Has anyone seen a website that shows the exact dates that the repack is occurring for their DMA? I dropped locals from Dish because I have the OTA adaptor (works great by the way). I'm in the Detroit DMA and I noticed one channel (from Windsor, Ontario) already changed frequencies. Since I have a bunch of OTA timers set, I'm thinking I'm going to try to watch something one night and it won't be there because the channel changed frequencies without my knowledge.
OTA Repack Schedule
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Re-scan day in the D was last week. The only channel affected was 20 to my knowledge.
Go to AntennaWeb.org - Antenna Signal Prediction and put in your address. For stations affected by the repack, there will be information available. It is only the Phase Completion Date, but it should give you some idea of when as the phases are only a few weeks long each.
I just spent 20 minutes checking the string of links on this subject with no results. Does the mean that all of the older VHF channels will switch to UHF and free the older VHF spectrum?
The repack is intended to free up higher UHF channels, so it is more likely that UHF channels will move to VHF than the other way around.
In looking at Fairport NY, I see only 1 VHF channel, and it is going from channel 13 to channel 9. WHAM is the channel.
The repack isn't necessarily sorted by market. Try this link: Searchable Clearinghouse | National Association of Broadcasters. It will at least tell you what phase each station is in.
When the repack is completed, it appears there will be 60 Lo-VHF stations and 451 Hi-VHF stations out of 2043 total active stations. 154 stations are surrendering their licenses although many will stay on the air as sub-channels of another licensee.
RabbitEars.Info
Yes...UHF above channel 37 is being moved below channel 37. We're losing 14 UHF channels, from 38 to 51. I can't imagine the amount of co-channel interference that's going to be introduced in close markets. DX'ing is basically dead now, at least in the UHF range.
Most channels will still be UHF after the repack. Frequencies below 600MHz aren't very attractive for wireless companies due to the size of the antennas required and the low throughput.
There will be 1532 UHF stations or roughly 75% of 2043 total stations minus the 511 VHF stations...
If I counted right on the RabbitEars list I linked above, only 32 UHF stations are moving to VHF channels.
Living in the NW, once digital came in, TV DXing pretty much went out the window for me. There is still FM, but I can only get my few digital translators. People living in the Midwest, it still works well for them. UHF never was all that good here either, expect for Trops on the rare occasion.
I was always fascinated how clearly distant channels would come in. Living in the northern suburbs of Detroit, I think my farthest UHF DX was from Owensboro, KY. My farthest VHF was from Edmonton, Alberta. It was always during the hot summers. Nowadays, I've received some digital stations from Cleveland a few times but I expect that to stop any time. With digital, it's more difficult to discover because the picture's either there or it isn't. With analog, you could sometimes see a glimmer of a picture through the "snow".
In my area of southeast Texas( Beaumont, Pt. Arthur) we have two companies running our networks. The Fox and CBS stations and subchannels Cw etc are on UHF. The ABC and NBC station and sub channels are on VHF. We used to have all on UHF but they moved to VHF on two stations a few years back and migrated back to their actual channel number VHF 12 from UHF 50.
