Milwaukee the worst for local HD capability?

[RonH]

Well, almost....  I stumbled upon this list.  Apparently we are the 35th largest DMA, and there is only one DMA ahead of us that has zero HD local news.  Wisconsin seems pretty bad overall.  When I am just driving around or going for a walk, I notice so many gigantic flat screen TVs in people's windows, regardless of if I'm in west allis or brookfield.  I guess it is possible that over half of these people are still hooking them up to analog TWC and thinking it is HD.

http://members.cox.net/oknewshawk2/DTV_HDLIL_DMA.html

Now, the last thing I am going to watch is local news, even if it is in HD, since I can get the weather in 30seconds by going to NOAA.gov and I don't need to hear about it for 30minutes.  However, I'm hoping that once they have the equipment to produce local HD news they will also have the equipment to time shift network programs, do useless weather alerts in HD, etc.

[gparris]

Maybe once everything is all-digital (no more analogue broadcasts), more locally-produced HD broadcasting will occur for smaller cities to engage it more, though some cities smaller than Milwaukee, probably have one HD local station by now.

TWC, like the government's attempt to wake-up analogue TV owners to the digital switchover, should educate their consumer with better advertising/education, so new flat panel HDTV owners see the real "picture"-literally.

From my own experiences, I know that once I educate a family that I setup with a HDTV or surround sound system, friends or my own family members, about using a HD sat or cable box (even just getting OTA HD channels), they try it and don't go back, accepting the difference in picture quality.

[Xizer]

Yeah. I noticed this too. It is why I only watch newscasts on the Chicago local channels. They have their act together much better.

[uwgrad]

However, I'm hoping that once they have the equipment to produce local HD news they will also have the equipment to time shift network programs, do useless weather alerts in HD, etc.

Channel 12 can already time shift HD shows as well as run HD crawls.  There are other posts here with pictures.  

As to weather alerts, since people with CECBs set to center cut for their 4:3 sets as well as Dish/Direct TV/cable center-cutting the HD feed for the SD/analog channels that will remain on those systems, weather alerts most likely won't change position at all because if they were moved off to the sides of a 16:9 frame, all the information would be cut off for 4:3 viewers.

[LoadStar]

Channel 12 can already time shift HD shows as well as run HD crawls.  There are other posts here with pictures.

Yup - in fact, for much of the night last night, WISN was time-shifting New Year's Rockin' Eve by 1 hour. (A problem with the recording shortly before midnight forced them to fall back to the SD time-shifted broadcast... I didn't stay tuned much after midnight to see if they managed to get it back to HD later in the evening.)