Milwaukee HDTV User Group

For those of you who have DISH Network, I've had good luck in the past for Brewers vs Cubs games that I can pick up the Chicago broadcast in HD when it's not available in Milwaukee in HD.  Typically it's either on WGN or Comcast Sports Network.  Using DISH's online schedule, I see it listed in HD on 442 (Comcast Sports Network).  No way to know if it'll air here, but my past experience thinks yes because it's the out-of-town team's channel.

I can understand why people in Kenosha and Racine would get both Milwaukee and Chicago stations, but it always puzzled me why I'm able to get them in Waukesha...but this is one of the times to be happy I do!

Did you turn the TV off and back on at any point?  When things like what you mentioned happen to me, typically it's an HDMI handshake issue, and toggling the TV power helps.
To give you and example, I use a 4 input/2 output HDMI switcher in my living room setup (no receiver).  If I play PS3, I need to make sure to switch BACK to another input BEFORE turning the PS3 off, else I'll hit the same problem you have...the TV gets confused with the handshake and won't show any of the inputs until I toggle the TV's power.
It's not much of an issue for me now that I know how to prevent it.

Hopefully this is your problem.

I can personally see some use to that dslreports.com as a way to possibly get another set of eyes to look at a long standing Roadrunner question/issue I've had, so thanks for the link!

In the case of Jack, his issue is more television related, so I doubt the TWC techs assigned to dslreports.com could even provide any help (that's me assuming they only deal with Roadrunner issues on that site).

It's too bad TWC doesn't have people monitoring this site to help with these kinds of issues.  I know over on the Satellite Guys Dish Network forum, there are Dish employees that actually interact with people posting and confirm/deny rumors, fix account issues, and even offer advice ranging from changes to packages to installation help.

I'm just thinking out loud here, but I wonder what is left to do that you haven't already tried that may get their attention to fix the issue.  I'm sure people have suggested getting a higher level tech on the phone to bypass the first line of customer service (I know that exists for Roadrunner, not sure about regular cable issues).

Maybe ask if they offer any diagnostic device they can install on your line or in your neighborhood that would monitor some of this stuff - then they can see for themselves what problems occur.  Anyone know if the TWC digital boxes store any of these kinds of tuning errors and can be retrieved later?  If they can see "yes, there have been 50 tuning errors on channel 1005 in the past month", that might help.

Only other thing I can think of is to call and tell them you want to cancel your service.  Typically they transfer you to someone who asks you what they can do to KEEP your business.  That would be the perfect person to explain your issues to and say you'd KEEP their service IF they can fix your problems.  I'd like to think they get a higher level tech on the line or sent to your house.  Maybe they'll give you a price break temporarily until they can fix the issues???

If they can't at least give you an indication they are TRYING to fix your problem, then maybe you truly start looking for a different service provider.  Sometimes the only way they can gauge customer dissatisfaction is with churn, so leaving would help them realize they are doing something wrong.

Good luck!

The surprising thing to me - Wikipedia shows that TruTV is owned by TimeWarner, being run by Turner Broadcasting.  Yet TWC doesn't carry the channel on their cable systems :rolleyes:

I won't know until I get home today if my Dish Network package gives me this channel...I'm guessing no based on Dish's website, but maybe they will open it up to all packages once the games come on Thursday.

The other thing to look for when doing the auto-scan is see if it says it finds any digital channels.  In my experience with various high-def cable boxes that do QAM, some of them remap the channels like your new TV does (4.1, 6.1), others still display the true location of the channel (73.18, 78.6 - these are made-up numbers as I don't remember which channel assignments TWC uses currently for their channels).
So if your scan says it found 6 digital channels, don't be alarmed if you don't find them on the expected 4.1 or 6.1 channel assignments.

The other painful thing is some boxes I've seen will show you ALL channels found, even if they are scrambled and unwatchable.  These would be all the channels you'd get if you had an actual TWC cable box and paying for a digital package.  Hopefully you don't find that, as it's a pain to weed out the useless channels from the valid ones.  If you see that, do some searches in this forum for "QAM" to see some posts from myself and others where various "legit" channels live.  Granted much of the info is probably a year or 2 old, so the channels may have changed locations by now, but at least it's a starting point to finding what you want.

Just curious, when the RCA was your main TV, were you using it to pick up QAM signals, or is this the first attempt?  Just trying to rule out if its just the new location that is the issue.  If it's not a big hassle, you may want to attempt to connect it to the line where the TV originally sat to see if it works there, to rule out the new location.

In the new location, are you getting NO CHANNELS, or just no DIGITAL channels?  Just trying to establish if you're getting anything from the TWC feed on that line.

The reason I went down the road of maybe the line is bad is because I ran into the same issue last year putting a new TV in the bedroom.  I was using an old length of coax in one of my lines, and turns out that even though the screw-on head connected, the actual metal line inside had detached from the sleeve...so I didn't actually have a connection.  When I found the issue, I felt very stupid, but it explained why I was getting zero channels

I pulled up the user manual for this TV, and I have to agree there are a lot of different options you can choose from based on the combination of both inputs and whether you're getting analog or digital (or both) from each.  I also agree that all the documentation says it is QAM capable, so hopefully you'll have it working soon.  Good luck!

For those of you who noticed the free Starz channels on Dish, did you also notice an increase to your monthly package price?  They raise their rates in February each year, so the $5/mo increase to my package is somewhat offset by the Starz channels.  Just making sure you realize they didn't really give you anything "free"

Thanks for the heads up guys!  With Dish Network's ability to remotely set programs to record, I can now watch this tonight.

Just curious, do you know any of your neighbors well enough to find out if they ever notice the same issues you do?  It's been said various places on this forum that the way to get TWC to truly investigate an issue is if a certain number of people call to complain in the same physical area within a short period of time.

So, if you can find a few other people who have experienced this, maybe you can plan out a day for everyone to call and complain.  Or, even if you don't complain at the same time, knowing it affects multiple people may be enough info to get a TWC customer service person to move you up to a level 3 person who WILL take the info seriously.

You have to look at it from their side - if only 1 person complains about an issue, they have to assume it's a problem with your equipment or line.  But if multiple people in the same area complain, it's probably an issue further up the line.

Since most of the major networks have the damn sub-channels eating away our bandwidth, why don't they just DIRECT us to watch the sub-channel for all the closing ticker info, and/or a web address if we want to look up specific places for closings.  I'm sure if they can get all the info into the ticker (probably some sort of spreadsheet or database behind the scenes), it should be just as easy to read the same list to populate to a webpage.

It's too bad this question wasn't posed a few days earlier.  I would have suggested checking in with some of the people at Flanners, only because I think they'll have some down time with the store being moved into the Colders on Hwy 100.  I stopped into the Bluemound store on Friday, and other than a few shelfs of clearance items, it was pretty bare.
I have no idea if what your friend is looking for is actually a service Flanners offers, but I was thinking for as a side job for one of those guys.  I imagine a sales guy with down time is probably looking for other ways to generate some money - so probably would have been a good fit.

Actually - I just checked their website and today is the last day of the moving sale.  Could be worthwhile to have your friend call them to see if anyone would be interested in doing that for him for a small fee.

I see on whitepages.com there is a William Moos with a West Bend, WI address, so maybe that is who you are looking for.  This may call for an old-fashioned snail mail letter to be sent.  That's probably the only way you'll get a phone number, seeing as most home and cell numbers are unlisted these days.

Not sure if this helps diagnosing or not, but I use the open QAM versions of the TWC signal, and I know CBS and ABC show up right next to each other in my guide.  They map as 85.5 and 85.12 on my Sony TV.  So I think they are coming down on the same physical channel.  So if you have problems with one, more than likely both are going to have issues.

To go a step further on the static stuff, when I had the TWC tech out looking for issues in my system, he was more interested in disconnecting and reconnecting all the cables going into the basement splitter.  If you have a splitter, maybe try that instead of the connection to the box.

Just a helpful hint with the Dish version of CBS 58.  The previous DVR recording passes I had programmed for CBS 58 shows did not work yesterday.  Seems they tie to the old SD channel which is no longer available.  So tonight I had to delete each recording pass and setup again.  Just figured I'd pass that along in case it saves someone from missing a recording.