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Post by tardiscaptain on May 20, 2020 22:53:01 GMT -6
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Post by CAwasinNJ on May 21, 2020 0:57:52 GMT -6
That is incorrect. First, the change won't happen until June 16. More importantly, it isn't only KJZZ that will be running ATSC 3. Here's the technical lowdown on what's happening: The over the air TV stations are beginning the (slow) migration from ATSC 1 that everyone is using now to ATSC 3. The problem is that the two systems are incompatible. A transmitted signal can only be either ATSC 1 or ATSC 3. With the recent repack there is no room to add a second physical channel for a simulcast like we did during the analog to digital transition. Instead what is happening is all the streams that are currently on one physical channel (in this case KJZZ RF 19) will be moved to other physical channels, though through the magic of virtual channel numbers will still show up to the viewer as 14.x. 14.1 will be hosted by KUCW, KUTV will host 14.2/Comet and 14.5/Dabl, and KTVX will host 14.3/TBD and 14.4/Charge. Finding the new locations is the reason for the rescan. That frees up RF 19 to go ATSC 3. In each market there are expected to be only 1 or 2 physical signals that are ATSC 3 and those will be shared by ALL stations in the market. At the end of the transition period (currently estimated to be about 5 years) everyone will go ATSC 3 and presumably go back to their original channels. The thing that worries me about this plan is how it will affect the quality of the ATSC 1 streams, both the moving 14.x ones and the other streams of the new hosts. The new hosts are already pretty much at capacity. Squeezing more channels in is likely to reduce the quality of everything unless other subchannels are dropped at the same time. The end result will be better, but there could be short term pain getting there. I'll be keeping an eye out for other ATSC 3 host stations. The only applications filed so far are the KJZZ/KUTV ones. |
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Post by tardiscaptain on May 21, 2020 17:25:44 GMT -6
Ah, I must have read the article wrong. Thank you.
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Post by kenglish on May 21, 2020 18:21:28 GMT -6
Ah, I must have read the article wrong. Thank you. I don't think you misread it. I looked at the link soon after you posted it, and it seemed to say they had changed. The current article says the change will occur on Wednesday, June 16. But, the 16th is actually on Tuesday, which would be during the FP shift change. I have to wonder if they have a typo there. |
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Post by CAwasinNJ on May 22, 2020 5:15:39 GMT -6
Thanks for that assist there Ken. It helps to know we're not going crazy.  I noticed the date problem too, though all the FCC filings confirm the June 16 part. The Nexstar stations have filed their end of the applications now too. Speaking of which....Nexstar, when you're changing around KUCW's configuration could you please update 30.4 to show it runs CourtTV now? It's been over a year. |
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Post by CAwasinNJ on Jun 18, 2020 6:50:42 GMT -6
So the switch was supposed to happen Tuesday. It's Thursday and still no change. I don't watch much on KJZZ, but I haven't seen any on-air announcements about needing to rescan. I'm pretty sure work is happening because I did see KJZZ's current/old channel (RF 19) go completely off the air (no signal at all) at just before 11:30PM one night last week. I figured there was some overnight reconfiguring going on and I didn't see anyone else affected. Anyone seeing or hearing anything new?
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Post by rcvideo on Jun 24, 2020 8:26:46 GMT -6
I saw a crawl last night saying it will happen next Tuesday June 30th at 10 AM.
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Post by CAwasinNJ on Jun 25, 2020 5:19:00 GMT -6
Interesting. I've been checking them out as much as I can recently and I haven't seen anything yet. It's good that they aren't running the announcements to death but they have to run enough to make sure the word gets out. I don't think there's a way to win that battle.  |
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Post by CAwasinNJ on Jul 1, 2020 6:07:02 GMT -6
The thread title is finally correct.  The simulcasts of the KJZZ streams started coming online Tuesday morning 6/30. The first one I saw was on KUTV which was broadcasting the streams but they were not showing up initially in the "table of contents" so they couldn't be viewed. The RF 19 signal went down at 10:18 and came back up a few minutes later. My equipment can't do anything with ATSC 3 so I just have to assume what's there now is the NextGen signal. Can anyone see into the data and report what's there? I figure on the Sinclair and Nexstar stations but I'm wondering about the other major signals. The sucky part of this is that for everyone still using the original standard (virtually everyone right now) the result is a negative. As I feared, the bandwidth given to a lot of the ATSC 1 streams has gone down noticeably. One I watch often is H&I, which previously had a bitrate of around 2.6 Mbps, is now at about 1.5 and it shows. There is a LOT of pixelation from being overcompressed. Unfortunately we OTA viewers will have to deal with that until we upgrade our equipment to use the new feeds. There was mixed news on the channel ID front. Nexstar did take the opportunity to fix the ID of Ch 30.4 so it correctly identifies CourtTV, but at the same time messed up (IMO) the IDs on the KTVX channels including the bizarrely labelled "HnI" for 4.4. There might be a reason they can't use special characters, I don't know, but wouldn't at least "HandI" be so much better? Overall I'm putting this down as a win but still..... And so we begin a new chapter in OTA viewing with the promise of even better pictures and more channels. I'm somewhat excited, but will become more so when I can actually do something with it. |
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Post by tardiscaptain on Jul 4, 2020 14:39:27 GMT -6
Yea I had noticed the HnI after the rescan. It made me raise an eyebrow.
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