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Which TV Station Has The Most Subchannels?

Markxxx

Markxxx

I was wondering in Chicago, WCIU has 1 main channels and 4 subchannels for a total of five channels.

I have heard some PBS stations are running even more as they are running public radio stations on some of their TV subchannels thus they can split the band even more. (I've never found a station to do this, but I've read it).

So what TV station does run the most subchannels? Any ideas?
 
KPAZ in Phoenix (religious) has one main and four subs currently on-air. All are SD.
 
4 subs?
That's nothing.

KSCI-18 Long Beach currently runs 7 (Main + 6). It was one of the first stations to load up it's multi casting channels almost immediately after the digital transition.

KXLA-44 Rancho Palos Verdes runs 8 (Main + 7) and it's sister station KJLA-57 Ventura runs 9 (Main + 8). Both channels air each others main on their sub for a redundant coverage spread.

Of course, none of these channels offer anything in HD and the PQ on the subs is Artifact City. Programming is primarily foreign language on all these subs.
 
Mark said:
I was wondering in Chicago, WCIU has 1 main channels and 4 subchannels for a total of five channels.

I have heard some PBS stations are running even more as they are running public radio stations on some of their TV subchannels thus they can split the band even more. (I've never found a station to do this, but I've read it).

So what TV station does run the most subchannels? Any ideas?
Click to expand...

KAXT-LD (low-power DTV) in San Jose. I don't recall the exact figure, but it exceeds ten. (they were also using minor channel numbers above 100, which isn't supposed to work but apparently on some TVs, does... I'm told they've since fixed that.)

WMVT in Milwaukee is running eight subchannels, three of which are basically radio stations. 36.6 is continuous classical music with a video still detailing the selection currently on the air. 36.7 is similar but with jazz music. 36.8 is the local NOAA weather radio with various weather maps.

Subchannels that don't have much motion (and these three sure qualify!) don't require much bandwidth, especially if you use a statistical multiplexer that can briefly "loan" bandwidth to these channels when they *do* change the display. And audio requires a LOT less bandwidth than video.
 
The last time I checked WFME (66) in NJ had the main channel plus about 10 subchannels. Many of them were "future use" and one had NOAA weather radio.
 
KAXT-LD has the most. It will have 20 subchannels (8 audio-only, 12 with video) when all is said and done. The 12 video streams already exist, the audio feeds may not all be operational yet.

And as Doug said, KAXT-LD was putting its audio subs as xx-101, xx-102, etc, but has now put them on xx-13, xx-14, etc.

- Trip
 
Around here, WBNA in Louisville, KY has a total of 6 streams going (Main + Five Others).
 
Although not an OTA station, in Mexico I saw a cable channel with over 20 subchannels. It was a music service similar to Canada's Galaxie, with different music on each channel, and no video at all, not even on-screen info.

When that Channel 6 audio carrier-only station in New York converts to digital, I wonder if they'll try to put in a ton of subchannels.
 
Cable also has twice the bandwidth in a given channel. 38-ish Mbps versus the 19.393 Mbps for OTA.

WNYZ-LP already operated digitally for a while. I don't think they're doing so anymore. They were showing a single SD feed, mapped to 1-1, that had nothing useful on it.

- Trip
 
I was wondering in Chicago, WCIU has 1 main channels and 4 subchannels for a total of five channels.
Click to expand...

Actually, WCIU-DT presently has a total of seven channels but they are not consecutive:

23-1, 26-1, 26-2, 26-3, 26-4, 26-6, and 48-1.

They had eight but 26-5 was recently taken off the air. 23-1 is a duplication of 26-2, and 48-1 is a duplication of 26-3. I'm not sure if each separate channel number uses more bandwidth when the mapping is duplicated.


Also in Chicago, low-power WWME-LD had seven channels until recently (23-2 thru 23-8), but now the station is down to just 23-2.

23-3 was airing audio Adult Contemporary and Oldies music and video of a motion screen promoting something called "What's up with THAT?".

23-4 thru 23-8 also had the same screen but without the music.
 
WNYZ-LP already operated digitally for a while. I don't think they're doing so anymore. They were showing a single SD feed, mapped to 1-1, that had nothing useful on it.
Click to expand...

Does anyone know if the digital signal of WNYZ-LP (which mapped to Channel 1-1) had audio?

The reason I ask is that the station's actual digital channel is 6 (but displayed on 1-1).

At the same time digital channel 6 was on the air, they were still broadcasting audio in analog also on channel 6 so the station could be received on FM radios at 87.75 FM.

It seems strange that the FCC would allow a low-power TV station to transmit in both digital and analog on the same actual channel number. There are some cases where low-power stations have switched to digital but kept their old analog signals still on the air, however they are are using different channel numbers.
 
avtosalon said:
I'm not sure if each separate channel number uses more bandwidth when the mapping is duplicated.
Click to expand...

It doesn't.

- Trip
 
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