It's about 9 days to the DTV transition. Let's check in with the over-the-air ATSC HDTV signals and see what the big networks are doing with that 27 Mbits/s channel that they've been granted by the American public. It's a priviledge, not a right!
Hmmm. The local NBC affiliate is only using 10 Mbits/s of the 27 Mbits/s channel:
![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t6VVL_SKdz9latteA-JdvmUzCnlsJAtRiEwjhzgG6fFiIJ-UhKIrhsTNXH0xWDLuINDYaJFVqk-Il_Es0oq6mf6GaTR8PdaQhbD73RNBlzHUlq63uUgBGY_in0Rx5s=s0-d)
Leading to spikes in the compression, resulting in a low picture quality at critical material:
![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vEnq7goi6E_v7faTAtMuyiLsO6ScuDhvP7Ac97JNEwupgsYoo8B3peRW_BCYNEcJqxm_M1vBZESzOySzdy4rw8QCvK2hxNsjvL_iz7-tBxXQUFONgY1E66Z1fVog=s0-d)
That guy in the black shirt is annoying! Who's he supposed to be again?
![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_veOxnFOUgmUq5AKj1m5ocQFc5CCr28YyDNzD2Fdv9ucxKyGr_6V4obv3qaDEvWE4ny3P2wYzh3SQvu9ANptqf4ENhjmBTINyHGx3QjNkDcCdzFxUG10ZvoRwMdE2I=s0-d)
Wow, those guys look like a bunch of hockey players. Unfortunately, hockey players and movies about hockey players are only famous in Canada.
Speaking of Canadians. The encoder used by this affiliate inserts I-frames, or key-frames, whenever it detects a scene change.
![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vZxz1We61IfMtbX5YuNpM207ZJcxiLhqs2n09ZIj1dhWD5Y30ZcQ_QetF7OIuUb7ovZ4rHx_ToXf41AwX4PIFNbRVSDO4G9K0ZE9OPV1kmNf26OCDZ-tnOg8YGuio79gINH_OX=s0-d)
Back from Hell-eh? And ready to party. NBC broadcasting SNL in 1080i, top field first, resulting in about 30% wasted bandwidth.