[brantford bill]

Hey was just wondering if anyone know's when the digital transition happens here in canada Aug 2011, will the following channels become digital?

6 - Global
10 - A Channel
13 - CTV
28 - TVO
31 - City
56 - CBC

just wondering? or are we just all supose to catch the channels of the CN Tower?

 

[stampeder]

It would be wonderful if there was a definitive list of all Canadian analogue OTA stations that will make the switch and when, but there is not.

The problem is that the Canadian plan only covers certain cities and areas that must transition, while leaving the fate of stations outside those areas completely in the hands of the broadcasters. To date there have usually not been clear statements made about them.

 

[ericball]

The best idea is to contact each local station and inquire if and when they will be making the transition to digital broadcasting and what their plans are for August 2011.

However, since the transition does have significant capital costs associated with it, I suspect that any station which can remain analog at least for the near future. Changing that will probably require some push from local advertisers who see the audience decreasing as people move to BDUs in order to get HD programming.

 

[little-infinity]

Kitchener is defined as a mandatory market for DTV transition, so the answer is most likely yes those (or at least some) will be digital.

Definitely 13 CKCO will flash-cut to digital on RF13 (or RF7 pre-2011 but that is highly unlikely due to potential co-channel with WNGS from Buffalo) . They have a unique news program for the area, and will want to be on the air.

Probably 6 CIII will also go digital on RF6 (or RF30 pre-2011 but again, that is unlikely), but some areas in that market can also be served off 41 which will beef it's output from the CN Tower. Time will tell.

As for the rest, it's a wait-and-see game. They will have to switch to digital if they want to remain broadcasting, or they could go dark and just be served from Toronto. Again whether reception will be reliable is again, a wait-and-see thing.

Stampeder has a wonderful list of stations in Canada, with their current analog, potential digital pre-transitional, and post-transitional allotments.

http://www.user.dccnet.com/jonleblanc/Canada_TV_Stations/ON.html

 

[mjjl]

And already Global is saying they may not transition CIII-TV-7 Midland, which is considered "mandatory" because it is in the Barrie market, but instead have a digital post-transition transmitter for CIII-TV-41 from the CN Tower with a power strong enough to reach Barrie. Channel 7 barely even reaches Barrie; that tower is in Muskoka (right along Highway 400, on the aptly-named Global Tower Road) and as such their signal is best in Muskoka.

That said, if Channel 41 has a stronger signal to reach Barrie it could reach Kitchener better than before. London has always had only a Grade B signal from Channel 6 Paris, so it is conceivable that transmitter could locate at Woodstock with CITY-TV-2, serving both London and Kitchener as well as areas such as Brantford and Tillsonburg. Would be nice if there was a Global Southwestern Ontario to go with it but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[mjjl]

Industry Canada Channels in the 2000s

Looking through the Industry Canada database for TV stations (in the baserad.zip file) there are a series of transmitters in several cities across Canada with CH#### callsigns that transmit at a frequency ranging from 2542 to 2680 MHz, which is still within the UHF band. London, Milton, St. Catharines, and other cities all have them. The London ones transmit from the same tower as CFPL-TV and CFPL-FM. What are these transmitters for?

 

[stampeder]

Those are allotments set aside for the old Look TV OTA data system, as well as some other specialized transmitters. That's why I filter them out in my IC database results:

http://www.user.dccnet.com/jonleblanc/Canada_TV_Stations/

 

[tvlurker]

Looking through the Industry Canada database for TV stations (in the baserad.zip file) there are a series of transmitters in several cities across Canada with CH#### callsigns that transmit at a frequency ranging from 2542 to 2680 MHz, which is still within the UHF band. London, Milton, St. Catharines, and other cities all have them. The London ones transmit from the same tower as CFPL-TV and CFPL-FM. What are these transmitters for?

2 GHz is not within the UHF TV broadcast band.

Although UHF frequencies technically extend from 300 MHz to 3GHz, when I worked in the RF industry, 2GHz was thought of as a microwave frequency, and not UHF.

As stampeder says, these are microwave broadcast allocations for old Look TV and other 'broadcast' (point-to-multi-point, as opposed to point-to-point links) microwave systems.

From wikipedia (which I quote only when I already agree with it :

microwave includes the entire SHF band (3 to 30 GHz, or 10 to 1 cm) at minimum, with RF engineering often putting the lower boundary at 1 GHz (30 cm), and the upper around 100 GHz (3mm).

 

[mr weather]

London has always had only a Grade B signal from Channel 6 Paris, so it is conceivable that transmitter could locate at Woodstock with CITY-TV-2, serving both London and Kitchener as well as areas such as Brantford and Tillsonburg. Would be nice if there was a Global Southwestern Ontario to go with it but I'm not holding my breath.

I wonder what will happen to the Global repeater on channel 29 in Oil Springs, and channel 22 in Stephenson for that matter? I would think the Windsor/Chatham-Kent/Sarnia-Lambton market would be big enough to fall under the *must* transition rules?