[MadMan400096]

That is a significant loss. MeTV has 3 hours of classic kids programming on Saturday morning:
Popeye and Pals (Paramount), Tom and Jerry (MGM), Bugs Bunny (Warner Bros). Incredible stuff, if you don’t mind violence.

Yeah, I'm definitely glad MeTV managed to get those cartoons from WB. This is probably the first time any of those cartoons have run on OTA in decades (not counting public domain cartoons, of course). Too bad I can't get it in my area. None of the Springfield stations carry MeTV, and the two closest stations to me that do carry it (WHCT in Hartford and an Adams, MA-based translator of WNYT in Albany) are not only both low power stations, they're on the exact same channel.

FAVE TV did not last long, MeTV is back on 4.4. Apparently, the owners of MeTV's attempt to use KREG (impossible to receive it in Denver) to serve Denver, via cable, failed miserably. A cushion to Scripps ravaging digital 3, 7, 10 and 59 (not counting the low power stations). Thanks to the FCC, one owner can own as many TV stations as they like.

Technically speaking, Scripps doesn't actually own 59. They had to sell it to Inyo Broadcast Holdings to comply with FCC regulations, though admittedly, considering how the stations are run, they might as well be Scripps stations.

 

[KyL416]

Weigel also has an ongoing relationship with CBS. Like in Weigel's home market Chicago, they carry a simulcast of WBBM to help with people who have problems with WBBM's main VHF signal, and they partnered with CBS to launch StartTV.

Also even though KREG doesn't reach Denver itself, it was enough for them to use must carry status to get them carriage in HD on both Dish and DirecTV. They still need KREG because in DirecTV's case being subchannel only wouldn't get them any carriage, while in Dish's case it would have been SD only via the national feed for markets without MeTV on a primary channel. But Comcast being Comcast pretty much flat out refused to honor the must carry request except for the western slope areas, although now it appears to be available in the Denver area as an X1 only IP channel, which leaves out anyone with a QAM based tuner.

 

[plain fan]

Saw that MeTV was back in Denver on Svengoolie's Twitter feed last night before seeing these updates. I checked this morning and it is coming through strong and clear for me. MeTV is one of the very few reasons why I even watch something other than movies.

 

[Phil T]

MeTV on Comcast in Littleton is showing as KREGD. Is KCNC rebroadcasting KREG or do they have their own feed?

 

[Nick Metrowsky]

Nice that MeTV does have a Saturday morning three hour cartoon block from 6 AM - 9 AM. A better substitute for what Ion is doing, three hours of kid oriented educational programming, to replace Qubo.

 

[Nick Metrowsky]

You could try locsst, and a VPN to get MeTV that way. MeTV is not on the Denver feed yet, but it is on number of the cities they serve. It is worth $5 a month.

Yeah, I'm definitely glad MeTV managed to get those cartoons from WB. This is probably the first time any of those cartoons have run on OTA in decades (not counting public domain cartoons, of course). Too bad I can't get it in my area. None of the Springfield stations carry MeTV, and the two closest stations to me that do carry it (WHCT in Hartford and an Adams, MA-based translator of WNYT in Albany) are not only both low power stations, they're on the exact same channel.

Technically speaking, Scripps doesn't actually own 59. They had to sell it to Inyo Broadcast Holdings to comply with FCC regulations, though admittedly, considering how the stations are run, they might as well be Scripps stations.

 

[KyL416]

MeTV on Comcast in Littleton is showing as KREGD. Is KCNC rebroadcasting KREG or do they have their own feed?

The best time to check KCNC 4.4 is Sunday mornings at 7am. If it's a rebroadcast of KREG, they'll be showing their weekly local public affairs show Colorado & Me instead of an episode of Saved by The Bell.

 

[Phil T]

4.4 is showing KCNC for its ID so it seems strange that Comcast is using KREG in Denver.

 

[rjeffords]

You could try locsst, and a VPN to get MeTV that way. MeTV is not on the Denver feed yet, but it is on number of the cities they serve. It is worth $5 a month.

Locast is great. Have always used Roku, but recently got a Amazon Firestick lite, downloaded the NordVPN app to watch local channels from other cities via locast. Works well for me.

 

[rthurlow]

Hi folks,

I've been away from OTA for a year and a half after a move from Fort Collins to west Loveland, since it was easier to add locals via Comcast than to put up an antenna at the new place, given technical details and wife-approval-factor. That's been acceptable, but 1) Comcast is charging more now that the introductory price has expired, and more importantly, 2) Loveland Pulse fiber-optic Internet service is coming soon to our neighborhood, so I am eager to see the day I can tell Comcast to go away. So I finally got help (from NoCo Cord Cutters, great guy) putting my old CM-4228 up in the attic last weekend, and I am quite happy with the results. I got the major channels with just the antenna, and a few more signals improved or appeared out of nowhere when I put the CM-7778 amplifier inline. I get the following RF signals:

7 KMGH Denver ABC 60% E
9 KUSA Denver NBC 56% G
13 KBDI Broomfield PBS 78% E
15 KETD Castle Rock Estrell 80% E
17 KPJR Greeley TBN 78% E
18 KPXC Denver ION 80% E
19 KCDO Sterling Ind 65% E
20 KRMT Denver Daystar 68% E
24 KDEO Denver Oorah 59% E
26 KZFC Windsor Ind 53% G
28 KTFD Denver Unimas 63% E
29 KDEN Longmont Telemundo 79% E
31 KTVD Denver MyNetw 80% E
32 KCEC Boulder Univis 83% E
33 KRMA Denver PBS 82% E
35 KCNC Denver CBS 80% E
36 KDVR Denver Fox 84% E

I split this two ways from the antenna - one branch goes to my main TV (soon to go to my Tivo) and one goes to an existing amplified splitter in my homerun area to fan out a lesser-quality signal throughout the house. My office TV sometimes fails to get stuff on RF9, but most other stuff is solid - I am still glad to have 9.4 on RF31. I find it remarkable how RF34 going to ATSC 3.0 has tossed channels around I also find it remarkable how many ways I can get KMGH - I get three copies, on RF 7, 19 and 26 - and that's not all possible options in the region. It's not as good as the dedicated FM antenna I left under the insulation in Fort Collins, but I'm getting decent results on FM from this thing, too.

I am a little surprised to not get a whiff of any Fort Collins transmitters through the back side of the CM-4228. I used to get RF27 and RF30 from Cheyenne when I had this thing outside in the Fort, and I might have expected to get RF11 - but I am pretty far west, and I am sure terrain is in the way. I'm not missing anything unique there except RF11 KQCK, which I don't care about.

A couple of questions:

- I am getting two copies of the 10.x channels, and can't figure out why; per rabbitears.info, I only expect that on RF19. (I think my Tivo would let me see this, but I haven't switched it over yet.)

- Does anyone else find it strange that RF15 KETD is alone amongst broadcasters in having only the main subchannel? I would think the repack and ATSC 3.0 musical chairs would make this a premium opportunity.

- Is anyone other than RF14 KZDN planning on increasing power? Are most of the low power signals stuck there?

Take care,
Rob T

 

[ElHawkman]

Welcome back, Rob T! Thanks for posting those signal strength numbers, always fun to see actuals. What are you measuring with? I live about as far south of Lookout Mountain as you live north, so I'll have to record my numbers and do the same. I do know that we struggle with the non-Lookout towers (Telemundo, TBN, Ion) down where i live. I'd love to see them bump those strengths a little bit to push it over Surrey Ridge. Ion's power reduction in the repack definitely hurt my ability to get it.

RF9 is a little unreliable at times for me too. I'm sure its mostly because occasionally I try to get it with a UHF only antenna (it works if you fiddle with the location). I've occasionally gotten the Fort Collins Fox affiliate with my Dish-installed Televes UHF antenna.

You might be getting the 10.x channels off of the Sterling RF23 transmitter? But then you'd be getting doubles of the 3.x channels too. Doesn't sound like you are.

KETD has been running a test loop for a couple months now on 15.2. I'm also surprised that they don't have at least another subchannel. I think at one point they had a religious analog channel or something. I'm kinda surprised that someone like HC2 Communications doesn't buy it because it covers the metro well.

 

[rthurlow]

Welcome back, Rob T! Thanks for posting those signal strength numbers, always fun to see actuals. What are you measuring with?
...
You might be getting the 10.x channels off of the Sterling RF23 transmitter? But then you'd be getting doubles of the 3.x channels too. Doesn't sound like you are.

I am measuring with the "Manual tuning" feature of the LG TV I have. I think I respect what my TiVo can tell me more, as it lets me walk through the logical channels and tell me the physical channel and strength of the signal, but being able to walk through the physical channels is good for now. I am actually getting two copies of 3-x as well, but until this morning when I went over stuff again, I haven't picked up anything on RF23 from Sterling. Chilly mornings must be good, as I locked into KBDI'2 RF 22 with good quality (only an unidentified non-zero signal before), and I did pick up RF23 for the first time I recall, with pretty low quality. It seems normal to get solid reads of two copies 3-1 and 10-1 on my LG, which made me think it must be showing up somewhere else, but it could be I am just looking at different things at different times. I will have to wait a bit before I will know for sure. Interesting stuff, though.

Rob T

 

[rthurlow]

Not conclusive yet, but I have a hunch about my duplicates on 3-x and 10-x. My LG TV tuner in "manual tuning" mode shows the lowest-numbered channel on any given RF channel, which is not always the most helpful thing in our musical-chairs market. From that, I am seeing that I am getting 3-1 from RF19 KSBS and also RF26 KZFC Windsor. That's not what I can glean from rabbitears.info. I suspect I am getting the 3-1/3-2 and the 10-x clusters from RF26. I will know more when I switch to my Tivo.

Rob T

 

[rthurlow]

Decent atmospherics this morning, so I am picking up RF23 Sterling from Loveland again on the autoscan. That means I now have four copies of 7-x (!), and three copies each of 3-x and 10-x. On the downside, I can't even tell there's a signal on RF9 today - the only 9-x I see is 9-4 and the new 9-7 ( the slide for Twist TV that starts tomorrow).

 

[Nick Metrowsky]

Looks like 9.7, like 9.4 is on the signal for KTVD. at least when I just scanned that is when 9.4 and 9.7 show up. As for KMGH they are on RF7, Rf23, RF26 and RF30. This is addition to Scripps taking over Digital 59, and duplicating some subchannel content there.

 

[ElHawkman]

Looks like 53.2 (RF 15) has gone from a musical loop/signal to Estrella News (apparently it's a 24 hour news channel in Spanish). I'm pretty sure that a few years ago 53.2 was a religious channel in English in analog.

I'm still not picking up anything on RF14 KZDN-LD (the Country Network, La Invasora, Ace TV) and I haven't since probably last December. One person on here said they thought the signal was getting upgraded.

From the south metro, I recently started getting KPJR (TBN) at 633kw pretty reliably and I've always gotten KDEN (Telemundo) at 800kw. Can't get the KXPC signal on the same tower at 300kw. I used to get KXPC very well.

Has anyone actually locked and viewed the ATSC 3.0 signal on RF 2? Does it really have the Dish Network movie channel? I have the Silicon Dust 3.0 hardware box but I can't get RF2 without a ton of work, possibly not at all.

 

[ppasteur]

Looks like 53.2 (RF 15) has gone from a musical loop/signal to Estrella News (apparently it's a 24 hour news channel in Spanish). I'm pretty sure that a few years ago 53.2 was a religious channel in English in analog.
Has anyone actually locked and viewed the ATSC 3.0 signal on RF 2? Does it really have the Dish Network movie channel? I have the Silicon Dust 3.0 hardware box but I can't get RF2 without a ton of work, possibly not at all.

I can get it here from around 285 and Hampden. But only on my old VHF/UHF antenna that was cut for channel 2 and up. My high VHF/uhf, the Winegard HD7698P (a big ass , high gain high VHF and UHF antenna) up about 45 feet can't lock on at all using the Quatro 4k. I am only about 12 miles from Lookout Mountain and can see the towers from my roof. With the old 6 element maybe 4 foot long antenna up about 20 feet I get 65% Signal level and about 70% signal quality. Symbol can be 90 to 100%.
Which means that unless you have a decent antenna tuned for low VHF, you likely will not be able to get a useable signal at any distance much further away.

It is indeed several channels of nothing I care to watch

	134.1	HOPR
	134.2	ONPPV
	134.3	STDIO
	134.4	AUD 1
	134.5	AUD 2
	134.6	AUD 3

HOPR a loop of promos for the HOPPER device
STDIO some clips from concerts etc. May be full concerts, but it has not yet been good enough for me to watch for any length of time.
ONPPV promos of their pay per view content. NOT full movies (at least that I have seen)
AUD1 through AUD3. music from DISH network. Nothing I have found that I like.

I believe they are using these for testing ATSC3. Probably as an adjunct to their DISH service at some point. They are constantly screwing around with things.
They seem to be intermittent, and pretty crappy PQ/SQ overall, even in the best case.
If you never get any of them, I don't think you are missing anything significant. In any case, unless you are close and have a GOOD LOW VHF antenna, forget it.

 

[dylanwnyota]

I can get it here from around 285 and Hampden. But only on my old VHF/UHF antenna that was cut for channel 2 and up. My high VHF/uhf, the Winegard HD7698P (a big ass , high gain high VHF and UHF antenna) up about 45 feet can't lock on at all using the Quatro 4k. I am only about 12 miles from Lookout Mountain and can see the towers from my roof. With the old 6 element maybe 4 foot long antenna up about 20 feet I get 65% Signal level and about 70% signal quality. Symbol can be 90 to 100%.
Which means that unless you have a decent antenna tuned for low VHF, you likely will not be able to get a useable signal at any distance much further away.

It is indeed several channels of nothing I care to watch

	134.1	HOPR
	134.2	ONPPV
	134.3	STDIO
	134.4	AUD 1
	134.5	AUD 2
	134.6	AUD 3

HOPR a loop of promos for the HOPPER device
STDIO some clips from concerts etc. May be full concerts, but it has not yet been good enough for me to watch for any length of time.
ONPPV promos of their pay per view content. NOT full movies (at least that I have seen)
AUD1 through AUD3. music from DISH network. Nothing I have found that I like.

I believe they are using these for testing ATSC3. Probably as an adjunct to their DISH service at some point. They are constantly screwing around with things.
They seem to be intermittent, and pretty crappy PQ/SQ overall, even in the best case.
If you never get any of them, I don't think you are missing anything significant. In any case, unless you are close and have a GOOD LOW VHF antenna, forget it.

How does the signal behave with lots of noise/electrical interference?

Dish’s studio isn’t the best representation of what could be done with Lo-VHF. I’m guessing that they’re broadcasting at a high SNR, which is probably why it’s harder to get. If a station had a crazy low SNR on ATSC 3.0, say -6dB, then things would be a lot different. The only way I see a revitalization of the Lo-VHF band is with low bitrates and low SNRs. That’s the only way you could reach the general public with their paper thin antennas on their window with skinny coax.

 

[ppasteur]

How does the signal behave with lots of noise/electrical interference?

I haven't watched enough to be able to comment definitively, but the picture was glitchy and froze from time to time. I tended to think it was their equipment, but I am not sure what noise does to a digital signal. I was getting what the HDHR Quattro 4K saw as a good signal. 90% strength, 80%, and 100% symbol quality. (I just rechecked it). But, as I mentioned, I did not find anything compelling enough that it made me want to spend any time trying to improve things.

 

[dylanwnyota]

I haven't watched enough to be able to comment definitively, but the picture was glitchy and froze from time to time. I tended to think it was their equipment, but I am not sure what noise does to a digital signal. I was getting what the HDHR Quattro 4K saw as a good signal. 90% strength, 80%, and 100% symbol quality. (I just rechecked it). But, as I mentioned, I did not find anything compelling enough that it made me want to spend any time trying to improve things.

Lo-VHF on ATSC 1.0 is horrible. I thought I would see if there is a noticeable difference. Thanks for your input.