WTMJ Becomes first Milwaukee TV Station with Local News in HD

[Nels Harvey]

I may be wrong, but some, not all, field shots seem like they are 16/9 SD.  Others are crisp and great looking like they are new cameras.  Of course some network feeds are SD with pillar bars.

Has anyone else detected 16/9 SD on their field shots?

Nels....

[TPK]

I may be wrong, but some, not all, field shots seem like they are 16/9 SD.  Others are crisp and great looking like they are new cameras.  Of course some network feeds are SD with pillar bars.

Has anyone else detected 16/9 SD on their field shots?

Nels....

Ya I'm pretty sure that those field shots are 16x9 SD...  They sure do look it....

I guess at this point they only have a small number of roving vans set up for HD, which is understandable....

[WITI6fan]

Ya I'm pretty sure that those field shots are 16x9 SD...  They sure do look it....

I guess at this point they only have a small number of roving vans set up for HD, which is understandable....

All the live field shots are 16:9 SD. The only field video in HD is stuff that they've been able to physically bring back to the station.

They might be able to do live HD from their satellite truck though.

[uwgrad]

As of now, HD liveshots are not possible in Milwaukee because the relocation to the new digital microwave transmissions in the 2 GHz band hasn't happened yet.  

In 2005, Nextel (now Sprint Nextel) agreed to replace all microwave equipment for broadcasters across the country as part of their $4.8 billion deal to get more spectrum for their wireless systems.

The deal for broadcasters just replaces their existing analog equipment with equivalent SD digital equipment.  If the stations wishes, they can pay the difference to upgrade to HD microwave equipment.

If TMJ decides to spend the extra money to get the HD encoders/decoders, then when the digital relocation happens in Milwaukee they could do HD liveshots.  

However, this date is up in the air at the moment.  The deadline currently is in September, but Sprint Nextel has asked for a delay until sometime in 2010.  Other markets surrounding Milwaukee have already changed over.

[WITI6fan]

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes during newscasts, usually when cutting from one video feed to another, the picture will get fuzzy for a few seconds? It really gets annoying once you notice it.

[REVM1M]

yes, i have noticed . first I thought it was my eyes going bad:)

[jeffski]

yeah I have...im sure they have bugs to work out

[duncantuna]

Boy, I tell you, now that Channel 4 has gone HD .. the other news channels just look like a high school production.

[BK7725]

When they showed their "on the Phone" graphic for the Dean nurse firing story, instead of using an old rotary phone, they used a phone that looked just like an iPhone. Glad to see that stations are getting rid of that rotary phone graphic.

[BK7725]

Traffic graphics in the morning are finally HD. Still waiting for all HD weather graphics, though.

[TAS]

I really liked the HD sports.     They took the FSN WI HD feed and showed hd brewer highlights!

[WITI6fan]

I'll put this here so I don't clutter the board with another thread.

The new weather alert bar is not 4:3 ready. The map is too far left so I can only see counties that border Lake Michigan. The crawl, however, stops scrolling at the same safe area line.

Plz fix, WTMJ.