Milwaukee, WI - HDTV - Page 13

It's widescreen (16:9) but apparently not HD.
http://www.milwaukeehdtv.org/forums/...ead.php?t=9144

Looking to drop my Cable TV service and just keep road runner, does anybody know if I do this, will I still get the Local Channels in HD via my QAM tuner. All we watch are the local channels so its not worth paying the $60 a month. However we live in an apartment that cant get OTA, I've tried it and its not reliable at all...

Thanks!

Hi,
I'm not familiar with CableTV and QAM tuners to answer your specific question.

But, to get OTA what options have you attempted? What options are available to you?

There are several homemade and "low profile" indoor/outdoor antenna options you could try if "Rabbit Ears" aren't going to cut it. Various Antennas can be had at thrift stores or retail for very little money.

If you have access to your Apartment's Cable Run(s) and the Building has a "Common" OTA Antenna on the roof (who knows you could get lucky) you might be able to "patch" into it with other residents...

Check this link for antenna/reception info.
http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx

If you have no luck with OTA.... Ask TWC about dropping back to "Basic Service", which covers channels 2-25, and 95-99. It should cost you about $20/mo and does include local HD on clear QAM.

Anyone having problems 5.1 audio on CBS tonight? Was trying to watch Survivor but no 5.1 just audio out of the Left Channel...
Any ideas?

Took a quick look/listen at Criminal Minds and it sounds fine (in 5.1). Watching via free wireless digital television.

So I noticed that the CBS 58 Commercials like weather and stuff like that are in at least stereo but the main programming is only mono??? I'm using Tiime Warner Cable QAM and a Moxi DVR...???

Maybe a call to Time Warner is in order?

We have internet through TWC and have been able to just plug our tvs into cable outlets and get basic cable. Since Saturday the cable is out but the internet still works. Has TWC found a way to filter the 2?

Yea they put filters on your line... What did you come from Digital Cable and RR? Or did you always have just RR?

So my 5.1 CBS problem has been narrowed down to the Moxi DVR, I think... For whatever reason it is locking on the SAP audio channel and I can't get it off... I reinitialized the box and started from scratch and it worked... Till I rebooted the box, then same problem... And there is NO way to force SAP off on this thing either... Might just have to go back to Time Warners box and pay the extra money...

Hey guys, just moved down to Milwaukee from up way up north Wisconsin to an apartment The East Side (near UWM) and for the most part all is well.

I picked up a cheapie $20ish antenna from Target to pull in locals for free since we're more of a Netflix couple and U-Verse satisfies that need. Just want the antenna for football and baseball, and she likes it for Glee and House.

Most of the channels come in great in HD- Fox6, CW18, NBC4 including a few others that we really don't even watch. CBS is missing entirely however- I tried a different (more expensive) antenna and it still didn't even pick it up in the channel scan to try and play with the positioning to get it to come in. I returned it and got my cheapie connected again.

..Am I missing something why CBS wouldn't show up at all? Are my cheap-ass antennas not going to cut it? Is my positioning of the antenna that terrible- that it'd need to be moved drastically compared to where Fox/NBC/CW..etc come in?

Any help here is much appreciated.

Milwaukee is a bit more complex at getting a reliable signal, due to several tower locations. Milwaukee is not like Chicago, where Chicago only has their stations on 2 skycrapers (3 if you count 2 LP stations on the AON Building). Was the second antenna used outdoors? If not, then that might be part of the problem. If you can have your antenna outdoors, then that's the preferred method, since digital signals don't penetrate buildings as well (especially on the VHF). Next question is, do yo watch WMVS (one of 2 PBS stations in Milwaukee)? If so, then you need an antenna with VHF-Hi, & neither of those antennas will cut it for VHF. They broadcast on RF 8 (only full power on the VHF with WMLW-LD being on RF 13), while everyone else is on the UHF. With you living in the Milwaukee city limits, I would recommend spending a bit more money for the Winegard HD-1080, & if possible, place it outdoors. I have this antenna, & I got all my UHF stations with little trouble (also get WLS-TV on RF 7 from Chicago). While I live in the Chicago market, it gets all UHF stations. It's hard to say if you can get WMVS as they get interference from WWMT Kalamazoo, MI on the same channel. But if that station isn't of importance to you, then this will be good for the UHF stations. WMVS does have a CP for a translator to broadcast on RF 36 (their former channel for WMVT, which is now on RF 35), whenever they get it on the air. I don't know of any stores local to you that sell Winegard antennas, but most stores don't carry Winegard antennas. The Winegard HD-1080 is no bigger than the size of a large pizza box.

Using UWM as your location, you should have plenty of signal strength, even with the simplest of antennas. http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...81a35f936b894e. DTV is subject to multipath interference, and that can sometime make a signal undecodable. I would suggest trying different locations in the apartment to see if you can find a place with a cleaner signal.

I'd agree. I'm way out in West Bend, WI and I've been able to get 58's digital signal with a "cheap" antenna (UHF/VHF adjustable TV top unit). So it probably has all to do with location. Might get yourself some extra Cable and coupler(s) and test indoor/outdoor locations. When I've been "Up North" around Boulder Junction area... I've found using an Amplifier and a "stick" Antenna (an RCA I picked up at Fleet Farm) outside did wonders... But it is very touchy. Just a few degrees off is all that matters on some of the flaky channels.

Thanks for the speedy replies guys!

Actually, while at dinner with the significant others grandparents, I did a little garage raiding and found an ancient antenna that probably came over on the Mayflower. All it says is, "Kenwood TV" on it and has 2 independent dials. One dial is "1-11" and the other is "0-180 degrees"

With a little messing around with location and the dials I now receive 33 channels in HD- including CBS. I *ahem* tested this out by spending the afternoon on the couch watching football on both FOX and CBS in HD and boy was it was great! Signal meter my Samsung LED TV would steadily read 8 bars (80%) and skip around back and forth to 8, 9 and even 10 (max) bars. occasionally the signal would drop down to 0 for the briefest of seconds and the picture would get a little scrambled but it never lost audio and promptly returned back to 8, 9 or 10 bars.

Flipping it over to NBC for night game provided almost identical results. Some old antenna sitting in her grandparents garage for god knows how long seems to have been our magic elixir of signal.

Glad to hear you've recycled/repurposed it.

Depending on the antenna's specific condition you might look for loose connections/contacts to resolve the brief "0" readings... Of coarse with my "up north" setup it is a wild ride with Full/Zero readings at anytime... It could be someone walking in front of the TV or heck almost anything. The Amp I'm using has a Signal Gain knob which also can greatly raise/lower a signal with even slight touches (it was originally purposed for Analog signal so I'm not sure how "clean" (noisy) the knob is when I adjust it.)

Good luck. I too envy my Grandmother's TV Antenna setup... (It is also very old... but more importantly it is setup HIGH on a dedicated TV Mast. Had always gotten great TV Reception with Analog and now with Digital too)

I have Globecast tv for international content using a small dish outside plus we have uVerse tv for locals and the u200. We pay $50/mo for uverse and $25/mo for globecast. I'm wondering if we can get similar content using globceast. They also advertise this uhf/vhf antenna. Any good? I was considering Roku but the show conteng seems old via netflix or hulu.....any ideas?

Link to antenna
http://www.globecastwtv.com/America/...r-antenna.aspx

As long as you're within 30 miles of the towers, and not down in a valley, that antenna will get you most of Milwaukee (but not WMVS, which is on VHF).
I notice that the price is with a tuner box. You should check your TV, if it has an ATSC tuner then you don't need the converter box from them. You can get better antennas for less money.
But if you do need the box, that price is about right for both.

This is not strictly speaking a local HD question. But the participants in the thread are probably the experts.

I'm a baseball nut out in California and happened to flip on the Brewers-Astros game on Saturday evening (the game that went extra innings). This was available to me via my DirecTV Extra Innings package. The broadcast purported to be HD, and some of the shots did look like HD. But the main CF camera used to show the pitch seemed like it was not really in HD--just a 16:9 SD image. For a second I thought that it was entirely a "faux HD broadcast", something we out here in San Francisco used to get when the local broadcast affiliate had the rights to a small number of Giants games. But, as I mentioned, the broadcast looked like a mix of HD and 16:9 SD. I flipped on the Houston broadcast, but they seemed to be using the same camera feeds/production.

Did I just get this wrong? No real reason to ask other than general curiousity. If all my team's home games had a CF camera in SD, I'd be pretty irritated.

When they run Brewers games (at least that I've noticed) on 58.2 OTA they've been in SD. I can't imagine at in this day and age they're swapping SD cameras in and out for HD ones, or if they're just broadcasting in SD. Haven't given it much thought though.

SD it is.
http://www.milwaukeehdtv.org/forums/...ead.php?t=9260

I'm pretty sure I was watching the Fox Sports Wisconsin broadcast, so the phenomenon I was seeing (if I wasn't just imagining it) was different than the local broadcaster who doesn't do HD.

FWIW, the phenomenon we had in SF was that the local OTA broadcaster didn't want to pay for an HD broadcast truck/facility. So they were using the same cameras but producing an SD 16:9 broadcast. It was passed off as "HD" but clearly was only 16:9.

I can't believe the Brewers aren't broadcast in HD. WCGV would be a good place for it.
Sports in SD just don't cut it anymore.

I'm not sure how many sportscasts are in HD. I know the Chicago Cubs had some of their broadcasts in SD while playing in Arizona. I know WGN-TV's sportscasts look like crap, as I watched a Blackhawks game back in January at a friend's house in Chicago, & I saw lots of blocking. My friend has an HDTV, while I still use an old CRT SDTV with DTV converter box. I'd never know how bad WGN-TV looks on my TV for sports, but I'd notice how bad WCIU looks when they run HD programming on WCIU 26.1, & their other subchannels when bandwidth is taken away to use it for HD.

As for broadcasting in HD or SD, WANE-TV in Fort Wayne, IN aired 2 sportscasts at the same time on their station back in December. With the station near Ohio, they were given permission to air 2 regional games the same day. They had one game on 15.1 in HD, while the other was SD widescreen in 15.2 or 15.3. I never heard how well that turned out. I wonder if any station would do such a thing in Milwaukee, or even neighboring Madison, Green Bay, or Chicago. I don't see Weigel trying such a thing with WDJT, due to This TV & WMLW-LD simulcast (maybe WBME)

I live at UWM and recently lost access to all my OTA hd channels. i was getting them just fine but around november, i lost all of it. i tried to get them back thru a rescan but it did nothing. the university pays for a TWC standard package. is it possible that twc is blocking the channels lost?

If you have your own antenna, then no. If you use an antenna on top of building, talk to maintenance. Maybe the dept head is being paid off to force you to pay for standard TWC package. But could be antenna needs to be fixed.

So what was the result? Did you just need to adjust the Antenna? (Something ate/damaged your Cable/Wire?)

Is anyone else having issues with ABC 12-1 out of Milwaukee? I've tried with two different TVs and two different antennas, and can only get it come in marginally with the better antenna.

The weird thing is CBS 58-1 comes in crystal clear. According to tvfool, CBS is 18.3 miles and ABC is 18.4 miles from me, both at the same angle. Other channels that are further out (e.g. NBC at 19.4 miles but a slightly different angle) come in fine.

Any ideas what is going on with ABC?

AntennaWeb tells me I'm 30 miles out for both 58.1 and 12.1 Both come in just fine here (12.1- "Locked" at 74-76% using a DTVPAL DVR didn't notice any problems).

Did you have problems before or after yesterday? Are you using an Indoor and/or Outdoor Antennas?

Depending on your setup... maybe check for a bad or loose cable/connection?