What is the problem with WISN?

[EmuZombie]

Today, 9/15 between 7:05 and 7:07 durring primetime, it dropped out of HD to scroll a message about DTV converter boxes.    

Why?  If you have to scroll the message why can't you do it on the HD feed? Why do you have to drop down to SD to do this?

I can deal with the occasional weather alerts, but if now this is going to happen every time this message is scrolled it will become old very fast.

Has it always been this way with WISN?  I don't watch it very often.

Of course, I didn't even address the entire issue of since we're already watching the HD feed, which is digital, it does nothing more then confuse those who don't understand HD TVs are digital.

[EmuZombie]

Seems to repeat every 10 or so minutes.  I can't take it anymore.  I turned to another channel.

[bschlafer]

They ruined Batman Begins.  The constant flipping back and forth from SD to HD to warn everyone about the DTV transistion that just about everyone on the planet has heard about ad nauseum now for several years.

I guess this is what we should expect from now on.  Probably won't be long before they run crawlers and ads in the margins full time.

[WITI6fan]

I've heard (but never seen) that WISN runs a HD crawl in the mornings during GMA. If they do, there's no reason they should be switching the HD feed to the SD feed.

[uwgrad]

While it does seem foolish to run a DTV crawl on the HD channel, the reason that all the local stations are running these crawls so often (4 is also doing it and dropping to SD) is that according to a study by Nielsen, Milwaukee is the least prepared city in the entire country for the DTV switch.  

Page 3 of the following pdf has the table about Milwaukee.
http://www.nielsen.com/solutions/DTV_Transition_Update_Paper_REV_061808.pdf


The reason that crawls aren't run in HD yet is that master controls of most TV stations are still SD based - the SD feed is still the primary feed.  Up until recently the HD broadcast has been such a low percentage of viewers that it was hard to justify the expense to have 2 switchers, 2 weather graphics systems, and 2 graphics systems for crawls/bugs/etc. - one set up for SD, the other for HD.  

Ever since stations started broadcasting in digital, the default set up was to upconvert the SD feed for the digital feed unless there was network HD programming available - basically only primetime.  Then the HD network feed bypassed basically all the station's internal equipment and was sent directly out to the transmitter.  Some stations had a very simple single bug generator that could be separately activated and put into the HD stream before it left the station.  This is why in order to insert anything else locally, they would have to drop down to SD.  Now that there is more HD programming airing throughout the day, and more people watching the HD broadcast, the stations will start to upgrade their systems to handle HD feeds.  The amount of equipment that needs to be added/replaced is quite large, and it is all very expensive.

Actually Ch 12 is leading the way for this in Milwaukee since as of last week they started to air syndicated shows in HD which is a huge step forward.  They also have had a HD crawl during GMA for the past couple of months, but apparently it's set up in such a way that it can't be used for other crawls throughout the rest of the day as evidenced by tonight's forcing of SD to run the DTV crawl.  

I think we'll have to put up will all of this until February of next year when the analog SD feed goes away.  When this happens, the stations will only have a single stream to work with in master control and they will be able to either convert or replace their equipment with HD capable stuff.  Then we should hopefully be able to see HD shows in HD.  

However, the big catch to this is that everything will have to be 4:3 protected for basic cable/sat subscribers, and OTA viewers that have their converter boxes set to center-cut.  This means that all the weather graphics will still have to show up almost in the middle of the screen on 16:9 sets.  Hopefully the stations get creative and figure out how to redesign their layouts so that they can be 4:3 safe, but remain in HD and not block too much of the screen.  However, this won't help with the fact that all the stations have gotten so bad about interrupting programming completely to have the meteorologist/anchors talk non-stop about the weather.  Then we miss out on the shows completely.

[LoadStar]

Yes, but WHY is there a crawl on the digital feed at all?!?!?

I sort of get that they may not have the equipment to do an HD crawl - but if you're watching the digital feed, you probably already know about the digital transition and that the analog feed is going away.

Stations - find a way to insert the crawls solely on the analog feed, not the digital feed. Nag those who are still watching analog TV, not those of us who have done what we're supposed to do.

[Fr8train]

On a similar note, on 24.1 during The Simpsons and Family Guy yesterday they shrunk the screen to about an eighth the size it normally is and the rest of the screen was taken up with information warning about the digital TV change.

It was ridiculously annoying...  :mad:

I was watching 24.1 not the analog channel, why show this on the DTV broadcasts and for that manner why make it so obnoxious to where you can't even watch the channel?

[Bluto]

Dumb question - why run it in HD at all?  If one is receiving and watching the HD feed, it seems they would be ready for the transition, right? :confused:

[uwgrad]

On a similar note, on 24.1 during The Simpsons and Family Guy yesterday they shrunk the screen to about an eighth the size it normally is and the rest of the screen was taken up with information warning about the digital TV change.

It was ridiculously annoying...  :mad:

I was watching 24.1 not the analog channel, why show this on the DTV broadcasts and for that manner why make it so obnoxious to where you can't even watch the channel?

Dumb question - why run it in HD at all?  If one is receiving and watching the HD feed, it seems they would be ready for the transition, right? :confused:

As I said in my post above, if the station is running local programming (local news, commercials, or SD syndicated shows), or a SD only network show, there is no separate digital HD feed.  All that is happening is that the analog SD feed is being upconverted and sent out to the digital transmitter.  When this is the case, whatever happens on the analog feed happens on the digital feed - there is no way to separate it.  So that is why it happened during Simpsons/Family Guy.

In the case of WISN knocking down to SD and running the crawl during Batman Begins, there is no reason for that to happen.  The network HD feed should be a separate signal path through their master control that bypasses the crawl equipment.  They could have left the HD feed alone while they ran the crawl on the analog SD channel.

[Fr8train]

Gotcha UWGrad... thanks!

I guess I should just be prepared for getting hammered more and more about the DTV transition as February comes as they use even more invasive ways of shoving it in our face.