What does anyone know about a "HDTV TEST" on 12/15/08 at 6:28 (pm???) I saw mentioned once recently on a Buffalo station?

It is a DTV test and they will repeat it on Jan 15 , 2009 at 6:28 pm. In other States they have done it before and basically at 6:28 pm on the Analog channel they will tx a banner for 2 minutes telling people that if they still see that picture they are not ready yet for the Digital transition.

It will be interesting to see if WNGS and ... (WPIX I think) will activate their Digital Transmitters on channel 7 and 23. It is a Western New York wide digital tv test. They will set up call centers to answer questions , basically to make sure people take meassures to be ready for the transition. First time along the Canada-US border probably. Nothing importante for us users who already have a digital set up.

donnyjaguar I do not think they are requiered to get the signal off the air , it makes no sense to me . maybe it is just that in most cases it is cheaper to do it that way instead of a sat link or fiber optics or a microwave link or whatever other means if it exists.

By Digital set up I meant an ATSC tuner either stand-alone or built in the TV or a Converter box because even if you have Digital cable or Satellite those provider might still be getting their signal over the Analog feed instead of the new DTV feed. Apparently the major cable and satellite companies in western new york are also running the test , I wonder if the Canadian BDU's are also going to do it.

It will be funny if the Buffalo networks are out on Rogers or any other canadian cable providers eh?. I would assume that by now they have already switch to the ATSC signal no?.

About carriage of Buffalo stations in Canada: My brother and a friend of mine are cable contractors and they have both told me that come February, Cogeco will pick up the digital Buffalo signals (The ones they carry, that is) and DOWN GRADE it to those who are still on analog. Pretty sad eh? U.S. networks in HD come from Detroit.

I've keep asking Bell ExpressVu (now Bell TV) if they will ever carry Buffalo US networks instead of Boston and they always say: Nothing's changing in the near future. I asked the CRTC about this and the provider can pick up these stations from wherever they want to.

If you want to get real confusing about where Cable companies get their feeds from, WTBS (Channel 17 Atlanta) had a local feed and a national feed. In the U.S. Cable & Satellite carry the national "TBS" feed which for some strange reason wasn't available on cable in Atlanta. In Canada cable & satellite carried the local "WTBS" feed.

To get "TBS" on cable in Atlanta, they changed the local WTBS to WPCH "Peachtree TV" and now they get both and once again in Canada we get screwed because we don't get TBS and all their butchered movies loaded up with commercials.

At least this is what I got from Wikipedia. We could still get TBS Superstaion, but cable & satellite providers in Canada would have to go through all that CRTC red-tape bull crap.

Let's not forget the old insane CRTC regulations with a cutoff date (that never advances) for "new" US television stations that can't be carried on cable (in case you wondered why you don't see some stations like WNLO, WNYO or WPXJ that are readily available from antanna).

Yeah, WNYO, and WNLO then WNYB and WNEQ signed on in 1987. This is the year that this CRTC regulation came into effect. Apparently WNYO is available around the GTA on digital cable?

When WNYO became WB49 after Tri-State Christian TV took their call letters and moved to Channel 26 I contacted the station manager. He said they would be trying to get WNYO (Wester New York and southern Ontario) on cable in Canada. Obviously they were unsucessful. Why? because CITY-TV said they were carrying the same programs as them and they would be cutting into their viewership. Yeah, at the time CITY was carrying Fashion Television, and Star Treck. WNYB was Dawson's Creek and Sister Sister. I think Global whined too. Surprise, surprise.

I saw that commercial for the HDTV Test happening Monday December 15th at 6:28 PM. It looks like ALL Buffalo TV stations are taking part.

Channel 4 (WIVB) showed the commercial between Survivor and CSI last night. A spot I would say when A LOT of people are watching.

It will be interesting to see if WPXJ and WNGS will actually 'turn on' their digital channels 23 and 46 respectively.

We'll only have 2 minutes to check things out. I'll be ready.

What will there be to check out? As I understand it they will be turning off the analog signal for 2 minutes. The digital signal will continue transmitting.

Yes, the test proves whether or not you are "Digital ready" but WPXJ will shut off their analog signal, but what digital signal do they have? They were supposed to transmit from 53, then somewhere else, now it's 23. WNGS is on 7-2; they were assigned channel 46.

I'm just saying you could do a scan and WPXJ comes up on channel...68 or somewhere else.

I'm hoping I remember...ie not be distracted by any thing ......since I use a computer approach to ATSC i can save my channel scans as a file [currently I have three such files] so I can do a new scan at that time..save as a file..then re-load one of the others... as I always have to enter CFTO-DT manually using my cards' add function dialogue box.

Which leads me to this question.........
On Daniel's chart he has CFTO listed with a higher power output than Omni 2....
Yet I always get O2 consistently better than CFTO but not OMNI 1 and still can't get CHCH(though I really don't care) and as for OMNI 2 there doesn't appear to be much worth watching with the exception of the early evening English news..whats with that? CFTO-DT is always 13-25%(when it does decide to reveal itself)on the OSD indicator but OMNI 2 is always 21-32% OMNI 2 does always have a nice 1080 picture though.

Any guesses?

When the change comes, as I said ages ago...I don't care if it is CDN or USA I'd like to see someone offer an OTA 24 hour news channel.

no idea , the same happens to me now that the pre-amp and rotor are damaged (water got inside and filled the compartment and froze, welcome to canada lol lol). the rotor works now but no luck yet with pre-amp (might also got damaged with the 18V coming from the FTA receiver, at some point I was using the same line to feed the OTA and the FTA set ups via TV/Cable switch). BTW the pre-amp (mind you this is a very cheap antenna , 30 cad with rotor and pre-amp and not even RG-59 but rather a thinner coaxial with no RG label) only uses 1 NPN transistor (KSP 10 manufactured by fairchild semicond with a Ft min 650 Mhz and very strange no maximun specified and Hfe 60) that even claims 35 dB !!! gain in the hole UHF band but well after 6 years nothing surprise me anymore in this country. As a comparison, back in cuba we were using 4 Ghz transistors (bought in Miami but do not recall their ID's anymore) in a 3 stage pre-amp and I do think we achived 35 dB gain thorough the hole UHF spectrum but they were 3 stages of a powerfull low noise transistor not only 1 mediocre one. well back on topic.

All three stations are using an Omnidirectional Antenna as per this website linked to IC apparently. [Link: recnet.com]

ERP's are very similar , 15 and 17 Kw and Antenna Heights are also very close with CTV having the heighest. The website also shows a coverage pattern for the 3 main contours (54, 70 , 80 dB) But does not take into consideration the terrain , only the antenna specs, so take it with a grain of salt.

I suspect the issue might be multipath in your case. OMNI 2 ad CTV have very close frecuencies so your set up should have similar performance for both (not necessarily but more likely) not the case with ch 64 OMNI 1. Unless OMNI 2 is actually broadcasting at higher levels or diferent specs than the website shows I can not think of something else other than multipath.

In more than 60 years of TV there has never been a free OTA news channels, I do not think that now after the success with Cable and Satellite they will introduce one. I might be wrong though.

For now this OTA signals are more headache than anything else, some are still 2.0 DD , some the audio quality is still crappy , some this some that , will see after the US analog shutdown if it improves but for the time being I still rely heavily on my Bell TV HD lineup with it issues also.

I'm not asking a new one be created, just a simulcast on a subchannel with an existing service.

Hi Bruce,

I agree with you it would be nice to have (OTA) an all news channel, but until OTA popularity increases and they see a market for it, I am afraid it won’t happen. One possibility would be that the CRTC helps us out, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on it. :-(

Licence For All News Channel CRTC Grants Citytv
Wednesday December 10, 2008
CityNews.ca Staff

Are you ready for some big news? How about some round the clock news?
The Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission has just awarded Citytv a licence for an all "news cable channel" that will be coming to a television near you in 2009.
There's not a lot we can tell you yet about CityNews Channel, expect that it will have all the elements you've come to expect from your favourite Toronto newsroom.

Recently I emailed CBLT asking if they would consider multicasting CBC Newsworld (on 5.2). They said that Newsworld is licensed as a cable only channel and that by law it cannot be broadcast OTA. If I recall correctly they also indicated that they are not licensed to multicast anything. I guess that's why no TV stations multicast in Canada.

What a waste of bandspace. If tv stations are not going to multicast they probably don't need 6 MHz of spectrum.