[distox]

During the 6:00 PM news and Canada AM, to give a quick example. But what is strange is that the commercials are Okay.

 

[Francois Caron]

I'll check it out. I usually only tune in during the evening hours, but I'll try to catch the Canada AM show tomorrow morning.

As I've said, I only have a two channel system. if this is actually a bug with CTV's Dolby Surround encoding, I might not hear it.

 

[airbox]

Its been over 2 weeks now CFCF 12.1, time to fix your audio. Dolby Digital 2.0 with sound comming out of the left channel only has to be fixed... Flick the DD5.1 switch on and get all those channels working, please...

Hi Distox, in a earlier post I mention that CFCF is broadcasting 2 independant audio channels, English1, English2, so with your remote control hit the audio button, and switch audio channels. The single audio channel is for descriptive audio service, use on some TV shows. My TV too occasionally switches to the single chhannel, rather than the Dolby channel. Hope this works for you.

 

[airbox]

I have had no problems with CFCF 12.1. Occasionally the strange bug with my TV choosing the wrong audio channel, so other seems to have this minor problem to, easily fixed by choosing the other channel via the remote control. Can't wait for local programs to go HD.
My TV, a 720P, shows CFCF at 1920*1080i, 2 audio channels.

 

[Blackburst]

CFCF-DT 51 has two audio program feeds.
Audio 1 : Surround
Audio 2 : Stereo

Not sure what the default is. I've had both come on with different shows as the default.

There is no program name supplied as a program guide. Just the words CFCF DTV program.

 

[stampeder]

CFCF-DT's technical broadcast performance

Here is a poll for everyone who receives CFCF-DT with regular strong signals. If you don't receive it properly, don't reply because this question is about their technical and operational status at their end only. The purpose of this poll is to see if CFCF-DT has worked out any bugs or glitches that might have happened during their launch period.

cheers!

 

[interdit_450]

CFCF-DT: Good reception with amplified rabbit ears in Pointe-Claire

Hello, just wanted to report good reception results in Pointe-Claire (near Lakeshore Hospital) as well for CFCF-DT on 51.

These screen captures show the analog and digital signal on a 2nd floor TV with amplified RCA rabbit ears with UHF loop. TV and rabbit ears are on an interior wall. The built-in amp is cranked almost to the maximum; if I reduce the amp I start getting occasional marcoblocking.

 

[kk77xm]

The mail from CTV Montreal For Why i can't get CTV HD in Ville-Marie.

I live on Amherst St. in Ville-Marie,Montreal. I can't get CTV DTV. Here is the mail i got from CTV.

CFCF is presently transmitting with a "transitional" transmitter from a small tower located in the "valley" of Mt. Royal between Westmount and Mt. Royal park. The tower is located next to the cemetery and the "Cavalerie" Police Station across from the Smith House. Since you are located on the other side of Mount Royal Park, it is practically impossible to pick up our DTV signal.

At present, Industry Canada does not allow any new broadcasting to take place from the main tower of Mt. Royal, due to the high power and radiation from the Radio-Canada FM antennas..The CBC / Radio-Canada is working to correct this problem for the summer, so there are no DTV stations broadcasting from the main Mt. Royal tower. As such, CFCF / CTV was left with no choice, but to find another tower to broadcast from.

You are able to receive the CBC / Radio Canada signals, because you are in very close proximity to the CBC / Radio-Canada building who are broadcasting from the roof of their building. Canal V (TQS) is broadcasting from the top of an apartment building on the corner of Sherbrooke & Amherst St. and Tele-Quebec is broadcasting from the Olympic Stadium Tower, all of which are close to you, but the signal from CFCF 12-1 is blocked by Mt. Royal. Viewers on the north side of Mt .Royal have problems receiving V, CBC / Radio Canada and Tele-Quebec.

The signal from our DTV transmitter is also hard to receive at our studios located at the corner of Rene Levesque and Papineau and as such, we had to install a high gain rooftop antenna to receive it.

As per Industry Canada & CRTC regulations, all analog TV broadcasting from the main Mt. Royal tower will cease on August 31st and Analog channel 12 (Along with Channel 10 / TVA) will begin broadcasting digitally on September 1st. At that time, you will have a strong enough signal to reach your set top antenna.

For the present though, your only choice would be to get a rooftop antenna.

 

[distox]

Hi Distox, in a earlier post I mention that CFCF is broadcasting 2 independant audio channels, English1, English2, so with your remote control hit the audio button, and switch audio channels. The single audio channel is for descriptive audio service, use on some TV shows. My TV too occasionally switches to the single chhannel, rather than the Dolby channel. Hope this works for you.

My antenna is connected to both my Sony KDS-R60XBR2 and my Bell 9200 PVR and it seems that neither can access the second audio channel that I could find. I wish they would switch them around and have the DD on the first channel. On another note, on the TV, the CFCF guide is there with titles and descriptions.

 

[Yuprules]

kk77xm: So it's the "shadow of the mountain problem", hopefully it will be fixed when they go full power!

Thanks for that update. Where did you send it to by the way? Form on website?

 

[foxfan]

Good answer from CTV, though I doubt even the post-transition signal from CFCF-DT on VHF channel 12 will properly reach a set-top antenna. CFTM-10 will certainly get a lot of complaints as well when all is said and done.

 

[Francois Caron]

CFTM-10 will probably have their conversion delayed beyond the deadline just so Québecor can force as many people as possible to subscribe to cable where the channel IS available in HD.

As for CFCF and CFTM's move to the VHF band becoming a problem, I'm not so sure about that. No matter where I moved in the city during the last twenty years, channels 10 and 12 were some of the easiest to receive even though they weren't always the clearest channels (bloody NTSC format!). And with UHF channels, reception was even worse!

And yet, my reception of digital channels on UHF has been perfect as long as the signal was strong enough to reach the antenna. So knowing that I can get a higher signal strength on the VHF band than on the UHF band (at least locally) should be a good indication that the move of CFCF from UHF to VHF should go reasonably smoothly.

Or am I missing something?

Be nice to me! I might only have the goofy looking Terk indoor antenna, but it works beautifully!

 

[Betamax]

Francois, you are right, band III (channels 7 to 13) is well suited for DTV (and for analog TV).

- Low impulse noise like UHF
- Reasonable antenna size
- Good indoor penetration, for people that use indoor antenna
- Better than UHF at long distance
- Diffraction that help getting the signal without a Line of Sight with the transmitter

The only problem I actually see : for DTV, they reduced the power. A good Band III TV station should have an ERP of 50 kW to 100 kW, not only 5 kW to 10 kW. This low power explain why people in Montreal have difficulties to get WVNY-DT on ch 13.

Here in Quebec City, we have CBVT-DT on channel 12 (Max ERP of 2.4 kW) and the signal is really easy to pick up. I made some test from different location in the city , with a cheap Philips rabbit ear VHF/UHF combo indoor antenna and no windows on the side of the transmitter. For me, it get a better score on the signal meter than CIVQ-DT on channel 25 that use an ERP of 9 kW.

I'm sure that CFCF-DT on channel 12 and CFTM-DT on channel 10 will be really easy to pick up.

 

[schoenbe]

Snapshot of CFCF-DT this morning. Signal strength fluctuates between 67% and 91%. As you can see there are some continuity errors in the signal. So far I have only seen a picture breakup (pixelation) once.

Stream information:

Elementary Stream PID 49 (0x0031) MPEG-2 Video
MPEG Video: Bitrate 16.808 Mbps Resolution 1920 x 1080i
MPEG Video: Framerate 29.97 fps Aspect Ratio 16:9 Chroma Format 4:2:0
Descriptor: STD Descriptor
Leak Valid Flag: 1
Descriptor: Smoothing Buffer Descriptor
SB Leak Rate: 48482 SB Size: 2048

Elementary Stream PID 52 (0x0034) AC-3 Audio
AC3: Bitrate 384 Kbps Sample Rate 48 KHz
AC3: Mode complete main Coding 3/2 5 L, C, R, SL, SR
AC3: Center Mix Level -3.0 dB Surround Mix Level -3.0 dB
AC3: LFE Mode On Dialogue normalization -26 dB

Elementary Stream PID 53 (0x0035) AC-3 Audio
AC3: Bitrate 384 Kbps Sample Rate 48 KHz
AC3: Mode complete main Coding 2/0 L, R
AC3: Dolby Surround Mode not indicated
AC3: LFE Mode Off Dialogue normalization -27 dB

CFCF-DT's signal is much cleaner than CIVM-DT's: fluctuates between 60 and 75%, with a significant amount of continuity and TEI errors. There are no picture breakups though.

 

[Trip]

As for CFCF and CFTM's move to the VHF band becoming a problem, I'm not so sure about that. No matter where I moved in the city during the last twenty years, channels 10 and 12 were some of the easiest to receive even though they weren't always the clearest channels (bloody NTSC format!). And with UHF channels, reception was even worse!

Define "not always the clearest channels." If the problem is severe multipath, then there will almost certainly be reception issues, because signal quality is far more important than signal strength when it comes to digital reception.

The only problem I actually see : for DTV, they reduced the power. A good Band III TV station should have an ERP of 50 kW to 100 kW, not only 5 kW to 10 kW. This low power explain why people in Montreal have difficulties to get WVNY-DT on ch 13.

WVNY's problem is that they have a directional antenna that only puts 2 kW or so in the direction of Montreal.

- Trip

 

[stampeder]

The excitement and activity surrounding CFCF-DT's launch has gone quiet now (10 days without a post here) so we'll return discussion of operational and technical status to this thread:

OTA Station Status: Montréal, QC, Northern NY & VT