One in three TV viewers in the US now use an antenna: report

[harshness]

Look at north dakota..one main studio with local inserts for news and commercials

What are you gonna do for a state that has a smaller population than many large US cities (somewhere around 700,000)?

My local ABC station, KATU, offers "local" news packages for some of the other cities that are only available through cable. AFAIK, they don't offer them on their translators.

 

[andy_horton]

The repack will go a long way towards a greater dependency on VHF in some of the more densely packed markets. They don't need to be big markets -- sometimes just several markets in the same region. At the other end, LA will have at least ten VHF stations and has had quite a few all along.

If Next Gen TV catches on with the viewers (it probably doesn't matter if it catches on with the stations if it doesn't resonate with the viewers), some stations may ultimately move back up but until ATSC 3.0 becomes the order of the day, there's going to be VHF.

Very true I know locally for TN, GA stations. Knoxville does overlap Chattanooga now, and Atlanta is overlapping in N GA & NE GA. Nashville would overlap Chattanooga as well except for Monteagle Mountain that simply blocks any possible overlap maybe with exception of Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. Chattanooga has (I believe) had "The big 3" on VHF, both Hi & Low during analog days. Now the big 4 (Fox) are Hi VHF, but WDEF is moving to RF 8, and 2 PBS Nets are nice since Knowledge only is aired on WNGH (GPB) but it's moving from UHF to Low VHF. I'm sure with others moving, WDSI already moved, I'm wondering with power increases/decreases, how this will affect many rural OTA users? VHF still and will exist in dense markets. Chattanooga is a medium market close to Nashville, Knoxville, Atlanta which are much larger. I also know as of now, WSB Atlanta uses many translators to reach the GA, FL state line for the most rural areas.

 

[N5XZS]

Albuquerque have 4 stations on VHF Hi band. Would be interesting to see if one of my local station file a CP to be on VHF low band with a ATSC 3.0!

Anyway, I think the reports on use of outdoors antennas is on the rise are pretty spot on.

 

[Tower Guy]

Yeah, it's called DVB-T using OFDM, but the Robber Barons over here wouldn't allow it, because they couldn't monetize it. So they came up with the horrible ATSC 1.0 system.

Now, ATSC 3.0 should have the best of both systems as it's a hybrid, but we will see how it goes.

ATSC 1.0 was a hybrid system that took the best technology from each of the proponents of a Hi-def standard. At first, no one proposed OFDM. Zenith’s 8VSB was the key to every company having a part of the final system. Only afterwards was OFDM considered. At that time, the adoption of OFDM would have scuttled the entire digital transition. The characteristics of the first incarnation of OFDM provided for worse coverage than 8VSB, even though OFDM had a multipath advantage.

Much before ATSC 3.0 there was a significant improvement to OFDM by the addition of “turbo codes”. The newer system, called DVB-T2, used these more efficient codes to further improve reception and surpass 8VSB.

In ATSC 3.0 the turbo codes are called Low Density Parody Checks or LDPC. This is the key to better reception of 3.0.

 

[Voyager6]

All the more reason to focus on 3.0... if reception will indeed be significantly improved, it might be the last opportunity to save OTA outside of major metropolitan areas.

To quote my father, who holds a Masters in EE, "In my opinion, they didn't do a very good job with the digital transition. Stations we could receive before are now gone."

I myself am NOT an engineer, but I DO believe that surely there was a way the US could have transitioned to digital without sacrificing the distance a signal carries.

Their modelling software was wrong in regards to range. Look at how many stations had to up their power output to reach most of their former viewing range. Even larger power increases would have been needed to cover the entire previous viewing range and that was something that the FCC was unwilling to allow. We can only hope that with ATSC 3.0 their modelling software has been corrected based on the real world results of the ATSC 1.0 transition.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Their modelling software was wrong in regards to range.

They were criminally wrong, IMO. They must have "backed into" the figures those models produced.

I think the whole transition was a fiasco that left many people in the dark (literally).

 

[Juan]

What are you gonna do for a state that has a smaller population than many large US cities (somewhere around 700,000)?

My local ABC station, KATU, offers "local" news packages for some of the other cities that are only available through cable. AFAIK, they don't offer them on their translators.

Thats gonna be alot more places...like Michigan and upstate ny

Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[harshness]

Thats gonna be alot more places...like Michigan and upstate ny

Buffalo, Rochester and Albany combined are more populous than North Dakota. Fargo (125k), Bismarck (73k) and Grand Forks (57k) combined are a somewhat larger population than Buffalo but spread over thousands of square miles of not much of global interest.

 

[Juan]

Buffalo, Rochester and Albany combined are more populous than North Dakota. Fargo (125k), Bismarck (73k) and Grand Forks (57k) combined are a somewhat larger population than Buffalo but spread over thousands of square miles of not much of global interest.

Its about saving money and making maximum profits...they already tried it once with the abc stations

Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[Trip]

They were criminally wrong, IMO. They must have "backed into" the figures those models produced.

The models work perfectly fine, if you consider that:

1) The model assumes the use of an outdoor antenna, aimed at the station, with the proper elements (not a UHF-only antenna being used for VHF), at 30 feet above ground.

2) The model does not take into account multipath, the most common cause of poor reception on indoor antennas. I'm not aware of a model that does.

3) Moving from analog to digital was a fundamental shift. There were plenty of signals that people watched in analog that were not considered to be "serving viewers" according to the model used for analog TV. Digital, with its cliff effect, is less forgiving, but if you compare against what was considered a signal strong enough to be "serving viewers" in analog, digital outperforms analog by a lot.

4) VHF noise was not factored in, as it probably should have been, but even since the DTV service assumptions were made in the mid 1990's, those noise levels have skyrocketed. 1990's assumptions would no longer be correct in any case, and the numbers used in the model have not been changed since then.

- Trip