Quote:
Originally Posted by jr_tech
'Tis true... WOOD TV 8 actually transmits their digital signal over-the-air on Ch 7, but the "branding" remains Ch 8, thanks to "virtual channel numbers". I suspect that the station is still seen on Cable Ch 8 as well. The illusion is complete, and most people do not really know or care about the changes of *actual* over-the-air frequencies, but it is an important factor when purchasing the proper antenna for a given area...
jr
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Most TV stations still brand themselves using their old pre-DTV channel numbers to avoid confusion. I live near Cleveland, which has channels 3, 5, 8, 19, 25, 43, 55 and 61. Every one of these stations still uses their old pre-transition channel number for station identification and news branding (our network stations have had "Channel 3 News", "News Channel 5", "Fox 8 News" and "19 Action News" for some time, long before TV went all-digital; they kept these brands after June 12 last year and have no intention of changing them any time soon).
This practice is being followed by most TV stations today, again to avoid confusing viewers who, as you said, don't care about the number to the right of the decimal point all DTV stations use to indicate their actual channel number. This is also why DTV converter boxes, for the most part, show the virtual channel number of the station being viewed; for example, DTV channel 2.1 will be shown on the channel display panel as channel 2.
On cable, however, the channels will always display on your cable box or on your television as whole numbers. For example, I have basic cable service from Time-Warner, no cable box. The channel numbers on my TV correspond, for the most part, to the stations' actual broadcast channels; for example, channel 3 on cable shows as channel "03" on my TV's OSD display, channel 5 as channel "05", and so on. The only exceptions are the UHF stations, which are downconverted by the cable company to VHF channels. The CBS station in Cleveland is on RF channel 19, but the cable system converts it to channel 4; the local MyTV affiliate on RF channel 43 is converted to cable channel 6, the "CW" affiliate on RF 55 is downconverted to cable 9, and the two PBS channels on RF channel 25 and 49 are converted to cable channels 10 and 20, respectively. I once asked a service representative at Time-Warner Cable why they didn't put the UHF stations on their regular (my term was the "right", meaning the stations' actual) RF channel numbers on the cable. I was told that, in the case of Cleveland's CBS affiliate on RF channel 19, the
network wanted the station on channel 4 on cable!
I couldn't believe it. What right does a television network have to dictate to a cable company on what channel to put an affiliate of that network? Time-Warner or CBS do not own CBS channel 19 in Cleveland (the station is in fact owned by Raycom National), so I do not see what right either entity has to dictate that the station will be carried on channel 4 instead of channel 19. The latter channel is blank on the cable in my area, so I wouldn't have thought it would be any trouble at all for the cable company to put CBS 19 on this blank channel position--but apparently Time-Warner had other ideas, or else the service representative to whom I spoke did not know what he or she was talking about when he/she told me that CBS told them to put CBS 19 on channel 4 on all TW cable systems in northeastern Ohio.
