WTMJ4 2005-06 Equipment and Switching Failures

[Joseph S]

E-Ring
9/20/2005 - E-Ring - 8:19 - Failed to flip switch for over 5 minutes after ads and another POS bit from the sleezebags in the weather dept that always seem to cause issues on NBC and ABC.  :bang:

Crossing Jordan
10/9/2005 - Crossing Jordan - 9:54 - Failed to flip the switch for the entire last segment of the show

[psubill78]

E-Ring
9/20/2005 - E-Ring - 8:19 - Failed to flip switch for over 5 minutes after ads and another POS bit from the sleezebags in the weather dept that always seem to cause issues on NBC and ABC.  :bang:

Precisely the reason to stick with Chicago OTA stations if you can get them.

I've never seen the HD flip issues until I moved to WI....

[Joseph S]

Crossing Jordan update

[jfelbab]

10/22/05  7:00pm  NBC Broadcast of "Chicago"

Audio drops and video goes black for a second or two every 20-40 seconds.  Sorry NBC & WTMJ, I tuned out and won't be back until you learn how to broadcast HD without constant errors.  Disgusting to think you could expect anyone to actually try to watch this.  You might just as well pull the plug and broadcast nothing.

Note to your advertisers... hope you advertise on other networks or you won't be selling to me. :mad:  :mad:  :mad:

[Chris G]

10/22/05  7:00pm  NBC Broadcast of "Chicago"

Audio drops and video goes black for a second or two every 20-40 seconds.  Sorry NBC & WTMJ, I tuned out and won't be back until you learn how to broadcast HD without constant errors.  Disgusting to think you could expect anyone to actually try to watch this.  You might just as well pull the plug and broadcast nothing.

Note to your advertisers... hope you advertise on other networks or you won't be selling to me. :mad:  :mad:  :mad:

I flipped through and noticed the same thing.... the signal drops were bad enough that they were even failing over to the NBC standard-definition feed.

(The only thing to their credit - the failover was fairly seamless...

[StarvingForHDTV]

10/22/05  7:00pm  NBC Broadcast of "Chicago"

That was brutal!!  I certainly hope they can fix whatever happened.  

Luckily there was a great looking (and sounding) HD broadcast of the World Series on Fox, which I switched to after being blasted by NBC.

[jfelbab]

Again tonight on Vegas.  :mad:  :mad:  :mad:

WTMJ, if you are reading this forum, if don't have the skills to correct this issue why not hire someone who does?  The NBC feed from Chicago doesn't have these drop outs.  Maybe you can borrow one of their engineers to fix the problems.

And it continues on with Medium.  :mad:  :mad:  :mad:

And 9:23 comes back from commercial and no HD.  Throw the friggin' switch.  You guys sure know how to PO your audience.

Be sure and let your advertisers know that you lost another viewer.  I've had it. I wanted to watch the Jets anyway.

[Chris G]

They must be having some serious issues with their HD equipment... The Tonight Show is being carried in standard definition on WTMJ-DT tonight.

[psubill78]

Again tonight on Vegas.  :mad:  :mad:  :mad:

WTMJ, if you are reading this forum, if don't have the skills to correct this issue why not hire someone who does?  The NBC feed from Chicago doesn't have these drop outs.  Maybe you can borrow one of their engineers to fix the problems.

And it continues on with Medium.  :mad:  :mad:  :mad:

And 9:23 comes back from commercial and no HD.  Throw the friggin' switch.  You guys sure know how to PO your audience.

Be sure and let your advertisers know that you lost another viewer.  I've had it. I wanted to watch the Jets anyway.

I've been only pulling in HD Chicago stations for nearly 2 months now due to the horrible Milwaukee stations....

It's sickening to me that they refuse to give a wavier to get the NY stations because they don't want to loose the advertising dollars and viewers... I wish there was a way for US (the audience) to let the powers that be know that we don't watch these stations unless forced to because of how poorly the MKE stations operate.
 
I can't recall a single Chicago station failure to date. I just wish CBS would move to a higher frequency so I wouldn't be forced to watch CBS 58 over satellite ....

[tazman]

Again tonight on Vegas.  :mad:  :mad:  :mad:

WTMJ, if you are reading this forum, if don't have the skills to correct this issue why not hire someone who does?  The NBC feed from Chicago doesn't have these drop outs.  Maybe you can borrow one of their engineers to fix the problems.

And it continues on with Medium.  :mad:  :mad:  :mad:

And 9:23 comes back from commercial and no HD.  Throw the friggin' switch.  You guys sure know how to PO your audience.

Be sure and let your advertisers know that you lost another viewer.  I've had it. I wanted to watch the Jets anyway.

I agree that all the issues stated here, they are valid ones and I also experience the same problems.  Not all these issues however fall on the backs at WTMJ, for the most part.   Please don't take this as a personal attack jfelbab.  I only quoted your post as a starting point in reference to everyone elses posts.  I had contacted TMJ directly about a week ago about audio issues with the Tonight Show.  A couple days later I was asked to have a phone conversation with one of the engineers at TMJ.  I am by no means a technical expert, but alot of explainations were givin for the technical problems that not only WTMJ suffers, but also problems experienced by other stations in our veiwing area.   It is also my opinion that others who view the Chicago stations, should view them more consistantly.  I think you will find that they also experience these issues.  If any one here has been watching the Tonight Show on a regular basis, you will know what I am talking about with the audio problems for that program.  Prior to my phone conversation with the engineer at TMJ.  He did some investigating of the problem on his end.  He found a problem with the Dolby encoding in the meta stream of the HD signal comming from the studio's in Burbank.  He contacted NBC regarding this and was told that he was the only one out of some 200 NBC affiliates that complained to them.  He sent them the technical info he had and told them what to look for.  They did indeed find a problem with their audio encoder at the Burbank studio.  There are a lot more details I could explain here, but spending the time online typing all of it is not my cup of tea.  It was also explained to me that these encoded signals have fail safes built into them so that when problems or glitches popup the affected part of the signal drops into another mode of opperation.  Hence the audio drops we experience.  To make a long story short most stations if not all, pretty much pass through what the networks send them.  Whether it be NBC ABC CBS WB UPN or FOX.  Most of these stations also do not have the means to monitor how their signal is being received because of the numerous means of distribution, OTA, CABLE,SATELLITE and so on.  They also have no control over any problems that may be introduced by a third party provider such as Satellite or Cable.

The reason I am taking this side of the fence, and don't get me wrong on this. I do not enjoy screwed up programming either.  But all the constant complaining, especially how most of us here HAMMERED on WITI FOX 6 over the last year and a half, is probably the biggest reason why you will never have anyone from TMJ monitoring this site.  Believe you,me.  I did extend the invite and that is what it boils down to.

[psubill78]

To make a long story short most stations if not all, pretty much pass through what the networks send them.  Whether it be NBC ABC CBS WB UPN or FOX.  

I cry BS!  Why would the Chicago station - watching the same show, same time, same "network feed" not have the same issues.

[jfelbab]

No offense taken tazman but I believe you and I are talking about different problems.  The video dropouts are a recent local TMJ thing as they don't occur on the CGO NBC OTA (WMAQ) feed.  The Leno audio dropouts were happening on WMAQ as well but not the video drops that have been occurring with regularity of late on HD material.  This is a TMJ issue locally, and it is very, very irritating as I'm sure you agree.  I've called the station more than once to register my complaints.  The fact that they even stopped sending a HD signal during Medium was a local issue.  WMAQ had a flawless presentation of Medium from beginning to end.  

This forum is a good place to express our dissatisfaction with these problems and to make it clear to any TMJ folks who happen to read these threads that they are losing the most important thing they own, us, the consumer of their product.  I now no longer watch TMJ. They lost me and our household for the most part.  I hope they realize that they are not the only game in town and even if they have a show worth watching, it's not worth watching with video dropouts.  Fortunately I don't have to put up with it as WMAQ has a pretty strong signal here.

If no one from TMJ views this thread, fine, at least I got a chance to vent.  But to put your mind at rest, tazman, I won't be complaining here about TMJ any more as I no longer watch it.

[tazman]

I cry BS!  Why would the Chicago station - watching the same show, same time, same "network feed" not have the same issues.

I cannot agree or disagree with you.  I am not within range to receive the Chicago stations.  All I know is that the manner in which we express our feelings about these problems only serves to turn our local broadcasters away.  We did specificaly talk about this forum for about 5 minutes that evening.  He stated that it had been monitored by TMJ at one time, but no longer.  Maybe if we had some technicaly enlightened RF guru's here that could receive both markets and had the equipment for anylizing the same signals from both affiliates and was able to document the differences with time stamp signatures on each signal and have something to present as a comparrison.  Then maybe we would be able to bend a few ears.  But at the end of the day.  I'm afraid all were doing is massaging each others ego's with all our rants.

SORRY for the reality check.

[tazman]

If no one from TMJ views this thread, fine, at least I got a chance to vent. But to put your mind at rest, tazman, I won't be complaining here about TMJ any more as I no longer watch it.

One thing I did find interesting was that when the Tonight Show is taped.  Any audio encoding problems that occured in the meta stream are now on tape archives for those shows.  So that some time down the track when they play reruns of those airings, the problems will still be there on the tape.  He said that they can go back I guess and fix the meta streams on those tapes.  Whether they do it or not, your guess is as good as mine.

[Nels Harvey]

The presentatin on Ch. 4 last night was bad, to be sure.  Since I saw it on both the HD and SD feed, I'm sure the problem was in some station equipment, or satellite feed.

The workload of the engineers there is such that there isn't really time to troubleshoot the problem until the assigned maintenance engineer can get to it.

The summary is, the engineers who were responsible for putting on the programming also had to do preparations for the newscast, load station breaks in the "Pit", and check their routine assignments.  They do care, but when there isn't time to turn around, I say "Give 'em a break!"

The ongoing problems are management in nature, with financial considerations being most important.  They had some sort of problem there, they knew it, and weren't able to fix it right away.

The presentation WAS annoying, but the engineers are regular guys too, and are working on an overloaded job.

Nels....