The official final DTV Table Of Allotments/channel change thread - Page 239

Mexico dances to a different drummer.

KPBI in the Fayetteville AR market is being bought by KFSM, the local CBS station. KFTA, the FOX station in that market, is another Nexstar station that will be losing FOX in the future, so I'm speculating that FOX will wind up on KPBI. However, KPBI only covers the northern half of the market. I came up with a possible transmitter configuration for them. The idea I had is a DTS with four transmitters, all on channel 34.

NOTE: This is speculation on something they COULD do, not an actual application. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest this will actually happen.

Here's the map I came up with: http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.p...ontour=Y&map=Y

Please note that the blue contour lines are required to stay inside the green line with only a "de minimis" amount allowed outside that green line.

Site 1: The current transmitter site would be upgraded to 1000 kW, but with a slightly directional antenna to shave off a bit of the power to the north. (Antenna pattern borrowed from WFDC.)

Site 2: The tower that analog 5 was on. This tower would operate at 60 kW and use mechanical beam tilt to aim the bulk of the power down toward Fort Smith while limiting radiation toward the horizon to 500 watts or so. (Antenna pattern borrowed from KQEH.)

Site 3: A tower owned by New Live Evangelistic Center right on a line between Harrison and Fordland, for obvious reasons. 5 kW. (Antenna pattern borrowed from K23DU.)

Site 4: The KBNS-CD tower, using a highly directional antenna to hit just Branson. (Antenna pattern borrowed from WKOB-LD.)

There's no telling if they would actually build out such a thing, but I rather like the idea. Any opinions?

- Trip

Ireland still uses Band III VHF in some areas for analog. It isn't clear to me yet if all DTV broadcasts there will be UHF, but it seems likely.

I'm guessing that the antennas Larry saw were Band III, but some old Band I antennas could be around as well, but there is a great resource that might help identify them:

Wright's Aerial Photography:
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/aerialp...hy/index.shtml

Band III stack:
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/aerialp...ngus/005.shtml

Or if they were bigger, some might be in the Ancient gallery:
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/aerialphotography/ancient/

Back when I was in Ireland in 1998, I remember some of the old "X" Band I aerials, which I believe were for 405 line. I don't recall the big "H" Band I aerials in Ireland, however.

DTV TABLE OF ALLOTMENTS, 47 C.F.R. SECTION 73.622(I), FOND DU LAC, WISCONSIN.

Denied the petition for reconsideration of report and order changing DTV channel for station WWAZ-DT from 44 to 5. (Dkt No. RM-11543 09-115 ). Action by: Chief, Video Division, Media Bureau. Adopted: 09/06/2011 by MO&O. (DA No. 11-1502).

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Rele...-11-1502A1.pdf

Edit: Ok, this is confusing, but appears to deny the petition (by WDJT) to deny WWAZ from moving to 5.

Yes, that's what it is. It just reaffirms that WWAZ can move to 5.

WDJT runs Milwaukee's Telemundo affiliate, thus their interest in keeping WWAZ out.

- Trip

I did some digging into one of the nuances of the ATSC rules. Thoughts and opinions are appreciated. http://www.rabbitears.info/blog/inde...rogram_Numbers

- Trip

The entire ATSC PID scheme is silly.

"In order to avoid collisions with fixed PID values and ranges already established in this and other international standards, PID values used to identify Transport Stream packets carrying TS_program_map_section() or program elements shall not be set below 0x0030."

Where exactly do these "collisions" occur?

Ron

A story in today's edition of "TV Technology" says that President Obama’s proposed jobs bill assumes that incentive TV spectrum auctions will bring around $28 billion in proceeds. The American Jobs Act, delivered to Congress last week, includes support for the Administration’s Nationwide Broadband Plan.

Read the article for all the details about the proposed auctions and the congressional bills involving the auctioning off of spectrum.

http://tvtechnology.com/article/124414

Larry
SF

National Broadband Plan? You mean the plan where spectrum gets stolen from OTA TV so that at&t and Verizon can provide rural people with "broadband" for $80 a month for a measly 10 GB with $10 per GB overage fees? That plan?

The Rockefeller-Hutchison legislation, S.911, provides that no full-power TV licensee would be forced to give up spectrum for an incentive auction, but that those who do would receive a portion of the proceeds

And if NO ONE "volunteers" how does the government expect to get spectrum?

My guess is that the definition of "give up" is key. If a full-power station in the sought-after UHF spectrum is forced to move to another channel in, say, the VHF band, they weren't forced to "give up" spectrum. They started with 6 MHz and ended up with 6 MHz; they "gave up" nothing.

That's the kind of semantic games the gov't loves to play.

In many areas there won't be any available place to move a channel.

Program 1 is used by many stations. Modern gear has user-definable PIDs, but some of the really early stuff (Flexicoder? DCII?) based the PIDs off of the program number, so when the 0x30+ requirement took effect, the easy solution was to just start using program 3 and above only. While few major stations are left using old junk like that, many have carried over the program 3+ into the modern day because to change it would break things for a lot of viewers, at least until they rescanned. Breaking things for viewers for no reason is a good way to piss off the bosses, so I doubt many engineers are going to be rearranging things any time soon. The only viewer experience with the program number is if the PSIP generator takes a crap (which you probably want to know about anyway), so I don't really see a problem with the current system.

Most early equipment defaulted to using the so-called program paradigm where PID values are tied to program numbers. Our orginal configuration (in 2003) started with 0x20 and program 2 because 0x10 was already not allowed. When the requirement to use 0x30 and above took effect and because the rules didn't disallow it I changed our encoding and PSIP to start with 0x30 and program number 1. What we got were phone calls from folks using older STBs that refused to tune to this scheme including one or two we had at the station (even after re-scanning).
While most newer equipment defaults to program 1 and PID 0x30 and most older ATSC STBs coupled with monitors without built-in tuners are probably retired by now, unless you're making other changes that would force users to re-scan I don't see any compelling reason to change just so the first program is called number 1 (which is hidden from the viewer and mapped to the .1 service anyway).

If you've ever wondered what the original WTVE 8-site DTS looked like before it was pared down to the 2 sites it has today, I figured it out and generated maps.

Contours: http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.p...=Y&size=&map=N

Longley-Rice: http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.p...=N&size=&map=Y

Both: http://www.rabbitears.info/contour.p...=Y&size=&map=Y

- Trip

The sale of WTVE was announced today.

http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/2...ation-for-304m

Yep, bought up by a spectrum speculator.

- Trip

Did all 8 make air? Will the CP to replace the DTS with one site at North Fancy get built? I can't imagine putting 8 sites on the air, shuttering 6 of them, then dropping the rest, especially the Roxborough site, for yet another installation.

I know the Bethlehem site is not on the air because I have driven right past it several times and if it was there, the spectrum analyzer would have showed it. I should think the 8 made it on the air since they did testing with it but I wonder if someone else paid for the extended network while WTVE just paid for the two it's kept.

I'm not sure why they filed the 900 kW permit, it is the signal on which the DTS is based though. I don't see them dropping the DTS when it gives them a very nice signal from Roxborough.

- Trip

They had to go through a lot to get the nice signal at Rox - a complex panel antenna that has different beam tilts plus having to put a temporary antenna up for another station while their antenna was being installed.

And so it begins for the Canadians. CKSH-9 in Sherbrooke, QC has applied to boost power from 4.47 kW DA to 36.3 kW DA.

- Trip

You think that since they had 2 years to see the USA mistakes in this they woud have learned something.

AMENDMENT OF SECTION 73.622(I), POST-TRANSITION TABLE OF DTV ALLOTMENTS, TELEVISION BROADCAST STATIONS (CLEVELAND, OHIO).

Substitution of channel 31 for channel 8 at Cleveland, Ohio for WJW(TV). (Dkt No. RM-11644 11-159 ). Action by: Chief, Video Division, Media Bureau. Adopted: 10/07/2011 by NPRM. (DA No. 11-1690).

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Rele...-11-1690A1.pdf

I feel like a large weight has been lifted...off my OTA viewing problems list.

Trip, Falcon, anyone...is there a way to look up what WJW-DT was running power-wise pre-transition? I can't find it in the FCC database, but I THINK it was a bit more than the 600 kW specified in that NPRM.

625 kW. Should make no difference at all. (I suspect the slight drop in power was to ease the whole Canadian coordination concern.)

- Trip

Good.

Of course, WJW is coming in like gangbusters today on 8, but I suspect it's atmosphere-related and will probably go away. 31 will solve all those problems for me. The pre-transition 31 facility was one of my strongest signals.

Could be but I doubt it. Hi-VHF is less susceptible to tropo.

For me, I've gotten WMVS Milwaukee on RF 8 in Gary, IN on occasion. I never got them when they were on RF 10 analog, but have gotten them in digital though. VHF is actually more suseptible to tropo than UHF. Why do you think stations on the VHF have been known to be picked up hundreds of miles during warmer weather (especially on VHF-Lo)? I knew someone who used to get WTWO Terre Haute on RF 2 in the analog days over WBBM-TV (also on RF 2 in the analog days).

Digital TV is more subject to weather conditions...I wasn't talking about trop, unless somehow WJW was getting affected by something else on 8 (WLIO?).

I'm talking about rain vs. clear skies, clouds, etc. The solid stations generally don't go away due to that, but marginal ones might (or might come in better temporarily). It's not trop, it's garden variety weather.