Earlier this year I noticed KOCB carrying an OU basketball game in HD and I was encouraged that they might have purchased the equipment to carry the Big 12 Network package in HD. Apparently, that is not the case and it’s actually worse than last year when the picture quality of the 4×3 SD images was just terrible. This year, at least for this game, they’re taking the HD feed from ESPN and converting it to standard definition so that the picture is window boxed with black bars on all four sides.
I hope this is just a one-time glitch, but if not, then I’m not sure why they wasted their money buying the rights for these games.
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I can’t find when KOCB-DT went on the air, but since there were comments here in early 2004 about them getting up to full power, I’m guessing they’ve been broadcasting digitally for at least seven years, maybe eight years.
Seven years after beginning, nearly three years after going all-digital (February 2009), they still can’t broadcast any HD except what comes directly over the network feed. Same with “sister” station KOKH-DT. Seven years.
Then again, why bother investing money to serve your customers when the law prevents competition from other affiliates for the same network?
the game isn’t in HD we should post a comment on Channel 34 Facebook saying put the game in HD
Good idea. I’ll try to remember to do that the next time they have a game on that I want to watch…
i post a comment on they FB page and this what they say CW34 – KOCB Tyler, thanks for watching. We are upgrading our equipment and should be able broadcast all the games in HD very soon.
And Sinclair Television, their parent company, is tripling retransmission rates they charge cable for carrying these two channels over the next 3 years. They are going to have to make the local-HD upgrade before I re-up to carry them on our system, I don’t care if the Super Bowl is on Fox.
I told them a tripling of cost was just a bit much. Their response was that their costs have quadrupled. For what? The networks have instituted fees local stations have to pay the networks now, a response to the fact local stations were raking in all this retransmission consent money and the networks were not getting any of that.
But this is an invisible cost to the viewer. When they turn on their TV and see a horrific picture on an OU or OSU basketball game, that’s when they wonder why the station has never made any investment in HD even though it’s been 7 years since it’s been around.
The games are still in SD, but now KOCB is stretching out the picture horizontally, leaving bars on the top and bottom, and distorting the image. It looks even worse than it did before.
I totally agree. I considered taking another screenshot, but then decided it wasn’t worth my time. You’d think someone there actually watches the games and realizes how stupid this looks.
We are very close to making the switch to HD, but unfortunately, we’ve run into a software bug that must be corrected before the switch can be made. Equipment is installed and is going thru final shakedowns, and that’s all I can say for now, but both stations will be full HD shortly.
Let’s hope basketball season isn’t over by then…
I hope ggore approves this message.
KWTX ch 10.2 in Waco carries the Big 12 Network basketball games in full blown HD. Every single Waco-Killeen-Temple market station has 100% HD capability and has been capable for months and months and months.
All stations do HD remotes, HD network pass thru, HD local news, weather, sports, HD tape delay, HD syndicated, HD local commercials, etc. Every single last one of them.