What's more important...Weather or Monday Night Football in HD ?

[Matt Heebner]

COME ON 12...Turn off the damn weather warning already!!!!!! I swear if this EVER happens during a Packer game...it won't be pretty.
A short warning followed by going BACK to the HD game would be more than enough.

This is very irritating!

Matt

[brewtownska]

Seems to me someone on this board has a direct phone number for 12's station room...hopefully I can find the old post and get the ball rolling.

Mike

[Greg Oman]

So the deal is if they need the screen crawl, they upconvert the analog signal?

I wish they'd not choose poorly.

Greg O.

[Kevin Arnold]

WKOW 26 DT in Madison has managed to stay HD AND have the weather info (rain from west). Yes the game looks great. Looks like WISN isn't quite ready for prime time.

[Mr Bill]

I was going ballistic and it was a non-Packer pre-season game. Everyone should call and let them know how you feel. I would have loved to have gotten a live person on the phone last night when I was really pi**ed. Channel 12 if your reading this, get your crap together.

If this was a Packer game they'd be sorry now. If anyone finds a good phone number to call please post it.

Bill (still steaming)

[Todd Wiedemann]

Sorry, guys.

I was out-of-pocket last night and didn't have access to my pager or PC (at the in-laws).

I will get in touch with my contacts at 12 and see what is up ...

[Joel S]

I can't believe a thunderstorm near the Illinois border was important enough to fill 20% of the screen with an obnoxious map and make channel 12 switch to SD.  Perhaps they were less sensitive to the issue becasue it was a preseason game and not the Packers.

I thought having TWC would allow me not to have to worry about the reception on my TV during bad weather. Now, rainstorms 50 miles away give me a terrible picture thanks to poor decisions by local tv stations.  Let's pray for clear skies during HD broadcasts (even with cable).:rolleyes:

[StarvingForHDTV]

Originally posted by Joel S
I thought having TWC would allow me not to have to worry about the reception on my TV during bad weather.

Is that really true?  Don't they get their feeds from satellite too?  I think I remember seeing problems with TWC picture quality on some of the stations during bad weather.  Not the old analog channels though.

I actually had to turn off Monday Night Football when the SD feed came on.  It's amazing how big of a difference there is when they switch it like that  :eek:

Starving

[Matt Heebner]

My question is: what if this had been a much slower moving storm? What...missing most of a hi-def football to warn people of a THUNDERSTORM warning?  I hope that WISN gets this under control before it becomes even more of an issue.

Matt

[The Law]

Personally, I don't mind be warned of potential catastrophes.  If the alternative is they don't send the warning then:

a)  do they get in trouble w/FCC
b)  I don't realise until too late that I did not unplug all my equipment so I don't fry my investment (no, I don't trust my surge protection that much - even though it's warranteed

[John L]

Originally posted by The Law
Personally, I don't mind be warned of potential catastrophes.  If the alternative is they don't send the warning then:

a)  do they get in trouble w/FCC

As a licensed FCC TV station, they MUST serve the Community and MUST warn of any threatening weather, and other catastrophese.  Therefore they indeed, if they must interrupt the game in its entirety to cover severe weather, then they must.  All FCC license broadcast stations have to provide such information.

But I believe the whole point of the conversation here is that WISN changed from Hi-Def mode rather than staying in Hi-Def to provide the weather information.

-John L.

[Gregg Lengling]

I think this will make the entire conversation moot!

At this time most local stations including WISN do not have HD production equipment.  This means they aren't able to do much as far as adding crawlers ect. to the HD signal.  They normally just pass the entire sat. signal through to us.  Some of the PSIP/ATSC encoders do allow them to insert "Bugs" (station logos) but not much more.

As HD products and DTV in general mature you will see this however taken care of.  At this point they are only spending the minimum necessary to make them legal with the FCC's digital mandate.  It is a plus that they and the networks are providing the small percentage of the viewing audience with HD signals (HD is not mandated only Digital is).  I know we would all like to see everything in HD as we have invested thousands of dollars ourselves...but once again these stations are in Business and businesses have to make a profit and until it becomes profitable to run HDTV and DTV stations you aren't probably going to see this change.

I know I'm not happy about it...but I do understand as before I retired I was a business owner and was regulated by the FCC and believe me everytime they threw something new at me...it came out of my pocket until the market place caught up with it.

So that's all for now.....TTFN