It’s NAB convention time in Vegas where the Country’s broadcasters gather to shore up their government run monopoly over what Americans see and hear.
Very often the FCC commissioners make an appearance. Since the two most knowledgable commissioners just resigned, there are only 3 members, two of whom showed up – the black woman from South Carolina who ran a blacks-only newspaper was a no show.
The sole Republican member is the Indian Hindu man who sees the most important challenge at the FCC being to “save AM radio”, which the old timers are soaking up:
http://streamingradioguide.com/startingover/?p=6488
One important issue facing the FCC is what to do with the space being vacated where TV channels 5 and 6 used to be (76-88 mHz) This is extremely valuable real estate. It’s in the FM range just below the existing FM Band and high enough that it doesn’t have the ionosphere “skip” that shows up on channels 2 and 3. Useful ideas include using it: expanding the FM band downward; community based low power LPFM; an all digital FM band with the goal of eventually turning off analog FM without the current hybrid technology; giving AM stations FM translators to begin the phase out of AM radio; using the spectrum for a new wireless broadband service or storing it away in the Social Security lock box. It’s something the NAB has a keen interest – the last thing they want is more radio stations.
The other Democrat member reiterated the expected collectivist rhetoric of “public interest”, “universal access” (see: Obamaphines) and “consumer protection” as part of the mission of the FCC – of course, TV and Radio aren’t really connected to phone service directly, although the FCC would like TV to give back spectrum for more wireless broadband
Art, Channel 6 hasn’t gone anywhere. Where I live, in the northeast, there are many VHF stations, including several on channel 6.
WPVI Philadelphia has been on channel 6 longer than I have been alive. So has WRBG (Red, Green, Blue), formerly WGY-TV 6 Schenectady, ( world’s oldest tv station, founded on January 13, 1928).
There is even a new comer in your former area, WEDY New Haven.
from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRGB
“On July 7, 2009 WRGB resumed its radio simulcast broadcasts on a frequency of 87.9 FM, without explicit FCC authorization.[7] Less than two months later, on August 24, the FCC ordered WRGB to turn off the 87.9 transmitter.[8] Currently, the only two stations licensed by the FCC to use 87.9 are KSFH, a high school station in Mountain View, California; and K200AA, a CSN International repeater in Sun Valley, Nevada. WITI, another former analog Channel 6 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, restored its radio audio via a content agreement with Clear Channel Communications, which placed that station’s audio on the HD Radio subchannel of WMIL-FM, and it is possible WRGB could consider this venue to restore the service.”
As a non-TV owner, I’ll defer to you.
The magic of digital TV is the channel ID has nothing to do with the frequency – unless you want it to. Since stations have huge investments in their VHF legacy channel numbers, they can technically be on UHF channel 17 but call themselves channel 6-1 as long as nobody else is on 6 for real.
Low Power TV stations didn’t have to go digital on the same schedule back in 2009 and a couple folks tried to keep transmitting analog audio to exploit a hole in the rules.
As the narrative above explains, because of the potential for interference with channel six, the FCC doesn’t license FM stations on 87.9 except in highly unusual circumstances where there is no channel 6
The FCC also wants to compress the UHF channels down to free up spectrum, for wireless. Some of the newer equipment looks for signals first before assuming the spectrum is unused
If Fiber becomes as widely deployed as google hopes, this need for Wireless broadband dissipates. Thy can just put up WiMAX or LTE hotspots every few blocks fed by a gigabit cable. No need to cover an entire city from one transmitter.
The initial plan was to move all TV stations off of VHF and onto UHF. That would make it easier for antenna design. In much of the country, the FCC did move all the VHF stations to UHF. Here in the northeast, they eventually decided they would need the upper half of the VHF channels – channels 7-13. There is a huge gap between channels 13 (upper VHF) and 14 (UHF) and also between channels 6 (lower VHF) and 7 (upper VHF).
Eventually they decided in a few select cities even that was not enough, so there are a few HDTV channels broadcasting on channel 6. I do not think there are any on channels 2-5 anymore, but I have not looked. The thought was to get them off of channel 6 later if possible. One way would be lower power transmitters spread throughout the viewing area, but that is a capital investment the stations don’t want to pay for.
Like anyone still watches over the air TV
I neglected to take my phone with me today. Some time later I’ll get a snapshot of almost every South facing apartment having a dish here
I am moving on my plans to cut the cable. Have you noticed that Time Warner, Comcast and others are content providers?
The content providers were unsuccessful in getting the “broadcast flag” law to prohibit you from recording broadcasts, but they did succeed in passing a similar CIC law ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_Control_Information )
CCI is implemented by the cable companies and and tells your hardware whether you can make a copy of the digital content. Do not copy will prevent you from making a recording at all. Copy once is what many cable systems use.
For me, I recorded an HBO program on an old PC and could not watch it on that PC with its old monitor because the old monitor was not “High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)” complaint. ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdcp ) . My newer PC is HDCP complaint so I tried to watch it on the other PC in the same room, on the same home network, and was prohibited. The error message was that I was trying to watch a prohibited copy. That is when I learned about the CCI and HDCP laws, and that I would only be able to watch my HBO recording on the old obsolete CPU it was recorded with…. and only then if I replace the monitor.
Have a read on what the cable companies have been doing: http://forums.tivo.com/pe/action/forums/displaypost?postID=11014844#e11014844
For me, over the air means I don’t have to pay the slimy crooks… saving money is nice, only a secondary consideration. No one likes to be have their access to content “stolen” from them after paying $10,000 for it over the last ten years to the cable company.
Good for you CC. Cut that dam cable. Before all these crazy TV stations went digital I use to be able to Pick up a station out of Winston Salem NC, Two West virginia stations,
Bluefield & Grandview. All Five from Roanoke VA, and in the Fall to spring, (when the leaves are off the trees) ABC from Lynchburg Va.
I was Gold ! Now not so much, North Carolina and Lynchburg are gone. I would have to build a tower.
Bluefield and four Roanoke is all I have left. which ain’t much, Unless you like Hyena’s reading the local news. blah
I heard PC sales are down again 14% this last quarter. That’s cause they don’t make a decent OS anymore, make everything run on a phone or a Kindle.
Have you tried Office 2013, don’t its sux and will set you blind! It is terrible. The company I work for is dumping that cheit on us.
Microsoft sux, They should bring out a XP classic, cause that is when they hit their high water mark. sad,
I have a PC I need to reload an OS on cause it picked up some drive by virus. XP is what it’s gettin, LOL
parrott
XP is still good and still have a machine or 2 that runs it! Gold!!!! I use other OS programs when needed, but so far they are non-essential to life as I know it.
So far as cable or a sat dish, I cut those. I had live feeds that were really good, but only run “Over The Air” now, and that is all I need. Still want the weather forecast and a couple other programs, but I’ve cut wayyyyyy back. I always figured the HD stuff was going to be worth it, but when considering the poor content being broadcast, not worthwhile, IMO.
Maybe someday I’ll be forced to connect digitally, or in other ways, but so far NOT HAPPENING HERE, of course your mileage may vary.
I’m with you on that, Parrott. Plug your address into this site and it will tell you what stations you will get as you vary the height of your antenna until you get the stations you want.
http://www.tvfool.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29
The same site has a link a button on the left called “callsign lookup” that is super cool. It will show you a stations coverage are based on 3D terrain maps.
Parrott, On the PC side, depending on how technical you want to be, consider Linux. The Ubuntu version includes a free Libre Office (compatible with Microsoft), and Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
From a desktop user perspective, is not much different than Windows. There is a learning curve if you want to get really technical but you will find a learning curve if you buy Windows 8. I put it on an old laptop to experiment with it and I like it. If you don’t like it, just install Windows 8 over it and you learned something new but wasted no money.
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
Pffffft Don’t get me started on Linux