I see here that some of the main Buffalo TV stations (WGRZ, WKBW, WNGS, WIVB) are all located far southeast of town. They are all VHF, and make me suspect you’re to the north. I also see their new DTV signals come from the same locations, but are non-directional. Other stations — WUTV, WNED, WNLO, WNYO — are all located northwest of town, in Grand Island, Most of those have highly directional signals, toward Buffalo. You can see those directional patterns and locations by exploring at that last link. I presume there are international requirements imposed on the second group of stations that are not on the first. I also expect that most of the former VHF stations located far southeast of town will have trouble getting into town with their new UHF signals. The one exception will be WNGS, which will come back on Channel 7 in digital form.

I agree with your assertion about the loss of television coverage with the transition to ATSC signals.

In the analogue days I could receive the four UHF stations of the seven Buffalo stations; the three VHF stations were unreceiveable. With digital, the three UHF stations are now receivable and two of the UHF stations are great with their omnidirectional signals. Regretfully someone at the FCC decided that the last two had to have highly shaped signals – citing to the stations that it may interfere with some Canadian signals. Using Canadian contacts, they say nothing in Canada is close to the frequencies they presently use. This may be a ruse used by some stations in Border Areas.

On the up side I can also receive all eleven Toronto Area stations, but only ten are on DTV so far. So with analogue and digital, I am receiving 21 stations; OK I guess.

Take a look at my comment at Phil Windley’s post here. Follow the links in the second paragraph. They lead to FCC maps that show changed and lost coverage for various channels.

Check this too. It’s all the facilities within 20km of Park City. They’re all translators. I suspect that the stations will go digital with their main tansmitters, then put in new DTV translators out where they currently have analog ones — or wait to see who squawks and put translators first in those places, and let the non-squawkers slide (because they’re on cable or satellite in any case).

Meanwhile, go here. That’s a search at http://fccinfo.com for TV transmitter facilities within 10km of Stansbury Park, which gets us just those atop Farnsworth Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains, which is an interesting study in itself, and why I point there to the whole search and not just to the peak itself. Lots of TV history there.

Go to the stations that have channels like 38DT, which is the new channel for KSL-TV, soon to be the former Channel 5. Or to 40DT, the new home for the former Channel 4. Look at the transmission patterns. They are full wattage only at their maxima. All the patterns are bug splats.

Lots of digital systems are like this. Some aren’t. Those in Boston and San Francisco are not. Most in Los Angeles are.

In any case, this is one more factor that will deny reception so some viewers, I am sure.

Much more digging to do here, for the curious.

Fox, NBC and PBS chose to use a repeater in town on Quarry Mountain. They come in just fine.

There are going to be a whole lot of ticked of people.

Honestly, the stations here were forced to upgrade to DTV, and have done so largely in the last month.

I now have a reason to build a MythTV box, slot a couple HDTV tuner cards into it, and call Time Warner to turn the cable TV *off*.

So in at least one household, the switch is the reason for the loss of one cable TV customer.

I agree. Our kid is a great reader, and has minimal TV exposure.

As I said here, I expect the failure of OTA DTV to accellerate the end of TV As We Know It. Which is, in most cases, as Fred Allen so perfectly put it, “chewing gum for the eyes.”

We’ve lived without network or cable (TV) for 7 years. (I temporarily rigged up an outdoor antenna for the election, then promptly took it down.) Internet access, of course, we’ve always had. (http://buzzphraser.com runs out of a server in my basement.) My daughter is the most advanced reader in her class, the most advanced math student in her class, and won her county-wide age-group freestyle swimming competition. Coincidence? I think not.

I pretty much only catch cable in hotel rooms when business-traveling; I don’t watch the cable hookup to my apartment, it just comes with the internet package, so I don’t compare it to the quality I get with ATSC. The image looks really good even just windowed on my monitor.

I realize I’m pretty skewed, in that almost everyone I know is either a TV-abstainer or a cable user; in particular, the people I’d be most concerned about (my grandparents) have cable through their respective assisted living facilities.

A regular temptation of early adoption, I suppose, is to accept the loss of backwards compatibility if there’s some benefit (in this case using the spectrum for something else), because losing it generally doesn’t affect you if you’ve already made the jump to the new system. I wonder if it would be a more robust solution for a coupon program to be applicable to purchasing a DTV (with exchange of old TV), instead of having to deal with a converter box?

If I ever moved further out, I’d probably bring my EyeTV 500 with me and make the realtor let me test the signal strength.

Meanwhile, interesting about the converter box and your Mom. I suspect in the long run people are all just better off junking their analog TVs and going with new digital ones. If she has line-of-sight to Mt. Wilson, she should get a pile of stations. Nearly all the stations from the whole of SoCal outside of San Diego are moving there, including stations from Riverside, Ventura and Anaheim. In some cases, such as Ventura, they are giving up on nearly all coverage in their home county. Looky here for the specifics. They’re doing it, I’m sure, to become an L.A. station that has to keep cable coverage in their home territory, where cable penetration is approximately 100% anyway, because there’s little line-of-sight to Wilson from the county in any case. If you want L.A. TV, you gotta have cable. Or satellite, although the rules for that one are goofy. The satellite must-carry equivalents are from Mars. (We have no local PBS on Dish, for example, just the national feed — and in low-def, as with *all* the local affiliates.)

Anyway, yeah, fubar.