🚀 go-pugleaf

On Dec 6, 1:35 pm, pat...@sonic.net (Patty Winter) wrote:
> "HD is coming to KQED Plus on XFINITY 710. Now see all your favorites
> in glorious high def, including the KQED Plus countdown to Downton Abbey
> beginning New Year's Eve."
>
> Does this mean they're only sending an HD feed to Comcast, or will
> it also be available OTA. I would think the latter, even though they
> don't mention it. I do see mention of "new equipment" in their log
> of TV Technical Issues on the KQED website.
>

Right now there are five subchannels on the station-formerly-known-as
KTEH. Is there enough bandwidth left to do HD OTA? Or will they bump
KQED on KTEH?

In article <8b759c75-ab68-49a5-b197-cf6d45d06b47@s6g2000pby.googlegroups.com>,
spamtrap1888  <spamtrap1888@gmail.com> wrote:

[unneeded quotage snipped]


>Right now there are five subchannels on the station-formerly-known-as
>KTEH. Is there enough bandwidth left to do HD OTA? Or will they bump
>KQED on KTEH?

Would they be able to add another SD channel to the SF transmitter?
If so, they could move Life or Kids to that one and have one HD and
three SDs on each transmitter.


Patty

I just found the clear QAM channel for KQED Plus, at least
in my area: 18.1. 

The SD version is still on 254.1.


Patty

On 12/17/12 11:28 PM, Patty Winter wrote:
> I just found the clear QAM channel for KQED Plus, at least
> in my area: 18.1.
>
> The SD version is still on 254.1.
>
>
> Patty
>
Please clear this up for me, Patty. Are you saying Comacast puts the HD 
versions of the OTA stations in the clear on their cable using QAM? Or 
is it just a QAM feed of the same digital SD that's on the low-numbered 
channels?

Someone told me the signals were available to any TV that can decode 
QAM, but I didn't think it was the high-def signals.

ALso, if they are HD, do they feed through at the same resolutions as 
the stations are broadcasting them OTA?

In article <50d0c1c5$0$80184$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>,
Neil  <weiserguy@sonic.net> wrote:
>On 12/17/12 11:28 PM, Patty Winter wrote:
>> I just found the clear QAM channel for KQED Plus, at least
>> in my area: 18.1.
>>
>Please clear this up for me, Patty. Are you saying Comacast puts the HD 
>versions of the OTA stations in the clear on their cable using QAM? 

Yep! HD and with surround sound. (I should have stated that I had found
the clear QAM channel for KQED Plus *HD*. As mentioned, I already knew
about the channel for KQED Plus SD.)


>Someone told me the signals were available to any TV that can decode 
>QAM, but I didn't think it was the high-def signals.

They are. I don't have an HD package through Comcast, but I can watch
the locals in HD using my TV's QAM tuner. So I split the incoming cable
feed, with one output going directly to the TV and the other to my SD
Comcast box for the non-local channels. (Actually, there are a few non-
local channels on the QAM feed.)


>ALso, if they are HD, do they feed through at the same resolutions as 
>the stations are broadcasting them OTA?

That I don't know. I could post the resolutions that my TV is getting
and you could compare them with the OTA resolutions. Oh, wait--my TV
is only 720p, so that wouldn't help you. But someone with a better HDTV 
could tune to the QAM channels and post their resolutions for you.

FYI, here are the HD channels I know of on Comcast's QAM feed: 

2.1 KTVU-HD
5.1 KPIX-HD
7.1 KGO-HD
9.1 KQED-HD
11.1 KNTV-HD
18.1 KQEH-HD
21.1 KDTV-HD
21.2 KFSF-HD
21.3 KSTS-HD
35.1 WGN America-HD
80.2 KBCW-HD

Some of those stations may not be on the same QAM channels in other
areas. Also, I haven't found HD feeds for KICU or KOFY. Maybe they
don't have them?

(I don't have an antenna hooked up to my HDTV, so I still don't 
know whether KQEH has an OTA HD feed.)


Patty

On 12/18/2012 11:42 AM, Neil wrote:
> ALso, if they are HD, do they feed through at the same resolutions as
> the stations are broadcasting them OTA?
>
I'm not sure if this is true throughout the Bay Area, but a friend of 
ours just got Comcast and the QAM feed off the cable doesn't look as 
good to me as the signal from an antenna.

Dave B.

On Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:09:36 EST, Dave Barnett
<dave.dbarnettNO@SPAMgmail.com> wrote:

>I'm not sure if this is true throughout the Bay Area, but a friend of 
>ours just got Comcast and the QAM feed off the cable doesn't look as 
>good to me as the signal from an antenna.

Can you say "compression"?  AFAIK the stations deliver clean feeds to
Comcast (at least those here do).

Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

In article <50d1136f$0$80172$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>,
 Dave Barnett <dave.dbarnettNO@SPAMgmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not sure if this is true throughout the Bay Area, but a friend of 
> ours just got Comcast and the QAM feed off the cable doesn't look as 
> good to me as the signal from an antenna.

Some years ago, a group performed viewing tests of the various TV 
delivery methods in a number of markets. In any market it could be 
found, Verizon's fiber was always tops by a wide margin. After that, it 
was usually a tossup between the satellite providers and the cable 
companies.

During that survey, Comcast came out remarkably well, typically beating 
the satellite operators. Right after the survey concluded and all the 
advertising was generated, Comcast (for one) started compressing the 
hell out of its video...and the product suffered accordingly. 

But as has been mentioned, cable companies (and everyone else) takes the 
high quality feeds from the program originators and then re-compresses 
them to fit into whatever restricted bandwidth their limited-capacity 
distribution network can handle.

-- 
John Higdon
+1 775 253 3838

In article <50c10a3f$0$29878$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>,
Patty Winter <patty1@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>Does this mean they're only sending an HD feed to Comcast, or will
>it also be available OTA. 

I just discovered that my digital TV converter has a status window
that displays whether a station is being received in HD or not. In
the case of KQEH, the answer is no. So I guess KQED is feeding the
KQED Plus programming directly to Comcast in HD, but not putting it
out that way on the air.


Patty

On 12/19/12 1:08 PM, Patty Winter wrote:
> In article <50c10a3f$0$29878$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>,
> Patty Winter <patty1@sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>> Does this mean they're only sending an HD feed to Comcast, or will
>> it also be available OTA.
>
> I just discovered that my digital TV converter has a status window
> that displays whether a station is being received in HD or not. In
> the case of KQEH, the answer is no. So I guess KQED is feeding the
> KQED Plus programming directly to Comcast in HD, but not putting it
> out that way on the air.
>
>
> Patty
>
I get KQEH OTA off a roof antenna, and as of this evening, 54.1 was 
still in some weird letterboxed version of SD. ("Weird" because it's 
letterboxed on 4 sides, like a small picture inside a picture frame.) 
KQED does that with all the 54.x subchannels within the stream.

Question for anyone who receives Channel 9 OTA: do they do the same 
thing on 9, or are they broadcasting a real HD stream on 9.1?

In article <50d229d4$0$80101$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>,
Patty Winter  <patty1@wintertime.com> wrote:
>
>I guess KQED is feeding the
>KQED Plus programming directly to Comcast in HD, but not putting it
>out that way on the air.

Confirmed by an email message from KQED. If they made KQEH HD, they
would have to delete some subchannels.

Red Dana did mention that in addition to Comcast, both DirecTV and
Dish Network subscribers can see the HD feed of KQEH (aka KQED Plus).


Patty