On Jan 6, 2008, at 3:02 PM, Ray Brown wrote: > I was looking at my local area, and there's at least one example... > in Springfield, MO, new DTV 44-1 will be the NBC affiliate, while > 44-2 will be the CW (and 44-3 will be "Weather Now", I guess it's > a clone of The Weather Channel?)
Our local NBC affiliate KUSA-9 has one of these continuous "Weather Plus" channels already going as does the local ABC affiliate KMGH-7. They're a mixture of a continuously updated weather info set into side and bottom bars, and a running loop of pre-recorded local news and weather forecasts, along with additional commercials (of course). http://www.9news.com/life/programming/default.aspx - KUSA DT and KUSA DT2 listings. As you can see, KUSA DT2 is in "perma-Weather" mode right now. Same thing with KMGH. http://www.thedenverchannel.com The only really useful part of that is if you don't have Internet access, you can see the live radar loops anytime. I guess it's also more interesting to watch local news loops than the same four stories from CNN over and over with talking heads, sometimes. I'm not sure what the CBS affiliate KCNC-4 is planning for their sub- channel(s), but I don't see anything on their website about it. Their transmitter supervisor is a Ham, and a "good guy", I should ask him sometime when it's convenient. Also, NTIA is issuing $40 coupons toward converter boxes for SD TVs: https://www.dtv2009.gov/ -- if you "qualify". I assume this means you have to say you don't have any pay TV services. > I was trying to prove or disprove our local (Joplin, MO FOX station > being simulcast on a DTV when they move, but I can't find it yet... > aah. Here, I found that the CBS affiliate, currently on 7, will move > to > 13, and Fox, currently on 14, wants to coexist on 13, but hasn't > gotten approval yet... Around here, it literally took an act of Congress to get our DTV tower up on the same mountain that TV has broadcast from since the 50's. http://www.hdtvcolorado.com/ There's a NIMBY group still fighting the Constitutionality of that particular maneuver, but the tower and shared 20,000 sq. ft. building for ABC, NBC, and CBS and what used to be UPN (I don't know what they are now, they're called "My 20" now...) is already under construction on the mountain, and once the DTV tower is up, 4 other smaller towers are coming down as part of the deal. Here's the NIMBY group's website, for a good laugh. Especially anything to do with RF engineering -- they're utterly clueless. http://www.c-a-r-e.org/ It's totally out of control, and has been for years. Making a few lawyers a lot of money, though. That's always a given, nowadays. Fox-31 KDVR and the TBS affiliate KWGN-2 put gear on other towers elsewhere. ABC, NBC, CBS, and UPN have all been broadcasting their DTV signals at extremely reduced power levels from a Downtown building, which gives all of them pretty wimpy coverage into the suburbs and the rest of the Front Range corridor. All are being sued in one form or another by the NIMBY group. The City of Golden, CO has been involved on and off in the fight over the tower. The Coors family (Coors Brewery is in Golden, CO) either really agrees that they don't want the tower, or there was pressure to support the city or face zoning problems later when/if the brewery needed to expand. The Congressional law tactic sure got them out of the fire, if there was behind the scenes pressure, and we're all glad Pete Coors didn't win his Senate bid if he really didn't want a sane single super-tower on the same mountain TV's always been on around here. Some early proposals had the broadcasters moving to sites that were traditionally only 2-way sites, and repeaters and other users on those sites would have had an RF ultra-mess to deal with... broadcast being "segregated" from 2-way, most of the RF engineers around here that I've talked to seem to think it'd be a good idea to keep it that way. A rare treat. >> So, there may be more content, but station WXYZ will still use the >> full >> 6 MHz. If my local area is any indication, they will simply add >> channels >> such as full time traffic and WX. (like you need 6 channels of WX >> forecasts) My guess would be that the additional "channels" aren't all that useful yet to the broadcasters, until the change-over happens and the majority of folks are receiving all of the channels. I doubt the additional channels will be carried by the dish folks due to bandwidth limitations, but local cable companies seem to be carrying at least a few of these sub-channels from the locals. It'll be interesting if they ever find anything more useful than continuous weather/news/commercials to put on them. So far, I like NBC's 1080i standard better than the 720p standard most of the others are going with, whether or not I can "really" see it on my medium-sized LCD panel or it's all in my head. There's going to be a LOT of SD content around for years and years in re-runs, that isn't in 16:9 format, so we'll be putting up with side-boxed or stretched and up-converted versions of old analog content for a long long time. (TV Land, anyone?) I think watching the legal battle has been more interesting (for some of us) than the content provided by most of the broadcasters! (GRIN) -- Nate Duehr, WY0X [EMAIL PROTECTED]
