# Warning banners



## Calvin Carrigan (Dec 5, 2006)

I'm not sure if this is the right place but............... Last night I was flipping between my local station on dish and the OTA. I noticed the OTA feed had a warning banner from the news station scrolling on the bottom but the Dish feed didn't. So do you miss local breaking news if you watching via Dish such as tornado warnings etc.?


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## bobukcat (Dec 20, 2005)

Calvin Carrigan said:


> I'm not sure if this is the right place but............... Last night I was flipping between my local station on dish and the OTA. I noticed the OTA feed had a warning banner from the news station scrolling on the bottom but the Dish feed didn't. So do you miss local breaking news if you watching via Dish such as tornado warnings etc.?


I don't know how Dish would / could be changing these, the only two possibilities (in order or plausibility) that I can think of would be:

1) For some reason the stations NTSC channel was not carrying the banner but the ATSC channel did, or maybe they were just not shown at the same time. This seems unlikely but the only other possibility I can think of is:

2)E* has cropped the picture from the NTSC feed they are recieving from your local. This seems VERY unlikely to me as it would be noticed on all programming, particularly sports that show the banner at the bottom for scores, etc.

I can't believe that any local would have a reason (at least a reason good enought to justify the expense) to provide E* with some kind of different feed from what they are sending out OTA.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

Here is what is happening: Some stations can not (or do not) carry the weather (and other) warning scrolls on their digital stations. In some markets DISH is only picking up the digital feed (not the analog feed where the scrolling information is) and they are carrying that station on their SD feed. I recently noticed that on one (and only one) of our local stations and I confirmed that with the chief engineer at the station. ALL stations will be adding the hardware so that they can provide the warning information on their digital feeds but, as noted, some can't do it yet.

In my market (Cincinnati), there has been LOTS of complaints about the way the stations do the warning and school closings (which we have had a lot of this winter due to snow and ice storms). The local CBS affiliate can only show the information when they are showing a show in SD so they were showing the CBS prime time programs in SD or sometime jumping back and forth from HD to SD. They got so many complaints about it that they now say that all the CBS programs will in HD (with no warning or school closing information) and during "break aways" (ads) they switch to the SD feed and show the closing information.


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## PhantomOG (Feb 7, 2007)

Recently here, with weather warnings, some of the local HD channels completely blacked out the screen to show the warning messages (several seconds, repeating every couple of minutes). VERY annoying to say the least. That was with cable though.


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## Hall (Mar 4, 2004)

Bill R said:


> The local CBS affiliate can only show the information when they are showing a show in SD so they were showing the CBS prime time programs in SD or sometime jumping back and forth from HD to SD. They got so many complaints about it that they now say that all the CBS programs will in HD (with no warning or school closing information) and during "break aways" (ads) they switch to the SD feed and show the closing information.


 Interesting. My local CBS was experimenting with this recently and at one point they were "squishing" the HD picture to fit the scroll or crawl on the bottom. More recently they've been running the closings during commercials (on the DT channel) which as I mentioned in a thread elsewhere, I thought that was taboo.


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## debpasc (Oct 20, 2005)

Albuquerque scrolls roll across the bottom and HD is switched to SD during the scroll and switched back after it's over -- this is what I see on my HD locals via Dish satellite. It's very annoying because we seem to get "breaking news" for every little thing.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

debpasc said:


> ... It's very annoying because we seem to get "breaking news" for every little thing.


YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN. Are the Albuquerque News Directors reading this?


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## AVITWeb (Jan 3, 2007)

It is interesting that you mention this.....We were watching Jericho the other night OTA HD. Now I only have a 508 at the moment, we are upgrading soon. Anyway, while we were watching the program, there was a split second when what looked like a piece of paper with writing on it appeared on the screen. We were recording it on the standard local on our 508. When I went back to check to see what that paper said on the recording, it was not there....I wonder if the feed is that much different.

On a side note, one of our locals switched completely to SD to show breaking news then went back to HD after the report was over.


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## jimborst (Jun 13, 2006)

The other night, I was watching the Late Show with David Letterman and my local (KMEG, Sioux City) had school closings for the next day. They went to the SD feed for the closings then directly after switched back to HD.

I know KMEG just went HD for the superbowl so HD is all new to them but I hope every weather, school, news bulletin doesn't cause them to switch to SD.


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

The devices for doing what is know as supers over HD programming are expensive. At the station that I work at the supers have to go out in SD. So when transmitting the HD signal it is only possible for us to broadcast it over the SD analog channel. We run 2 different streams the analog and HD stream. We have both the SD & HD coming down from CBS. We run both at the same time and the master control op has to press a button to inset our commercials into the HD stream. It is planned for us to install automation in a few months that will take carry of both streams at the same time and auto switch between the HD & insert SD commercials. Mpw you know more about what happens in a station. Stations are still in a transitional stage and it will be that way for several more years.


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## hvs10trk (Aug 12, 2006)

Stations in the bigger markets can feed the "dish/cable" companies alternatively via fiber. Some stations even control each feed seperately, although rare.


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