Cleveland TV station switching to a DTV subchannel

[DavGoodlin]

WWSI is Telemundo for South Jersey. One day after never being able to pull it in, it locked in on the Samsung SIRT-451, not an e-skip fluke either.

After scanning in on another DT, I found it was coming from one of the Philly transmitters as a subchannel, though it's virtual was still 62.1

It would be nice if WHYY would abandon VHF 12, they broadcast much less power than is needed to cover their area, and go as a sub on one of the flamethrower transmitters like WPHL-17.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

It would be nice if WHYY would abandon VHF 12, they broadcast much less power than is needed to cover their area, and go as a sub on one of the flamethrower transmitters like WPHL-17.

It's a matter of economics. Using a DTV subchannel in the VHF TV band, with a VHF transmitter of course, is much less expensive than setting up a UHF DTV channel, since VHF TV transmitters and towers, etc. are cheaper than UHF ones. The same situation exists here in northeastern Ohio with the CBS TV affiliate, and also with the FOX affiliate. The CBS station transmits on VHF DTV channel 10 (virtual channel 19), which reaches the western half of the Cleveland area just fine; however, the channel does not reach the eastern half of the station's viewing area, making it impossible to watch that station with rabbit ears and a DTV converter or with such an antenna connected directly to the TV, even a flat-screen set with a clear-QAM tuner. (The same holds true for FOX channel 8, which transmits on RF channel 8.) To get either station's DTV subchannel at all requires a high-power VHF high-band antenna. Your situation with channel 12, which is located, IIRC, in Wilmington, Delaware, is very similar to the one folks here in northeastern Ohio have to tolerate with the CBS affiliate and also the FOX station on channel 8; this is not likely to change any time soon, or perhaps at all.

[Robert Grant]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

WWSI is Telemundo for South Jersey. One day after never being able to pull it in, it locked in on the Samsung SIRT-451, not an e-skip fluke either.

No, a trop fluke! Sporadic-E skip only affects HF and VHF (and not the whole of VHF at that).

Tropospheric refraction affects VHF and UHF. Trop (also called tropo) is more common than E-skip, but usually involves shorter distances than Es.

Most trop openings affect all TV channels and the FM broadcast band, but the low VHF channels and the FM band are sometimes excluded.