Peoria, IL - HDTV

OK, I'll answer part since nobody else has.

WMBD is owned by Nexstar, the second or third largest
non-network station owner. This company prides itself on making
money by buying stations cheap and running them on the tightest
possible budget, doing as litttle as possible to spend money on
improvements. Apparently they are successful, or at least
as successful as possible with their large debt load. These are mostly
mid-market stations.

Doug McDonald

Did VOOM set up the antenna or did you have the Channel Master before you added VOOM?

I'm in B/N also and have been looking to get into HD either with Insight cable (PVR as part of their package) or VOOM. Only negative I've picked up on VOOM is that their local reception antenna is pretty bad. Knowing that picking up locals requires some pull in our area, I have been looking for someone else who has been successful.

Where are you? I assume you live 10 feet from the WYZZ tower? ;-)

Also, the NBA games (don't really care about em) on WHOI have looked great for me. I assumed it was HD?

And yes, WMBD sucks.

Yeah I get em all except 43.1 and I'm closer to their tower than you.

I will say that I did not watch WHOI/NBA last night (sunday), as I'm not a fan, but when I have stumbled across the games they've looked great.

I emailed them at the end of February with regard to their HD programming and overall signal strength/tower height. I was told all would be well by the end of March.

Yes, March. If I'm not mistaken, today is the 15th of June.

If I have a point it's that they had no problem telling me a lie so I'd leave them alone. Hoepfully they were telling you the truth.

If not have you tried to tune into 55-1 (44-1). I know someone in North Peoria who gets it and I get it in Morton so that may be an option.

I had Voom from Jan to May. I had so many problems I had to dump them. I used my own antenna that I picked up from RadioShack that works great with my built in tuner but Voom only had mapped channels. I got two with voom WTVPHD and WHOIDT. Just before I left voom, they did up date the mappings and I got the rest. PQ was fine via Voom or Builtin tuner.

Im in North Normal and I get with Built-in HD tuner on Mitsu a WS-55513

WYZZ-DT 43.01 - NO HD
WHOI-DT 19.01 - Have seen some HD
WAOE-DT 59.39 - NO HD
WEEK-DT 57.01 - Some HD
WTVP-DT 46.01 - NO HD
WMBD-DT 31.01 - NO HD - comes in most of the time
WTVP-HD 46.04 - HD

44 shows on my list but no picture comes in. I had Superior Satellite come to put up a bigger antenna to see if I could get Springfeild but no go. I just got the same channels I get with my RS antenna. I don't think Im going to give my money to insight for the S&it selection of HD.

FYI I believe the WYZZ tower is in Carlock.

Any suggestion on getting more channels would be greatly appreciated.

I'm located in north Peoria, and I will be buying an HD tv soon. The question is should I buy a tv with an integrated tuner or without? If I go with the integrated tuner, will I be able to pick up OTA HD with an indoor antenna? The tv will be located in my basement. I really don't want to go with an outdoor antenna.

If I can get local HD with an integrated tuner and indoor antenna, I'll go with the integrated tuner set. If I can't, I may as well buy the tv without the integrated tuner and get my HD with a STB through Insight.

I'm new to HD so if anybody can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.

Do you have an attic? Try an outdoor/attic antenna. If not, I have heard the wingrad SquareShooter is not bad. In normal, I tried a Silver Sensor in my basement and could only pickup one channel

Thanks for the responses. I was trying to avoid the hassle of finding a way to get the antenna run upstairs. I have a two-story and I'm not sure how to get the wire run all the way from the basement to the attic area above the 2nd floor. Guess I either find a way to run the antenna to the attic or go with Insight.

If it is more appropriate to combine with the Champaign (Springfield-Decatur) DMA thread let me know. There is no thread for the Peoria DMA, but if there is a lot of overlap, or just not enough activity to support it's own thread, I'll combine them.

Am I correct in assuming that you cannot get any NFL games in HD by an OTA receiver on WYZZ, WHOI or WMBD?

If I cannot get any NFL games in HD OTA on these stations, I'm going to hold off buying a receiver and antenna for a while.

I'm in North Peoria and get HD (NFL) with ESPN and ABC. (Insight) Interested if anyone knows if WYZZ has a date for HD.

ggingrich, HeavyC,

Thanks for the responses. I think I'll rent the HD box from Insight for now until the locals start carrying more of them. I will also email WYZZ.

Watching a beautiful game on WHOI right now. Watched some beautiful games on 55-1 WRSP yesterday.

Will not see a HD game on WMBD because they are a nexstar owned station. Same folks manage WYZZ.

Better hope the legislation passes that will allow us to get the national CBS HD feed.

Has anybody contacted WHOI? They have been going from 93 to 0 on the signal strength meter since Sunday.

I'm guessing no HD football in 6 mins but we'll see. I've talked to 2 others in the area who are expierencing the same thing.

I will be firing off an email today, since it looks like others were having an issue. I experienced issues last night during MNF and wanted to be sure that is was not multipath or other issues with my antenna (I thought I have the antenna al sorted out but you never know). The issues were similar to what you described EAW.

The game would freeze (signal strength would be fine) then go to no signal for a second or two then flip back to normal. It would happen on a regular schedule, I didn't time it but it was like every couple of minutes or so and would happen the same each time.

As the game went on it seamed like they were trying to fine tune it and it got worse for half time and the third quarter and then it seamed the same as the first quarter in the fourth quarter.

Did anyone that can get WAND have similar issues on that ABC station or was this limited to WHOI?

Here is what I sent to the Station Manager and the Operations Manager:

-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 10:33 AM
To: T. Stemmler; D. Kuehn
Subject: Digital Signal Problems

Hello,

I am writing to report some signal problems with receiving your digital broadcast on channel 19.1 at my home in Bloomington, IL. I personally experienced these issues last night during Monday night football and it was very disruptive to the viewing experience. Additionally, others have reported similar issues have been taking place since Sunday (www.avsforum.com has discussion thread dedicated to local reception of Digital and High Definition Signals in the Peoria-Bloomington DMA).

I experienced issues last night during MNF and wanted to be sure that is was not multipath or other issues with my antenna (I thought I had the antenna all sorted out but you never know) but after I saw that the issues were similar to what others described I thought that it might be a problem in the digital signal broadcasted or at your station.

The game would freeze for a short time period usually between 2 and 7 seconds(signal strength would be fine) then go to no signal for a second or two then flip back to normal. It would happen on a regular schedule, I didn't time it but it was like every couple of minutes or so and would happen the same way each time. As the game went on it seamed like someone was trying to fine tune the signal to remove the problem, but it got worse for half time and the third quarter. Then it seamed the same as the first quarter in the fourth quarter, like the settings had been changed back to what the were in the first quarter.

Based on this experience I have a couple of questions:

Can you confirm that this was an issue with your digital broadcast signal?
Have others reported it to you(I hope I am not the first one)?
Do you know what this issue is?
Is the problem continuing?
Do you have a fix for it and if so when will it be implemented?

I enjoy High Definition programming and watch your station more because of your high definition broadcasts, but issues like this can be very frustrating, especially during high profile events such as Monday Night Football. I had a group of people over to watch the game and they were not pleased with the experience because of this and made comments like “High Definition does not work” and “Why should I get HD if the networks can’t get it right”. I personally have seen and do see it done right over the air and with DBS systems and I tailor my viewing to those who do it right. To get more folks jazzed about HD and to get them to move to HD we need to have stable systems that deliver the programming and try and make it fool proof. Working with issues like this can be very difficult for the average viewer and we need your help to make it simpler and cleaner.

I know that OTA digital broadcasts can be very effective at delivering HD programming. Additionally, I am sure that you are concerned about the delivery of your broadcasts and have approiate resources devoted to the resolution of issues such as these. I would appreciate a response to the questions above and can provide any additional information you need.

Thanks,
Ryan
------------------------------

Here is a response I got from who I believe is an engineer:

-----Original Message-----
From: F. Roe
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 12:43 PM
To: Ryan
Subject: DTV

We are having a problem with our DT transmitter, please be patient as we correct this problem.

Fred

Cool. I believe WHOI.

Unlike WMBD and WYZZ who tell boldfaced lies to people in hopes that they will go away.

A further Update it appears that this issue was just a pre-cursor to a larger problem. Good luck to them getting it fixed!

-----Original Message-----
From: F. Roe
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 2:38 PM
To: Ryan
Subject: RE: DTV

A further update……………..our transmitter died completely but parts are on the way.

I have better luck with 17-1 than 19-1. I think 17 went HD a year or so before 19 and don't seem to have issues that often. I also live in Bloomington.

Channel 31 and 43 are driving me nuts though, I don't think they ever go HD. I hate what they have done to the Sunday Ticket this year. Now when a game is on 31 and 43 (in SD of course) I am blacked out from the HD version from Direct TV.