Have those of you in the Windsor market noticed the audio dropouts are not happening anymore??? I've not watched TVO for prolonged periods, but when I have tuned in, I've not had any audio blips like I was a week ago. Still no EPG though.

randomusername2, Saturday Night at the Movies (SNAM) has a policy of not modifying movies from their original state. No editing for time, censorship, or modifying the aspect ratio or other variables.

Altering a film from 16:9 ratio to 4:3 is a change that results in loss of some picture. This is why disclaimers for some stations that have done this are presented.

I believe the person whom you contacted understood you perfectly and responded appropriately.

My solution to watching films presented in this state: Zoom your TV settings to fill the screen. Most sets/tuners have this capability. You will lose a small amount of image at the periphery, but for me that is tolerable.

Jase88, the only problem with that argument is these movies have been modified, they have been letterboxed. All that is being asked of them is to remove the black bars that were added (or at least partially since most modern North American and UK movies have an aspect ratio wider than 1.78 (16:9), with most using 1.85).

Things get trickier when the movie has an aspect ratio between 1.3 (4:3) and 1.78 (common for old (prior to 1953) and modern European films). Optimally it should be letter boxed on the SD stream and pillar boxed on the HD stream, but that requires using an oddball scaling ratio, so typically one of the two streams ends up getting window boxed.

Roger1818, I understand what you're saying. But a material change to the movies has not occurred. They've been modified to fit 4:3, but this has been done in a way that hasn't removed any of the image. You're still seeing the full 16:9 picture--albeit shrunk to fit a 4:3 screen.

These prints where formatted this way at time of purchase/acquisition by TVO. Thus they cannot be modified by TVO. To present in true high definition, a new print would need to be acquired.

While I understand that the modification was done in a way that hasn't removed any of the original image, what I am proposing wouldn't remove any of the original image either (only black bars). I also agree to get present it in HD an new image needs to be purchased (I even said that earlier); however, I disagree that TVO is impossible for TVO to modify the image. There is equipment out there that will do a centre cut on the image and while the result will be a low resolution image, it is no worse than what they are currently broadcasting

This issue isn't limited to those with HDTVs. Even those of us with 4:3 SD TVs get a window boxed image. Even worse it is letter boxed, pillar boxed and then letter boxed a second time. You can zoom in on the image to make it only letter boxed, but if they removed the black bars, that wouldn't be necessary.

I did a rescan with my DTVPals last Friday and now I have TVO 32.1 with picture and no guide and TVO 33.1 with guide and no picture.:confused:

Jase, roger, my wish for SNAM is they broadcast the movies so that the picture has either pillars or letterbox, not both.

Blowing up the picture at the TV to fit the screen results in a poor picture. Based on what I've seen of SD widescreen broadcasts on other stations I believe upscaling the picture at the station would be an improvement. I have no problem with them broadcasting SD movies but having both pillar and letterbox is like watching a VHS tape.

On a good note TVO has made some changes so that my Samsung now can decode the program details and station id. This had been an issue for several members here.

TVO assures me that they're working diligently to acquire more "HD" prints. This is a costly process. And they must present prints as they are purchased--no modifications after the fact.

I personally don't have a problem zooming the image on my TV. I have a Sony Bravia, and I find the PQ (in "zoom" mode) to be close to DVD quality. Obviously the larger your TV screen, the more likely you are to observe PQ shortcomings.

Noticed TVO Belleville is now on 26.3 (still 480i) and 26.1 is blank. Anyone know what's going on here? Is 1080i coming soon?

Noticed TVO Belleville is now on 26.3 (still 480i) and 26.1 is blank. Anyone know what's going on here? Is 1080i coming soon?
Hi UniformOscar.
My TV and PVR shows TVO Belleville as 26.1. I haven't heard when or if they will be going HD for that transmitter.

My tv tuners still show no call letters just 19-1 .I would think station call letters would be mandatory ?

My tv tuners still show no call letters just 19-1

This is also true of our converter box Channel Master CM7000. No channel name, program name or description or rating.

HOWEVER!!!

Our Toshiba 19" panel TV shows EVERYTHING.

19-1 TVO
Program Name, 16:9, Canadian rating (very important) and description as well as the time followed by EST.

It was a children's program, just tried it now.

Can't speak for an extended "EPG" as the TV doesn't support it.

Try a rescan.

If your TV still comes up empty, it could be "brain dead" or a subtle setting in the ATSC stream is causing it to choke...

Cameron

EPG and station ID show up perfectly on my Channel Master 7000Pal DVR, and Sony Bravia TV's. No issues.

^^^^ Great to know the newer CM gear is OK. The converter box is completely out to lunch unfortunately. :-(

Cameron

one thing i notice about TVO that differs from most other stations (aside from the Canadian Ratings), is they use an awful lot of EIT / ETT to account for 5 to 10 minutes or so in between programs. That's when u'll see TVO_Program or something like that, in between main programs. I think they do that so when ya record, you record only the program and not the "promotional" commercials in between. Their EPG still working here also.

^^^
It's crazy during the day, when children's programming is run. Much of it is only 5 minutes or so in length....so there can literally be a hundred or more program listings for the daytime.

Even after a complete re scan both my old Sanyo tv and my 2 Samsung 151 boxes still dont display TV0 station ID and take several seconds to lock onto the signal.My PVR and Panasonic TV are fine with their PSIP info.So clearly something wrong with their psip affecting older equipment.

So clearly something wrong with their psip affecting older equipment.

I'd be more inclined to think it's the older equipment that is made strictly to U.S. ATSC standards and not able to deal with the subtleties of the ATSC spec where Canada is concerned.

Cameron

There is no difference between Canadian and American ATSC standards. However, the standard is so complex, that many tuners and set-top boxes fail to implement it 100% correctly. (Witness the use of "Spanish" to describe the DVS audio channel, because the correct method often does not work with many STBs and tuners.)

There is, however, a difference between Canadian and American Ratings, but these are text strings, so they generally display just fine. The ratings compatibility issue comes up if you want to use an (optional, from the standard's point of view) feature to filter on specific ratings. Then you may find that you can only filter on American TV or MPAA film ratings, and not Canadian TV ratings.

As far as requiring a proper Call sign in the PSIP, I'm pretty sure that is not a Canadian regulation. In fact, the only thing Industry Canada is policing is the use of the correct TSID.

I do not recall seeing anything in the ATSC standards or in the FCC regulations requiring legal IDs in the PSIP, so that information is just text. Legal IDs still must be visual at a minimum. For example, the home stations for MHz Worldview (WNVC/WNVT) each carry 5 SD subchannels, and the whole business is mapped as 30.1 to 30.10. The legal ID is added as white text in a grey bar superimposed over the top of each program for 15 seconds or so (WNVC Fairfax for 30.1-.5 or WNVT Goldvein for 30.6-10). All the other subchannels in this market are labelled visually in a similar manner (usually some small text) each hour.

If you want to start a religious war about legal IDs, the visual legal ID for WTTG, Washington, DC, is simply "WTTG DC". heh heh heh.