The /A\ Channel stations may or may not have a future - industry scuttlebutt is that CTV will wind them down or maybe sell some or all of those stations. As for SRC, that's a public policy question as to whether or not a minimum French language broadcasting presence will still be pushed across the country. I would watch for industry-wide announcements in the months ahead regarding the above channels.

CHEK will have no choice but to leave VHF-LO channel 6 for UHF 43. CHNU (Joy-tv) has been allotted UHF 47, so unless they get another number they will have to wait until CKVU-DT vacates 47 for VHF-HI channel 10.

If anyone gets any info from their staffers please let us know what you find out.

The contour map is in this attachment (see Appendix 4B)

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/public/broad/applications/2009/2009-1139-8.zip

Looks like they are in HD and 5.1 during "Parenthood" tonight.My timing must be off because I haven't tuned in to CKVU-DT during an HD broadcast yet. I recorded Community (which is normally in 16:9 DD5.1 on NBC) yet it was broadcast on CKVU-DT in 4:3 aspect.

I wonder why CIVT hasn't upped their power yet, weren't they planning to do so? It's the only digital station I can't reliably get with an indoor antenna connected to an older computer, which I'd like to use as a second PVR for the bedroom.

Looks like CKVU hasn't ironed out all the bugs yet.

I'm watching some Pierce Brosnan / Gerard Butler movie (Butterfly on a Wheel) on CKVU-DT right now (2240h) and I can hear someone reading off blind-assist visual descriptions faintly in the background. It's kind of amusing.

My timing must be off because I haven't tuned in to CKVU-DT during an HD broadcast yet. I recorded Community (which is normally in 16:9 DD5.1 on NBC) yet it was broadcast on CKVU-DT in 4:3 aspect.

In my very limited checking I have not seen it again either.
Perhaps I should have recorded it :D

I believe they have upped their power. Its the strongest signal here, in the 90s. CHNM is the weakest in the mid 60s.

A bout of insomnia this morning around 3 am. Checking out the ota signals and noticed CBUT 2.1 was off the air.* Signal strength 73, black screen no sound. Their analog broadcast was up and running on 2. Forum posters have noticed this before where the channel displays a black screen and no sound while showing a viable signal. Not sure what the exact terminology for this condition would be....

Also, for everyone's info & to compare notes...CHNM 42.1 is the weakest at the moment showing a signal strength in the mid 60s, with minor breakup.

*The digital (HD) feed was also absent from Comcast.

A bout of insomnia this morning around 3 am. Checking out the ota signals and noticed CBUT 2.1 was off the air.* Signal strength 73, black screen no sound. Their analog broadcast was up and running on 2. Forum posters have noticed this before where the channel displays a black screen and no sound while showing a viable signal. Not sure what the exact terminology for this condition would be....
.
Once a week in the middle of the night CBC Toronto re-boots the encoders and that was what you saw. Later in the morning we had an outage from Toronto as well 7:20-7:30am.

Just received a note from SRC in Vancouver stating that there is no plan to implement DTV broadcasting before July 2011. With only 50k francphones (but a doubling of migration from Quebec to BC over the past few years), there is no hurry to implement. SRC will stay within the regulations of their mandate to broadcast across Canada and deply by the cutover date.

Too bad SRC no longer carries F1 on their station. But they will continue to have some differentiated content for us OTA viewers.

32.2
I did a scan this morning and picked up up 32.2 which is 32.1 ctv hd tv all the same less program info. Wierd results this morning for CIVT DT

Post 1105: I'm watching some Pierce Brosnan / Gerard Butler movie (Butterfly on a Wheel) on CKVU-DT right now (2240h) and I can hear someone reading off blind-assist visual descriptions faintly in the background. It's kind of amusing.

I noticed the same thing last night on Murdoch Mysteries.

I PVRed Community again the other night and for 11 seconds it was in HD 16:9 DD5.1 but with the audio limited to just the Left Front speaker, then it suddenly switched to SD 4:3 and Dolby Pro Logic all around for the remainder of the show.

I think its clear they're working out the audio bugs. :)

Yeah, it looks like CKVU is still working out the bugs. I've noticed some intermittent lip sync problems with their audio as well. And I noticed that their PSIP isn't up to snuff yet. The time in their PSIP is set wrong and the program information is displayed as a CityTV event code rather than the name of the program. It looks like they have dynamic PSIP -- they just aren't taking advantage of it yet.

What I don't get about CBUFT (SRC) is why they don't piggy-back it on the CBUT-DT signal? CBC owns CBUT-DT and they own CBUFT. The studio for both channels is in the same building and both channels share a common transmitter site on Mt. Seymour. Why don't they broadcast CBUFT as an SD multiplexed signal on CBUT's HD feed? CBUT and CBUFT can share the same RF feed with CBUT-HD in 1080i on PSIP channel 2-1 and CBUFT-SD in 480i on PSIP channel 26-1. Or they could do 720p HD for both channels, but my preference would be to keep CBUT in 1080i.

All the CBC has to do is plug an SD encoder into their transport stream multiplexer and feed it with CBUFT video, then it's just a couple minor tweaks on their PSIP generator to assign the PIDs from CBUFT's encoder to the right PSIP channel and they're off to the races. If they wanted to they could put CBUFT on the air in digital for less than $12k -- and in all likelyhood there is probably a spare encoder laying idle somewhere in the CBC that they could use to do it right now.

CBC's policy and mission statement is to broadcast their stations at the highest possible quality, so multiplexing is therefore a no go. Having said that, if you look at CBUT-DT's bandwidth usage in TSReader it is not at its full potential... :confused:

BTW many of use hope that Canadian DTV stations will never multiplex so that HD PQ stays as high as possible.

^ Agreed, however I wouldn't mind seeing local news on Omni (in Cantonese, Mandarin, German, Korean, Tagalog, Punjabi, etc) multiplex'ed so some air at the same time (typical news hour time). Of course in 480i to accommodate for bandwidth.

Whether that'll ever happen is yet to be seen. Question... would they get x2, x3, x4 credit for every hour of airtime in an non-English/non-French language?

Citytv is tonight in HD all evening, as they appeared on cable. Also right away, simsubs are used on American channels. It is now clear that until they went cable, they just did not want to bother with any hd content or anything.

if you look at CBUT-DT's bandwidth usage in TSReader it is not at its full potential

Then why not broadcast CBUFT in 480i in CBUT-DT's UNUSED bandwidth? As long as they don't decrease the bit-rate of CBUT's primary 1080i HD feed there won't be any loss at all in picture quality. They're broadcasting a 19.4 Mbps data stream regardless of whether their A/V stream and PSIP consume it all or not.

That's not what I'm getting at - I am simply curious why CBUT-DT seems to be using less than its full bandwidth. I do not wish to see the HD PQ degraded in any way, including at present.

Citytv coming in beautifully in HD tonight! Woohoo!