Johnstown, PA - HDTV - Page 95

Channel 15.

- Trip

So, both transmitters are broadcasting on 15?

Yes. It was the first station to try DTS, I think.

- Trip

WPSU operates a second booster transmitter on Pine Grove Mountain also on RF 15. Additional boosters are planned (also on ch 15) in Altoona and Johnstown under experimental authority.


Under the rules, low power stations such as WHVL are not entitled to protection from full power stations (or booster stations that serve them). That said, the distance between the two is not likely to result in interference within WHVL's service area (essentially parts of Centre, Clearfield, and Blair counties.)
And no, there are currently no full power allotments available for a new station in the Johnstown-Altoona-State College market.

There are currently few or no vacant full-powered allotments anywhere. At some point in the future, the FCC will allow petitions for rulemaking to be filed to create new allotments, which is how many of the old vacant analog allotments came around.

They only created allotments for stations that were operational or had permits to become operational at the time.

- Trip

If you go back far enough in this thread, there is some discussion about WPSU's SFN from when it was first established and discussed here. I don't know if the details are still accurate, but it should flesh out the general idea of where things are and what they're trying to do.

-JEff

One would think there would be a replacement for that station with the full power allotment in this market, which magically switched markets when no one was looking...

When no one was looking? The newspaper stories through the 19760s, '70s, 80s, and 90s sounded a constant theme - operation of a second television station in Johnstown was a huge challenge, made larger because of being a UHF station.

Channel 19 (and earlier when it was ch 56) was never financially successful in the Johnstown market. The station was beginning to develop some possibility of earning some return on investment when the FCC dropped in a short-spaced channel 8 into the market in the mid-1980s. That was the end, and not too many years later ch 19 went dark. Only by moving into the much larger Pittsburgh market could the station have any chance of remaining on the air to serve anybody.

Fast forward to today. There's a low powered Class A station licensed to Johnstown, WBYD-CA (analog ch 35, proposed digital RF 24). Even they cannot make a go of it here. They have actually done a stealth move to Pittsburgh. The transmitter is located in the WQED tower complex and serves Pittsburgh, not Johnstown. The coverage map shows the WBYD signal never comes within 50 miles of Johnstown. How the FCC has allowed this to continue without changing the COL is a mystery.

WPCW has been up front about their move into Pittsburgh. When they were allocated RF 49, the transmitter was to have been located near Monroeville. When they were given RF 11, it made sense from financial, technical, and market coverage reasons to co-locate on the KDKA tower. None of this was done in secret.

BTW that short spaced channel 8 allotment was originally intended for the Pittsburgh market but was moved to Johnstown at the request of the license holder. So the channel 8 and channel 19 allotments really switched places.

Not really. The short-spacing proposal started in Congress. While the initial engineering study by the FCC may have started with Pittsburgh in mind, there were really no possible channels that could have been used in Pittsburgh, and from the earliest stages of discussion, channels 8 or 12 were being considered for the Johnstown market; there being a certain Congressman from Johnstown whose support was needed for the enabling legislation directing the FCC to create the short spaced allocations (they were Salt Lake City, UT; Johnstown, PA; Charleston, WV; and Knoxville, TN.) The eventual license holder did not get into the game until after the allotment had been made.

I finally got around to rescanning for WPSU and found it on RF15. Thanks gang.

Am I missing something or is it strange that the program guide on WJAC-TV/RTN6 has many programming errors OTA, but when viewed on TitanTV.com it is correct. Doesn't it seem logical that the program guide at the station would be correct as well, or would be more likely to be correct and not the other way around.

I have been recording off of WPCW's QAM signal on Atlantic Broadband ever since ABB put it on.

Now I only have my WinTV HVR-950Q as a QAM tuner right now (no TVs or converter boxes with QAM), so I can't compare anything else myself.

When I record from RTV6 it just looks somewhat blurry, but that's to be expected because it's bit-starved.

Yet, I noticed after recording a few times, WPCW seems to be somewhat grainy/sandy mainly the people in the recordings, not so much of the scenery.

Is WPCW bit-starved as well? Am I just getting a bad QAM signal (I have many splits including a cable modem)? Or is it possibly how my TV Tuner Card is recording (I have no issue with any other station though)?

EDIT: I must admit even though it looks slightly grainier on WPCW, I noticed when converting the recordings afterwords, the quality is basically constant on WPCW, which results in a constant file size normally vs RTN6 which ends up with non-constant quality and the file size goes nuts, sometimes way bigger than it should be even though you don't really get great quality.

For the past couple of days (at least) I've noticed that when I tune into either Fox 8 HD (ch. 708) or Discovery HD (ch. 759) I get "No data available"...no info on the program that's on, etc. (This is ABB in Altoona/Johnstown.) Anyone else notice this?

Thanks,
DGK

Yes. But the programming is there and the listings are available on the analog channels.
Also Nat Geo, FX and one of the Starz movie channels (Comedy) have been going black at times.

It also appears they are ramping up some additional In Demand features, which might explain things being a little discombobulated.

Today Atlantic Broadband will announce the addition of the Big Ten Network at 3pm.

It's about time!

Thanks for the tip.

DGK

True, as long as the channel's still there and everything else works, it's OK. It's just a very minor pain...one that they'll probably take care of sooner or later. As long as it's not just me that has it! That's happened before (weird problems that is), but not since I got the new STB a couple of months ago.

DGK

I'm looking at getting Dish Network and have a few questions.

I assume we could rent our recievers. How much money per month would we pay for one Duo DVR VIP 722 Reciever and one Solo DVR VIP 612? A Duo DVR VIP 722 is one reciever for two TV's, one for standard and one for HD, and DVR on both TV's. A Solo DVR VIP 612 is for one HD TV with DVR.

Also, how much would it cost for DVR service. We would probably get the Classic Gold 250 package for $47.99 per month for 1 year and with the HD service for an additional $10.

I caught the last few minutes of Dr. Phil today on WJAC-HD and I noticed that it was in 16:9 HD today. I wonder if other syndicated programs that currently broadcast in HD such as Entertainment Tonight and Live! with Regis and Kelly will now air on WJAC in 16:9 HD. One can only hope.

Well I looked at the source again and played it on a 2 different computers to help make sure if it was just one computer's codecs.

I get extremely odd results.

If I play the recorded files on either computer one being XP Home and the other Vista Home Premium VLC and MPC-HC does the following:

VLC = Random long clear lines through out random areas of videos.
MPC-HC = Random White Dots or Snow in various areas of video.

In both examples the areas of said distortion change locations as the video continues.

In the VLC instance I noticed if someone just waves their hand, their entire arm becomes a whole bunch of wavy lines. Never seen anything like it.


Also, I noticed that it demands a lot out of my systems to just play the recorded files and my systems barely do. Also, even though it's DivX VBR and MP3, my systems have trouble viewing it.

I am using VirtualDub, MPEG2 Plugin, AC3 Decompressor, DivX 6.8.5, resize to 720x480, and cropping since the recording shows the video in a square surrounded by black. So it's like a video square inside a black square.

I'm going back to a topic we were discussing back in July about The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and how WTAJ aired it with a frame around the picture in addition to the HD sidebars. Well, The Late Late Show debuted in HD last night and WTAJ didn't air in in full screen HD. Instead, on both the standard and high definition channels, they aired in in 16:9 widescreen within the 4:3 range with bars on the top and bottom of the screen. The picture was clearer than how it has been before, but I just wish WTAJ would air in in full HD.

I guess this is better than what WRGB, the CBS affiliate in Albany, NY, does by airing all of their programming in 16:9 (even non-HD programming with the sidebars) with a frame around it on both the standard and HD channels.

No 16:9 on my TV for Dr. Phil - regular black bars on the sides as usual

I have noticed that for the past few days. When I noticed it during the last few minutes of the show when it was briefly in 16:9 HD on WJAC, I thought my TV was stretched out, but I checked the aspect ratio on my TV and put on the SD channel and it was infact in 16:9. The picture quality was beautiful and I just wish WJAC will air syndicated programming in HD soon.

Are you wanting HD over SD or 16:9 over 4:3? They are two different animals.

So, is there any word as to when the Altoona WJAC translator will go on the air?/ is it being built yet?