Festival of Lights
KKTV is covering the Festival of Lights parade on its digital subchannel 11-2. Cool -- I hadn't heard they were doing that (gimmee a break, I'm moving this weekend).
Everyone looks really, really, really cold. Especially Don and Shannon. If you were down there tonight... I hope the doctors can save your toes.
The video quality on 11-2 is atrocious - and stretched to 16X9, so everyone looks fat - but Arkansas-Florida on 11-1 looks pretty good.
Despite the utter lack of video quality, I love it when the stations use their subchannels (or KOAA's WeatherFirst Now cable channel) to offer expanded coverage. It seems like what Congress had in mind when it handed out the digital frequencies.
UPDATE: It took me a couple of tries, but I got KKTV's live webstream coverage of the parade working. That's even cooler: If you read my story on Internet TV on the Life cover today, you'll know that even the networks don't have streaming totally figured out.
posted by AndyW @ 12/02/2006 05:37:00 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Multicasting is NOT cool, especially when it causes the quality of their main product (11-1) to degrade so drastically. 11-1, once the pioneer of the CS HD scene, is rapidly becoming unwatchable due to the fast motion artifacts ("macro blocking"). Be it CSI or football, fast action looks horrid on KKTV.
I hear this a lot, but the football game on 11-1 didn't look any different to me after the parade ended on 11-2.
Squeezing three channels on is clearly a lot, but KK does seem to turn off 11-3 when it's doing HD on 11-1.
I think the bottom line is that local stations are searching for ways to remain relevant (and profitable) as more viewers get their programming online (see Saturday's Life story). If providing HD keeps the viewers coming, they'll do that, but I don't blame them for playing around with other ideas.
I have to agree with the first poster: multicasting on KKTV has completely ruined their picture - and it continues to get worse! The macroblocking on Numb3rs on 12/1 was horrible!!
If things don't improve by the time shows start up after the first of the year, I will not be watching anything on KKTV anymore - I'll rent the DVD box sets for CSI, Numb3rs, & How I Met Your Mother instead!
Perhaps the picture did not improve after the parade ended but that is probably because they still used the bandwidth for 11-2 in spite of not actually displaying anything on that channel... I was not watching and have not ability to monitor the bandwidth (others do) but imagine that this was the case.
Multicasting is the worst thing to happen to HD since, well, since HD came about. What's the point of having an HDTV and HD source material if they starve the feed with half of the standard HD bandwidth?
Post a Comment
<< Home