Because there have been some activity going on lately on Madison's west shared TV broadcast tower, and there have been some reception problems, I decided to take a BER count while I recorded football games broadcast on the two stations that we have discussed previously: WISC-TV and WMSN-TV (VHF).  What I found was interesting:

WISC  3.1 (689 MHz): 1 correction.  (~3PM signal strength 100, S/N 33 dB).
WMSN 47.1 (201 MHz): 296 corrections.  (~3PM signal strength 95, S/N 31 dB).

During this three (3) hour period, neither station had an uncorrected packet.  That's some pretty nice shooting since just a few days ago!  Good work, guys!!!

Equipment:
Antenna - RCA ANT1400 magnetic loop omnidirectional
Distribution Amplifier - Terrestrial Model 480 - gain: max, FM filter: in, all 4 outputs loaded
Receivers - TiVo HD DVR x2

I'm using a pair of stock (aside from the 1GB HDs) HD TiVo boxes.  That gives me 4 ostensibly identical tuners, and by switching between them I get a statistical average that should negate any manufacturing tolerances or other differences.  At any one time I can get a statistical sample of up to two readings.  But for plotting trends I have as many as four readings.  In other words, if I'm seeing a problem for days or weeks, I can be assured that it's not a flaky tuner, feed line etc. that could be causing false readings.

This is great news.

The article is here: http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/WMTV_NBC15_Is_Now_Broadcasting_News_In_High_Definition_105053489.html

Jam Pro,

Are you using a pc tuner and tsreader for BER and signal information?

I understand the existing waveguide was for VHF 11, which is where they are digitally, not UHF 47.  You're correct that it won't work for UHF 49, which is where they are going digitally.

Good to know, JP.
Will give them a look/see as I have already checked out WISC and Milwaukee's WTMJ and WITI over the past year or so. After having seen news in HD, like other programming, I do have not watched any other news channels....

I am just hoping, since I have Dish, that it happens before 11/1 so I can utlilize the OTA in case there is no resolution by that time.

LOL...I'm reminded of what an old antenna engineer / tower climber predicted about the future of broadcasting maybe 20 years ago.  He said that everybody would have cable, and that OTA TV transmission would cease to exist...soon.

Well Frank, IIRC you owe me a nickel.

Just a few days to go...

To be fair to the engineering staff at WMSN and their vendors, they're facing a tough challenge with plenty of unexpected surprises.  For example, the existing "channel 47" waveguide (fancy name for a pipe) that they had planned to use to feed their new UHF antenna...well it doesn't work at two frequency notches up.  After all that careful planning, and with their new transmitter and antenna ready to go, they got held up by a plumbing problem.

And they still have the "devil's in the details" phase to go through...

Kerry said not to hold him to that as a firm date.  So let's hope for the best, and not blame anyone if something else untold might happen.

That's TV. folks!

Looks like WMTV is now Madison's second station to offer news programming in HD.  Congrats, guys!