Huntsville, AL - HDTV - Page 93

Well, -5.7 would be higher than what TV Fool indicates for WHIQ now, and you can see above that my antenna and amp make that station totally watchable.

Those same hills are between myself and the other stations transmitting from Huntsville. Their signals aren’t being impaired to the point of being unwatchable.

You get in 19 which is on broadcasting at 50 kW so channel 49 at 48 kW shouldn't be that much different. Anyways I'm not saying the shouldn't be higher than 48 kW. I'm saying your area also has a lot to do with it since people that live a mile form you( but higher up ) get in that channel very easily. Short of getting a 260 foot tower or moving I'm not sure what else to tell you.

WHNT filed a license to cover for their 250 kW facility at 1742' on 2011-11-18. So WHNT (RF-19) enjoys a 7 dB advantage over WAFF's 48 kW (RF-48) in terms of ERP.

WAFF has a better HAAT (1889') over WHNT (1742'), a 147' elevation advantage.

According to RabbitEars, the contour of these two non-DA facilities gives a plus to WHNT with 64 miles compared to WAFF's 57 miles.

Just to refute a point made earlier that increased power would have little effect in my area:

Here's what we have now, at 48 kW - hitting the hilltops and little else:



Here's what 356 kW would do - actually reaching places where people live:

I'll provide an anecdote from my neck of the woods. Univison's KUVN was operating with 186 kW at 1699' until February 2011 when they increased to 1,000 kW at the same height.

My favorite barber shop has KUVN always on and they know that I used to be in broadcasting. I adjusted their rabbit ears setup as best I could but it was always beset with periods of pixelation and dropouts.

After the power increase (around a 7 dB boost, WAFF's 48 kW to 356 kW would be a tad over 8 dB), it's been solid without any disruptions. The owner of the barber shop asked if I pulled any strings to "make the picture better". I told him that they increased power but I had nothing to do with it. Still, he comped me on a haircut that day!

Yep...sometimes an increase in ERP really can make a difference to get past the digital cliff.

Anyone else getting this stuff from Knology?

First, they send something that says they are trying to keep rates low and are negotiating with their stations.

Then they send me a bill a couple days later and say they are bumping rates up Jan 2012. I can't really figure out how much from what they said, but it looks to hit me for at least another $10 a month! They blame it on the sports channels, but there is no option to opt out of a few of them...

And today they sent out an email saying WHNT is hitting them for a 130% price increase, asking us to call WHNT, and saying that WHNT is refusing to negotiate with them because of the holidays.

Anybody know what's the real story here?

Yeah, the Knology price increases suck; my bill will have gone up almost 30% in less than 4 years. If the increase is largely due to sports channels, how come the sports channel pack didn't see an increase?

The negotiations (or lack thereof) between WHNT and Knology are the same as what's going on between WAFF and AT&T. It is similar to what has gone on with some of the cable channels and providers more and more often over the last several years. What used to be a private negotiation about price and packaging has turned ugly and public, with both sides trying to win public opinion over the other "mean guy" (similar to US politics over the last 20 years).

Over-the-air broadcasters have two ways to get their signal on cable systems: they can exercise "must carry", which means the cable systems have to carry the signal (but don't have to pay for it), or they can restrict it and require payment (similar to cable channels). Independent, low-power, and maybe public broadcasting (not sure here) usually go the must-carry route to get their programming out there. Major network affiliates know that people are just used to seeing ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC everywhere and use that power to get cable systems to pay for their signal.

Cable systems used to be allowed to carry out-of-market network affiliates; in this case for example, if Knology couldn't get a deal with WHNT done, they could try CBS42 in Birmingham (who currently has their own negotiation issues with Dish Networks). The broadcasters got Congress to change the laws several years ago to give them exclusive carriage of the network signal in their market to stop that.

It looks like a bunch of broadcasters are trying to play hard-ball with the cable/sat systems this year. Personally, I'd prefer Knology to tell WHNT to stick it; if my cable bill keeps going up at this rate, I'll drop Knology, and then WHNT won't get a dime from me.

I see that WZDX and Charter are playing the "negotiation" game as well now.

Also, WHNT and Knology have apparently reached an agreement.

I'm only going by what TVfool says. If their info is out of date That's not my fault.

When you go to TVfool it says

WHNT-DT 19 (19.1)
CBS
Max ERP: 50.000 kW
Eff. pwr: 50.000 kW
Dist: 49.5 mi Path: 2Edge
Rx: -105.1 dBm NM: -14.1 dB
Az: 149.8° (true)
Az: 152.8° (compass)

It also says

The transmitter database was last updated on December 9, 2011

So what else am I supposed to think? It makes me think they are broadcasting at 50 kW not 250 kW.

A) I never said it wouldn't make a difference

B) Your house is still in an area not colored. Maybe barely some red.

C) exactly what tool or site did you use to come up with those maps.

Their filing of a License to Cover with the FCC indicates they are now at 250 kW, regardless of what TV Fool says on the subject.

I will point out that RabbitEars has it listed correctly at 250 kW.


Those look to be RabbitEars maps.

- Trip

Well I guess I shall confirm with your site from now on.


I thought that but how did he change the values? Also while I have your atention I wish you maps went down to 31 dB. You color codes stop at Medium Outdoor antenna. A color for Hard Outdoor Antenna would be nice. There's a differnce between HARD to get in an IMPOSSIBLE. It be helpful to know which situation one is in

He didn't. I have maps generated for both values.

48 kW: http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.p...=1479530&map=Y
356 kW: http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.p...=1274616&map=Y


The reason there isn't a "hard outdoor" value is that the maps are actually being generated in a way that attempts to take indoor antenna reception into account. Basically, they assume a receive antenna height of 13 feet rather than 30 feet as the FCC assumes. I'm using the fringe outdoor value at the reduced height to set the "medium outdoor" spots. To get an accurate "hard outdoor" limit would require being able to run both heights in the same map, something I don't think I can do.

(Plus it would take many months of number crunching to redo all the maps. )

Not to mention the fact that when you get into the fringe areas, the Longley-Rice predictions tend to stop being terribly accurate from my anecdotal observations. For example, to look at the TV Fool plot for my apartment in Chattanooga, you would think Knoxville would be easy and Atlanta would be DX-only. Instead, I get several Atlanta stations all the time but have yet to decode anything from Knoxville. I've seen this in a few cases where the signal strength gets very low and I think it has to do with the shortcomings of Longley-Rice as relates to ground clutter/scatter, knife-edge diffraction, and other oddities like that.

- Trip

What's up with WAFF changing 48.2 from THIS TV to Bounce TV? I checked out their schedule on the channel's website and it appears to be reruns of Judge Hackett and the Soul Train. Who's bright idea was it to do this? If they were going to change that channel, they should've at least went with THIS TV's sister station, ME TV which airs classic MGM shows. That would've at least made them competitive with WHNT's multicasting of Antenna TV. Poor decision WAFF! Maybe WAAY can start multicasting something that might interest viewers.

You mean WHITE viewers? Bounce TV obviosuly caters to blacks. You want Me-TV which is old TV shows. Which of course catered to WHITE America. Not everyone is America is white and it's getting less white every year. Plenty of stations in your area with shows that whites enjoy. Don't get mad because there is ONE station that bothers to cater to blacks.

The decision probably has less to do with race than picture quality and corporate policies. Someone must not have been happy with the way WAAY .1 looked with two subchannels, so they axed the only sub they could. Bounce TV has some deal with Raycom as far as I know. It's on here in Mobile on WFNA (Raycom also owns WKRG which carries Me-TV), and it's on in Birmingham on Raycom owned WBRC.

Personally out of all of them Me TV is the one I enjoy most, so I hope you can get it up there soon. New TV shows are so boring and network TV so awful to me I'm actually getting hooked on Cannon and Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore for the first time.

NEW CHANNELS IN HUNTSVILLE????? I just installed a tv in my RV. I scanned channels I got the usual channels but also got 15.5, 15.11,15.13, 15.15, 15.17, 15.19, 15.21, 15.23....many are religious channels one I didnt recognize similar to ION, C-span2, a shopping network channel. I dint get the 15.1, which I thought was odd. I went inside to house TV, could not get any of these. I am in Hazel Green area. Please tell me if anyone else is getting these, or not. My question is why I can get them in RV, not house, same address. In house get 15.1 but not in RV???

The only thing I can remotely think of that matches:

I occasionally get WTJP, under certain weather conditions. They carry five religious different channels and have a repeater in Jasper.

That would explain the programming, but not your multitude of 15.x subchannels.

Sounds more like WYAM-LD Decatur (if they've moved to 15) or WSSF-LD Fayette.

- Trip

Could it be possible the RV TV is picking up some sort of cable QAM leakage? I've never heard of anyone relaying C-Span products OTA.

It could be. I'm surprised the FCC allowed them to move to 15, since we're on 14, as that's usually not a good idea, even for low power.

Not to mention being not that far from WZTV in Nashville, on 15.

We actually had issues with WZTV when they went live with their digital, since our analog was on 15. Folks in the Columbia area were affected, took about a week to tweak things.

You're one of the handful of stations on RF-14 (as is our KERA here in Dallas-Ft. Worth). What challenges does that present with the aggressive filtering you have to do in order to protect < 470 MHz?

I'll have our chief engineer pop on here and offer a better response than I could. Though I believe we had some filtering issues (with a hospital I think) the first couple of weeks we turned on digital. That was back in 2005 I believe.

Here is what our chief engineer had to say:

Has WAFF done something else to their transmitter? Here in New Market I get steady 93-94% signal on 48 through my Dish Network VIP722. The last few days it has been at 99-100%. I get 100% on 19, 31, and 54. 85ish on 25.

Did anyone lose 41-3 and 41-4 on OTA in Huntsville? Trying to watch the football game and they both just dropped. Everything else comes in fine.

Please thank your CE for providing such a level of technical detail and for the fascinating "Bandwidth Enhancement" whitepaper from Axcera. I really appreciate your posting of this information.

I recently added a HDHomeRun and the "app for that" and have also noticed an increase. I can't find a true definition of Signal Quality vs Signal Strength although I'm now seeing WAFF at 93-96% Quality at 99-100% Strength as opposed to 84-87% at 92-94%. The fact is I saw no immediate change after their reassignment (from RF-49 to RF-48) on 12/07/11 and many others said likewise. Maybe this past week they got around to acutally making that power increase, or adjusting parameters.

41-3 & 41-4 ??? How about their -1 & -2 whether it's on RF-41 or their namesake, FOX54.