Milwaukee HDTV User Group

Saw this mentioned in Cuprisin's article, and hoped my DTVPal would have automatically scanned for it, but no such luck. But after doing a manual scan, it is there, on frequency 48. This signal strength I'm getting is in the mid to upper 70's, whereas most of the other full power stations in the area are in the high 80's or low 90's. Haven't been watching it long enough to ascertain whether or not it has the same technical issues as 58.3.

I bought several generic 15' hdmi cables off Ebay for $11.99 each and they all work perfectly.

All new TV's have both NTSC and ATSC tuners, and many people who aren't well versed on the diferences often don't know whether they are watching analog or digital. My parents have a plasma TV and I've often found them watching the analog station when they thought they were watching the high definition form of the show. I've told them that HD stations will have a "1" after the station (ie 4-1, 6-1, 12-1, etc) and analog stations have a "0" after them (4-0, 6-0, 12-0). With their TV, if you manually enter the station and mistype it, it can switch from digital to analog under the right circumstances without you noticing.

If people with a digital TV were watching the analog station at the time of the test, they saw the screen that said they weren't ready for the transition. It's an inherent flaw of the testing procedure and will produce many false alarms every time the test is performed.

Weigel paid $7 million for channel 49, so they must have bigger plans for it than just METV. The transmitter is supposed to be moved around October 1st. I hope they put ME-TOO on 49.2, but who knows when that will happen.

Yep, the problem is as bad as ever. And to top it off, during the past week or so a lot of the programs have been cutting to a blank screen for minutes at a time, to either come back to a replay of the scene just shown, or commercials - followed by a blank screen - then followed by more commercials. Saturday afternoon was the worst. What a mess.

My only hope is that the problems will go away when 49.1 goes on the air around October 1st and MeTV is transferred to that digital station.

Specfically, it has a major audio problem. I watch it about 2 hours a day, and usually there will be serveral periods where the sound breaks up and it sounds as if someone is pushing the mute button repeatedly about 4 times per second. This can go on any where from 15 seconds to about 2 minutes at a time. I have to turn to a different channel because it is just too irritating, and it seems to be happening more and more often. I've experienced this problem with two seperate converter boxes, so I'm pretty certain this has nothing to do with my equipment. The problem hasn't occurred on any other channels, including 58.1 and 58.2.

I have an Insignia and it has two major drawbacks (which also exist in the Zenith DTT900 clone), both of which have been discussed at length on AVS Forums. It's Dolby Digital 5.1 decoder is flawed - the sound that comes out of the left channel during a DD broadcast has a high pitched slur that is very annoying if you are able to hear such high frequencies. The only known workaround is to use an RCA splitter to bypass the left channel, which of course forces you to use mono sound. Second, the electronic programming guide only has information for what is on now, and what is on next.

Despite these drawbacks, the general consensus is that this box is the best on the market right now. However, there are many more boxes yet to hit the market, which will probably have better features and fewer bugs.

Sitcomsonline has posted the schedule for ME TV, which starts March 1st: http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showpost.php?p=3841681&postcount=9

They started showing teasers this weekend, and from the looks of it most of the shows that will be on METV are already on WMLW! What gives? Is WMLW going to be repurposed?

The schedule will probably be the same as the ME-TV affiliate in Chicago: http://www.metvchicago.com/whatson/schedule.aspx

Thanks guys, exactly what I was looking for!!!

Thanks for the replies. I'm looking to use a converter on a TV not near a computer. What is the cheapest OTA converter available? Are there any that do NOT include HDTV conversion? Like a digital cable box, but for OTA instead.

I'm interested in viewing digital (not HD) OTA stations on my analog TV. There was legislation (not sure if it passed) to provide everyone with a $50 converter when the deadline for digital transition occurs. I'm interested in buying one now! Does this $50 converter currently exist? It seems that all the converters available right now are over $200. Any help would be appreciated.

None of the local stations issue their own watches or warnings. I know Oklahoma City stations issue their own warnings and alerts, which ticks off the NWS. There may be other markets that do that too, but definitely not around here. All of the graphics and break-ins are strictly forewarding information from the NWS.

It's simply a matter of choice.  What they are required by law to do is what Channels 18 and 24 currently do - run the EAS scroll message at the top of the screen, and for a tornado warning, sound the tone and the audio message from the National Weather Service. Everything else beyond that which is done by the other local stations is only an attempt to get better ratings during stormy weather. Also, 4, 6, and 12 have always (at least since the 1980's) interrupted programming with the "special report" when a warning was issued and a meteorologist is actually on duty at the time. There are just many more warnings issued today than there were back then.