Save Free TV...what? (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

I'm in Rochester.

This partial switch back to VHF also caused antenna confusion since "HDTV antennas" were often just for UHF. After the transition, without a VHF antenna, people lost their signals.

So that makes sense that all OTA broadcasters could switch back to UHF, freeing up the VHF nationally.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

That was the original plan and one the government wants to stick with so they can auction off VHF. Some of the stations don't want to give up those frrequencies. I'm pretty sure that's what the ads are all about and thats why all HD antennas were UHF ones. There was never really supposed to be any digital broadcast from VHF.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by Adam Gregorich

VHF was given up. VHF stations (stations 2-13) were given UHF spectrum for their new digital stations country wide with the intent that after they shut down analog that the VHF would go unused and be returned to the government. I believe a few stations petitioned the government after the switch to keep transmitting on the VHF band if they were having issues getting their signals through. Some of these exceptions may still be broadcasting. Everyone else nationwide should have shut theirs down.

This is flat-out incorrect. The auctions that were held reduced the remaining television frequencies to channels 2-51. There was no specific plan for the VHF channels -- 2 through 13 -- after the digital switch. My local CBS affiliate WRGB, for instance, had filed with the FCC to return to its VHF frequency after the switch from the very beginning of the process. Many other stations currently on VHF channels are on a completely different VHF channel than the one they used for their analog broadcast. Some broadcasting on VHF now were actually UHF channels in analog.

However, you are correct that nearly all digital television transmissions were on UHF frequencies prior to the switch -- especially the early digital broadcasters. Noticing this trend, many companies manufactured UHF antennas and marketed them as "HDTV antennas" under the false assumption that all digital channels would stay on the UHF spectrum. Most of these antennas can pick up channels 7 through 51, so it's only the lower half of the VHF spectrum that really causes problems. When WRGB returned to VHF 6, many people lost digital reception. When they called, the station engineer told them to hook their old analog antenna back up. Ninety-nine percent of the time, that took care of the problem.

VHF frequencies have the advantage of penetrating walls much better than UHF frequencies, and handle variable terrain better as well. Unfortunately, they also require much larger antennas and much more powerful transmitters. Since the FCC has a hard power cap on digital transmission, VHF digital channels are more likely to have signal problems than UHF digital channels.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

This is flat-out incorrect.

A bit of an understatement don't you think? I had my fuzzy-logic filter activated and applied to my local situation. Stations were given new frequencies so they could run parallel networks (analog and digital). They were supposed to return one after the cutoff. How they do that is still being sorted out, and they would like to keep both. Approx 515 stations switched their digital channel/frequency to their analog channel/frequency after the analog turn down. Just looking at full power stations after the turn down there are approx 40 in the low VHF (2-6) like Adam said a bad place to be, 450 in upper VHF (7-13) and 1300 in UHF. There is still a lot of drama around the frequencies that they are supposed to give back. Being that the unused portions are going to vary market to market the broadcasters are concerned that any new services turned up in between channels might create interference. They would like to find additional ways to make money with that spectrum rather than give it back (either old digital or analog). In a good economy the high estimate of what that would fetch was 70 billion. For nationwide services, the government is in the process of moving stations on channels 52-69. I think they have already sold this to Verizon and AT&T. A few years ago Sprint was trying to do some horsetrading with their Nextel frequencies as well with PSAPs. I'm not sure what happened to that.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Is this supposed to be sarcasm? I can only assume that either a) you click submit 10 years ago through a verrrrry slow dial up connection and it's only now showing up or b) you haven't watched TV in the past 10 years.

The quality of TV program is very high right now -- TV is better than movies as an entertainment medium and has been for about 10 years. The growth of pay and basic cable as viable programming outlets has caused a cycle of competition and an influx of talent that has created some of the best shows in the history of TV in the past 10 years.

Uhh, I wasn't talking about the actual SHOWS, I'm talking about how they're PRESENTED- with network logos and graphics constantly on the screen, and increased commercial time (about 20 minutes per hour now!) it IS an unwatchable mess. I don't care how good a show may be, I'm not watching it presented like that; I'll wait for it to come out on DVD.

I just got a new HDTV this week, and checking what's been coming in on the air in the past couple days my comment stands. Only reason I even bothered hooking the antenna up is in case there's ever any breaking news. HD is a bust- I'd rather go back to black and white with a clutter-free picture and less than 10 minutes of commercials per hour than watch HD with all the annoyances they've added.

Comments like this boggle my mind.

It's always boggled MY mind how people on a forum like this who claim to care a lot about picture quality tolerate junk intentionally put on the screen.

 

[ThomasC]

Originally Posted by Jesse Skeen

Uhh, I wasn't talking about the actual SHOWS, I'm talking about how they're PRESENTED- with network logos and graphics constantly on the screen, and increased commercial time (about 20 minutes per hour now!) it IS an unwatchable mess. I don't care how good a show may be, I'm not watching it presented like that; I'll wait for it to come out on DVD.

I only get TV over the air. I consider the logos and commercials to be a price I pay to watch great shows for free. Most of the time, I don't even notice them. I've got a DISH OTA DVR, so that solves the issue with commercials.

 

[Hanson]

Originally Posted by Jesse Skeen

I see your point about the clutter, but I have apparently trained myself to tune out the bugs and don't even notice them when I watch. The odd thing is, I can't watch movies on cable because of the small logos in the corner, but they can have animated banners running along the bottom during a TV show and I don't even blink an eye. And I loooove the color and clarity of HD -- I would rather watch a show in HD with logos than a bug free DVD-only release. I've been time-shifting and skipping commercials since the mid-90's, so that hasn't been an issue for a while now.

I guess the bugs and extra commercial time started soon enough in my formative TV watching years that they don't bother me.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by Adam Gregorich

Stations were given new frequencies so they could run parallel networks (analog and digital). They were supposed to return one after the cutoff. How they do that is still being sorted out, and they would like to keep both.

That is bizzare. Out of curiosity, what TV market are you in? I hadn't heard of any stations unwilling to give up their second channel. A couple have gotten permission to switch channels since the switch as a result of unique problems between their local area and the given frequency, but I didn't know until you mentioned it that any were still trying to keep both.

In a good economy the high estimate of what that would fetch was 70 billion. For nationwide services, the government is in the process of moving stations on channels 52-69. I think they have already sold this to Verizon and AT&T. A few years ago Sprint was trying to do some horsetrading with their Nextel frequencies as well with PSAPs. I'm not sure what happened to that.

The FCC held a series of auctions for the 700 MHz spectrum. Channels 54, 55, 59 went first. For instance, channel 55 is now being used for the mobile FLO TV service you see advertised every so often. The big auction happened in January 2008, and the remaining 700 MHz spectrum was split into five "blocks". Block A was a 12 MHz band consisting of Channels 52 and 57. Block B was a 12 MHz band consisting of Channels 53 and 58. Block C was a 22 MHz band consisting of Channels 60, 61, 65 and 66. The controversial Block D was a 10 MHz band consisting of Channels 62 and 67. Block E was a 6 MHz band consisting of Channel 56.

Block C was the most valuable block in the auction, for obvious reasons. That being the case, Google successfully petitioned the FCC to attach certain strings to its usage. As a result, Verizon Wireless (the winner of Block C) will not be able to restrict the devices and software that subscribers choose to use on these frequencies.

Block D was controversial because it had the most restrictions placed upon it. The rise of mobile devices in the 1980's and 1990's required increasingly large amounts of radio spectrum. Industry lobbying got the government to chip away at more and more of the other uses of spectrum, including the spectrum reserved for emergency responders. The result is that emergency services across the country have far fewer radio frequenices to work with than they once did. This became a huge problem on 9/11, which NYPD and FDNY communications got completely jammed up with the onslaught of citywide communication between agencies in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. One of the 9/11 Comission's recommendations was to ensure that adequate communications were restored to emergency services. Block D was to be the way that recommendation was enacted. Rather than simply open up Channels 62 and 67 to emergency services, however, the government wanted to have its cake and eat it, too. The plan was to aunction the spectrum off to private comanies, who could use the spectrum only after developing a national emergency response system that prioritized emergency transmissions over customer communications. No company was willing to the millions it would have taken to overhaul the national emergency communications system, nor to be stuck with spectrum that it would be a second class citizen on. The highest bid for Block D (around $450 million) failed to reach the reserve price set by the FCC.

The other four blocks were auctioned off for a total of close to $20 billion.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

FWIW, my local NBC affiliate has always broadcast digitally on channel 5.x and the local CBS affiliate has always broadcast digitally on channel 12.x.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

But are those the real channels? The ATSC broadcast format allows broadcasters to use "virtual" channel labels to keep their old analog numbers, regardless of what channel they actually occupy on the spectrum. For instance my local NBC affiliate, WNYT, comes up at 13.x despite broadcasting on VHF 12. The local Fox affiliate, WXXA, comes up as 23.x on screen despite broadcasting on VHF 7. Only WRGB broadcasts on the actual channel it's labeled as.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

I don't know how it works. All I can tell you is that if I plug rabbit ears into the back of my TV, NBC HD is on 5.x and CBS HD is on 12.x -- I have no idea whether there's some sort of re-mapping going on. I don't have any sort of digital cable or converter box, so if something's being re-mapped, the TV is handling it (and my old set did too).

 

[DaveF]

You can find the virtual and actual channel listings at sites like antennaweb.org.

For example, my local 10 NBC is on channel 10. But 13 ABC is something like channel 58 actual.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Originally Posted by Adam Gregorich I had my fuzzy-logic filter activated and applied to my local situation. Stations were given new frequencies so they could run parallel networks (analog and digital). They were supposed to return one after the cutoff. How they do that is still being sorted out, and they would like to keep both. Approx 515 stations switched their digital channel/frequency to their analog channel/frequency after the analog turn down. Just looking at full power stations after the turn down there are approx 40 in the low VHF (2-6) like Adam said a bad place to be, 450 in upper VHF (7-13) and 1300 in UHF. There is still a lot of drama around the frequencies that they are supposed to give back. Being that the unused portions are going to vary market to market the broadcasters are concerned that any new services turned up in between channels might create interference. They would like to find additional ways to make money with that spectrum rather than give it back (either old digital or analog). In a good economy the high estimate of what that would fetch was 70 billion. For nationwide services, the government is in the process of moving stations on channels 52-69. I think they have already sold this to Verizon and AT&T. A few years ago Sprint was trying to do some horsetrading with their Nextel frequencies as well with PSAPs. I'm not sure what happened to that.

Interestingly, in the market that I'm in, Phoenix, AZ, if you turn on an analog TV all of the channels that used to carry the networks, now carry Spanish language television. There are now in the neighborhood of 20 Spanish language channels in the VHF and UHF bands. Far more channels than we had before the digital switch over. Not a single English language channel.

I thought all that bandwidth was supposed to be reallocated for other uses, but obviously thats not the case.

Doug

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Douglas Monce

Interestingly, in the market that I'm in, Phoenix, AZ, if you turn on an analog TV all of the channels that used to carry the networks, now carry Spanish language television. There are now in the neighborhood of 20 Spanish language channels in the VHF and UHF bands. Far more channels than we had before the digital switch over. Not a single English language channel.

Doug

Are they broadcast from across the border, perhaps? It looks like that's about 80 miles away, which is pretty for TV typically. But that sort of thing has been done for Radio, so perhaps TV is now capitalizing on the empty airwaves.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Originally Posted by DaveF


Are they broadcast from across the border, perhaps? It looks like that's about 80 miles away, which is pretty for TV typically. But that sort of thing has been done for Radio, so perhaps TV is now capitalizing on the empty airwaves.

Acutally the Mexican border is about 180 miles away from Phoenix. We can't even pick up stations from Tucson. No these are local stations with adds for local businesses.

Doug

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by Aaron Silverman

I don't know how it works. All I can tell you is that if I plug rabbit ears into the back of my TV, NBC HD is on 5.x and CBS HD is on 12.x -- I have no idea whether there's some sort of re-mapping going on. I don't have any sort of digital cable or converter box, so if something's being re-mapped, the TV is handling it (and my old set did too).

The remapping is handled by the ATSC tuner in your TV or converter box. That presumes, of course, that remapping is in fact going on.

Originally Posted by Douglas Monce
Interestingly, in the market that I'm in, Phoenix, AZ , if you turn on an analog TV all of the channels that used to carry the networks, now carry Spanish language television. There are now in the neighborhood of 20 Spanish language channels in the VHF and UHF bands. Far more channels than we had before the digital switch over. Not a single English language channel.

I thought all that bandwidth was supposed to be reallocated for other uses, but obviously thats not the case.

The digital switch only applied to full power stations. Low Power Television (LPTV) stations can continue broadcasting in analog indefinitely. Like digital channels though, they have to broadcast between 2 and 51 so it's not a bandwidth issue.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Ah very good, thanks for the clarification Adam.

Doug

 

[monika]

DaveF , I admit . You are saying right . Today or tomorrow HDTV will be all over the world. Cocal cable TV will be less interested Service.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The drumbeat grows louder:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/business/economy/28view.html

Professor Thaler proposes auctioning off the entire remaining television spectrum, which he estimates will bring in $100 billion. What happens to the millions Americans that watch television free over the airwaves? If you're over an arbitrary income level, tough noogies. If you're poor enough, you get a voucher for subsidized low cost television service for two years. Thaler doesn't say what happens to them after the two years.

The gist of it seems to boil down to this: the public airwaves should be sold off to private interest, so they can be used to more ably connect the devices sophisticated urbanites like Thaler user. If you don't want to pay for cable or satellite, that's too bad.

Pardon me if I don't want to give up my free broadcast television so that Professor Thaler's smartphone works a little faster.