DTV Transition News Bulletin
Q: Getting VHF stations are a problem for me. I get everything else fine.
A: If you’re one of the millions of Americans who lost some DTV channels on June 12th you may need to do a re- scan. Below is a article with some tips:
As we had warned earlier, after the June 12th switch, some DTV stations cut their power by over 90%, making reception nearly impossible.Many stations that have reverted to VHF assignments have dramatically cut their transmitter power, in some cases by over 90%! Some stations mistakenly thought they could save money by cutting their power while reaching the same number of viewers.
In other cases the FCC imposed reduced power limits to stations that reverted to their old VHF assignments in order to prevent interference with adjacent markets. There has been a misperception among some station owners that while dramatically lowering DTV transmitter power, they could serve the same coverage area as analog, and this has turned out to be incorrect.
Many stations who have reverted back to VHF are now finding themselves with significantly reduced coverage areas and fewer viewers after switching to VHF. Many stations realizing their mistake have applied for higher power assignments (or UHF channel assignments) from the FCC, but the process could take over a year.
In the interim, a new high gain high VHF antenna, the Clearstream 5 will be forthcoming. This may replace on the receive side some of what has been lost. The Clearstream 5 has an expected ship date of late June 2009.
One potential problem with re-using low VHF (2-6) and high VHF (7-13) TV channels for DTV is the possibility of interference from other signals during certain times of the year. "Skip" may bring in distant broadcasts on the same channel and create interference. Low VHF (2-6) digital broadcasts are particularly prone to interference and is often hard to receive reliably, regardless of what model of antenna is used. Note: The physical size of low VHF and high VHF antennas is much larger than that of a UHF antenna.
