WMLW upgrading broadcasts next year?

[jeffy]

Last night I emailed the following to WMLW:

 

You should be embarrassed with the horrible quality of tonight's broadcast of the Brewer game. Your channel normally has a much worse picture than FSN, but tonight you have set a new low.

 

 

They just responded with:

 

We wanted to respond to your complaint about the Milwaukee Brewers game broadcast on September 1, 2010. A piece of equipment failed at our transmitter causing the video to go dark. We apologize for any inconvenience this equipment failure caused.

 

As we move ahead with plans for the 2011 season, WMLW will be upgrading its transmission to high definition.

 

Again, we are sorry the problem occurred, and hope you continue to watch Milwaukee Brewers games on WMLW in the future.

 

Thank you for writing.

 

I don't have HD but I thought some might be interested in this apparent upgrade. Hopefully, in order to do HD, they will have to upgrade whatever it is that leads to the normal poor quality picture that they put out for Brewer games and it won't just mean a poor quality picture in the HD format.

[chadomac]

That's nice to hear. I was at a bar last night and saw the game on, and I thought the bar just had a really bad television. I watch 100 Brewer games a year, but if it's on WMLW I always look around for ANYTHING else to watch instead. It's truly terrible, especially once you see the games in HD.

[Outlander]

It's about time they did something. I understand not everybody gets cable and they are trying to show games to those individuals but it is hard to watch the games on WMLW when the night before I watched it in HD.

[TheEndless7]

Yea, if you think WMLW is bad without having HD, you should try from going to a game on ESPNHD or FSNHD to it. It's almost unwatchable at times.

 

It is good to hear though, I believe that the non HD quality will improve tremendously by the upgrade, but I'm not positive on that.

[nate82]

It is not just going from an HD feed to WMLW it is that their normal broadcast is just horrible. The sound is horrible and the picture quality seems like they are using technology from the 1970's to broadcast everything. It is horrible even compared to standard definition on any other channel.

[BrewCrewForever]

I also emailed them and got that exact same response.

[Invader3K]

Well, good to hear that they'll be moving to HD. Seems like Brewers fans all over have been complaining about it, not just a handful of videophiles.

[Hofbraunhaus]

Best news I've heard all day. I had to turn the game off last night because the picture was so horrible, even by WMLW standards. My dad just bought his first HDTV two weeks ago and previously always thought I was overreacting when I complained about WMLW games. He called me last night during the game and said he finally understood.

[Invader3K]

Best news I've heard all day. I had to turn the game off last night because the picture was so horrible, even by WMLW standards. My dad just bought his first HDTV two weeks ago and previously always thought I was overreacting when I complained about WMLW games. He called me last night during the game and said he finally understood.

That's hilarious. A convert believes!

[bjkrautk]

...that's great, in theory, but my concern is what FSN will do with WLMW HD broadcasts.

Will FSN be able to split out a WMLW HD broadcast for FSN SD while showing the game properly on FSN HD....or will the FSN HD broadcast be the same as FSN SD.

 

 

(I just don't want double-letterboxing; putting black bars at the top and bottom of the screen to keep the 16:9 aspect ratio for FSN SD, and then putting in the black columns to preserve the 4:3 aspect ratio of the SD broadcast on FSN HD.)

[carniesandrubes]

...that's great, in theory, but my concern is what FSN will do with WLMW HD broadcasts.

Will FSN be able to split out a WMLW HD broadcast for FSN SD while showing the game properly on FSN HD....or will the FSN HD broadcast be the same as FSN SD.

If WMLW does indeed go to HD, none of that should matter.

 

The problem is that WMLW is a sub-channel of WDJT (CBS 58). There is only so much bandwidth they can use for all their subchannels (usually not enough for 2 simulatneous HD streams + their other sub-channels). First priority will be whatever primetime programming is on CBS at the time, so don't expect great quality on WMLW. They might even just go with a widescreen, non-HD feed. The picture quality will be better, but it likely won't be true HD.

[Godspeed]

WMLW also runs on 41.1 (in addition to 58.2). Ideally they'd boost the signal on that channel and drop 58.2, freeing up more bandwidth for CBS HD.

[InsomniacInkRoss]

Last night I emailed the following to WMLW:

 

You should be embarrassed with the horrible quality of every broadcast you have ever done.

I tweeked this to what you should have said.

 

I wouldn't hold your breath on any promise from Weigel broadcasting (owners of CBS58, WMLW41, and Telemundo63). I wasted five years of life working there based on promises of improvement and upgrades. Let's not forget this is the station that went dark during UWM's first trip to the NCAA tournament, had a $250,000 live truck fall thru ice on a frozen lake, uses stadium cameras for Telemundo Brewers games, and countless other braodcasting attrocities.

 

As for: "A piece of equipment failed at our transmitter causing the video to go dark."

[/i]

I would love to know what 'piece of equipment' fails in such a way that video only goes dark but nothing else is affected.

[Invader3K]

had a $250,000 live truck fall thru ice on a frozen lake,

 

Well now, that's a story I'd be interested in hearing.

[jeffy]

Last night I emailed the following to WMLW:

 

 

 

You should be embarrassed with the horrible quality of every broadcast you have ever done.

I tweeked this to what you should have said.

 

Thanks, but then still need an adjective to describe the most recent one, which was far worse than their normal poor picture...what would be far, far worse than horrible?

 

So that's why those telemundo broadcasts were so bad...I watched those back when for some games that was the only option.

[Godspeed]

had a $250,000 live truck fall thru ice on a frozen lake,

 

Well now, that's a story I'd be interested in hearing.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/29493229.html

[InsomniacInkRoss]

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs260.ash1/18765_1277558669686_1551593334_30727923_8314893_n.jpg

[alwaysrocking]

Has anyone heard if wmwl will be going hd this year for brewers games. I don't see why they cant go hd. Wtmj has 2 sub channels i believe at least 1 of them is in hd! If wmlw cant hack it then the brewers need to see out another channel that will carry the games in HD! Its ridiculous that in the year 2011 we have to watch any games in standard definition.

[Invader3K]

alwaysrocking, I was wondering the same thing. Yesterday's game on WMLW definitely wasn't on HD (same crappy SD picture). Since we haven't heard anything at this point, I have to think their claims last year have not come to fruition.

[Mass Haas]

Here's all your details on the broadcasts this year.

 

Personally, I'm more concerned that the Extra Innings package provides such limited HD.

 

Of course, grousing about 15 WMLW non-HD broadcasts is a bit silly when one considers everything going on in the world, but in the limited discussion this focuses on, of course folks will moan some.

[alwaysrocking]

Matt sure many things in the world are more important. Why be a brewers fan then with that reasoning they are very unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

 

I would just think that in this day and age every game should be in hd, of course cbs 58 news isn't in HD yet its not even in widescreen so why would I expect a game on on WMLW be in HD. Once you watch nearly everything in HIGH DEF, Standard Defination looks like black and white tv. Just saying!

 

Even worse is Saturday nights game is on WMLW, the 1st chance for most of us to watch the brewers this year, most of us work tomorrow, ugggggg!

[honuswagner21]

Personally, I'm more concerned that the Extra Innings package provides such limited HD.

 

Of course, grousing about 15 WMLW non-HD broadcasts is a bit silly when one considers everything going on in the world, but in the limited discussion this focuses on, of course folks will moan some.

Extra Innings on DirecTV has just about everything in HD that is broadcast in HD as far as the Brewers are concerned. The part that bugs me is that the WMLW games are still produced by FSWi and thus use their HD capabilities. I noticed this last season when they would show highlights on MLB Network after the game and they were definitely getting the HD feed and no, it wasn't the other team's broadcast. I usually use these WMLW games as an excuse to tune in either to the radio or do something else entirely. 100% fail on the part of the Brewers for not requiring some sort of HD broadcast to simulcast in the local market. As mentioned, this is 2011 and not 1990.

I am excited about the FoxMO being available. Somewhat concerned about how the music referenced in the article will be used throughout the broadcast. I am kind of hoping that they don't play a song everytime they show a replay of a homerun. Coming back from commercials would be fine and maybe when they flash player bios and other stats.

[Mass Haas]

Extra Innings on DirecTV has just about everything in HD that is broadcast in HD as far as the Brewers are concerned.

Yeah, I get EI via Comcast and nine out of ten Brewer games I'll see will be non-HD. Sigh...

[bjkrautk]

I am excited about the FoxMO being available. Somewhat concerned about how the music referenced in the article will be used throughout the broadcast. I am kind of hoping that they don't play a song everytime they show a replay of a homerun. Coming back from commercials would be fine and maybe when they flash player bios and other stats.

Didn't they do something awfully similar to this towards the end of last year? Punctuating some of their late/post-game production with a song montage. (The song in my head as I think about it was "Breathe" by Ryan Starr....might have the name wrong. I think there may have been a few other songs used as well. They also used "This Town" by O.A.R. to punctuate a number of FSN ads right around the same time.) It stuck out to me last year, because it was so random and abrupt that they dropped it in where they did. At the same time, it wasn't offensive, and didn't take away from the game coverage, so I didn't mind.

 

[chadomac]

I don't think I can watch WMLW games ever again. It's so dark and blurry it's ridiculous. I seriously can't believe they have such a terrible broadcast.