Milwaukee HDTV User Group

RF Ch5, low power, directional to NW, transmitting from super tower near Estabrook parkway.  You'll need an antenna with low VHF abilities for this station and those small UHF only compact antennas won't cut it.

There was a marathon through the Estabrook parkway last week.  At the tower the route turned onto the bike path.  The road was blocked for the runners.

Many stations have new transmitting antennas which are eliptical or circularly polarized.  So, you can try mounting your receiving antenna either vertically or at an angle in between V and H.  At near distance to the transmitter site, you can even try perpendicular.  At the frequiencies involved, a few feet one way or another can make a big difference also.  At your location, a simple bow tie may be quite effective.  I live just north of Estabrook park and find a simple bow tie works well for all but Ch's 8 and 5.  Since 8 is repeated on 36.1 it's not required and I don't mis 5.

Thanks for that info.

Milwaukee Public TV must be rolling in money.  Upgraded antennas on the old tower last year and new antennas on the community tower now.   I like PBS, but I'm getting tired of pledge month 4X per year and the almost endless paintings auction.   When WISN put up their circular polarization antenna their signal degraded at my location; especially in summer, using outdoor 4 bay bow tie.  I know that the idea is that CP works better with small indoor ( no gain and monopole ) antennas.  And of course you need to feed CP with double power ( electric bill + ).  Has anyone seen a commercially available outdoor CP receiving antenna?  Left hand or right hand CP?   I suppose that I could replace the cat wiskers on my bow-tie with circular hoops.

I have noticed that a new TV transmitting antenna is being hung on the west
bridge of the super tower in Milwaukee.  Anybody know who it belongs to?

Could be my imagination, but WMLW 46-2 and 46-3 look much better lately.  Does anybody know if they have new encoders or other technical changes?

FAM 3 equals 3db attenuation / 1/2 original signal level.
FAM 6 equals 6db attenuation / 1/4 original signal level.
FAM 10 equals 10db attenuation / 1/10 original signal.  It's a log scale.

Try Industrial Supply on Rawson Ave.

Recorded Smallville 10/08 and still getting 45 frame I frame interval except for hard I frames at scene cuts.   While I can make an edit on B or P frames, it's better for my decoder if I keep to I frames.  What's changed?  I had 15 frame interval for the recordings I made last season.

Anybody else notice that WVTV has increased the I frame interval from 15 frames to 45 frames?  2/3 less I frames results in about a 1 mb reduction of the stream data rate, but it makes finding an I frame to edit on ( cut out the non program material ) a lot more difficult.  Whats the technical point of 1-1/2 seconds between I frames?

I see a jin pole up on the side of the WISN TV tower near the top.  Anybody know what kind of work is going on over there?  Perhaps removing the old analog antenna or re-locating the UHF antenna?  Just curious.

The "old" Ch 24 tower on Capitol drive is gone!   Anybody know where it went?  It was de-constructed over the past couple of days.  Also, since the "old" ch 10 / 18 dual top tower is also no longer used for TV, will it also be de-constructed?  Maybe some FM'rs still using that tower.  Mayor Norquest is smiling.

Thanks Jim.  I have a few recordings of Smallville season 9 sourced from other than WVTV and they have audio in all 6 channels.  I suppose it's possible that some stations run the 2 channel audio through a dolby prologic decoder and use that as the audio stream for transmission.  Not a big issue.  I just have to switch my amplifier manually.

Well, I'm catching up on missed episodes also, and that's why I noticed that I have some in DD 2.0 and others in 5.1.  I just checked and episode 7 Kandor and episode 12 Warrior are true 5.1.  And these are two episodes I know I didn't get from Ch 18.  Thanks for your input.

I record Smallville ( a quilty pleasure ) from both CW in Milwaukee or Madison depending on which way the antenna is pointed.  Recordings made from Ch 18 Milwaukee have only 2 active audio channels in a 6 channel 2/3/.1 stream while Madison has all 6 channels ( true digital surround ).  Is WVTV down mixing the audio?  Audio from CH 18 sounds OK through the pro-logic decoder.  Anyone else notice this?