Champaign, IL - HDTV - Page 163

Thanks to the posts, I chased down a probable switching problem. It should be corrected now. Please post if you see anything.
Sinclair now owns the GoCom stations and we planning on making improvements asap.

WAND switched 17.2 to Cozi TV today...

Cozi, huh? Well, I, for one, am going to miss having a weather subchannel. So, Sinclair owning WCCU and WBUI, is this owning as in "duopoly waiver" or owning as in LMA? If it's the former, I'd like to point out (and probably not for the first time on this thread) that the eastern part of the market just doesn't get WBUI in all that well OTA. Perhaps, since TheCoolTV is off 15.2, we could get a station featuring the CW's prime time schedule, and selected parts of THISTV's schedule and WBUI's current syndicated schedule. Best part is that it's basically free station from the perspective of Nielson ratings and must carry status. You shore up OTA viewership in the east without going through any of the non-technical/non-regulatory troubles of starting a new subchannel service.

I'm not seeing Cozi on W31BX. 17.2 still is the Local Weather Station, with the L-Bar, weather reports. I suppose I wouldn't mind losing the 24/7 weather format if they kept the weather L-Bar and fit the current weather locally produced weather segments into the schedule somehow (maybe a short weather segment at the hour), as opposed to having them continually on loop, of course, they'd need to be able to break into programming during severe weather. Heck, they could even keep an audio forecast and the NWS radio station audio by sticking it in a second audio program.

Edit: Cozi's website says WAND-17.2, but even it says that it's the Local Weather Station playing right now.
Edited by kc9hzn - 2/12/13 at 11:33am

That is because Cozi TV does not get switched over until around 4pm.

Oh, okay then. So I'll probably never get to see it, except maybe on Fridays. Does it run in the L-Bar or full screen?

You can find their schedule at http://www.wandtv.com/story/21136026/cozi-tv-172 Weekdays programming begins at 1:00 pm, until 1:30 pm, then begins again at 4:00 pm. Weekends, programming is from 5:00 am to 10:00 am on Saturdays, 9:30 am on Sundays.

Okay, I see. Yeah, with the exception of Friday and the post prime time portion of the Weekday schedule, I'm either at work or at church when it's on. Thanks for the schedule, though, it takes forever for Zap2It to update affiliation changes.

Actually as of Friday, they have now updated the info, so if you go in there and look at this week, the programming reflects on 17.2, what WAND lists in their Cozi table, in the link I posted previously.

I went in and set my local OTA as favorites, then switched it back to ATT UVerse as my provider, and it now shows not only the OTA I want to track (14.2, 14.3, 17.2, 20.2, 23.2, 55.2), but also all of the UVerse channels. I would switch between Zap2it & the UVerse WRA, but it takes forever for the guide info to queue for UVerse WRA.

Not an HD topic, but today E* added WICD-15 Champaign to the locals pkg - but ONLY in SD...

I finally got around getting an antenna up in my attic, to pick up 14.2, 14.3, 17.2, 23.2, 55.2. I have found that there is a "sweet spot", in order to pick up not only 23.x at high enough signal, but also to pick up 49.x at a high enough signal. I am using the Antennas Direct DB8, and the Channel Master 7777 with great results. I have the antenna pointed at around 50 degrees, which puts in the the best spot to grab all stations.

I am seeing 23.x in the high 60's, low 70's on our Panasonic TH-42PX75u signal meter, and for 49.x in the high 70's, low 80's. Everything else in the 90's or at 100. I am using this to supplement my UVerse service, since the only sub-channel we get is 49.2 I have also found that our Panasonic grabbed the tower out of Jacksonville for 17, but no way to clear those two ghosts out of the channel menu, due to the short coming of how Panasonic setup the software for that part of the set.

The reason why you're having this issue, is because your using a UHF ONLY antenna to pull in physical ch 13 - which is what ch. 49 is transmitted on, as well as the fact it is NOT transmitted with as much power as the other local stations.
I've used both a VHF High band antenna (WILL-12 is transmitted on physical ch. 9) combined w/a UHF yagi, as well as full V/U antennas here in Springfield & have no problems pulling in BOTH of these stations - & WITHOUT a pre-amp to boot.

But as you said...you're not getting anything on 49.xx that you are NOT already getting on U-verse...
Edited by dishrich - 3/2/13 at 7:15am

49.x I was not worried about, but since I could grab it, I figured try the best to tune the antenna to pull them all. You never know when Uverse will take a crap as it did back in Jan.. I may add a VHF on top of the pole in the attic, but right now, not too worried about it, even though the DB8 is pulling it in.

I went and ordered the Antennacraft® Y5713 from Radio Shack, since the price is not bad for $30. With moving the DB8 back a little towards the North, it will bring back 23.x to 100% Signal, and I can still then use the VHF to pull in 49.x at 100%. I just figured that I wasn't going to worry too much about it, but since I want a good back up, it will be the best choice.

The good thing is, I sit up on the hill on W. Jefferson down the street from the Casey's before Lincoln, so I get pretty good coverage from having it up in our attic. I just did not want to put it up on the roof, since it would be more of a pain if I ever had to do maintenance and the fact that we pulled the pole down that was on the side of our house, when we had our roof done. My father joked with me, that I should just go and take one of the towers that my neighbor on the left or right of me have, that are not using them. Told him too much work
Edited by gregzoll - 3/2/13 at 5:13pm

49.2 being CBS, I'd think that would be one of their highest priorities, being one of the Big Four and all. But anyway, I don't believe in fixed direction antennas for this very reason. You compromise on both stations. I'd just leave it set for 23.x and switch it to 49.x when Uverse messes up.

49.2 has never been a priority for the ownership of the channel. Even watching the basketball game today and comparing it to 1003 on UVerse, the PQ is as bad for OTA as it is on UVerse. Too much mosquito pixel noise that you can see. At least though the picture does not break up like it does with UVerse in fast motion scenes.

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Updated
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Got the antennas up and going. The pole is actually not tilted, just appears that way due to that I was reaching up into the attic from standing on a step stool. It is moving over towards where the Chimney is and back about a foot and a half at the end of the month, when the chimney in the pic comes down, and the roof gets repaired where it is at.


Edited by gregzoll - 3/8/13 at 8:14pm

E* has now ALSO added it in HD today...

Nexstar Broadcasting is the only Broadcaster that I know of that does not have sub channels on their stations in any of their markets...it's a bandwidth and money issue for them However, WCIA/WCIX is the exemption to that rule of Nexstar's as neither station covers the entire Springfield-Decatur-Champaign, IL DMA like Nexstar would want for them to, so that is why WCIA 3 is on 3.1 & 49.2 and WCIX 49 (which began originally ass a repeater of WCIA 3 back in the 1980s) is on 49.1 & 3.2 respectively. check out my good friend Doug Quick's Research on WCIA on his website at http://www.dougquick.com/wciachampaign3.html.

The Nexstar/Mission stations in Rockford both have subchannels. 17.1 WTVO is ABC 17.1 is MyNetworkTV and 39.1 is FOX and 39.2 is BounceTV.

Nexstar's CBS affiliate WMBD-31 Peoria, IL, WCWJ-17 CW Jacksonville, FL & WROC-8 CBS Rochester, NY, all have has Bounce TV on subchannels.
There are several other Nexstar stations that also have (different) subchannels on their stations.

You probably need to recheck your research on this topic...

Just checked the PDF of my May Comcast bill online a moment ago. The bill mentioned that effective June 19, Speed Channel (which IIRC will be later rebranded as Fox Sports 1) will no longer be dual-carried on both channels 68 and 551, only on the latter channel.

I know it's just one channel but does it appear to you that Comcast will eventually try to do away with the dual channel thing that's a carryover from the last part of the Insight years--in other words, could the next "Operation Cavalry" be the elimination of dual channel numbers (e.g. VH1 on 24 and 814; ESPN on 27 and 506; FX on 54 and 116) for anything above Limited Basic or perhaps Digital Economy in favor of exclusively being carried on their 3-digit digital channel?

I think the master line up plan was to keep the XX range as it is and to have a new XXX ranges.

did they change that?

Whenever CC gets off their rears, they are supposed to have aligned guides in all markets, and they are supposed to go with 4 digit channels, just like how ATT went with U-Verse. As for the simulcast of the same channels on the guide, they are not taking up any bandwidth space, they are just mirrored, so that those with just DTA's can watch what those with something like the Pace or Motorola set top boxes or DVR's.

Of course, if you go to set favorites, CC has a tendency of wiping them out when they do a upgrade on the box, or the box gets rebooted by the customer, since they are not held in NRAM.

Comcast now has HD-DTA's available in Springfield; just picked it up tonight & posted a review here:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28301671-DTA-HD-DTA-s-are-here-in-Springfield-IL-a-review

Also, they have the new X1 Multi-room DVR on display; they have now activated 5 tuners in it, as well as the thin-client boxes.
Counter guy & phone tech support guys says they are supposed to be actually available in a couple weeks.

I noticed my HDHomeRun to WMC channels stopped working a week or so ago. Troubleshooting with Silicon Dust, we came to the conclusion Comcast changed their channel metadata, and while clearQAM is still working on TVs the mismatched metadata doesn't play well with Windows Media Center. That, and your discovery that HD-DTAs are already available, hint that the end of clearQAM in our area is coming soon. I think the FCC requires a 30 day notice, and discounted/free DTAs (for a period of time-- two years?).

Of course, around that same time Ceton released their 6-tuner CableCard network adapter, so I upgraded and losing the two tuners isn't a big deal. (If I get time, I'll pick up a cheap antenna and see what my OTA options are.) It's disappointing the clearQAM days are ending, but hopefully DLNA gets mainstream sooner than later. Or UC2B gets built out in the next 2-3 years and other IPTV solutions become available...

TBK

The FCC does not have to require anything for Private owned companies to do for their customers TromboneKenny. As for the "metadata", would not be the first or last time that a CATV provider screwed up the PSIP info on their system. There is a long thread about it, from 2009 in various Verizon forums, about PSIP not being correct, during the Digital changeover from NTSC to ATSC.