Hdtv - Uhf? (1 Viewer)

[Jim_Hunt]

I noticed all the HDTV signals in my area (Indianapolis) are on UHF. Are all HDTV channels going to be on UHF?

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Jim,
The vast majority of OTA digital broadcasts are UHF, but there are a few exceptions.

Here in Fresno the ABC affilliate, which broadcasts its ntsc signal on UHF channel 30, is broadcasting it's digital signal on VHF channel 9. We get one HD feed, one SD loop of recent news shows, and one SD feed of just a picture from a stationary camera atop our one downtown "skyscraper." These are remapped by the stb as 30-1, 30-2, and 30-3.

We only have one other digital channel up and running, 44-1 which is actually broadcast on channel 44. It's owned by a local independent broadcaster that also has one full power and half a dozen low power ntsc channels, none of which have a network affilliate. Their digital offering is a 24 hour a day SD rebroadcast of the Home Shopping Network.

All of the upcoming digital broadcasts are slotted for UHF channels.

 

[Marque D]

Most are UHF but there are some which are still VHF. The main reason for a majority of the DTV channels being UHF is because most of the VHF channels are already occupied by analog station. There are a few exceptions like WBBM-DT (3) in Chicago and WFAA-DT in Dallas (9).

But I believe once the DTV transition actually happens and the analog stations are turned off, each station has the option to keep ether their original channels number or the one they are currently use for digital television.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

When the FCC was planning to dole out new channel assignments to the TV stations for digital TV, they were considering eliminating part of the VHF band. The FCC had already decided to eliminate channels 52-69 and was planning to eliminate the low-VHF band channels 2-6 as well but ultimately decided not to. VHF has much different propagation characteristics, it takes far less power to transmit a VHF signal than a UHF, so you can imagine how all the TV stations that have their NTSC channels on VHF are looking forward to having to put a megawatt of power into their UHF digital channel just to hope to be able to replicate the coverage area they had from a few kilowatts into their VHF analog channel.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Yes, it would be great if Weird Al's station was in HDTV