 action news last night... maybe cos I was watching the HD version. They didn't show an HDTV screen freezing and pixelating, though I saw some of that yesterday.

For like maybe one or two frames, PBS-HD had a couple pixelated squares in the video. It only happened once, and wasn't due to weak signal. Maybe a station error or something.

I'm building a better antenna to replace the small outdoor antenna I currently have. Once I get it rigged up, I'll hunt for new channels.