Rockford, IL - HDTV - Page 30

Is your terk amplified? If so try unplugging it. 39.1 had the strongest signal of all of them. You may be getting too much signal.

Unless an analog channel from somewhere is interfering with it, I doubt if Feb. '09 getting here will make any difference.

I don't know if they're planning on raising the power much, because it's already quite a blaster and really gets out there as it is.

yea hopefully when i get my terk outdoor antenna up on the roof it will come in !i only have problems with the fox channels wmsn (madison) 47 and 39(wqrf) go figure !!!! Does anyone know when 13.3 Retro tv is set to launch????

Well fox in Madison is VHF. Its digtal channel right now is 11.1. Did you saying "yea" mean that your antenna is powered? Did you try what I told you?

yea 47 is trying to switch from 11.1 to 49.1 i cant wait!! as far as turning it off
to get 39 in no go i think its due to the fact i have a huge cliff behind my house which is also the way towards rockford!! I will let you know when i can get someone who has a bigger then a 6ft ladder to put my outdoor terk up (hdtvo) outdoor antenna!!!

I passed the digital test for 23 Yes what do i get for a prize????

?

23 turned off there analog channel today at 5 25 pm i was making fun of the fact !!!

does any one know when wrex is adding retro tv to its lineup??

Hopefully in 09. In got squeezed out of the 08 picture no thanks to an insanely tight budget.

http://www.daily-chronicle.com/artic...4727695385.txt

Updated: Monday, December 22, 2008 1:12 AM CST

Viewers of WIFR Channel 23 digital television should receive a stronger signal with fewer dropouts starting today, according to a news release from the station. WIFR was recently granted permission from the Federal Communications Commission to increase the power of its transmitter from 50 kw to 100 kw.

The station will begin broadcasting the stronger signal at some point in the morning hours and should complete the process by the end of the day, the release said. The FCC has mandated all broadcast television stations shut down analog transmitters and broadcast only digital signals beginning Feb. 17, 2009.
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FYI...you might get a stronger signal from it now.

Now if WREX would just do the same thing. It's the only station I can't pick up on my tv in the basement.

I have 23.2 on and it has been cutting in and out a few times this late morning. Maybe I've gotten too much signal now.

I couldn't believe it when I saw it, but on the noon news on WIFR 23-1, it was widescreen, and looked a TON better than 23 analog! I saw this on a 37" brand new Vizio at work during the Presidential Inauguration. I thought...oh, they must be stretching it...but before I completed that thought, it was clear they were NOT stretching it. Even better: local news shots from field cameras were also in widescreen and possibly HDTV! They also looked VERY good to my eyes. Tonight, at 10 PM, I was at home ussing a set top converter box, and I letterboxed it...and it was very nice looking widescreen. If they wwere testing, it was a GREAT test!

Now, they aren't promoting it; I just noticed it today. I checked just last week to see if any Rockford newscast was in HD or widescreen, and I didn't see it then. It may be very well upconverted SD, but man, it looked really good, and I could see Andy's facial features a lot more clearly than before. I could tell when SD cameras were used at the Presidential Inauguration, and WIFR's newscast was a lot better looking than those SD cams!

No doubt it's 16:9...and it's either very, very good upconverted 480i or with their encoders, adequate HDTV.

I am amazed WIFR was the first to be in widescreen and/or HD for their newscasts and field cameras. I was thinking WREX would be first, then WTVO and WIFR would battle for second/third. Oh well...

What do all of you think?

They have been doing the news for several weeks that way.

Wow, so much for breaking news. So is it HD or not? Hard to tell...

Yeah, the news is definitely HD, and even some of the field cameras.

Now I just wish 13 would get their signal power boosted so I can pick it up in my basement.

captclueless, maybe after the DTV switchover when WREX-DT moves from 54 to 13 you will have better results. when i have my CM 4228 pointed at Madison WREX-DT will get choppy at times, mainly in the daytime. The other Rockford channels do just fine. I live in byron and WREX is directly north and the others are just a little East while Madison is just West of WREX.
Don't forget to rescan your tuner after the switch over

Well, I watched it at noon and at ten today, and it appears to be HD, although not the greatest I've ever seen by a long shot.

Also, every field shot I saw on both broadcasts was definitely both 16:9 and 4:3 SD. Maybe they do have some HD field cameras, but I didn't see one single shot from them on either broadcast today.

Even the shots of the weather maps didn't seem to be HD. Just the in-studio shots of the newsreaders behind the desk and of the weather guy, and that was it.

But I will say that Nichole Vrsansky is even cuter in HD.

does anyone know the status of the rockford channels are they switching or not?

Last night on wifr news at 6, one of the anchors said that all of the rockford stations were going to go ahead with the switch as planned on feb 19th.

My contacts in the market concur.

I wonder why they chose Feb. 19th because wasn't Feb. 17th the target??

The White House wants your opinion on The DTV Delay ACT Bill
President Obama said he will not sign the DTV transaction act into law on Monday until he hears what the public has to say, you can comment here

http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing_room/dtv_delay_act/

Here's the list of stations that have notified the FCC of Feb 17th sign off.
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_publi...A-09-221A5.xls

I meant the 17th. sorry.

Hey all,

WREX is not doing well with 12 kw down here in DeKalb. At my place on the northwest side, I used to get it easily with my ChannelMaster 4228 UHF antenna. But now, I only have VHF antennas pointed east and south. Picking it up off the side isn't working from either antenna. I have one for standby use and that one may need to be added to my antenna arsenal to get it. As a side note, I have a ChannelMaster 4228 (discontinued) UHF-only antenna at work, and it's near the top of a 80' building, or about 60' up. It gets WREX-DT in going from good to bad. But to be fair, 13 analog off that thing was multipath Hades and I fully expect my third generation tuner isn't liking it.

But on a nastier note, they couldn't even lock it from the NIU Holmes Student Center antennas, some 180' up! They get blips of it, but a lock isn't there (it's even too weak to resolve any PSIP data). To be fair, those antennas are probably just UHF antennas, albeit professional (cable TV) quality ones. In any case, until that issue is resolved, it's been taken off the NIU campus cable system and replaced with WTVO-DT instead, which proverbially pegs the signal meter.

Edit: I unhooked one of my two ChannelMaster 4228 mesh screen UHF antennas, which I used primarily just to get WLS and WTTW in Chicago. When my 6th gen tuner came along, one of the two antennas wasn't needed anymore. So, I put it into a VHF slot on my VHF-UHF splitter, put it on the north side of my attic, pointed it towards Rockford, and it took a lot of tweaking to get the reception of WREX to a solid 60% lock, just leaning against a wall until the weather warms up and I can spend more time up there. I can't get WWTO-DT 10 anymore on my VHF antenna pointing south since that slot is now filled, but due to a hill in the way, I rarely got it anyway. If they go 80 kilowatts, then it'll happen, but until the weather warms up, this is what I have for now, which is fine.

Also, a friend of mine in Waterman, using a Winegard HD7084P pointed at Rockford, is now able to lock WREX-DT solidly for the first time. And, a guy on the Chicago OTA board who lives in Plano, 25 miles southeast of DeKalb, got WREX for a few minutes this afternoon, but then lost the signal. He can lock WTVO fine, but not WIFR or WQRF.

So much of our equipment would need to be upgraded/replaced first, and with this economy, that seems far off. (Then again, I've been in for surprises before, and I've only been in this business for a year.) I think the studio cameras are digital; the field cameras are definitely digital but probably not HD-capable. However, our production board is an analog Ross 630, our master control switcher is a 20-year old Grass Valley model, and our house routing is all analog --- I'm no engineer, but I think those are our weakest links. IMO, the RVS-630 would need to be replaced with a digital switcher before we could even consider HD production.

Is WIFR-DT moving back to 23 or did I miss somethng? 13 now pegs the signal indicator on my Insignia Converter box in Byron Il with CM-4228. On my HDTV 13 scans in as 0.1 and 0.2, I rescanned a couple times and it keeps going back to 0.1

I have an antenna in my garage that does a great job. I own a flat panel samsung tv and I have one antenna line split, one to the tv and one to my vista media center computer to record tv.

After a rescan, my samsung tv picked up all the channels perfectly, all with strong signals, even three channels from madison.

After a rescan in Vista MC, I can get all the stations but WREX. WREX shows zero signal and does not work at all.

I know its not a matter of fact that the antenna is not strong enough, as I can pull in a 75% lock on three madison channels in VMC, and they come in crystal clear, and again, WREX is 100% on my samsung tuner.

I am wondering if it is the way VMC handles finding tv stations in your area... I believe WREX switched bands or something, and it just may not be updated in the VMC software yet. The VMC software seems to 'tune' based on zip code.

Did this make sense? Does anyone have any idea or suggestions how to fix this? I appreciate the help.