A My Network affiliate (WZMY) began operations as a sister station to WPME (My Network - Portland) and WPXT (CW Portland) in December of 2009. It took some time to get the station up and running with HD equipment but recently they ironed out some of the bugs. I live in Southern Maine, and while WZMY is not in my cable channel lineup, I can pick it up in HD off of the coax cable line if I switch my input to antenna rather than the cable box. The channel is 50.1. You can also pick up WZMY if you use a "rabbit ear" antenna and that will, of course, be in HD as well.
On another note, both WPME and WPXT in Portland have some new equipment and are able to broadcast network, syndicated and locally produced television shows in High Definition. You may have noticed lately that some of the the locally produced shows like "Our Maine" which used to be in standard definition, are now in high definition. Even the annoyingly ubiquitous (is that redundant?) Maine Auto King is in high definition.
It's great to see some Maine TV stations taking the lead and giving the consumer what they want, which is High Definition. Now 50% of US households have at least one HDTV. And now that consumers are learning how to get HD out of their TV and once they experience true HD, there's not going back.
It's a shame, to me, that the HDTV industry has not made it easy for consumers. A barrage of terms, technologies, and choices make it almost impossible for the average consumer to understand what they are getting for their money. And that's what this is all about; money. Isn't that what everything is about?
Recently, I had a friend who decided she was going to buy and HDTV and was going THAT DAY to Best Buy to purchase one. She knows I know what I'm talking about but I couldn't take time off from work to go with her. So I had about an hour to research what was available at Best Buy and what was the best deal for her budget. Of course, from her perspective, knowing nothing about current TVs, she "heard" she could get an HDTV for "around 200 bucks". I rolled my eyes at her, over the phone (luckily), and tried to explain to her that she could probably find something called an HDTV for a little over $200, but that wasn't the smart choice. I found myself explaining about screen sizes and proportions, Hertz, refresh rates, contrast ratio, etc. and I could tell she was rolling her eyes. In the end, she bought something respectable. At least it was a 120HZ. Now I have to explain to her how to get HD from her cable company. She thought all she had to to was buy the HDTV and plug it in and she'd be good to go. It's hard to believe but yes, we're still there.
4 comments:
I don't get HD on cable as TWC broadcast their channels in analog, but I do get a few digital channels in 480 or 720 and one in 1080i..
So how to you plan to get HD from cable channels when they are converted to analog...
Hi - I'm not sure what you are saying or asking. What I was trying to say is that for those of you who have HDTVs but don't want to spend money to get HD through an HD enabled cable box, you can get your LOCAL channels in HD by simply hooking up the cable coax from the wall into the back of your HDTV. Then do a full scan and let the TV do the work for you. It should find all of your local channels and they will be in HD when that channel is broadcasting in HD. For example on my cable system, when I do a scan for digital channels, my TV will pick up WCSH 6.1 and 6.2 as well as 8.1 and 8.2 because those are carried to your home on the coax cable from the road to the outlet in your house. Real cable channels (like MSNBC, or CNN) are not carried on that coax in HD because they are not "broadcasting" over the air. So you can't get those in HD without paying your cable company for the cable box that received the HD signal and then send it to your TV. You are correct in that some local channels are broadcasting in digital 720p and 1080i. The analog channels you see are actually digital channels that are down-converted to 480i or 480p so a non-HD TV can see them. I hope that helps.
I just wish that the cable company could just allow the channels to broadcast in digital and/or HD as they receive it from the satellite.
I'm planning to raise my TV antenna up another 10 feet and that will make it 25 feet above the ground.
I have a DB4 antenna so it receives channels in all directions and I receive the channels very clear and at a medium signal. I'm hoping to get a stronger signal when I raise the antenna up.
Where is the WZMY station anyway.
Yes, it would be nice if cable companies would just relay the HD signal through the coax cable. Two reasons why they don't. First, it's a way to get customers to pay for a cable box (you knew that already). Second, there is not enough bandwidth in the cable to carry all of those channels in HD, so the cable box upconverts the signal after it gets to the box (that's probably not techically 100% correct but it's something like that. I spoke to someone in the industry who explained it to me a while back).
WZMY is in Derry, NH.
Good luck with the antenna.
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