SW Ontarians,

Don Mumford (through David Winter) has sent out a request:

...we just received permission from industry Canada to test our transmitter in advance of August 31st. We’re doing that tonight between 2am and 5am. If you happen to be up, we’d appreciate your feedback on the signal strength and quality.

Again, remember that while your TV may now have 10 analogue locked in, you will need to rescan the spectrum to lock in the digital broadcast of 10. Please email me back with your test results.

So, if anyone is up, I'm sure they'd appreciate the feedback.

Are they only testing CFPL?

Well, Don would only know about CFPL. I've heard in earlier in this thread that CKCO has done tests in the late night.

Well, Don would only know about CFPL.
Don would also know about CHWI (CTV2 - Windsor) since he is the P.D. there as well.

Sorry, my mistake. If you are curious I'd just send the station an email. He is _REALLY_ good about getting back to people.

A CFCF-12 news story about the switch over ! ...LoL

http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110825/mtl_digital_switch_110825/20110825/?hub=MontrealHome

I will definitely test CFPL tonight after 2am. That's good news. And I see Mumford's email address on the station's webpage.

Just heard back from Don, it is only CFPL testing tonight.

CHWI will convert without over the air testing on the 31st at 6AM. 16 is set right now, while 26 needs some swapping out.

10.1 CFPL London is now testing. Reception is strong here, around 90%. No program description or guide info.

Well i just picked up CFPL 10 very briefly a few mins ago here during their digital testing, but it already faded away. No surprise as it's 91 miles away. ID's as just "CFPL" and does have program info and is in 1080i.

at 2:10am it came back in weak with poker from NBC in HD on.

Picking up CPFL here in Kitchener with a small CH10 yagi...reception is 67/100 according to my signal meter. There is a poker game on right now, that is in HD.

Receiving the test signal in Kitchener. SNR of 25dB. 1080i. Excellent results--very relieving!

Full Signal here, 1080i no PISP info.

So.. since when has CFPL been a NBC affiliate?

Interesting choice of test program, the NBC network feed.

No wonder it looks so good. They are using a raw NBC network feed. I wonder what the Canadian /A\ feed will look like.

Should look the same.

ZAP2it TV listings has already replaced /A\ logo icon with CTV two logo icon...

Should look the same.
Try watching 51.1 from Woodstock and get back to me about that. :confused: The feed can make a world of difference. CFPL was probably using an uncompressed, full bandwidth NBC feed for the test. That's many times the bandwidth of most satellite feeds. I don't know if that was being picked up locally or fed from Toronto. My best guess is a local pickup. If CTV used a low bandwidth consumer signal for the /A\ feed (Rogers, Shaw Direct or Bell TV for example) the quality will be much lower. Poor quality studio equipment used for switching and overlays can also degrade the signal. I hope CTV does the right thing with the /A\ feed in London but I'm not putting any money on them doing so. That NBC signal CFPL used was pristine. I haven't seen an HDTV picture like that in years.

ScaryBob, I didn't see a PQ difference between the test CFPL signal (using NBC) and WGRZ Buffalo (NBC affiliate).

That makes sense since WGRZ would be using the same NBC feed. I'm just saying that the /A\ feed could be lower quality and that further deterioration could take place if the HD signal processing equipment at CFPL is not state of the art. CFPL has not been retrofitted to produce HD content so it may also be that some of their other equipment is not top rate either. There is a lot more going on at most originating stations than just sending a network feed directly to the transmitter.