You sure the TVE are mostly 1080i? I tried looking this up through Google and couldn't find anything.
I know the OTA signals are much clearer than streaming, but figured the TVE feeds were even lower quality.
The quality looks good to me. Channels reports the quality of most TVEs as 1080i, but some lower. It reports Fubo and Locast as 720P or lower. HD Homerun is mostly 1080P for most major network stations.
How is a Hdhomerun 1080p? I’ve only seen networks broadcast in 1080i and 720p. Channels just what they broadcast in it has nothing to do with the stream.
Where do you see that in Channels?
I think you have those reversed.
OTA would be 720p or 1080i.
TVE would be 720p or 1080p.
I don't think the "HD 1080i" tag actually applies to TVE feeds, it's probably for cable and just got carried over. If you want to see the actual resolution and bitrate for TVE channels, you can use the "Stats" overlay while watching live feeds or "View Details" on a recording.
Most of mine are 720p or 1080p.
Afaik, all OTA stations in the United States are either 720p or 1080i, but at far higher bitrates.
The tags saved in the metadata are from the guide provider. They are not necessarily accurate, especially when using TVE or custom channel feeds.
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True, my local CBS is 1080i OTA but my cable, TVE and locast feeds of it are 720p at 59.94, 29.97 and 30 fps, respectively.
I went through and checked the quality on some tv everywhere channels I watch. Comedy central, mtv, bet, science channel, olympic channel, newsmax, msnbc, discovery, nbc sn, hgtv, food, bravo, history, pbs, usa, and tlc are 1080p at 30fps.
Hallmark, tennIs channel, tbs, cnn, freeform, women's entertainment, tnt, disney, ifc, amc, bbc america are 720p at 30 fps.
Fox news, the ESPN's, and the fx channels are 720p 60 fps.
I went back and checked the Channels "Details" info. OTA in Boston changes from week to week. The stations are shuffling towers and transmitters while they are working on ATSC 3.0.
As of yesterday, WCVB (ABC 5.1) was the only station broadcasting in 1080P. CBS, NBC, and PBS are 1080i.
However, on TVE, the following are 1080P:
NBC, CBS, PBS Providence, Science, Food, Discovery, CNBC.
There are likely more EVE 1080P channels, but I did not go looking for them.
Ken
How do you know this? The only reason I ask is I'm always searching for updates on ATSC 3.0 deployment in Boston.
I spent some time on the phone with a chief engineer from one of the Boston TV stations.
The current resolutions come from "Details" in Channels.
Ahh, must be ATSC 3.0 then.
No, I do not have an ATSC 3.0 tuner, just the old HD Quatro.
Then there's something off about your recording or info. ATSC 1.0 does not support 1080p transmission. It's 1080i, or 720p; but never 1080p.
I'm just reporting what the Channels/Details is reporting to me:
Track #0: MPEG-2 video
1920x1080 16:9 yuv420p progressive 29.97fps
Track #1: ATSC A/52A (AC-3)
5.1(side) eng 384kbps
Track #2: ATSC A/52A (AC-3)
stereo spa 192kbps
Wow, first report I've seen of a 1080p ATSC 1.0 broadcast.
Wonder if that details display is correct.
You could try opening the recording in MediaInfo to see if it agrees.
Then there's something off about your recording or info. ATSC 1.0 does not support 1080p transmission. It's 1080i, or 720p; but never 1080p.
It's allowed:
(See page 9 of https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/a_53-Part-4-2009-1.pdf)
You usually don't see it because we're limited to 30 full frames per second in 1920x1080. So usually broadcasters use 1080i instead which allows them to get 60 fields per second. The only way to get 60fps progressive is to step down to 720p.
Sometimes, broadcast encoders will dynamically switch to progressive scan mode when they detect non-interlaced content. Using this allows them to display 29.970fps or 30fps content in progressive scan. They can also achieve progressive scan for lower frame rates, like 23.976fps or 24fps, by using the REPEAT_FIRST_FIELD flag to instruct the television to display selected frames for longer to achieve a telecine cadence. It's likely that this is what's happening here. This tends to be more common on non-realtime formats like DVD, but it's certainly possible to do with live television content too.
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As noted from a post, I stand corrected.
I've never seen it in the wild, but I guess it can happen. Thank you @dbloom for the pointer.