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Old 10-31-2017, 10:50 AM
benman94's Avatar
benman94 benman94 is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Detroit, MI
Posts: 1,190
Why is ATSC on VHF so damn finicky?

Why is reception of ATSC on VHF, especially low-VHF, such an enormous pain in the ass compared to ATSC on UHF? In the analog days, my grandparents, who live in something of a fringe area, had a hell of a time picking up some of the NTSC UHF stations. Now with ASTC, the situation seems to be reversed, with any station on UHF coming in just fine and the handful of VHF stations in the Detroit and Flint/MBS markets being nearly impossible to receive.

More importantly, why the hell would the FCC approve a standard that doesn't work very well on VHF? In a place like Michigan, VHF stations were a must in getting adequate coverage of our geographically large markets.

Take for instance the upper lower peninsula and eastern upper peninsula of Michigan. Traverse City, Cadillac, Sault Ste. Marie, St. Ignace, Cheboygan, and Petoskey all rely on Traverse City stations (with full power translators between the Soo and the Straits filling in the gaps). Providing a quality signal to that vast area was feasible with VHF, it's near impossible to do with UHF. The local stations have resorted to sharing sub-channels to try and make up for the inadequate coverage. Still, if I lived in St. Ignace, I'd be pissed that FOX is only available in standard def on a subchannel of another station...
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