Welcome back KUCW

[CAwasinNJ]

KUCW-DT is back on the air. KTVX-DT 4.2 is still running a simulcast of it, but the 30.1 version is much less pixelatted.

Congratulations.

[dxstuboy]

Untamed Sports needs to go away, its a worthless channel, and the picture quality is atrocious (sp?).

[Timmy]

So a general DTV question. I notice that most stations shape their image to the source material. For example, if programming is 4:3, then the shape is 4:3 with black bars on the sides. But some channels (KBYU, BYU-TV,BYU-TVi) and others like Untamed and KSL's .2 station where the programming is clearly 4:3 but they stretch it to fill 16:9. This reduces clarity and aspect ratios are jacked as well.

So do stations have control what shape they're ultimately broadcasting in? If so, why stretch it so horribly?

[CAwasinNJ]

First, in defense of Untamed. I have no use for it myself. Those outdoorsy shows bore me to death. If i had my choice between watching Untamed or a test pattern I'll take the test pattern. That said, I know there are some people who really love that stuff. Don't know why, but they do. To them, it's not a worthless channel. So if the alternative is having one programming stream (no pun intended) then this makes sense. Also, they must be making revenue from it. I don't know whether there are local avails in the program feed or the space is being leased or what, but any additional revenue can't hurt and Newport can use that to help finance programming on the .1 channel. That will benefit a lot of people.

Now to the letterboxing thing. Yes, the stations can have control. KUED switches on the fly frequently. Whether certain particular stations have that capability in the equipment they bought would be something only the stations would know. I just looked at the channels you mentions and they all look perfectly fine. In particular, Untamed and UniversalSports (5.2) are both being broadcast in 4:3 at the moment. I'm looking directly at the digital broadcast and not through a cable or satellite system. I haven't paid much attention to most of the broadcast digital stations on Comcast, but I do remember that they have KSL Weather Channel (5.3) badly screwed up. That's Comcast's fault not KSL's. The broadcast 5.3 signal is correct.

[dxstuboy]

I am not questioning or complaining about the format of Untamed, I am complaining about the image quality. It looks terrible.

[Timmy]

CA, maybe it's my $50 converter box from Wal-Mart (Magnavox) It only has a very few settings and one is i think full, wide or 4:3 and Full seems to be the best one but there are channels where it doesn't stretch 4:3 content to 16:9 aspect, it's inconsistent so that's why I questioned the station equipment/settings.

[CAwasinNJ]

I'd go over the manual and see what it's supposed to do in each setting and each situation. I opted for the RCA model at Walmart since Magnavox is owned by Philips whom I Do Not Like. On my RCA everything looks exactly the way it's supposed to in the wide mode. The only real disadvantage to running it in normal 16:9 wide mode is that when the source material is 4:3 on an HD station it gets double letterboxed. The aspect radio is kept exactly correct though.

Back to KUCW news. It looks like a simulcast of KUCW on 4.3 in SD is staying around for now. The crawl line saying to rescan your tuner to find 30.1 is gone but the simulcast is still there. For goodness sake why? Divert those redundant extra bits to 4.2 already if you don't want them on the main channel!