# NASCAR on NBC



## oldave (Dec 22, 2003)

The local NBC affiliate swears that NBC is only sending SD feeds of NASCAR on NBC, claiming there is no 16:9 widescreen feed. Their digital signal was unwatchably (is that a word? It is now) blurry, except on local inserts. Those were nice and sharp.

We *watched* the widescreen feed yesterday on an affiliate from another DMA (yeah, we know, it's unethical to watch out of market signals rather than supporting the local station and advertisers).

The local NBC affiliate's general manager seems concerned, but the engineer insists the other station was converting the 4:3 SD to widescreen on their own, and that NBC did not provide anything else.

The engineer says what they retransmitted on their digital signal yesterday was SD 4:3 upconverted to 1080i.

Any other markets actually have an NBC affiliate sending the NBC 16:9 NASCAR feed on their digital channel? I'm curious what other markets are getting it, so I can point the station engineer to the right place (with a CC: to the GM, as well... since this engineer hasn't answered a single email I've sent him regarding their low power status and when we might expect higher power, etc, until I emailed the GM and CC:'d the engineer this morning).


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## BFG (Jan 23, 2004)

I think just about every market gets the Widescreen version of the Nadcar races, I watched it down here in West Palm yesterday, so your station engineer must be a little crazy or in denial


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## generalpatton78 (Dec 17, 2003)

I haven't watched Nascar that much on NBC, but I'm pretty sure they had a 1080i 4:3 up converted picture the last time it was on. I can't say this for 100% because my HDTV is 4:3 and I can simply stretch the image to it's correct format. I have a local religious station that squishes it's 4:3 picture into a 16:9 mode with horrible results. However some local stations do go threw a special converting process that cuts off the image some at the top and bottom to make a 16:9 picture with somewhat good results. This is what the other station is doing I'm sure. I've read that only one or two races has been done in HD this year.


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## Pete K. (Apr 23, 2002)

Oldave,you are dealing with WMGT. Need I say more?


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

Today's race started out at 4:3 (on WRC4 out of Washington, DC), then suddenly at 10:00 (3 hours into the race!) it became widescreen, and the sound improved a bunch too (to 5.1, perhaps? I had my surround receiver on). The minute the race ended, they dropped back to 4:3 for the wrap-up. 

-Chris


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