Milwaukee HDTV User Group

Ch 4's new digital master control switcher now allows them to air "bugs" and crawls in the HD format.  No longer is it necessary to go to SD to air the weather "bug".  Yes, it really annoyed me too.  They are planning a switch to HD news soon; HD camera's are in the studio ready, but newsroom video computer editing is not ready.  It's all about money: capital investment.  Very slow economy has slowed the transition.  They announed that they intend to continue SD until June across their 12 TV stations ( nationally ) at a cost of about $35K per month just for electricity.  At some point in the future, they plan to remove the VHF antenna from the top of the tower and relocate the CH28 UHF antenna from the west side to the top.

Link to list of analog TV stations dark or going dark Feb 2009

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-221A5.pdf

You can get an idea of what distant reception is possible by going to the FCC web site and looking at service contours.

Here's WGN from Chicago

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/FMTV-service-area?x=TV301087.html

This is primarily determined by the transmitter antenna height and the distance to the horizon.  You can increase this range by increasing the height of the receiving antenna.  But until the analog signals go off the air, it will be difficult to get good distant digital reception even under the best conditions due to multichannel and co channel interference.  ( There are so many stations on the air )  When I lived in Shorewood, I could consistantly get CH 32 analog from Chicago by aiming my antenna at the CH 6 tower.  The tower reflected enough signal down to ground level.  Now I live in Glendale and get poor Ch 44 analog from Chicago by aiming at the Ch 12/58 towers. I know I might get more channels, but the local transmitters over drive the front end RF amplifier of my tuner.  The same thing happens when you try using an antenna amplifier.  

So the answer to your question is:  I think it will be possible to get Chicago and Madison digital from Milwaukee with a big antenna mounted very high ( 50- 60 feet or more ) once the analog signals expire.  The best commercial UHF antenna I ever encounted was a 7 foot Channel Master parabolic ( dish ).  Excellent narrow beam width and high gain.   Bow ties have good gain, but wide beam width and thus cannot be aimed well to limit interference.

Trees....especially on wet and windy days.   It's not the signal strength, it's the multipath.  Best solution is to mount the antenna higher.  Amplifiers tend to intermodulate.   Try a non amplified splitter.

It's still analog at my house in Glendale.

 Update    As of 24 October...  After a very careful tweaking of my antenna direction, I can receive just barely enough signal to lock in 48D.  It'll have to be much stronger than this if reliable coverage of northern Milwaukee county is expected.

TWC gets their HD signal of WTMJ DT via a fiber cable, not off the air.

There seems to be a lot of atmospheric ducting going on the past few days.  This is causing interference between analog and digital channels on the same frequency.  Next year, when the analogs go away, digital reception should improve.  After the switchover, only low power stations will still be allowed analog transmissions.  There is a surprising amount of low power stations that will still be on the air analog.  Every little town upstate seems to have one.

I keep a roll of black masking tape handy near the TV.  I just cut a piece or two of the appropriate size to cover all those annoying things like the endless logo supers for things like pussycat dolls or gladiators.  The promotion departments have gone too far.  It's distracting and cheapens the shows.  Logoaway!!!

I have two digital sets and I only get the squished picture on one of them.  I thought my 2nd set was NG.  So, there must be some issue with the data stream meta data.   If others are having the same issue, I feel better knowing my set is OK and the problem is with WITI's gear.   Sure hope they fix it.

I live on the "north shore"...  Bender Road....and have a Urban range U/V full size antenna from Radio Shack in the attic.  I have about 25 feet of foam RG6 cable to a 4 way splitter in the basement, then various lenghts to the TV's, one as long as 50 feet.  No amplifier is required to get good signal level at all sets.   So, before you buy an amplifier, check to find out if you really need it.   If you do, then one of the amplified splitters may be best suited.  In my experience, the amplified splitter made too much level for one of my sets and caused cross modulation on the low VHF channels.    Keep in mind that most of Milw's digital channels are on the UHF band and will be attentuated by snow on the roof if your antenna is attic mounted.

Ch 13 is licensed as low power.  Not sure what the EFP is, but expect that antenna height and power would be spec'd to serve an area of about 30 mile radius.  It's more about getting a media outlet carried by cable than maintening an OTA presense.

I am using a Panasonic DMR-EZ27  digital tuner DVD recorder as a front end to an older analog TV.   It is still working fine on al HDTV / SD PBS channels in Milw.  The DVD recorder part is only SD ( from the HD material), but the tuner outputs all ASTC modes and the DVD upconverts and looks remarkably good.

Must be a recent change.  I checked and got the same info.   I've often wished I had access to the PBS satellite feed.  Another good reason to look into a card for the PC.

WTMJ engineering has been working with Leitch and has recently made some changes to the SM parameters.  Finding test equipment and knowlegable personnel to track down this issue has been a problem for them.  So, an entire new SM encoder ( Same model, same manufacturer ( Leitch )) was put into service for testing.  I've noticed a small improvement on my system, but the problem continues.  It seems to come down to null packet over-runs.  Anyone else who's been followiing this thread notice any changes?
Tod

Ch 10 digital signal is a real ch 8.  WMVS Ch 8 often suffers from same channel interference from an analog ch 8 in Grand Rapids MI.   If the problem is not on-going, then that is a possible explanation.