Late one weekday evening in the mid-1990s, a team of broadcast engineers gathered in southeastern Wisconsin to discuss the future of TV.

More than a decade before the majority of Americans would ever hear about television's "digital conversion," or about the digital converters they would need to buy to ensure continued access to mainstream broadcasts, it was in Milwaukee that a team gathered to test the feasibility and functionality of a digital TV signal.

"It was part of a General Electric-Sony experiment, I believe, where we were one of the first in the country to broadcast a digital signal as an experiment very late at night," said Tom Dvorak, Milwaukee Public Television's director of broadcasting for the past 28 years. "We flipped the switch and they picked up the signal at the top of a building in Chicago, the signal that had emanated from our transmitter."

Digital TV chalked up another impressive victory, in its journey to becoming the new standard.

It was only a year ago that American broadcasting finally went digital, improving the average small-screen picture quality for millions of rabbit-eared Americans and leading programmers and broadcasters to broaden their horizons.

Since the beginning, Wisconsin has been at the forefront of the movement. Apart from those initial digital tests in the '90s, Dvorak and his counterparts across the state - as well as the nation - have been engaged in a vigorous programming debate for more than a decade about how best to use the new capabilities of the digital band. "There were plenty of debates: How are we going to program in a world where we can have multiple channels per station?" he recalled. "How can we rush to adopt the new equipment we'll need to improve picture quality? This is what has dominated our conversations."

On the evening of Sept. 15, 2008 - almost six months before the nation went digital - it was Milwaukee that emerged as one of the first communities in the nation to embark on a digital TV test across southeastern Wisconsin. Around 5 p.m. all analog signals were shut down in a preface of what was to come.

Today, more than a year after the informational campaign drew to a close and the country took the high-def plunge, it's less the technical obstacles or achievements of an all-digital world that's sparking buzz among consumers than the additional programming possibilities that Dvorak and his colleagues across the nation have been debating for years.

Just consider: When the digital conversion finally occurred, not only did the home viewer start receiving higher quality picture and sound, but they started tapping into a digital spectrum that carries through the air multitudes more data and information.

As a result, home viewers are now receiving more channels of programming on their home television than ever before.

In the case of Dvorak and MPTV, this means that where there once was just Channel 36, there is now a portfolio of Channel 36 programming - to be found on 36.2, 36.3, 36.4, 36.5 and so on.