CTV downgrades signals in New Brunswick

[freddytireguy]

CTV Atlantic has reconfigured their signal delivery system in New Brunswick and now use multiple signals on one transponder. The result is that New Brunswick viewers who have invested in OTA equipment to receive uncompressed 1080i broadcasts are now graced with compressed 720p. So much for the NFL. Why they can't use fibre is beyond me. Bell is the fibre king in the province with FibreOP. I bet Toronto is still 1080i. I am extremely disappointed.

[magnet]

Ironically the signal originates in Toronto is fibre fed to Halifax and gets sent outbound from there.

[freddytireguy]

I have submitted a letter to the editor in the local paper to advise people to complain. I doubt it will do much good but is worth a shot. If nothing else it might cause some shame. I expect it to get published and will get a phone call from the station manager if not higher up.

[magnet]

I say call CTV Halifax's reception line during business hours and ask to speak to the head of engineering. He is a very friendly and helpful guy and has some awesome stories about taping Atlantic Grand Prix wrestling in the studios at Moncton.

[freddytireguy]

That's how I got the news to begin with. It's out of his control as it was an edict from the network. The only benefit we are going to get is we will be getting full program information and the full guide included in the signal once they get the bugs out. That's little consolation when the signal drops from 19 Mbps to maybe 7 Mbps.

[rob50312]

I am pretty sure that that CTV OTA license says they should broadcast in HD when the program material is available that way.7MPS is not HD.Also if this affects cable provider than CTV will not be allowed to get a simsub for any US stations if they cant match the picture quality.I complained to CRTC about this and they directed the station to provide the content in HD.

[DrSat]

Originally Posted by freddytireguy

The result is that New Brunswick viewers who have invested in OTA equipment to receive uncompressed 1080i broadcasts are now graced with compressed 720p.

There is no such thing as an uncompressed 1080i OTA broadcast signal. It remains heavily compressed as the required bitrate of an uncompressed signal would be 1244 Mbps for 1080i and 553 Mbps for 720p which is way too large to fit in the max 19 Mbps capacity that an OTA channel has.

My assumption is that CTV is switching from fiber to C-band satellite for distribution as their HD first generation feeds currently available FTA on Anik F1 @ 107.3W are also 720p. However, these feeds have a higher bitrate (6.5 Mbps MPEG4, equivalent to about 13 Mbps in MPEG2 which OTA is using) and one less generation so they look MUCH better than any other source, including OTA.

Regardless of this, 720p is usually better for sports due to a clearer picture in fast action scenes such as when the camera is rapidly panning to follow the action on the field.


Best regards,

Dr. Sat

[ralph_sinclair]

DrSat,

My question for you is a 2-parter:

1. Are you still receiving a 1080i signal of CFTO OTA from the CN Tower? Or is it now 720p as well?

2. Are you saying that the 720p C-band signal looks better to you your eye than the 1080i that was/is available OTA from the CN Tower?

The 1080i OTA we had here sure looked good to me. It was using the full ATSC bandwidth. The current 720p signal, like CBC, is running 15mb/s video and while not bad, its noticeably softer than the 1080i was.

[57]

15mb/s video

The max OTA is 19.4 Mb/s video plus audio, so 15 Mb/s video is not bad and pretty typical. CTV Toronto is still 1080i, I just checked. Last time I checked, CTV Toronto was around 16-17 Mb/s video + audio, so 15 for video is right in line. 720P can look softer than 1080i, each has its advantages and disadvantages. For example, many people talk about the exceptional quality of the High Fidelity stations (Oasis, HiFi, etc), yet they are 720P.

[majortom]

Attached zip file of a TsReader export might give you an idea what Drsat is talking about regarding the satellite distribution feeds for CTV.
extract to a temp dir and open the .htm in your browser. Look for the bit Rate stats near the bottom. Just noticed, they were sorted by PID, not by bit rate when exported.

On CBAND Satellite they appear to be using h.264 (MPEG4) in 720P format for the HD Programs. They also appear to be using statistical multiplexing, as the bit rates of any given channel is changing as needed based on the program content of the various channels. ie - at one point I saw some of the HD programs approaching 9 Mbps, while 6 or 7 at the exact time of this snapshot in time.

[roger1818]

H.264 is optimized for progressive scan, so if they are using that for distribution, that explains why they are they are using 720p not 1080i.

Originally Posted by DrSat

Regardless of this, 720p is usually better for sports due to a clearer picture in fast action scenes such as when the camera is rapidly panning to follow the action on the field.

That assumes the source is progressively scanned. If they are taking a 1080i signal and converting it to 720p (like CBC does) you will get many of the motion artifacts of interlacing (depending how good their de-interlacer is) combined with the reduced resolution of 720p.

[audacity]

Well, in my opinion 720p is better than 1080i - but if they previously record with a interlaced format and then convert to a progressive format, the damage is already done.

Instead, they should change their production to use 1080p, and then scale it down to 720p (if necessary). Then, if they eventually upgrade to a better video codec, they could easily do 1080p in 10mbps rather than 19mbps.

[Blackburst]

I doubt very much that the CTV station in NB will be providing a 10mbps or less in their signal stream.

Here in Montreal, you can see what CFCF (CTV) provides as a mbps with a 1080i, and what CBMT (CBC) provides with a 720p signal.

http://www.rabbitears.info/search.ph...&callsign=cfcf

http://www.rabbitears.info/search.ph...&callsign=cbmt

At 9.70 mbps per stream, the station can provide two 720p signals. If they wanted to.

Here is KWYB (ABC & FOX) with a variable bit rate on each stream offering two 720p streams

http://www.rabbitears.info/market.ph...callsign=38576

[jeffNB]

I was at the CKCW-DT TX site recently and there is a new C-Band receiving dish that was not there when they transitioned to digital a year and a half ago. The dish is fortified with structural steel to protect it from falling ice from the tower. So we can assume that the CKCW-DT site is now fed via C-Band. Not sure how the TX was fed before, but there has been a Andrews dish pointed at their Halifax Street 'studio' in Moncton. The dish is still there. Not sure if there is fibre at the site, but there is on the road as it passes by to the Global/CBC (now dark) TX site further up the road.

Like a previous poster said, it is weird that they don't use their own fibre for distribution. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that CTV Atlantic's master control has been moved from Halifax to Toronto.

freddytireguy, I see that the D-G published your letter to the editor. Do you know of anything come out of it?

Jeff