Madison, WI - HDTV - Page 7

Question: Kinda OT for the topic, but wasn't sure where else to ask.

Looking to get a Hitacthi 57S715 maybe around tax time. I've tried asking at American (only ones in town that seem to have the set) if they know of any calibration people and they don't, and searches on Yahoo turn up nada.

So, anyone know of some HD calibration people in the area? I'm in madison over by warner. Does Charter offer anything?

Also, since I'm here, how is Charters HD service now? Anyone using the Cable Cards?

The packer game looked good today, but had many 1/2 second audio dropouts, was it just my setup or did you all have audio problems?

It looked and sounded great to me. No dropouts of any kind!

I had a couple of audio dropouts towards the end of the game

Can anyone confirm this for me please?

Sent an email to charter asking about their hdtv service and which channels are encrypted or not.

The response I got back was "all channels are encrypted, no exceptions"

I had Charter HD service in Fox Lake for awhile and all the HD channels were encrypted, in the 770 - 790 range. Performance was spotty at best as well and in this area there was / is no option for a recorder for the foreseeable future.

Dopped my Charter TV service and went with D* and OTA. Even with the occasional rain fade and OTA reception issues it's much better than anything I had with Charter.

NAN,

I've got Charter HD and I've been pretty happy with it. No Fox or PBS though so I have to get those OTA.

There aren't any local ISF calibration guys that I know of. I ended up having my Pioneer 643 calibrated by Dave Levy from Des Moines. He's one of the resident experts over at www.***************.com. He does road trips sometimes if enough people can be done on the same trip.

John

I'm happy with my Charter HD service here in Madison. I'm just waiting on them picking up Fox47 and offering the Moxi DVR. I was told back in August that it'd be early Sept. I call at the beginning of every month, so I'll find out the latest status in about a week.

I thought they did pick up fox? Wasn't it in this thread that there was a fox engineer posting about a game?

Also, here's a really really stupid question. But I have to ask. Current signal is split thus : Living room tv, two seperate bedroom tvs, and cable modem. If I upgrade the signal to HD for the living room, am I correct in assuming that the rest will just continue as before?

Like I said, really stupid question, and i'm almost certain the answer is yes, but its nagging at me you know?

Last I heard Sinclair Broadcasting and Charter will still in negotiations on carriage. Also, you are correct, the rest will continue just as before. You'll just need a box for any TV you want HD on.

It sounds like the Charter Madison headend must be a little more robust than Fond du Lac. It's good to know that folks in that area are having good luck with it.

I agree about charter. They had a substandard picture when I used their HDTV service. This was in spring and i could not even get a DVI output on their box. I had Voom and it was ok except for their CS and accounting. I have D* now and am very happy. They have new satellites by late spring or early summer and will carry the most HD at that point from what I can gather. I would put lemon juice in a open wound before going back to Charter's TV service IMHO.

gl

Re: D* and new satellites. Don't hold your breath for any specific launch time until Sealaunch (or whoever) has the satellite in their possession. I'm sure you remember that the satellite that provides Madison's local spot beam was at least a year behind the original promised date.

Good point. My wife also gave me hell when I switched to Voom for a brief dance with the devil. She missed her Tivo!! She does not say much about HD or SD TV but take her Tivo away and watch out!!

Not that I know of. I think the only DVR they are offering here in Madison is the Moxi DVR (which can obviously be used as just a SD DVR), but it is still in beta-testing, AFAIK.

Is there any info as to what resolution the local stations are sending?

I have a SamSung SIR-T165, and it gives no feedback as to the native resolution of the broadcast. I have it set to upscale everyting to 1080i, as that's what my projector likes the best.

Also... I thought there was suposed to be a program guide on the HD OTA channels, but the guide is always empty on my samsung.


I am over by the Alient center, and I get 3.1, 3.2, 15.1, 21.1, 21.2, and 27.1 anyothers that my litte antenna is not finding that would compell me to upgrade to something better?


Back when charter offered the HD box for free, I got one, it had DVI, but it was disabled, it had video in, but it's disabled, the box had a place for firewire, but it's disabled.... and with the crappy cable in my house, all HD reception was also .... you guesssed it... disabled. and the analog channeld lookd HORID, and most cable we watch is in the under 100 range. so now with my samsung OTA box, I get Greate looking SD cable upscaled to 1080i, DVI with RGB out that works, upscaling of 3 video in sources, and working firewire.... and all I miss is having 2 or 3 local HD channels over cable.... instad I get 4 HD channels over rabbit ears.

Josh

Josh,

Much like yourself I am converting everything to 1080i as that's the format my TV can display.

No 47.1 on the channel scan? Are the rabbit ears UHF only? 47.1 is coming in on VHF 11. It's one of the stronger signals for me. Of course being almost 50 miles from the towers I'm running a rooftop antenna and a preamp. Also, I believe that 57.1 (32 digital) in now on the same tower as 15.1.

On Charter, I replaced all of the cable in my house with new RG6 coming from one splitter where the cable enters the house. Had Charter trench a new cable from the pole to the house. PQ was still less than good with major pixilation problems on digital and HD channels. On a side note, I do still use Charter for internet service and their service has been stellar.

I rip their TV pq but I totally agree with the internet....Charter rocks there!

Just wanted to let people in the Madison area know that a local ISF calibrator is available. Just call Audio Contractors (out of Oregon) at 608-835-0556, and ask for the lead installer, Jeremy Tiffany who is ISF certified.

Cool thanks.

Now, if anyone happens to use him, please be sure and post. I won't be getting my set until at a minimum feb.

what sort of experence interms of display devices does he have I wonder? the certification does not speak to experence. and there are so many diffrent display types. Just saying that ISF does not make one a literal know-it-all / Can-do-it-all person.

Josh

There is now a thread dedicated to the Milwaukee, WI DMA. Please direct any issues regarding Milwaukee affiliates or Milwaukee area cable issues to this thread: Milwaukee, WI - HDTV

Does anyone live between the two towers, or within 2 miles of both of them? I am looking at houses in this area, and for anything within 3-4 miles of the towers, antennaweb gives a red - medium directional antenna. If I go 12 miles west to Cross Plains, it says yellow - small multidirectional?

Do homes near the antennas really need a bigger antenna? I'd have thought my tooth-fillings would've been able to pull in the signal at this range.

Does the antenna need to be directional in this area? The two towers would be at anywhere between a 60 degree and 180 degree spread, and I don't want to use a rotor because of my HDTiVo.

I have been trying to find someone in the Madison area to install an OTA at my place between Mount Horeb and Verona and I can't believe how hard it has been. I posted earlier and called the place recommended in Sun Prairie, but I am out of their service area. I've called three places in the phone book and am singularly unimpressed by their customer service. I cannot get call backs and one guy flaked on an appointment to come out to give me an estimate and look at wiring.

I am completely unhandy and don't have the time for a do it yourself, so I need to find someone.

Anybody have any ideas? I am really tired of the bad SD reception with locals I get with Dish and want to finally be able to watch "free" TV in HD.

Thanks in advance.

Hey all,

I just thought I post my experiences with my new LG 4200A for OTA and Charter cable. I'm in Burke between Madison and Sun Prairie. The reason why I went with this unit instead of building an HTPC is due to all the hassles poeple had with the ATI HDTV wonder card. I can't PVR HD but oh well. I'm going to wait until someone comes out with their 550 Pro chip.

First off, I really like the unit. It is easy to figure out how to get it to work. I used an indoor Zenith Silver Sensor and was able to pull 47-1 (Fox) OTA but the thing had to be aimed perfectly to the SouthWest-ish area. The other HD stations were no problem. The guy from Chase TV in Sun Prairie that was out said that Fox-47 is the weakest station in Madison. I didn't want my antenna sitting on top of my TV so I had Chase put Channelmaster 3677 up in my attic above my garage. It cost me $130 but then my wife doesn't have to look at an antenna. I make and run my own cables so there was only the minimum labor charge ($35/hr). I get all the Madison and Janesville stations solid in HD. I can't pull any of the Milwaukee stations in though. The installer said that if I wanted to do that I need to put the antenna on the roof and get a rotator to get it to point at Milwaukee. The odd thing with this tuner is that I can never get the Signal bar meter much past the middle even when I have a strong signal. I think it is designed that way.

I also have an remote control A/B box so that I can switch between the antenna and cable. It is interesting to see that things that you pick up when you connect this to Charter. Of course you get all your regular SD cable channels but you also get a some of the local digital channels (ABC,NBC,CBS) that they send out unencrypted and a ton of the digital music channels. There are other strange things you find too like the Tennis channel, Teen channel and all this online gaming stuff they must have now. You also pick up peoples pay per view movies that they order. It's weird if they press fast forward on their remote you see them skipping through the movie. But most people just let it play.

All in all I highly recommend this unit. The picture is awesome. I had Charter digital cable when it frist came out for 3 months and had constant picture problems (blockyness, bad signal). Becuase of that I gave up on Charter digital and was looking at satellite. I'm cheap so I thought I give OTA a try and am very happy. I paid ~$280 for the 4200A. YMMV.

Good luck with the Milwaukee channels if you decide to give it a shot. I'm about 60 miles from the Milwaukee towers as the crow flies. Got a rat shack Vu-190 on the roof with a CM 7777 amping the signal. When I spin the antenna at Milwaukee I get NBC and ABC ok on a good day, CBS and Fox are non-existent, and of course PBS comes in great.

That is interesting on the Charter channels. I never thought to hook cable into my OTA HD tuner when I had Charter.

Thanks for the report spatialight; that's some really interesting and helpful info. That's funny about the PPV movies...I can't get my head around how that works though. Is there a block of channels big enough to accommodate all potential PPV viewers in your neighborhood and they just get doled out per-user?

John

I too have seen this behavior...my HD set (Sanyo HT32744--$700 at Wal-mart). I only watch OTA channels, but I have plugged my charter into my set, and have seen the same channel set as you have. The channels that I see is all of the QAM 'in the clear' channels that charter is passing. They must figure that since very few people have QAM tunners they can pass it unencrypted. I am sure that it will change soon.

I only have charter highspeed, and it takes like 10 minutes to scan all the music subchannels, so I never watch the charter stations (plus the OTA broadcasts are higher quality because they aren't being multicast like charter does--multiple sub channels means less information, ie worse PQ)

I am interested in building a HD PVR, and have been looking at the ATI 9800 PRO All-in-Wonder. I really dont have the time or $$ to be tinkering though. And I haven't found a good site that starts from the beginning & walks a NOOB through how to do it. Anyone who has done it I would be willing to hear how it went.

sterno3 - last weekend I wrote a couple tools which download guide data for Madison OTA DTV channels in XMLTV format, evaluate show selection predicates (like title = 'ER' or category = 'Suspense') to select shows from the guide data, and then automatically schedules them to be recorded by the MyHD card. I just have it download the next day's guide, and schedule one day at a time. It detects conflicts and schedules in priority order to resolve them. The tools are very crude - no GUI - but writing rules to find shows to record is very easy, and the darn thing works. The only problem is that my hard drive space is going bye-bye in a hurry. As far as I know, no one else has created such a set of tools for use with the MyHD card.