Denver, CO - OTA - Page 271

Guilty. I selected "Start a New Thread" rather then "Post a Reply" with my KWGN question.

Here's a question. When will KRMA begin it's migration to Lookout Mountain? How long is it expected to take? I have a feeling that when they're operating at decreased power during the STA I'll have to switch to KTSC.

DK:

Rocky Mountain PBS' KRMA-Denver station secured licensing at it's Lookout Mountain site in anticipation of making the move back. However, no hard timeline is now in effect, other than within the time frame the STA's are good for.

A couple of scenarios were accounted for to make possible a move. The scenarios themselves have evolved since FCC applications were made. A transition now could include operating at low power for a very short time. The options presented this past winter and spring dictated operating at low power for a longer period, while certain contractual negotiations would be ironed out.

TC AVS

Conversations with CPT-12 staff indicate they are still poised to move the translator "soon".

TC AVS

"Soon" would be good. We haven't been able to watch an evening signal of theirs since this low-power period started, especially once a little wind comes up.
Godspeed, RMPBS.

Seems to be some confusion - CPT12 (KBDI 12) is not the same as RMPBS (KRMA 6).

Based on your location in Green Valley Ranch northeast of Denver, the new digital low power translator for CPT12 (KBDI 12) for Boulder will provide no signal to your location. It is primarily for service to the Boulder valley, Louisville, Lafayette and north toward Longmont.

RMPBS (KRMA 6) is not broadcasting in low power - they are at full power (1,000kW ERP) broadcasting from Mt. Morrison above Red Rocks Amphitheatre. They have not moved their transmitter back to Lookout Mountain.

Which station are you having problem receiving OTA?

I emailed the station about the status and just received an answer.

"We plan to have a new digital translator on-line by the end of July. We anticipate that this translator will provide solid fill-in signal in your area. As we get closer to turning on this new service we will post the start date on our website. Once this is completed you will need to rescan for our channels and you should start getting a solid signal. "

News from ColoradoMedia.net:
KSBS-LD Denver has gone on the air from their transmitter located on Lookout Mountain. The station is broadcasting on real channel 41 UHF but is mapping to digital channel 10. Right now, 10.1 is showing religious programming with color bars on 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4.

KSBS-LP was a repeater for Telemundo affiliate KMAS TV in Steamboat Springs until 2006 when NBC sold it to "Denver Digital TV, LLC" (the current owner) after they acquired KDEN for Telemundo programming here in Denver.

Some more info on KSBS:
One of the channels with color bars has their web site listed as:
http://www.ksbstv.com/

The manager of "Denver Digital TV, LLC." is David Drucker, who was a co-founder of Echostar and Wildblue Communications. He is currently listed on KBDI Channel 12 Colorado Public Television's web site as being on their Board of Directors.

http://www.summitpublicradio.org/site/listings.html


Summit County Public Radio translators system carries these Denver TV stations:
KMGH DTV on 10.1
KCNC DTV on 10.2
KUSA DTV on 10.3
KRMA DTV Rocky Mountain PBS on 10.4

I can only assume at this point that they are all carried in Standard Definition.

KMGH question

My Philips 42PF7320 Plasma was flashing a power supply error. It was built 5 years ago, and probably designed 7 years ago. I had to re-seat the horizontal drive cards every so often to get it to stop generating intermittent 1/2 black or full black screens and that took a couple of hours to do. That effort was getting old. It weighs quite a bit, and throws off a lot of heat. I have heard that failure of the caps in the power suppy is pretty common, but I was not about to spend more time or any money on it. I picked up a 47" Vizio E472VLE for less than $680 including tax at the Arvada Sam's Club. It runs cool, which is important since we don't have A/C.

The real issue
When I did the channel scan, I was surprised to see double entries for channel 7. The scan had picked up Physical 7 and 17. I found the explanation at RabbitEars.info

Channel Call Sign City of License ASRN AGL Record Type HAAT Power
7-1 (7) KMGH-TV DENVER, CO 1058328 653' DT‑LIC 1178' 54 kW DA
7-1 (17) KZCO-LD DENVER, CO 1058328 551' LD‑LIC 1072' 15 kW DA

Does anyone know how long they have been running the low power transmitter on UHF 17?
I don't recall any mention of it, but that doesn't mean much.

KZCO-LD has been on since last summer at the very latest based on FCC paperwork, and I suspect it was up before then.

- Trip

The official start was 7/6/11 http://www.avsforum.com/t/793003/denver-co-ota/7830#post_20662694

The KZCO-LD license was applied for on 7/6/2011 and was granted on 7/25/2011.

On some TVs, KZCO RF17 shows up as channel 17, on others as channel 7 (thus two V7s will display) - it depends on the software processing of the PSIP data by the TV. It was a topic of discussion last summer among the Denver televison stations engineering community. Of course, RF17 is the successor to the old analog RF27 Azteca America service which is now on V7-2 on both RF7/V7 and RF17/V7.
Edited by GE AVS - 8/6/12 at 12:04pm

I am happy to hear there was concern here. In the Minnesota Twin Cities they have they 2 cases where 2 transmitters are sharing Virtual channel numbers.

As I understand it, in the Denver case, KZCO may not technically be a repeater, but effectively it is. I presume it carries exactly the same data content. Therefore, it does not matter which transmitter a tuner locks to, as long as the signal is adequate, there is no difference in available programming. I presume the benefit of this situation is that people with UHF only antennas, can receive receive KMGH, if they are in range of the lower power transmitter. With my antenna system, the signal seemed to be adequate, here in Louisville, but I now have skipped the extra entries in my tuner table.

In the Twin Cities, the transmitters broadcast different sub-channels. This has caused problems for some equipment. The Philips DVDRs (3575 and 3576) do find both transmitters during the scan and do associate both with the shared Virtual Channel number, but they only check the lower transmitter channel (which was found first during the scan) when trying to do a scheduled recording. If the desired sub-channel is on the lower frequency transmitter, the program gets recorded. If it is on the higher frequency transmitter, a blank screen gets recorded. While the programmers of the Philips units, might have handled the situation better, I am not shocked that they didn't. They were not based in the US, so they had to look to the standards, and it may not have been obvious that a broadcaster would do what they did. Personally, I would not have anticipated that a broadcaster would do what the Twin Cities stations did. The only known reason PBS used a single Virtual Channel for its 2 different transmitters, was so they could market them both under the Channel 2 "BRAND". That, marketing decision, seemed to more important than the problem some viewers would experience in viewing their programming. By the way, there is a work-around for those who are tech savy. They can delete the 2 transmitter Virtual channel from the channel list, and then do the scheduled recording using physical channel numbers(as long as the Physical Channels are not in use as a Virtual Channels by some other transmitter), but that is beyond the understanding of a lot of viewers. Using the work-around does mean that they can no longer use channel up and down to reach the station, or tune to the station using the Virtual Channel number. Also, if they do not implement the work-around, since the lower Physical Channel carries the higher sub-channels, when stepping up or down through the sub-channels, they are out of order.

I live in the Twin Cities are confused as heck as to what you're saying.
We have 2 examples where 2 RF stations when they do the PSIP "mix the subchannels" together

One is KSTP5 (RF35) and KSTC45 (RF 45) both owned by Hubbard Broadcasting
5-1 is KSTP 5 (RF35) ABC
5-2 is KSTC 45 (RF45) IND
5-3 is MeTV (RF45)
5-4 is AntennaTV (RF45)
5-6 is ThisTV (RF45)
5-7 is LiveWell (RF35)

The PBS does the same thing. We had 2 analog PBS stations (2 & 17)...When the digital transition happened they mixed them (TPT=Twin Cities PBS)
2-1 is KTCA PBS (RF34)
2-2 is Minnesota Channel (RF34)
2-3 is TPTLIfe (formerly TPT17) RF23
2-4 is TPTWeather (RF34)
On RF23 they also have a duplicate of the Minnesota channel. Most TV's ignore this station (23-7) but some TV's do show it. My Panny Plasma ignores it but the AOC shows a 23-7

The only time we have an issue is when the PSIP encoder went down on RF23. Our CW which is on RF22 maps to 23 (which was the analog spot) so last year PBS had an encoder problem so it wasn't mapping RF23. So it was over riding WUCW (CW) mapping. Depending on the TV or what you were using you saw duplicate 23-1's or TPT was overriding WUCW. Here is the start of that issue
http://www.avsforum.com/t/446660/minneapolis-mn-ota/1200#post_21257078

The good thing is the only channel where a RF station is on the same number as a Legacy (Analog) number here is this example. We have no examples of "fill in" translators here

The only time YOU had an issue was when the problem you described occured. Apparently, your tuners handle the situation.
The issue has been discussed in the Philips / Magnavox DVDR forum. When a user of a Philips DVDR 3575 or 3576, does a standard scan and tries to record programs, they have a problem. In the case of PBS, if they set up to do a scheduled recording of 2-1, the Philips tuner will tune to RF23 (It would be found 1st by any normal scan that starts at VHF 2 and scans upward). When the tuner looks for 2-1 on RF23, it will not find it since only 2-3 and 2-4 are on RF23. The designers of the Philips tuner did not anticipate the Twin Cities configuration or their tuner hardware cannot accomidate it, so they either did not, or cannot, switch the tuner to RF34 and record 2-1 there. In either case, the recording comes out blank.
A similar problem occurs if they try to schedule a recording of 5-3. The tuner tunes RF35(the lower value) and 5-3 isn't there. They get a blank recording.
The only other city where this situation has been reported in that forum is New York.

With only 2 cities involved, the problem is probably not going to get a lot of attention. There is also a risk that they could break something for everyone, while trying to fix a problem that only effects a tiny percentage of their customers.

That sounds like as major flaw then in the receiver. Because I always understood it when you type in 5-3 as example the receiver/tv/whatever you are using knows to tune to the "actual" channel of 45-5. Seems stupid for it to look for RF35 when that has nothing to do with the channel you are trying to find

Then it probably has the same issue in SW Minnesota. The only station in the market is KEYC CBS & FOX. Its on VHF12 so when you scan it shows
12-1 KEYC CBS
12-2 KEYC FOX

But there is some translator stations in that area (because Mankato is too far from Minneapolis) that is run by the co-ops there. One of the stations they carry on the UHF setup is also KEYC. They use 38. So to cut down on the confusion they remap it to 12-4 & 12-5. So if you can get both (12 is south of Mankato, 38 is west) with separate antennas it looks like this
12-1 KEYC CBS (RF12)
12-2 KEYC FOX (RF12)
12-4 KEYC CBS (RF38)
12-5 KEYC FOX (RF38)

This discussion points out an interesting issue. While the ATSC PSIP standards and recommneded practices are essentially fully developed, it appears the CEA (Consumer ElectronicsAssociation) has not developed a standard or recommend practice for this issue that would resolve this problem on the consumer products side of the industry. I have not researched this aspect of the CEA standards - does anyone know if the CEA has a standard regarding this?

I personally experience the issue with KZCO with two different high-end brands - one displays RF17 as channel 17, i.e., RF17/V7 as channel 17 since RF7/V7 already exists, and the other displays RF17 as V7, thus, two V7s.

Major Flaw?? That is a matter of opinion. These tuners were designed quite some time ago. They took the philosophy to not maintain a complete table of all the sub-channels. The scan just maps the major virtual channels to physical channels. It was unclear how often stations would reconfigure sub-channels, but the designers decided it would be cleaner to refresh the available sub-channel info ever time the tuner went to a physical channel. The approach they took means that they do not have a table of which sub-channels are on which physical channel. They do find all the sub-channels when using the tuner for live viewing, but for some reason only one physical channel is checked when performing scheduled recordings. Whether this was an oversight, or a hardware limitation has not been made public.

That said, the Philips units were introduced before transition was implemented. That means that they were out there when the Twin Cities stations decided to do their "Really Cute" virtual channel assignments. I have never heard of a technical advantage provided by the PBS decision to map 2 physical channel to Channel 2. Based on the discussion in the other forum, I have the impression that PBS was probably the first to do this. The only explanation I have heard was that it offered a "BRAND". Apparently a couple of other station operators in your area have followed that lead.

I am of the opnion that most broadcast engineers want as many viewers as possible to be able to view their stations with any equipment out there. The willingness of a Denver PBS station to work with a TV manufacturer to accomodate a scanning issue reinforces that. Something in their PSIP blocked the TV scan by a particular TV brand and/or model from detecting the station. The station engineer was confident that his PSIP was compliant with the standard, but that didn't prevent him from making a change that accomodated the scan used by the TV, since it did not adversely effect others, and the same TV was able to detect all the other Denver stations during a scan.

My original point was that I am delighted that the Denver broadcast engineers considered viewer impact when making a decision. I presume they did not want to do something that would adversely effect the ability of any viewers to use any of their equipment without a "Good Reason". Just because you can do something, does not mean you should do it. IMHO some Twin Cities and New York Stations put the ability to use a Virtual Channel Number as a "BRAND" ahead of the interest of a few of their viewers.

yup thats my opinion. Its a flaw that it has a hard time trying to figure out that 5-3 works off 45 instead of 35. .
so was my Panny plasma which figures it out just fine...whats your point?
awww I think its cute too ....also easy to find the stations. Thats probably why they did it. When they decided to use the "TPT" name instead of KTCA2 and KTCI17 they figured why have one station abandoned (17) and instead they mixed it together. Same reason why KSTP & KSTC did that in October. Easy for end users to press channel up and get the next station they own
yup. Easier for end users. Also our Fox and My affiliates have the -2 of the other station on their RF (since Fox9 broadcasts on VHF). So when you scan 9 you get KMSP FOX HD (9-1) and WFTC MY SD (29-2)....on 29 its the other way around.
so they should change everything around because one DVD recorder can't figure it out?
not really. KSTP/KSTC mixes them together for ease of finding stations. They still call it 45 when the only ones who see it on "45" are sat customers. OTA see it on 5-2 and cable its on various numbers (mainly 12). But then satellite has had it at 45 since 2002 so it would be kinda hard to change that

Since you live in the Twin Cities, I am happy for you that you like the arrangent the station operators there chose.

Here in Denver Metro, we have 2 sister station pairs that could have done something similar to the Twin Cities operators, but I am personally pleased that they chose to keep each Physical transmitter assigned to its own Virtual Channel.

KUSA Virtual 9 Physical 9
KTVD Virtual 20 Physical 19

KWGN-TV Virtual 2 Physical 34
KDVR Virtual 31 Physical 32

To each, his own !
Since Denver is not effected by this debate, I suggest we drop the topic from this forum.

Kenavs, I'm a little confused about your posts regarding KZCO-LD. If I read your posts correctly, you stated that KMGH and KZCO both show up as 7-1 on some of your tuners. I just checked 5 of my TV's, 3 different brands. On all of them, KMGH is 7-1, KZCO is 7-2. One of my tuners also still showed KZCO as 7-27 but tuning 7-27 shows "no signal". So if my tuners are reading the PSIP info for KZCO as 7-2, I have to wonder why yours read it as 7-1. My tuners also show 7-3 as Cool TV and 7-4 as 24/7 news.

On a somewhat related note, I do have a problem with all of my tuners for channel 5. I receive KGWN, transmit channel 30, virtual channel 5. I also receive the low power K05MD-D, which transmits on channel 5. If I scan in K05MD-D on any of my tuners, KGWN disappears. I suspect K05MD-D is the problem. Has anyone else incurred this situation?

The KZCO-LD call sign entry that I listed for Physical UHF 17 came from the RabitEars.Info database. That is not what was reported by my tuner. The full scan with my new Vizio E472VLE found what appear to be 2 identical data streams. One was being broadcast on VHF 7 and the other on UHF 17. The skip table shows (2)7-1s, (2)7-2s, (2)7-3s, and (2)7-4s.
I just checked the Vizio, my Philips DVDR3576, and my Magnavox 2160A. They all show the same sub-channel descriptions.
7-1 KMGH-TV
7-2 Azteca
7-3 Cool-TV
7-4 24/7
The Vizio scan was just done on Saturday, and the Philps and Magnavox refresh their information ever time they tune to a Physical transmitter. I hope that makes things clear.

FYI: The Vizio has 1 entry in the skip table for Virtual 5
5-1 5.1 (Per the System Info display, this is Physical VHF 5)
Since there is no active entry for Virtual 5(these tuners are Virtual Dominant) in the Philips and Magnavox, when I key in 5, they go to Physical 5 and do a scan which finds the same station that was found by the Vizio.
The tuners in these 3 units do not seem to be able to pick-up VHF 30 with my attic mounted antenna.

Kenavs, Thanks for the clarification. Your tuners report just like mine, with Azteca showing a transmit channel of 17 but a virtual mapping to 7-2. KGWN is from Cheyenne, so you probably need to point north to receive it. You may also receive KLWY from Cheyenne, real & virtual channel 27. They carry Casper's KTWO on subchannel 27-2. Their local news is a far cry from anything from Denver. It's worth watching once to see what much of the country has to put up with for local newscasts.

I do wonder if your tuners might handle the situation differently during a full scan, and a partial scan. Perhaps, a full scan might allow both virtual 5s to exist.

Just a thought. Obviously, I can't test it since I cannot detect any UHF 30 signals.

Followup:
I don't know what, if anything, it proves, but I just tried a partial scan of Physical 17 only on my Vizio. It had no effect. The Skip tables still had the Virtual 7 entries for both Physical 7 and Physical 17.
Edited by kenavs - 8/9/12 at 12:06pm

According to the FCC database, K17FC filed for a license on 8/2/2012 (Community of License - Boulder) to broadcast on RF27 (Service=LD) from Lookout Mtn. with 0.2 kW ERP (CP was granted on 5/29/2012).

I presume you intended to type K17CF.
According to RabitEars.Info: K17CF will be Physical 27 and Virtual 27.
Edited by kenavs - 8/9/12 at 1:29am

You are correct. I meant to type K17CF, not "FC". Also, the FCC data shows no virtual channel number which, so far, always means the RF channel is also the Virtual channel number. For absolute clarity, the FCC should always indicate both numbers. The FCC states the Virtual channel number for K17CF as: "Virtual Channel: (viewer sees this channel number)".

The FCC doesn't keep track of virtual channel numbers in most cases; they're just listing the former analog channel on full powers, as best I can tell. For example, KAIL in Fresno has mapped to 7-x for years and years, but the FCC still says the virtual channel is 53.

- Trip