"JamesK ^^^^
I've noticed the CBC news appears to look softer. "

I totally agree with you that it looks softer and that softness is the loss of the razor sharp image quality that they used to have, it's like watching tv on some value brand HDTV not your high end Sony, that you have, oh well i just hope that the CBC keeps airing Hockey Night In Canada! Cause they way things are going around there who knows....

Same deal here in Windsor on CBET 9-1. Kids programming is in 16:9 HD, while the remainder of the day is in 4:3 SD. Makes no sense to me why they would discontinue HD during normal programming. What's going on CBC????

I have noticed a few others note this problem, could we see how widespread this is, my local OTA station is CBNT-DT ch 8.1 in St. John's. I do not know if it is also a problem if the broadcast is on cable. The signal is 1280 x 720, but programming is 4 x 3 SD. The local news was 16 x 9 (and appeared to be HD) for the first 10 days or so now SD.

The local CBC station for Regina (CBKT-DT) 9.1 is the same. The broadcasts in the morning (children shows) are 16:9, but all other programming drops down to a cropped 4:3 picture. The signal remains as 1280X720p, just the added bonus of black pillars on each side of the screen.

What concerns me the most was the report of bit rate at only 5mps which will really make for a poor quality picture during hockey.

I've been watching CBET in Windsor since the 4:3 aspect issue came about and agree it is annoying. Like was mentioned, the kids shows this morning in 16:9 and the network rate is over 15Mbps. So I hope things improve with the regular programming and certainly in time for hockey season.

Just as a follow up on previous post, the current broadcast (2011 Sports Day in Canada) is 4:3 aspect but the network rate is 15 Mbps.

CBC HD to SD update:

The CBC broadcast changed from 16 x 9 HD to 4 x 3 SD sometime just before 11:30AM NL time (not on the half hour). The remaining hour and a half or so of the children's programming was 4 x 3. I am not sure if these programs were older and natively SD 4 x 3 or if the transmission just switched (I was not watching that closely....reading Digital forum!). Since that time all is in 4 x 3 SD including the present "Sports Day In Canada" broadcast.

The local private station, NTV HD is 1080 and local programming is mostly HD, with some of the remaining programming HD and the rest windowboxed SD, but I assume when they buy programming for the coming season there will be more HD. I can cut the private station some slack, they are trying....but the CBC as the national carrier screwing up something that is a no-brainer...dump SD go HD

Strangely enough, I always noticed virtually every CBC program used to say available in HD...I cannot remember seeing it recently, now that we have HD transmissions!!! Then again, I rarely leave CBC on now as it is SD and I would rather have a HD signal on....

P. E. Hannon

What concerns me the most was the report of bit rate at only 5mps which will really make for a poor quality picture during hockey.
I recorded a program on CBLT earlier this week - bitrate was 15mbps. Higher than anyone else uses for 720p.

I was just watching Saturday report on CBC. It is definitely in crappy SD (4 x 3)...but some of the news clips with non CBC captions had the captions cut off by the pillarbox bars! What are they doing? Upconverting video to widescreen then cropping it to fit 4 x 3 in SD?

Since the transmission suddenly switched to 4 x 3 SD this morning from HD could CBC be switching some sort of transmission system at a predetermined time? This would still not explain why the local newscasts have gone from 16 x 9 HD to 4 x 3 SD, but maybe the "national" transmissions....I am totally baffled by this corporation......they must be trying to get people to switch to cable because the CBC OTA signal now looks so bad as compared to other OTA broadcasters.

P. E. Hannon

Windsor the same, the first few days was HD and now nothing in HD.

To make things even more ridiculous (the 4:3 and theoretical 16:9 signal, that is) ...

I live in Moose Jaw and can receive an analogue signal from one of the Regina repeater stations (CBKT-1 channel 4) The analogue signal is a 4:3 image with black bars all around it within the 4:3 picture. So anyone with a standard definition TV isn't even able to get a picture that fills the screen. Now imagine a letter boxed cropped 4:3 image on a hi-def wide screen TV and the result is an image that only fills about one third of the screen.

photo of analogue signal (black bars within black bars)...
http://www.web-bandit.com/files/tv_photos/analogue_small.jpg

photo of digital signal (black bars all around a 16:9 image)...
http://www.web-bandit.com/files/tv_photos/digital_small.jpg

I can't get the CBC digital French station reliably, but I do know the repeater station (CBKFT-10 channel 16 - analogue) appears to have a similar problem.

And finally, the SD signal that Bell Satellite uses on channel 247 (I assume coming from CBC directly somehow) appears to be formatted properly, and fills the screen the way it should.

Maybe, the CBC is testing us to see if anyone notices or complains about the problem to justify not converting all stations to digital.

Anyone notice that CBC 5.1 Toronto has been missing program information for a few days now?

Guys, not observing 4:3 programming here in the Ottawa / Gatineau area, it was still 16:9 programming all day yesterday, last night and still today. Don't assume it's the entire country.

Schmerpy, it looks like after they converted to 720p they forgot to turn the PSIP EPG back on.

Forgot?

Where does this industry find its engineers?!

I am an engineer and I would not have a job very long if I operated like this.

wow man, dial it back a notch -- we have no idea whats going on behind the scenes. Furthermore, consider yourself lucky you event get CBC in digital!

That is a mighty high bar for competence, Micah.

The Sept. 1 transition deadline was supposed to result in improvement, not big steps backwards like in the case of CBC and CHCH.

I do not think we need to be apprehensive about expecting things to be done right.

That expectation is a condition, not a bonus.

One of the projects the CBC has been working on the past several years is the "Next Generation Converged Network" (NGCN), fully linking its facilities across the nation together with what I assume are terrestrial fibre links.

One purpose of the NGCN is to replace traditional satellite/fibre backhauls from remote production centers to Toronto/Montréal. Another purpose was to feed the new digital transmitters with an HD signal from the Toronto/Montréal master controls.

Clearly this aspect (perhaps only in HD) is not working. I was very surprised feeds that were supposed to be feed via the NGCN appeared on Anik F1R. The stations without correctly functioning HD signals are stations that aren't in the Anik F1R mux: CBET, CBAT, CBKT, CBNT, etc... The reason children's programming may be in HD is that there's no local programming or ads during it, and they may just be switching to the available satellite HD feed.

Would seem like they initially tried to feed them via the NGCN (as they were initially in HD and I assume that they have no other way to do so), but then some sort of failure or reliability problem appeared.

The sudden and unexpected switch to 720p could even be related to this: relizing the inability to feed all stations via the NGCN, they scrambled to fit as many stations on the two transponders as possible... but wouldn't explain the switch of stations like CBLT, which are only yards from Toronto master control -- unless (likely) the entire new nationwide master control system operates in a single format.

I have tried on four or five occasions (and a number of computers) to send a complaint to the contact us location for CBC.....each has been rejected!

Suggestion: go old school and use a telephone. This applies to pretty much for all broadcasters. These are enormous organizations, not ma and pa operations. Emails get lost or misdirected. Ya, the phone probably takes longer and you may get passed around a few times but almost always get an answer (might not be the answer I like) by being polite and professional about it. CBC audience relations has a coast-to-coast-to-coast tool free number.

http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/about/contact.shtml

Forgot?

Where does this industry find its engineers?!

I can tell you they didn't forget because, guess what, I called audience relations Friday and they gave me the scoop. EPG will return.

On a side note, if you were a broadcast engineer looking for a job right now and had 2 offers - one from a broadcaster looking to quadruple its roster of dtv transmitters over the next 5 years and one from a broadcaster looking to shutdown 600 analog transmitters with no new dtv transmitters, which one do you think would be better for your career aspirations?

John Fowler - I was thinking the same thing Re: the children's programming/local ads.

In fact I noted that when CBCT Charlottetown was blessed with proper high-def for the first week and a half of transition, that there were tons of hiccups around the commercial breaks. It almost seemed as if they were showing the Halifax feed, and then when it was time to show a local commerical, this was queued up from some other source. There were tons of long pauses on the red CBC logo at transitions. Maybe this wasn't working out for them and they had give up the ghost and go back to SD.

Whatever the reason, it SUCKS, and we'll really start suffering come hockey season. Global and CTV have two and three different HD stations/sets of ads in the Maritimes (respectively) and I'm seeing proper HD there. Get your act together CBC!

I was able to submit an online complaint via Google Chrome and I suggest that everyone else not getting a proper HD signal, do the same.

Listen to El Gran Chino -- pick up the phone & call. I've never even gotten a response from the CBC's email form.