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Senior Technical Editor Martin Rowe covers topics relating to general-purpose instrumentation, compliance, communications test, and anything else that comes along.



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Sunday, June 14, 2009

DTV transition complete

Jun 14 2009 7:05PM | Permalink |Comments (4) |


Well, the DTV transition happened on Friday, June 12. I've read that assorted help lines received thousands of calls. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those calls came from people who were already using converter boxes, but lost the high VHF channels 7 through 13.

I did get a call from my father-in-law, who uses a converter box, because he lost channel 7, the only high VHF channel in Boston. At midnight on Friday, WHDH switched its analog channel 7 (174-180 MHz) to digital and ceased its prior digital broadcast on UHF 42 (638-644 MHz). He just needed to run a new scan on his converter box to find the transitioned digital signal.

I have cable, but am not without issues. One TV doesn't use a cable box. Instead, the cable connects to a two-way splitter that goes to two VCRs (one is a VHS/DVD combo). The RF outputs of the VCRs go to an A-B switch to the 23-year-old TV. I'm getting interference on Channels 2 and 7. Comcast converts the DTV signals to analog and sends them on the original VHF frequencies. Analog channels 2, 4, and 5 in Boston have not gone dark just yet. They repeatedly broadcast shows about the DTV transition, called "nightlighting." I get some interference from the channel 2 analog broadcast (54-60 MHz) leaking into my cables. So, on top of the digital channel 2 sent as analog, I get lines and can even see some faint images from the analog broadcast. The channel 2 54-60 MHz analog transmitter will do dark on July 12, which should eliminate the interference. Channels 4 and 5 produce virtually no interference with the "analogized" digital signals coming from Comcast. Those channels will cease nightlighting around the end of June.

The problem is channel 7, which is broadcasting digital on 174-180 MHz. That signal won't go away. I get some lines and noise leaking in from the digital carrier, resulting in a "snowy" picture. No images as on channel 2, of course, because my analog TV can't interpret the digital modulation. I was able to mitigate the interference with some tin foil around the A-B switch and by moving the switch a few inches. I'll try tightening all the cables and see if that improves reception.
Maybe there won't be an uproar after all, as I predicted in 2006.


Related entries in: Communications Test | Digital Converter Boxes | Digital TV (DTV) | 

Reader Comments



at 6/18/2009 8:42:43 PM, rp8sf said:
Have you tried some clamp on ferrites blocks?



at 6/23/2009 8:02:30 AM, Martin Rowe said:
I have though about using ferrite clamps, just haven't had time to get any.



at 7/1/2009 4:08:33 PM, Ben said:
There's no uproar because too many people have just become resigned to being told what to do by practically everyone else.

I'm still analog TV curmudgeon; my life doesn't center around watching some 50+ inch TV. Besides now having only two rooms with a working TV, I can also no longer just LISTEN to the audio using portable (walk-man like) radios, which I used to do almost daily so I could HEAR PBS news and other things no matter where I was.



at 7/4/2009 11:33:51 PM, flashplayer said:
Hmm. Is it true? :-)

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