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DTV Transition

S

scooterodell

Guest
So... how can I make sure this is related to radio? Well, I read about this week's DTV transition in Fybush's North East Radio Watch, so here we go...

I've been using DTV converter boxes for almost a year now. Rescanned Friday night and a couple of times over the weekend. I can now pick up 51 out of Buffalo with four different subs. 49 is now coming in, too. But I cannot for the life of me get 10 on either box, and I can only get 13 on one box. The rest of the Rochester signals come in fine. Anyone else having trouble with 10 and or 13?
 
scooterodell said:
So... how can I make sure this is related to radio? Well, I read about this week's DTV transition in Fybush's North East Radio Watch, so here we go...

I've been using DTV converter boxes for almost a year now. Rescanned Friday night and a couple of times over the weekend. I can now pick up 51 out of Buffalo with four different subs. 49 is now coming in, too. But I cannot for the life of me get 10 on either box, and I can only get 13 on one box. The rest of the Rochester signals come in fine. Anyone else having trouble with 10 and or 13?
Click to expand...

Scooter...sounds like you might be using a UHF-only antenna that can't get the VHF signals 10 and 13 are now putting out?
 
Scott, thanks for the pictures of the Buffalo-Rochester analog TV turn off. I grew up watching 2,4, and 7 in Buffalo with a vague recollection of 17 as a NBC station before becoming WNED. Nice job!
 
Scott Fybush said:
Scooter...sounds like you might be using a UHF-only antenna that can't get the VHF signals 10 and 13 are now putting out?
Click to expand...

I'm using traditional rabbit ears with a UHF loop in the middle - pretty standard for an analog antenna. Anyone know if 10 and 13 are running at a lower power level now? Back before I had the digital boxes, I could get 10 and 13 on their analog VHF frequencies just fine.
 
"I'm using traditional rabbit ears with a UHF loop in the middle - pretty standard for an analog antenna. Anyone know if 10 and 13 are running at a lower power level now? Back before I had the digital boxes, I could get 10 and 13 on their analog VHF frequencies just fine."

They're running a lot lower ERP (about 15 dB down from their old peak power levels, although peak analog ERp and digital RMS ERP aren't equivalent--you get significantly more bang for your watt in digital mode). They may have seen the trouble coming, since even before they made the switch back to their old channels for digital broadcast, they filed a CP application with the FCC to triple it. I'd be willing to bet a lot of other stations will do likewise.

We're making the same discoveries now that were made in the early days of analog TV 60 years ago--it takes a lot more power to satisfactorily serve a metro area than the FCC originally thought. You'll see a reshuffling of power levels, and perhaps even further channel shifts for individual stations, in the course of the next few years, in the same way TV was re-aligned back in 1952 after the "freeze".
 
Well, I know Mr. Fybush would be very happy to learn that our nine year old daughter is with the program.

She came downstairs from her bedroom on Saturday morning and triumphantly reported that she rescanned and all the channels are just fine.

:D
 
I really have to feel sorry for those living in rural areas who don't have cable or the dish. They are the ones who are truly getting the short end of the stick in this new era of DTV. I am sure because stations are operating at lower power, their signals aren't being seen as far away from their metros as they were before.

Where I grew up, if you didn't have cable, you had to rely on reception of mostly VHF stations from 75 to 100 miles away. The signals came in remarkably well with a good outdoor antenna. Now, I am sure the situation is far different.
 
JakeLongwell said:
I am sure because stations are operating at lower power, their signals aren't being seen as far away from their metros as they were before.
Click to expand...

Jake, it's not for lack of power. Most are running higher power than they used to. All the Buffalo stations are now on UHF channels. The propogation is MUCH different, being more line of sight. It doesn't fill in like VHF signals did, particularly the lower V's. The lost viewers in the southern tier are due to the ridges and hills between the transmitters and viewers. The stations went by the engineering predictions and the total contours match analog but did not take into account lost viewers in the valleys. Not much can be done for them except for adding translators or on-channel repeaters. (Of course there is always cable or satellite, but people who traditionally made use of free TV are resistant to paying anything now.)
 
Bob1370 said:
They're running a lot lower ERP (about 15 dB down from their old peak power levels, although peak analog ERp and digital RMS ERP aren't equivalent--you get significantly more bang for your watt in digital mode). They may have seen the trouble coming, since even before they made the switch back to their old channels for digital broadcast, they filed a CP application with the FCC to triple it. I'd be willing to bet a lot of other stations will do likewise.
Click to expand...

I hope that CP gets through quickly. My sister-in-law works in a nursing home in Gates and had the task of re-scanning all of the residents' DTV boxes. None of them can get channel 10 now, and the residents are not pleased with the loss of Kevin Williams!
 
Where I live Time Warner Cable simultaneously lost the channel 8 video and channel 11 audio for about 45 minutes or an hour around 6:30 this evening. It’s not the first such outage I’ve noticed affecting a local over-the-air station in the last few days – could there be any connection with the DTV changeover?
 
A friend of mine with a place in the Southern Tier near Ellicottville says that Buffalo TV disappeared in spite of a 30' high antenna with rotor. All he can get are a couple of god-squadders out of Jamestown.
 
listener-in said:
Where I live Time Warner Cable simultaneously lost the channel 8 video and channel 11 audio for about 45 minutes or an hour around 6:30 this evening. It’s not the first such outage I’ve noticed affecting a local over-the-air station in the last few days – could there be any connection with the DTV changeover?
Click to expand...

Doubtful. We and WROC both have direct fiber feeds to TWC, so it must have been something else...
 
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