CTV BC News Going HDTV Soon!

[trekkie604]

The expanded set looks awesome. HD picture quality appears great too.

[zivan56]

They only mentioned that HDTV signals are available on Shaw/Bell/Telus. No mention of the OTA channel. Not a simple oversight I believe...

[CHrisCHu]

Originally Posted by zivan56

They only mentioned that HDTV signals are available on Shaw/Bell/Telus. No mention of the OTA channel. Not a simple oversight I believe...

Yeah, I was surprised they didn't mention OTA, too, especially when they promote "local TV" so much these days. Perhaps they feel shame about the fact that CTV puts out the lowest transmission power out of the local 3 HD broadcasting stations.

Is it just me or do the anchors actually sit further apart from each other to fill up the width of the screen?

[Vostok]

Originally Posted by CHrisCHu

Yeah, I was surprised they didn't mention OTA, too, especially when they promote "local TV" so much these days. Perhaps they feel shame about the fact that CTV puts out the lowest transmission power out of the local 3 HD broadcasting stations.

Is it just me or do the anchors actually sit further apart from each other to fill up the width of the screen?

Yeah, they do sit apart. There are several reasons. One of the main one is the camera angles. When the camera is just on one of them, they need enough space to cover the whole screen without zooming too much into the person. Hope that answered your question.

Oh, and also, what channel is it when watching CTV BC over the air in HD? 32?

[danbcman]

I agree there was real mention of OTA how ever they did say broadcasting in HD TV so pretty close I guess

[MAXAM]

slipperbomb "Vancouver, BC (November 23, 2009) – Starting today, CTV British Columbia (CTV BC) becomes the first television station in British Columbia to broadcast local news in full HD, from field acquisition to studio."

I'm a little confused. Hasn't CBC Vancouver been broadcasting the local news in HD for some time now or is it just Widescreen?

[atong]

I believe CBC is just widescreen, its not true HD, it's a lot blurrier than CTV now.

[CHrisCHu]

Originally Posted by MAXAM

slipperbomb "Vancouver, BC (November 23, 2009) – Starting today, CTV British Columbia (CTV BC) becomes the first television station in British Columbia to broadcast local news in full HD, from field acquisition to studio."

I'm a little confused. Hasn't CBC Vancouver been broadcasting the local news in HD for some time now or is it just Widescreen?

Although CBC News National is pretty good quality fullscreen HD, CBC News Vancouver is not. Not sure about other regions, but CBC News Vancouver is only widescreen SD, and a pretty bad quality SD. I mean I can zoom in CTV News SD on analog channel 9 to 16:9 fullscreen and the picture quality is still much better than CBC News Vancouver on OTA. And unlike Global and CTV HD feeds provided by Shaw cable are of same PQ as OTA, CBC HD on Shaw cable is significantly worse than OTA.

Note that I'm talking video source, not broadcast format, which on all 3 Vancouver local HD stations (CBC, Global, CTV) has always been 1920x1080i, for at least a year now.

[MAXAM]

Thanks guys for the info! I figured someone on the forum would know.

[VBC1]

I tuned in tonight to watch the entire news at 23:30, but there was absolutely no mention about HD at all. I was thinking that the news anchor would say something like "Good evening in high definition" at the start, but until the end of the news, there wasn't even a mention. Wow, how enthusiastic from them.

Originally Posted by CHrisCHu

Yeah, I was surprised they didn't mention OTA, too, especially when they promote "local TV" so much these days. Perhaps they feel shame about the fact that CTV puts out the lowest transmission power out of the local 3 HD broadcasting stations.

The reason is probably the fact that even majority of the employees working there don't even know what OTA is or that CTV Vancouver even broadcasts in HD OTA, let alone anything else.
When it comes to 'local tv', another fact is that this station probably broadcasts with lowest power level in all of North America and realistically their signal only effectively covers North Vancouver.

[tofinoguy]

I saw it last night at 11:30 as well and although they did not verbally mention it, there were graphics that indicated it was "now in HD". And really, that's good enough for me. It's not a huge groundbreaking event or anything.

[stampeder]

An announcement about the HD Newscasts is up on their website now:

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/l...shColumbiaHome

[faston]

It was the first thing they mentioned on the 6pm newscast; 'Welcome to CTV Vancouver News, now in full HD'. They even had a story about it and the building of the new set/control room.

[danbcman]

Thanks Stampeder for the site link I added my thoughts to growing coments section hoping it will be read and given some thought on my points.

[CaptChaos]

Fantastic picture quality! Thank you CTV!

Now, when will Global BC news switch to HD?