Mobile, AL / Panama City, FL - HDTV - Page 125

WALA has been at 77 signal strength at my house for ever until it was removed from Dish . Say whatever you want, but that is my story and I stand by it. Maybe they should be reported to the FCC, for not running at full power.

FCC rules require a station to maintain a power level of 85% to 110% of licensed power. As long as they are within that range, they are legal.


8 actually looks pretty decent, though they'd have to watch for possible interference concerns regarding WDAM-7 Laurel MS.

- Trip

Trip do you think going from 85 to 110% would make enough of a difference for us to notice?

I could have sworn that WJHG has been broadcasting on channel 7 since the digital transition!

Possible. 24.65 kW to 31.9 kW.

- Trip

It is on 7.

- Trip

I just found this weird on WEAR-TV on Dish Network.

I never seen that color before... On Digital TV, it was black...

Why did most of the stations switch to a uhf frequency for the digital transition?

For marketing purposes, I can certainly see why a station which was on a certain analog channel would keep the same digital channel, but, apparantly, few did.

And I noticed that WALA, while not keeping the channel 10 frequency, switched to channel 9. Not sure what their rationale was.

Like in the old days, would a digitial transmission on a VHF frequency carry a greater distance, using less power, or is the frequency difference less relevant? I assume the latter, becuase otherwise, the airwaves would be filled with VHF assignments, and that does not seem to be the case.

You would think so...
Turns out that VHF, especially channels 2 to 6, are more susceptable to noise. In analog you don't notice it because your eyesight auto corrects for it unless you look for it. In digital it results in blocking, loss of signal (it takes several seconds to re-clock) or total inability to lock to the signal. Notice how much more touchy antenna aiming is for digital.

It's actually pretty complicated and I don't understand all the ins and outs of the transition, but I'll do the best I can.

The UHF channels work better with the digital signal. Impulse noise and other factors that make VHF low and even VHF high less than ideal for digital transmissions aren't as much of factor, if at all, on UHF. That's one reason many former VHF stations migrated to UHF permanently after the transition.

I think the main reason stations migrated to their same VHF channel or one nearby is one of cost savings. By staying with or near the same VHF channel, they can reuse parts of the transmission system including the antenna. That stuff is very expensive, and converting from a VHF to UHF operation means replacing pretty much everything at the transmitter site.

The impression I get from LIN, who owns WALA, is they are cheap operators, hence the desire to reuse the existing analog 10 antenna for digital operations on 9.

All things being equal, I believe even with digital transmissions, VHF broadcasts travel further with less power. But as PBSengineer noted, the noise factor prevents it from working well in the real world.

This was also commented on by PBSEngineer, and it makes a lot of sense. The noise was there in analog too, its just the poorer resolution of analog and our ultimate receiving equipment (our eyes) were not as apt to detect it.


'Nuff said. You already know how I feel about that! They overspend to buy the station, and need to make up for it in every other way. Wonder when we'll see Bob Grip in HD? Not anytime soon, I'll bet..


I think you both hit the nail on the head with those responses. Thanks much.

The strange thing is they seem to have HD insert capability on both WALA and WFNA, and use it for weather alerts. So there's at least part of the plant that's HD ready.

I was just getting used to Jeopardy! in HD before I moved down here, now I quit watching because it's still low def. I auditioned all the news stations to see which one I liked best and 10's news team seems like a bunch of teenagers or college students. So I have my doubts about them ever going HD for news.

I've settled on Local 15 for now, and will be asking them about HD plans for news soon. WEAR's studio shots look great but they haven't upgraded the field equipment. WKRG seems to have the same graphics package as WVTM in Birmingham and also apes their use of 16:9 SD for live shots.

It looks like WEAR has been doing widescreen from the field and for their news reports for several weeks now. They don't look to be in HD.

One thing i've also noticed on WEAR is how bad some of their commercials look. Some of them look like they have been mis-rendered, or worse, even sent by email to the station! (If it can be emailed, chances are it's not broadcast quality video).

In this day in and age, the broadcasters are adjusting to a whole new way of putting video on the air. It seems like it's all coming through the internet with tapes not really being used anymore. With so many formats and ways of compressing video, there's always going to be a few spots that can't be converted to the exact standard for optimum viewing.

http://www.lagniappemobile.com/artic...ID=4336&sid=18

Lagniappe in Mobile is reporting that the owners of Blab TV in Pensacola are going to be airing on a megawatt broadcasting signal based out of Wing, AL (which is actually located in Covington County; part of the Montgomery DMA)
The story claims that this is a return to the air for BLAB TV in the Mobile area and that the station qualifies as "must carry".

If i'm not mistaken, BLAB TV (on cable in Pensacola) and WPAN (broadcast) are two separately owned channels that air nothing but local infomercials?

I don't see any record of any new construction permit or license transfer for this new station. Could Lagniappe have mixed up the facts? I know that WPAN used to use a translator in Mobile, but not BLAB TV.

I did see on WPAN's site that they will be back on DirecTV and will add Dish Network coverage in 2012.

If this is a brand new station based out of where it is, how is it going to cover our market and how can it qualify for Must Carry status if it originates out of another market?

I call shenanigans unless someone has something official from the FCC.

BLAB TV is going to be leasing time from WFBD-TV, which will be broadcasting BLAB TV all of the time. Here is a link to an article from the Pensacola News Journal about the changes:

http://www.pnj.com/article/20110313/...xt|FRONTPAGE|s

Isn't Wing where WFBD-48 is located?

EDIT: Mario500 beat me to it. I should have posted instead of running off to do other stuff first!

- Trip

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...&q=call%3dwfbd

As it is now, WFBD barely extends in to Baldwin County, and is practically impossible to pick up in Mobile, especially in the westerm half of the county, which is on the fringes of WXXV's coverage area, also on channel 48. Calling it a Mobile station is an extreme stretch (even though it's licensed to Destin).

How do they determine must carry status? Is it by the actual transmitter site location, or what?

While WFBD is near Wing in Covington County, the TX site is actually in Escambia County, Alabama right near the state line. So if it's by county, then it's technically in the Mobile market.

I've never heard a peep from WFBD or WPAN in Foley with an indoor antenna.

The articles don't answer whether BLAB will get the primary channel on WFBD or if it'll be on a subchannel. And if it's the main channel, will it be completely displacing America One? And when it moves off WPAN, will WPAN be all home shopping?

It's by city of license of the station, which for WFBD, is Destin. There are a few exceptions to that rule (KPBI in Eureka Springs AR comes to mind, which is located in the Springfield MO market but claims must-carry in Fort Smith/Fayetteville AR) but in general, that's how the determination is made.

- Trip

Here we go again...
http://www.multichannel.com/article/...at_Brewing.php

I wonder who's next in line to renew their agreement with LIN, because their track record hasn't been pretty as of late.

And with it comes the annoying crawl during prime time programming... Grr

Im tired of seeing the Dish crawls on 55, but I am 3 weeks behind on shows

LIN & COX have come to terms on a new agreement and WALA & WFNA will continue to be carried on COX.

I'm looking for a hd antennna. Anyone have a Mohu?

Please let the rest of us know if you decide to get one, and how well it works. The reviews on Amazon, quite frankly, look a little too good to be true. If I have seen one 'miracle' indoor antenna, I've seen a billion. I am not sure a single one has ever lived up to anywhere near the hype in the adverising copy. In fact, most such antennas have been nothing more than snake oil.

An outdoor antenna is generally always better, unless you live very close to the transmiters, and they are all in the same direction.

But your neighbors might not like that ugly old antenna on your roof. Becuase of that I mounted a Channel Master 8-Bay UHF antenna in my attic. It gives me pretty good results, but the tall pine trees in and around my yard do not help with UHF reception. I am in Spanish Fort next to the transmitters, but down in a relative hole.

Hey, it's time for a surpising breakthrough, and maybe this is it. But...

Everything that anyone could possibly want to know about the Mobile- Pensacola TV market, or any technical, policical, news or entertainment programming issue must have already been covered in prior posts.

No posts in a month. No reception questions. No nothing.

Guess it's time to go watch some TV.

I'd complain again about Local 15 needing HD news and WALA needing to run syndicated shows in HD, but it'd be beating a dead horse.

Just for fun, I did an analog channel scan a few weeks back, and channel 30 (the HSN channel in mobile) doesn't seem to be broadcasting anymore. I used to get them loud and clear from midtown. Any idea if they're in the process of flash-cutting to digital?

It would be nice to get a low power digital station here that carries other diginets the other stations aren't carrying (like AntennaTV or MeTV.)

I did not realize that any analog channels existed any longer, and I did not know about the channel 30. Was it some kind of low power station, and do those exist anymore?

Here is a link to an article about the station written in January:

http://www.examiner.com/tv-in-mobile...sters-part-one

Programming from the ION Television Network is now available to cable TV customers of Comcast Cablevision of Mobile with digital receivers (or "set-top boxes"). I cannot get programming from ION with a digital transport adapter, even though "ION I" appears on the screen when I have the receiver set for the channel.