[SBE] analog shut-off day

[Leon D. Zetekoff, NCE]

Get the FCC involved. The power company is in violation. Especially now 
with the BPL info the ARRL dug up this is a good time (IMHO) to go for it

Leon WA4ZLW

* Spain Robert wrote, On 6/15/2009 3:43 PM:

> A big problem with low band DTV is the high noise floor - and 8 vsb decoders can't deal with that. Ignition noise, arcing neon lights, cracked power line insulators, lightning are much worse at low band than high band or UHF.  Problem #2 is rabbit ears - at best, they are a half wave dipole, with 0 db front to back ratio, picking up reflection from mirrors, refrigerators, etc.  At worst, they are pushed all the way in, and resonant on channel 13; oriented the direction the tv sits, not towards the TV station tx.  

> The rural viewers in your grade B contour don't use rabbit ears - they use real antennas, that have front to back ratios, and minimum multipath.  

> In Casper, we had to use a channel 47 DTV translator to feed the DISH network receive point, because the receive POP was 1000' from a substation.  The noise floor from that substation is so high, the s/n from our VHF DTV tx was only 16 db.  The s/n from the channel 47 (10 watts into a PR-450) was 30 db.

> We have been fighting with the utility for years, and they won't do anything.  

>

> Bob Spain 

> Wyoming PBS 

>

>

>

>

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org on behalf of Gibson Prichard

> Sent: Sun 6/14/2009 9:46 AM

> To: sbe member discussion mail list

> Subject: Re: [SBE] analog shut-off day

>  

> WTVF Nashville moved from UHF56 digital to VHF5 12am on 6/12 and has been

> deluged with viewer calls. Things like poor indoor antennas, no knowledge of

> re-scanning, boxes that hold our pre-transition channel position (and won't

> update it to the post-transition freq.) are only the tip of the iceberg. We

> figured a move to low-band 5 would be beneficial to the distant viewers who

> couldn't pull in 56 due to propogation issues. We had no idea the near-field

> would be as big of a deal where we have loads of signal and are even

> circularly-polarized.

> We've probably had in excess of 2000 calls and not seeing any real solution

> to what largely seems to be problems relegated to viewers less than 40 miles

> from our tower.

>

> Gibson

>

> On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 9:17 AM, <chscherer at everestkc.net> wrote:

>

>   

>> Any stories of problems as stations turn off their analog transmitters? I'm

>> not asking about the station's ceremony (if any), but rather any viewer

>> problems? Are the predictions of unprepared viewers proving to be true?

>>

>>     

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