Chicago, IL - OTA - Page 365

Exception: Hearst-Argyle ABC stations and ABC O&O's get right of first refusal for Monday Night Games, because of their parent company's relationship with ESPN.

WLS usually waives their rights because ABC and Disney don't want Dancing with the Stars to not air live in the nation's #3 market, so it goes to the highest bidder.

But, WISN in Milwaukee never waives their rights. Other stations couldn't get the games no matter how deep their pockets are.

Anyone use MCE? MCE gives me the "no signal' blue screen on ch7.

Has Ch7 died for anyone else?

My other non-MCE tuner works just fine.

Edit: I hate it when this happens... After an hour long outage its back to normal now. I didnt do anything so it must have been the station.

Just saw Rob Feder post this over on TimeOutChicago.com:

It was the station
Mike Caplan posted on his facebook
https://www.facebook.com/#!/michael.c.caplan

now all that left is to Telemundo Chicago when will convert their news to HD

Most of the video clips were SD, but the studio shots are HD. Baby steps...

I was wondering: Now with Universal Sports gone, has WMAQ's PQ improved? Has the data rate increased on the main and/or NonStop? Any rumors on if something will be added in the future?

Has anyone picked up a 38-100, 38-200, & 38-201 before? I just bought a refurbished Haier brand portable TV from Big Lots, & when I did a scan, I got those additional virtual channels, but nothing was shown on those channels. I don't get those channels with my VisionTek USB TV tuner stick, or my Magnavox DTV converter box. For WMAQ-TV, unless the tuner in my portable TV doesn't pick up unmapped channels, then 5.3 is gone, as it only registered 5-2 & 5-3 (I put the dash, because that's how the TV displays the channels).

ION stations were testing something that involved three extra temporary subchannels, but they were only defined in the PSIP stream and their substreams weren't ATSC data.  Many tuners ignored them.

5.3 is gone; Universal Sports ended at midnight 2011-12-31 and then WMAQ carried a still card for a couple of days.  The subchannel was shut off on the second or third of January.

If ION doesn't want to lose their copyright on AirBox, they'd better get going. It's my understanding that based on the dates here (http://www.trademarks411.com/marks/85198775-airbox), they need to submit a Statement of Use within 6 months of approval, so by March of this year. A Statement of Use requires public use of the copyrighted mark, so they need to launch in the next couple months.

Speaking of AirBox, I've found some other info about it over the weekend. AirBox Television, Inc. is almost certainly part of ION, same corporate officers, same corporate headquarters, but AirBox.com (advertised on one of the AirBox streams Trip decoded) is registered by "carl crabill" (Carl Crabill was an executive at MovieBeam), while other ION properties are registered by ION Media Networks, Inc. Also, based on their business filings, AirBox Television, Inc. claims to be in retail, so presumably that's the division that'll be selling the retail boxes. And this (http://www.justformyclients.com/ion/5-functionality) appears to be spec work for, presumably, AirBox.com. (Not all of those are necessarily for the main site, they might be for AirBoxBlog.com or AirBoxOnline.com, all also registered by "carl crabill".) Interesting note, that Susan Rust whose spec sheet that is appears to have done website work for the likes of Viacom and NBC Universal, as well.

So nothing definite that we didn't already know, but a little more to speculate on. But with the more frequent tests and the approaching deadline, I assume we'll hear something in the coming weeks.

My portable TV picked up more than just 38.100, 38.200, & 38.201. It also picked up 38.202, 38.203, 38.204, 38.300, 38.400, & I believe 38.401. I wonder exactly what Ion Media has planned for the extra channels that aren't showing anything. I'm still amazed the TV can pick up the extra channels. I'm surprised it doesn't pick up the 2 channels that WTTW uses for the Update TV service like Samsung TV's do.

Portable TV, as in ATSC M/H? That might (or might not) explain how your unit gets the additional stations. They are, presumably, broadcasting something on the channels, but it's encrypted.

Edit: It seems that, based on what other people have said, the majority of content is Spanish. So, unless you speak Spanish, you're not missing out by not being able to watch the encrypted channels.

I can tell you that my portable TV does not have an ATSC M/H tuner. If I move the TV too fast, it loses the signal. It has a regular ATSC tuner built-in. It's just odd that it picks up these extra channels. I get WLS-TV on RF 7 & WBBM-TV on it if I have the outdoor antenna hooked to it. It however does not pick up WOCK-CD like my converter box can, & WWME-LD pixelates a lot on this TV too, but not on the converter box.

Well, weird ION channels aside, how do you like it? I've been idly considering getting a portable TV, myself. What sort of antenna connector does this one have, just a standard connector, or do you have to use an alligator clip, or what?

It's a good TV for what it's worth. It's a refurbished one I bought from my local Big Lots. It's a Haier 7 inch, model#HLT71, & I may have mentioned that I paid $29, but it was $39. I would have preferred a more popular brand name, but it's something for now. The antenna that was included is a telescopic that screws into a coax input. I'll use a regular antenna with this TV, as the telescopic antenna doesn't pick up a single VHF channel. My regular antennas (Antennacraft CS600 for VHF & Winegard HD9032 for UHF) hooked to the TV picked up more stations, including WLS-TV & WBBM-TV on the VHF. I just wish I could enter the RF channel to manually add channels, but new channels require a rescan. Entering the RF channel will say Fail to lock signal.

"Global" on W25DW's 25.2 seems to have disappeared entirely.  It had been only a silent vertical-color-bar test pattern for weeks; now there's not even that.

They're still labeling Sonlife on 25.3 as "Sunlife."

Anyone notice issues with WTTW the past few days? There is an occasional line of what looks like static at times, and it sometimes 'blinks' a brief blue flash with an audio snap. I thought it was Comcast, but am seeing it OTA, too.

I've noticed it too along with another issue,the chicago tonight replay
on 11-2 is always fuzzy looking but the second repeat back on 11-1 is clear..

Yeah, I've noticed it a lot recently. Lots of popping and picture break-ups, as well as other problems. When I played back my recording of Nova from last week there was a sizeable chunk of the show missing - nothing but black screen. It seems to come and go, though: my recording of today's This Old House had some popping in it, but Ask This Old House was clean.

I was watching WTTW 11 & WTTW Prime, & the picture froze up at random times throughout various shows. Create didn't act up as much as WTTW 11.1 & 11.2 did. I wasn't all that thrilled to find beg-a-thons on 11.2 today. So it gave me an excuse to avoid the channel much of the time. This was while I was at work. Now if only I could get WYCC & WCIU at work. Those 2 stations don't come in at work (WYCC because of their weak signal, & WCIU for a weaker signal toward Indiana). I was surprised to get WJYS at work, since the building is primarily metal & concrete. I did notice much of the brokered programming WCIU used to carry on the old FBT was being shown on WJYS 62.4 today. Maybe they're trying to pick up the programming Weigel no longer wanted, though I thought Polnet was doing that.

11-2 = SD, 11-1 = HD

That said, I found WTTW Prime to often be decent given the number of channels crammed together. I recorded (via Comcast) a Nature show a few weeks ago, and it looked surprisingly good, even zoomed up to de-letterbox it. Yes, it's SD, but it wasn't as fuzzy or blocky as I was expecting given how compressed everything must be for 1080i + 3x480i.

Between the pixelated faces (remember "At the Movies"?) and now this, I wonder what WTTW is doing.

I noticed the "blue blink" as well, the last couple of days on 11.2.
At first, I thought that it was just our OTA reception.
However, it wasn't happening on any of our other channels when I flipped around. Something weird must be happening on their end.

I've noticed it too, both OTA and on U-Verse.

WBBM was breaking up quite a bit on DirecTV and over the air 2-1 today during the AFC championship game. I wonder why.

I recorded Downton Abbey and Sherlock last night from Comcast on a computer with a USB tuner stick.

I played back D.A. while Sherlock was still recording. In D.A. I saw occasional lines near the top of the screen, and quite a few flashes -- some with rather loud audio snaps, others without audio issues.

When I played back Sherlock, I didn't notice ANY of these problems!

Perhaps the problem is in WTTW's program acquisition or server systems...

Is WOCK have any unusual issues? The feed on Comcast has been a bit glitchy, with the channels sometimes going dead (by me, each subchannel is on a different Comcast frequency!) I assume Comcast is using an antenna, and WOCK is always a bit difficult to pick up. I rarely get it with an antenna.

I heard on WBBM radio today we are experiencing more powerful than ususal sun flare activity, maybe this is why?

As for Comcast...the office in Rolling Meadows has several large dishes and a tall tower. At the top of the tower is what looks like a TV antenna, possilby an answer to locate channels, I realy do not know.

The solar flare isn't suppose to get here until tomorrow or Wednesday. You can get the latest information on the sun's activity at spaceweather.com. I check it every morning.

Why isn't WLS transmitting guide data on rf ch 44?

I used to work at that facility in Rolling Meadows. It was a receive site back the MediaOne/ATT days. I believe it's still a backup site. There are OTA receive antennas at the top but those are a back up as well. There was typically 1 tuned antenna per channel they were picking up. That was a nicely setup facility back in the day.