The TV Moves Are Done.

DeadElvis · Jun 12, 2009

WHBQ-TV is now digital on 13; 53 is dark. WTWV-14 has completed its moved to 23, and the signal is improved.

The only shoe left if for Channel 50 to shut down once they finish "nightlight" in a couple of weeks. Nothing new is anticipated until channel 34 signs on (eventually), and DTV 10 signs on (if it ever does).

I understand channel 5 fielded many phone calls from dazed and confused Memphians. WREG probably did, too.

-DE

RadeoEngineer · Jun 12, 2009

DeadElvis said:
I understand channel 5 fielded many phone calls from dazed and confused Memphians.
-DE

Any of the REC engineers? ;D

radiosaur · Jun 12, 2009

Well, I can tell you up here northeast of Millington I got the Tornado Warning voer NOAA radio, then turned on TV5 to watch the coverage. Nothing. Zero.

I was able to move the attic antenna around enough to get a very spotty signal. I got no good information from it. WREG wasn't much better.

Ya know, the human mind can hear through static and see through snow. Both are analog, as is the mind.

What can you make of:

The tornado i ov ch memp sh imm i go doppler ar

I also managed to get a few broken still images, but that's all. AND DirectV was suffering from rain fade.

If my experience was typical, OTA digital TV is in a world of hurt. My house is on the 6th highet spot in Shelby County. I can SEE the WMC and WREC towers at night.

In Shelby County with an attic antenna and no signal?

RadeoEngineer · Jun 12, 2009

And where are the 3" 4 AAA battery powered handhelds you want to take to the basement? I'd take snow over blank.

firepoint525 · Jun 12, 2009

radiosaur said:
What can you make of:

The tornado i ov ch memp sh imm i go doppler ar

You're new to this DTV thing, aren't you? I've been dealing with this crap for the better part of a year now! And yes, I absolutely HATE DTV, but it ain't like there's much on TV anymore anyhow!

:

anotherguyTN · Jun 13, 2009

So when did WHBQ shut down? They were supposedly ssaying 11:59PM, and,I had my VCR set to catch if they did anything special. I know they probably didn't though unless they changed it to where it was during the 9:00 news. I was working late again tonight and missed it.

WJKT Fox 16 in Jackson shut down at about 12:15 in the middle of One on One. They didn't have any announcement or even a trailer that the shutdown was about to happen. They just shut it down right in the middle of the sohw itself, not even during an ad time.

WBBJ ABC 7 was supposed to shut down right before Noon during their local news today. I taped it but haven't been able to watch it yet. I figure they at least made a comment.

I taped WREG and haven't been able to watch it yet either. Did WHBQ or WPTY do anything to note the shutdown time, or did they just shut down like WMC?

tomservo · Jun 13, 2009

What can you make of:

The tornado i ov ch memp sh imm i go doppler ar

I also managed to get a few broken still images, but that's all. AND DirectV was suffering from rain fade.

If my experience was typical, OTA digital TV is in a world of hurt. My house is on the 6th highet spot in Shelby County. I can SEE the WMC and WREC towers at night.

In Shelby County with an attic antenna and no signal?

I think the switch to digital, in the long run, will drive a lot of the remaining OTA viewers to cable or satellite because of these problems. Tonight when the storms moved through my area, WTVA from Tupelo's digital signal was resiliant but still very choppy audio made it nearly impossible to hear what the grad school weather girl was saying. Marsha Marsha Marsha! (The analog was looking so bad as to be unwatchable too, though.)

Actually I was surprised by how well it held since I've only got a small attic antenna and their tower is over 40 miles from me AND they're on VHF channel 8. But that's the crazy thing. Some folks get lucky, some folks get poor reception even looking at the towers. It don't make much sense. ???

For a while this morning though I was getting WREG-DT down here in Grenada like it was a local. Go figure.

firepoint525 · Jun 13, 2009

Zach said:
What can you make of:

The tornado i ov ch memp sh imm i go doppler ar

I also managed to get a few broken still images, but that's all. AND DirectV was suffering from rain fade.

If my experience was typical, OTA digital TV is in a world of hurt. My house is on the 6th highet spot in Shelby County. I can SEE the WMC and WREC towers at night.

In Shelby County with an attic antenna and no signal?

Click to expand...

I think the switch to digital, in the long run, will drive a lot of the remaining OTA viewers to cable or satellite because of these problems. Tonight when the storms moved through my area, WTVA from Tupelo's digital signal was resiliant but still very choppy audio made it nearly impossible to hear what the grad school weather girl was saying. Marsha Marsha Marsha! (The analog was looking so bad as to be unwatchable too, though.)

Actually I was surprised by how well it held since I've only got a small attic antenna and their tower is over 40 miles from me AND they're on VHF channel 8. But that's the crazy thing. Some folks get lucky, some folks get poor reception even looking at the towers. It don't make much sense. ???

For a while this morning though I was getting WREG-DT down here in Grenada like it was a local. Go figure.

Or they will just turn off the boob tube all together, and say the hell with it!!

Ain't nothing but "reality" TV on anymore, which as we all know, is as far from "reality" as you can get! :

tomservo · Jun 13, 2009

firepoint525 said:
Or they will just turn off the boob tube all together, and say the hell with it!! Ain't nothing but "reality" TV on anymore, which as we all know, is as far from "reality" as you can get! :

Maybe this is an opportunity for radio to bring back interesting drama programming. I'd turn off the TV to listen to a show like Suspense or Ray Bradbury Theater. </wishful thinking>

anotherguyTN · Jun 14, 2009

Since I haven't heard anything about what happened with WHBQ and WPTY, I'd assume that they did nothing other than a cold shutdown like WJKT, or possibly with a trailer like WMC. WBBJ and WREG did better than any other stations since they carried the shutdown on a local broadcast.

I tried to rescan my tuner and didn't pick up anything new. I can still get the digital stations from Jackson, which didn't change channels. There was no improvement from Memphis. I can still get WLMT and WPTY occasionally, and still can't get WREG, WKNO, or WPXX. WHBQ moving back to 13 didn't help any. I still can't get them either.

WMC definitely got worse. I could get them occasionally on 52, but now that they're back on 5 and have moved to their old tower, which is 10 miles further away for me, I can't get them at all. I know that I'll need to get an outdoor antenna, but that is a lower priority for me right now.

One change that happened for Charter Cable in Jackson is that they moved WBBJ to where it is actually on channel 7 now instead of 8. This may have been because of technical problems when the analog station was on 7, but it never made much sense to me.

RadeoEngineer · Jun 14, 2009

I was watching Meet The Press this morning on WMC and there were frequent freezups of several seconds, and this was on cable. Maybe the nasty weather has something to do with it.

radiosaur · Jun 14, 2009

RadeoEngineer said:
I was watching Meet The Press this morning on WMC and there were frequent freezups of several seconds, and this was on cable. Maybe the nasty weather has something to do with it.

Wasn't Biden on MTP? Maybve it was just the gaffe filter kicking in.

w9wi · Jun 14, 2009

anotherguy said:
One change that happened for Charter Cable in Jackson is that they moved WBBJ to where it is actually on channel 7 now instead of 8. This may have been because of technical problems when the analog station was on 7, but it never made much sense to me.

Not sure what part doesn't make sense, but if you mean the part about Charter carrying WBBJ on channel 8 before the digital transition, the reason is "ingress" interference.

The cable isn't perfectly shielded. Some WBBJ over-the-air signal leaks into the cable, and interferes with whatever Charter is carrying on channel 7. If they're carrying WBBJ on channel 7 then you get a potentially pretty serious "ghost". (if they're carrying something else, you get a mix of that and WBBJ) Since WBBJ left their digital on channel 43, there's nothing left to interfere with Charter carrying them on channel 7.

anotherguyTN · Jun 14, 2009

w9wi said:
anotherguy said:

One change that happened for Charter Cable in Jackson is that they moved WBBJ to where it is actually on channel 7 now instead of 8. This may have been because of technical problems when the analog station was on 7, but it never made much sense to me.

Click to expand...

Not sure what part doesn't make sense, but if you mean the part about Charter carrying WBBJ on channel 8 before the digital transition, the reason is "ingress" interference.

The cable isn't perfectly shielded. Some WBBJ over-the-air signal leaks into the cable, and interferes with whatever Charter is carrying on channel 7. If they're carrying WBBJ on channel 7 then you get a potentially pretty serious "ghost". (if they're carrying something else, you get a mix of that and WBBJ) Since WBBJ left their digital on channel 43, there's nothing left to interfere with Charter carrying them on channel 7.

That makes sense then. I live about 2 miles away from WJKT's tower in Alamo and there was problems with static from them on channel 67, which is Nick, on some TVs until the shutdown. I guess there would be the same kind of problem with WBBJ closer to their tower. Thanks for the info.

RadeoEngineer · Jun 14, 2009

radiosaur said:
RadeoEngineer said:

I was watching Meet The Press this morning on WMC and there were frequent freezups of several seconds, and this was on cable. Maybe the nasty weather has something to do with it.

Click to expand...

Wasn't Biden on MTP? Maybve it was just the gaffe filter kicking in.

Good one!

tomservo · Jun 15, 2009

w9wi said:
The cable isn't perfectly shielded. Some WBBJ over-the-air signal leaks into the cable, and interferes with whatever Charter is carrying on channel 7. If they're carrying WBBJ on channel 7 then you get a potentially pretty serious "ghost". (if they're carrying something else, you get a mix of that and WBBJ) Since WBBJ left their digital on channel 43, there's nothing left to interfere with Charter carrying them on channel 7.

That's one thing I don't miss about cable. Growing up around Birmingham our cable always relegated religious and barker channels to 6, 10 and 13, the three VHF outlets in town, and they always looked awful.

Another bit of ingress would be from the town's fire department VHF radios, which blanked out channel 18 or 19 every time there was a radio call.

So what would the opposite of ingress be? Outgress?

That same leaky cable system also leaked the other way, and it was possible to ride down my street with a police scanner listening to weather channel audio in the 70cm ham band.

Here's another question: wouldn't a strong DTV signal in the VHF band still potentially cause interference to cable systems, and how would that interference look on screen?

w9wi · Jun 15, 2009

Zach said:
So what would the opposite of ingress be? Outgress? That same leaky cable system also leaked the other way, and it was possible to ride down my street with a police scanner listening to weather channel audio in the 70cm ham band.

I'm pretty sure it's indeed called "outgress"!

Cable systems do (fairly frequently) get in trouble with the FCC over this, when they leak TV signals into the aircraft communications and navigation bands.

Here's another question: wouldn't a strong DTV signal in the VHF band still potentially cause interference to cable systems, and how would that interference look on screen?

Yes. I've observed it here. (we've had a DTV signal on RF channel 10 for several years)

The interference causes the affected cable signal to look weak, "snowy".

If you tune an analog TV (with antenna) to a channel occupied by a digital station, you see snow. If the digital station is interfering with an analog station (now only available via cable...) the snow from the digital station mixes with the program from the analog station.

JoeMorris · Jun 24, 2009

Any idea when My 50 will start broadcasting in HD?

DeadElvis · Jun 24, 2009

It would be hard for them to transmit in HD...

Right now, they have 4 streams running. It would be tough to shoehorn HD in there, too. I suppose one could do it, but the SD streams would have to be really, really compressed.

Don't hold your breath.

50's analog is still on, BTW, running transition-only programming (the NAB "Nightlight" program). I can't recall if they planned to run that until the 26th, or go all the way to July 12 (my list is at home).

DE

DeadElvis · Jun 24, 2009

A quick aside...

I just noticed that WHBQ-13 is now producing local news in HD. Very nice.

WREG is now the only first-tier Memphis station doing news in SD.

DE