Waco / Bryan, TX - HDTV - Page 217

Did something change with the power output (or directional output) with KCEN (6) and KWTX (10)? They were coming in fine at my house in Round Rock. I didn't adjust my antenna or change any equipment. They just stopped tuning in. KCEN I get pixellated in the evening. KWTX, nothing. These had been working fine for 6+ years. Just wondering.

It seems that KCEN is working better today, I'm holding a good strong signal. Is it storm related??

What heading are you aiming at?

Shot in the dark here since no one has posted in 3+ month, but I remember that a Fox Waco engineer used to post here. I am wondering if there is any way that we could stop getting Redskins games every Sunday. I know that RG3 plays for them, but he and Baylor don't have much of a following in Bryan/College Station, and I, like most that I know, despise the Redskins. I guess this is part of a larger problem. I would like to see us have our own Fox affiliate and not be relegated to being served by a repeater for Fox in Waco.

The FOX network considers Waco-Temple-Killeen-Bryan-College Station as one market.
As such FOX will not grant a seperate affiliation to any station in Bryan-College Station.
They also will not allocate a dedicated Network reciever for KYLE. (As does CBS to KBTX)

A far as football game choices go, the only options that Texas stations have are Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans.
All other game decisions are determined by the FOX Network Programming division.

Wow, thanks for the prompt reply!

This DMA is bizarre. KBTX's transmitter is in neighboring Grimes County. You could be a DirecTV or Dish customer living at the base of their transmitter, and they (actually the FCC) would tell you that you are in the Houston DMA and not eligible to receive KBTX. I'm sorry to hear that Fox buys into this logic.

On the other hand, cable companies are allowed to offer OTA channels outside of their DMA. It's crazy.

Thanks again for the quick reply though.

Actually cable companies are not allowed to inport out of market TV stations unless they can show that the station is "Significantly viewed OTA" in their DMA.

I finally got DirecTV to send me an AM-21 OTA Tuner for free (they wanted to charge me $50 for the longest time). Anyway, I set it up and everything works fine except KAGS 23 does not show up as one of the available OTA choices. Is there a way to manually add OTA channels to the AM-21?

Nope. You get only the guide data that they transmit in the data stream. The AM21 doesn't run a true scan like most OTA tuners do. FWIW, Tivo and Boxee have the similar limitation.

At least you got them to send you a box. I couldn't find anyone there who even knew what it was so I finally just bought my own.

Thanks for the info. Maybe they'll add that channel to the data stream at some point in the future.

If anyone else is trying to get an AM-21, just use the argument that DirecTV doesn't really offer our true local channels (KBTX, KAGS, KYLE, etc.) in HD over the satellite. That explanation seemed to satisfy the rep I spoke with.

The AM21 will scan if it's connected to the HR34 DVR or the THR22(Tivo-based). If a scanned channel is not in the DirecTV database, however, it will only show "Regular programming" in the guide...

I wish I had read this thread earlier. I setup my AM21 last night. Not only can it not view KAGS 23 and KRHD 40, I noticed that it still includes KWBU 46, which ceased broadcasting in 2010. It seems to me that someone (DirecTV?) could make this right by simply updating a database.

I agree completely. However, I emailed DirecTV about this issue and they said I should contact the local affiliate. I haven't had a chance to do that yet, but I will hopefully get around to it at some point.

DirecTV doesn't create the guide database or really have anything to do with it. They contract that out to Tribune Media Services. That's who you need to contact.

http://www.tribunemediaservices.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribune_Media_Services

If you can reach the engineer at the local station they may be able to help with getting things sorted out with Tribune Media.

Has anyone else along the northern Williamson-southern Bell County market boundary between Waco-Temple-Killeen and Austin experienced reception problems over the past couple of weeks besides me? I'm located in NE Williamson County near Circleville and generally have had good-to-excellent reception of most broadcast stations in both markets (except a few really low-power ones) both before and after the digital switchover in 2009. However, not long after the big winds of week before last, my reception for almost all stations became really poor and I thought it was just because the rooftop-level antenna orientation had been torqued around in the event. however, even after hastily readjusting to an eyeball-estimate of the proper azimuth and dogging the u-bolt nuts a bit tighter, it wasn't that much better and there was a lot of intermittent signal loss on even the strong stations from Austin, and most of those from Waco-Temple-Killeen weren't being received at all.

I readjusted the orientation again in the middle of last week after the winds finally died to an azimuth a lot more accurately with a compass for the previous setting (once I found that paperwork and checked TVfool.com for an update), but still had spotty reception on some of the Austin stations and most of the Waco-Temple-Killeen stations. This morning I discovered (happily) that everything across both markets was back and with a consistently strong signal for the most part. Since this coincided with the definite change in atmospheric conditions (bring on the rain!) and dissipation of the solar flare that erupted a week ago, I'm presuming those were the primary factors with the off-azimuth orientation not helping things.

The other discovery was the swap of 'thisTV' from 6.2 to 6.5 and its replacement 'coziTV', which looks like it will have some interesting old series and films.

Finally able to pickup these KCEN channels for the first time in a long time(albeit poorly...) I noticed the TV reports that 6.1(NBC) 6.2(MYTX) and 6.4(MundoFox) are being broadcast in 720p while 6.3(MeTV) and 6.5(ThisTV) are 480i. Can anyone confirm this? I never heard of a station broadcasting 3 HD channels at the same time...

Never heard of that. Cant imagine that any of them look good.