Rescanned my Tivo when rf18 went down. 75% signal strength on my cm 4221 on rf11.

This may be an indication that the current alloted VHF erp's are going to be a problem for OTA in Canada.
the biggest problem for VHF in Canada, well GTA actually, is gonna be that a good portion of OTAers aren't gonna be prepared for VHF Hi. Translated, all them people using UHF Bow Tie designs with no provision for VHF Hi yet.
Probably gonna need a new VHF antenna here myself, cause if I'm marginally getting CHCH now, doesn't bode well for when CTV comes up on VHF 9 from the CN tower. Is what it is I'm thinkin. Time to optimise.

I am in the same boat as Manbooya, I have a reflectorless 4 bay and was catching CHCH off the side. It's gone, and I have been staring at my TV with channel 11 on trying to will it into catching a signal. I will tinker with MythTV later to see if that makes a difference. Channel 7 VHF is stellar for me here in the Falls, but maybe CHCH and CFTO are going to be channels I no longer watch since they are out of the spectrum.

On the plus side this is the first time I have been at the Digital Forum F5ing something, so that's kind of fun...

Hi All,

Anyone else in East York/Beaches able to get CHCH apart from HWP?

Hi HWP this is could be depressing. This might warrant shelling out $100+ for a CS5

Does anyone know when the TV Fool will show the new situations? or is the pending part reliable?

Does anyone know when the TV Fool will show the new situations? or is the pending part reliable?

The pending part is generally reliable. It is based on the "Authorized" class entries in the Industry Canada database.

Rescanned my Tivo when rf18 went down. 75% signal strength on my cm 4221 on rf11.
I needed to do the same (I can watch my TiVo from work using my Slingbox). Now I can confirm my AntennasDirect DB-8 (aimed about 60 degrees away from Stoney Creek) is successfully receiving CHCH on VHF 11 in Etobicoke.

I just e-mailed their contact address asking if they are already at full power. Worth a shot, they might not reply.

Here's my video of it going down, not the best quality, hopefully someone will upload a better one. EoF7jVAgg2g

As you would expect from seeing that video, I get absolutely nothing on digital 11. Analog was usually much better at night on CHCH (Tropo?), so I'll have to check again around 11:30.

And btw, I'm not in the city of Buffalo, I'm in East Amherst, a northeastern suburb.

Anyone who's seen my past posts knows my crazy indoor NNE reflected setup that's netting me solid UHF. Any tips on how I position my Terk's VHF dipoles to try and get the signal back?

Right now they're half extended in a thin V.

Any ideas? (Sorry if this belongs more in the Indoor thread, but since it's pertaining more to trying to get CHCH, I figured I'd start here.)

The conventional wisdom for horizontally-polarized signals like CHCH's is to extend the rabbit ears horizontally.

In practice, start with that idea, but since the polarization can change once the signal starts to suffer from multipath, try everything.

I just called the CHCH switchboard and asked if they were making any further changes to their antenna broadcasting. She asked how I got CHCH currently, I said antenna, she said I would need an analogue to digital convertor, I explained that my digital TV already had an ATSC tuner. The switchboard operator said all she knew was that they would no longer be available on channel 18 and I needed to change my tv to "11.1". I said I had done that and nothing was coming in and asked if they would be making any changes like boosting the power or reconfiguring their broadcasting in any way. She said she didn't know yet, she would definately ask and asked me to call back tomorrow and she would have an answer for sure, she offered to put me through to engineering, but said they were very busy and I would probably only get voicemail.

pr92,

And btw, I'm not in the city of Buffalo, I'm in East Amherst, a northeastern suburb.

What Antenna are you using there? I'm in the southtowns, south buffalo area, terrain is still kinda low here (rises significantly to my south). I'm still getting it on 2 of 3 tuners. Not quite enough signal quality for the PC based tuner here though, and marginal signal on the LG LCD TV and Zenith CECB, which are pretty good tuners. May get me a VHF Yagi soon, see if I can get any better with that.
Nice Video, if that's the best u could do during the day, I can say my CHCH Analog reception was much better than yours.

It could be a bit confusing to some CHCH OTA viewers in the golden horseshoe area who used to receive 11 in analog as their PSA's are still stating that analog will be turned off on August 31st. They should have edited the PSA to state that the Hamilton transmitter would be switched early on August 15th. Too late now as the switch already took place!

Being a news station, they should have at least made a story on the analog switchover of their Hamilton transmitter. I'm getting a feeling that for some reason, CHCH does not want to promote the fact that they can be received OTA. All of the print ads i've seen so far from them only list their cable or satellite channel assignments :(.

Okay...well changing the dipoles to horizontal did not work...should it be horizontal pointed towards the station. If that's the case I can't move the antenna for fear of losing everything else.

Sigh...

This thread is an information depot for CHCH:

I can tell you that it is the main 11RF antenna that is being used.

The folk at CHCH are now aware of this thread, so keep your CHCH-dt OTA signal related DTV results, your questions and your concerns coming into this thread.

Many other questions are currently being reviewed by CHCH department heads and hopefully this 'CHCH Transition' thread will provide some useful decision making input and have some OTA viewer impact on CHCH's resolutions to any contour loses.

Hi All,

I'm here in Caledon, ON and I did pretty good. I lost 12% (70% -> 58%) signal but it looks solid so far. I do hope that it gets better.

pr92,



What Antenna are you using there? I'm in the southtowns, south buffalo area, terrain is still kinda low here (rises significantly to my south). I'm still getting it on 2 of 3 tuners. Not quite enough signal quality for the PC based tuner here though, and marginal signal on the LG LCD TV and Zenith CECB, which are pretty good tuners. May get me a VHF Yagi soon, see if I can get any better with that.
As of right now, I just have some 30 year old rabbit ears on a cathedral ceiling beam. Kind of a long shot for digital. I'd like to get a nice Yagi on the roof eventually.

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd301/pepsirules92/GEDC0183.jpg

This thread is an information depot for CHCH:

I can tell you that it is the main 11RF antenna that is being used.

The folk at CHCH are now aware of this thread, so keep your CHCH-dt OTA signal related DTV results, your questions and your concerns coming into this thread.

Many other questions are currently being reviewed by CHCH department heads and hopefully this 'CHCH Transition' thread will provide some useful decision making input and have some OTA viewer impact on CHCH's resolutions to any contour loses.

OTA Canuck,

I appreciate the positive tone of your posting, but the reality is that this was not just an analog to DTV transition but a very retrograde and unnecessary UHF to VHF DTV transition.

Many many CHCH viewers have been tuned to CHCH OTA DTV since April 2008. Many of them used to get somewhat snowy analog pictures and crystal clear DTV.

I'm no expert but what has happened today with the loss of my DTV signal was entirely expected with the switch to VHF 11. I suspect the folk at CHCH have been well aware that they were going to lose many of their GTA viewers.

It's their choice to lose their viewers, and their advertisers' audience. I'm certainly not going to invest in a VHF antenna just for CHCH.

The smart thing for THEM to do would be to seek permission to reinstate UHF 18, and stop the shipment of that antenna to Ottawa. But that aint gonna happen.

Well although the only thing I made a point of watching on CHCH was 60 Minutes it's been a slice.

Guess it's time to forget about you existing since I'm not getting cable to watch rolling news in the day and CW shows at night.

You next CTV?

I appreciate the perspectives of Obed and OTA Canuck, and I know which way I lean in that debate, but is there any update on whether the changes to the antenna broadcast from CHCH are done for good or is there still a chance that they will be making adjustments to their transmitting that might change our reception results for those of us in the 36 bDu part of their coverage area?