Magic May 1st.

[Kevin Arnold]

The final?? date of the start of the digital transition is almost here when all stations legally required to be on the air, should be.  Public TV's 36 should go live but two months late, on June 30th  with their digital 35 giving MPTV a whopping 2 digital channels to program.  They can finally move their incessant multicasting to 35 and run full time HD on 8, either the HD demo loop or some other combination of programming.  Finally Pax TV (which few Milwaukeans watch) will light up channel 40 but will have no HD programming.  Home Shopping Network afficianodos will have crystal clear, ghost free channel 48 to watch those beautiful quilts, dolls, and paint brush kits offered for sale.  Some time this summer WITI will finally chicken wire their digital antenna to the main tower and reach more than 3 people OTA.

The main thrust will turn from getting stations on the air to getting HD programming on the stations.  I hope that more movies will finally be offered to the indies in HD so that these channels will finally get their use as intended.  And I finally hope that some local station takes the plunge and purchases some HD equipment so that we may enjoy local high def. content.

[RobbQ]

Ah yes, remember being excited about a new deadline coming up?  

fwiw - I had a brief conversation with a MPTV employee at the State Fair HD booth last year. He said that their plan at that time was to make digital 35 the HD channel with 8 continuing to multicast.

[techguy1975]

Originally posted by Kevin Arnold
Home Shopping Network afficianodos will have crystal clear, ghost free channel 48 to watch those beautiful quilts, dolls, and paint brush kits offered for sale.  

I wonder if Ch. 49 will actually go HD.  From what I've heard in other forums, the station is just barely getting by.  The owner of the station doesnt have the money to do the DTV buildout, and was denied permission to move the transmitter from Oak Creek to one of the towers in Shorewood.

I wouldnt be all that surprised if they just turn in the license for WJJA, and pull the plug

[RobbQ]

Originally posted by techboywi
I wonder if Ch. 49 will actually go HD.  From what I've heard in other forums, the station is just barely getting by.  The owner of the station doesnt have the money to do the DTV buildout, and was denied permission to move the transmitter from Oak Creek to one of the towers in Shorewood.

I wouldnt be all that surprised if they just turn in the license for WJJA, and pull the plug

I have a question on this.  I had assumed that when stations went digital that there would be some stations who would not do HD but would use multicasting as a cash cow to pay for the technology and keep afloat.  Is there some reason that these local stations not doing HD couldn't "rent" their 3 to 4 other channels to other signals?  Granted, I do not know the applicable laws but it seems that if CBS 58 (1) digital could play HDnet that other stations could find paying customers for broadcast.  I would think that shopping channels would love to reach the non-cable/satellite public when everything goes digital.  I would even be interested in seeing radio stations broadcast a crystal clear digital signal on a digital TV sub channel.

I realize that it would not be possible to rebroadcast many things, such as competing or neighboring cities channels, but there has to be something out there.  Will this occur when digital comes closer to the masses?  Am I missing something?