Digital Dialog

Digital TV in Kauai

I'm back from Kauai where I just spent 5 full days installing a new digital television transmission system beginning with our system on Mt. Kahili.

It took multiple helicopter rides to get all the new equipment up to the site and the old equipment down.  Then we spent the entire day with absolutely no creature comforts (no bathroom, no food, restricted liquid intake and no access to warmer clothing).  Finally at about 5PM, the system went on-the-air successfully so everyone in Lihue, Kalaheo, Kaumakani, Hanapepe and beyond should be able to receive the PBS digital transmission.

Anahola's system was replaced the next day and officially went on-the-air at 6PM, Wednesday 12/16.

Kilauea, by way of a new digital relay station in Moloaa, went on-the-air on Thursday at 7:30PM.

Finally on Friday we were on our way to Princeville to finish my digital TV installations when we discovered that the mounting hardware for the antenna was not compatible with the tower...so while the translator is ready to go, I need to get some steel fabricated so that the new antenna can be mounted to the tower.  Once that is completed (sometime in mid-January) my digital TV transmission upgrade will be completed and on to the next project we'll go....

More Changes in What you are Seeing...

We reprogrammed some of our computers in Master Control to try and address the "postage=stamp" video many of you have been experiencing on cable channel 10 and 90.

Let me know if this has improved viewing PBS Hawaii programming for you...

Hawaii Island Digital Upgrade

It's done!!!  We completed the digital over-the-air upgrade at 7:30 PM tonight...There are still a few issues that we have to address, but for the most part, Hawaii island is now all digital, so you will need to either have a digital TV or a converter box to watch our over-the-air signal.

For those of you that do have a UHF antenna and digital TV, you will need to execute a channel scan to acquire our new channel frequency into the memory of the TV.  It will show up as 10.1 and 10.2 on your digital TV's display.

This digital upgrade can provide you with a great looking picture as well as additional program streams (10.1 is our main channel in HD and 10.2 is a PBS Hawaii Kids channel, for now)...but digital also has its drawbacks which you can read about in my previous entries including the Cliff Effect, which will be the most irritating artifact of the upgrade.

For those of you not familiar with the Cliff Effect, unlike an analog signal which can be viewed when the signal reception is poor, with digital, you either have it or you don't.  I'm hoping that most of you will get it...as predicted by FCC computer models.

I'm headed for Kauai tomorrow and will begin Kauai's upgrade on Tuesday...

So what am I seeing on Oceanic Cable...

For Oceanic Cable viewers, it depends upon what you are watching...HD Ch. 1010, Digital Channel 90 or Analog Channel 10.

As of Nov. 2, most of our programs come to us in a true HD format (16:9 - wide screen).  When we show any of the new HD programs on cable Channel 1010, you will see a full, side-to-side, top-to-bottom picture on your HDTV.  When we have to show a (4:3) picture on the HD channel, you will see it with black bars on both sides of the picture (pillar-boxed)...but you are still seeing the whole picture as it is meant to be seen.  The other type of picture you may experience is when a program that was made in a wide screen format, but was meant for a 4:3 screen.  Producers did this prior to being able to show true HD quality pictures but needed a wider screen, like movies).  This method starts with black bars on the top and bottom of the picture (letter-boxed) and then when it was changed to HD, black bars on the sides were added to make up the entire HD screen.  This is what we call the "postage-stamp" effect and we try to avoid this as much as possible.

For viewers of digital Channel 90 or analog Channel 10, it gets more complicated.  Because our signal is basically now a HD formatted picture, we need to convert it to display on your on your non-HD television set.  This is where we locally have the choice to decide how you see the program...we can either take just the middle of the picture to show you...this is called "center-cutting" or we can shrink the picture down until it fits, width-wise, on your screen.  This is called "letter boxing", black bars on the top and bottom of the picture.

Why not just use the "center-cut" option?  We want to show you the entire picture as it is meant to be seen and when there is picture and words that exceeds the 4:3 center-cut boundaries, your non-HD TV will not show this portion of the picture and important video could be cut from your viewing...so using the "letter-box option leaves you watching a smaller picture in the middle of your TV, but seeing the entire picture as it was meant to be seen.

So what's correct?  Both!  We are trying to find a solution that can accommodate the style of display to maximize the screen dimensions you have.  To do this, many things must come together including the acquisition of more HD programs and the purging of the old non-HD programs.

So until that time, there will be moments when the picture may not fill your screen, or parts of the picture may get cut-off.  You will see this type of thing happening on every channel you watch (though you will not know because you don't have a wide screen to compare it to) and as the TV broadcast industry struggles to implement new protocols, we will be susceptible to all the problems I have mentioned above.