Please bring WPGH Pittsburgh back to Ohio Valley!!!

brokaw33 · Post by **brokaw33** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 9:24 pm

Ever since Fox Ohio Valley took over Fox Pittsburgh, it's been horrible ever since. Can something be done to get Pittsburgh back? Help!

fearpeddler · Post by **fearpeddler** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 9:24 pm

call your local cable or sattelite provider.....

lovetalkradio · Post by **lovetalkradio** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:13 pm

brokaw33 is 100% right. When WTRF took it over it has gone down hill.

Nothing like watching analog stations with crappy sound or the SB with no HD.

Jon Fox · Post by **Jon Fox** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 7:24 pm

I always hated having WVFX Fox 46 from Clarksburg... when WVFX signed on with FOX my cable company dropped WPGH. Hopefully it is gotten better... but WVFX was constantly going off the air for days at a time and when it was on, the picture quality was horrible. I hate those cable syndication rules... if I pay for cable I should be able to watch all the channels I pay for. Now I'm lucky I get good television.

Paradigm · Post by **Paradigm** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 8:34 pm

Fox Ohio Valley (WTRF-D2) is terrible. I was trying to watch the super bowl the other day on its HD channel provided by comcast. The HD channel had some weird streching going on like it was streched to wide not tall enough. Switching to the standard Def channel and setting our HDTV to autostrech provided a much better picture than the true HD content. At times during the broadcast they would fix this and the Standard Def channel would screw up the tv. It was terrible.

fearpeddler · Post by **fearpeddler** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 12:09 am

Paradigm wrote: The HD channel had some weird streching going on like it was streched to wide not tall enough. Switching to the standard Def channel and setting our HDTV to autostrech provided a much better picture than the true HD content. At times during the broadcast they would fix this and the Standard Def channel would screw up the tv. It was terrible.

sounds like they're trying to up-convert their signal if that was the image you were recieving before having to adjust your set...

Mr. Tom Jones · Post by **Mr. Tom Jones** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 11:21 pm

Paradigm wrote:Fox Ohio Valley (WTRF-D2) is terrible. I was trying to watch the super bowl the other day on its HD channel provided by comcast. The HD channel had some weird streching going on like it was streched to wide not tall enough. Switching to the standard Def channel and setting our HDTV to autostrech provided a much better picture than the true HD content. At times during the broadcast they would fix this and the Standard Def channel would screw up the tv. It was terrible.

Thank Comcast for converting the 720p signal WTRF-D2 was supplying them to 1080i.

Ever since Fox Ohio Valley took over Fox Pittsburgh, it's been horrible ever since. Can something be done to get Pittsburgh back? Help!

Not happening. The fix is in. Stay tuned.

fearpeddler · Post by **fearpeddler** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 12:08 am

Mr. Tom Jones wrote:
Paradigm wrote:Fox Ohio Valley (WTRF-D2) is terrible. I was trying to watch the super bowl the other day on its HD channel provided by comcast. The HD channel had some weird streching going on like it was streched to wide not tall enough. Switching to the standard Def channel and setting our HDTV to autostrech provided a much better picture than the true HD content. At times during the broadcast they would fix this and the Standard Def channel would screw up the tv. It was terrible.
Thank Comcast for converting the 720p signal WTRF-D2 was supplying them to 1080i.

Ever since Fox Ohio Valley took over Fox Pittsburgh, it's been horrible ever since. Can something be done to get Pittsburgh back? Help!
Not happening. The fix is in. Stay tuned.

you wouldnt see a distinct physical difference if they were going from 720p up to 1080i, sounds like they're taking a 480i analog signal and blowing up to HD, which if that were the case going from such a horrible standard up to 720 or higher would look bad..

Mr. Tom Jones · Post by **Mr. Tom Jones** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 7:11 am

fearpeddler wrote:you wouldnt see a distinct physical difference if they were going from 720p up to 1080i, sounds like they're taking a 480i analog signal and blowing up to HD, which if that were the case going from such a horrible standard up to 720 or higher would look bad..

I have it on good authority that was not the case. On the SD side, I am told that Fox's NOC was flipping affilates' satellite receivers around from channel to channel. (For that matter, ABC, CBS, and NBC can do the same thing.) If the Fox NOC had flipped the wrong receiver, you might have a point. I don't think they're that inept (though I understand they are cheap).

Both 720p and 1080i are 16:9. 720p does better with motion, which is why ABC, ESPN, Fox, and NASA like it. 1080i can make a crisper picture for non-motion shots, which is why CBS and NBC like it. Which still begs the question -- why is Comcast sending through a 720p signal at 1080i? It's another box in the transmission chain to screw things up, unless you spend the money on stuff like this.

I am also told by friends who know broadcast engineering and indeed are paid to do so that your friendly cable companies may not be stellar at replacing the bits of their physical plant that need replacing. Now it's probably true that some of the WVMH stations need some engineering bits replaced -- WTRF reportedly has racks of equipment with a "Forward Television" inventory sticker on them -- but to blame them for everything wrong with a signal overstates the case.

In this multichannel world, the OTA broadcasters are much more subject to the whims of the cable operator's physical plant than in the past. And if both are living on the edge in engineering terms, I would suggest that at the margins, things will happen. Even so, do you seriously believe with all the attention focused on a Super Bowl game that WVMH's engineering people would not go over stuff beforehand?

cgarison · Post by **cgarison** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:41 am

If you have the Motorola Comcast box, change the settings to match the signal being sent. I had all kind of problems with ESPN at 1080i and they all went away when I back my box down to pushing a signal to my HD Monitor at 720p.

But that still does not negate the issue where the score banner on FOX Sports NFL broadcasts runs across the screen about 1/5 of the the way down. I realize that this is a scaling issue between using the same cameras for 4:3 and 16:9 broadcasts, but it is hugely annoying. Especially when my TV is 16:10 and I have black bars regardless of what I am watching.

Mr. Tom Jones · Post by **Mr. Tom Jones** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 2:49 pm

cgarison wrote:If you have the Motorola Comcast box, change the settings to match the signal being sent. I had all kind of problems with ESPN at 1080i and they all went away when I back my box down to pushing a signal to my HD Monitor at 720p.

Just checked with my two friends who were reporting the Super Bowl signal from Fox via Comcast was 1080i. The one said he was pretty sure the Motorola box feeding his Sony was set to match the signals being sent, but he'd double-check.

The other pal of mine with a year-old Panasonic has no cable box from Comcast. He's using it straight out of the box, and he verified it was set to pass along whatever Comcast was feeding. It was being fed 1080i from Comcast.