Hey Arizona Joe!
 

How are things out there? It's cooling down here, but no frost yet. :eek:

You've always seemed to be up on these problems the stations have, and every time I Google around I rarely find any answers.

I think Sunday night and again last night all of my OTA channels went dead (both TVs). Not all at the same instant, but all within 10-15 minutes, starting around 12:30 AM. Wake up in the morning, check the TV and everything is fine.

I'm assuming they're having transmitter full-power problems, antenna problems/maintenance, or shutting them down to comply with more fed regs but I can never find anything online about why this is happening.

Any ideas of what is going on? TIA! :D

Hi Dagwood, Not to worry....
The Rochester, NY stations are proceeding through the
repack. Because of the close proximity of all the stations
on Pinnacle Hill, town of Brighton, when one station has
to make repairs or changes, they all must shut down for
the safety of engineers.... The issues are not with your
system!!!! I imagine the trees are changing colors there.
Such a beautiful time of year! GO BILLS!!!!!

Thanks Joe, you (and Rabbit) are always a big help. :D

What does this mean exactly? "The Rochester, NY stations are proceeding through the repack."

And how did you find this out? :confused: I Googled everything I could think of last night and found nothing (as usual).

Trees are just starting to change here, but in the Adirondacks they're much farther along. :)

EDIT: Yes Bills! 3-0 and going up against Brady this Sunday! If my TV craps out I'm gonna be pretty upset. http://magaimg.net/img/8y9m.gif https://i.postimg.cc/y60mLtFJ/smiley-bashhead.gif

Hi Dagwood,

All stations above Rf 36 are required to move to make room for
wireless communications. In your area, WROC moves from Rf 45
to Rf 21 and WBGT from Rf 46 to Rf 29. In order to coordinate
all the moves and prevent co-channel and other reception issues,
the moves come in "phases." Your area should actually be mostly
through the repack with only two stations left to make the move.
My assumption is that one or more stations transmitter needs some
adjustments to improve reception. That is why you are seeing the
stations go dark in the wee hours of the morning. I believe you
should not experience any more service interruptions during normal
viewing hours except in the case of an emergency or major failure.
Our weather here is cooler than normal and currently cloudy with a
good chance for rain. After a hot, dry summer, we really could use
a break and get some much needed moisture. The trees at my elevation,
5,200 feet, won't really start to turn until mid/late October but in
Flagstaff, at 7k feet, the trees are already changing. They pale, however,
to the incredible reds, oranges and yellows of New York State!
Nothing would please me more than to see the BUFFALO BILLS prevail
over those cheaters....... I watch every Bills game online, for free.

All the best,
Joe

New
Ch Curr
Ch Callsign City of License Operator Ph LSS
9 13 WHAM-TV ROCHESTER, NY Sinclair 4 36 [Const.] [Map]
10 10 WHEC-TV ROCHESTER, NY Hubbard Broadcasting [Const.] [Map]
21 45 WROC-TV ROCHESTER, NY Nexstar Broadcasting 4 37 [Const.] [Map]
22 16 WXXI-TV ROCHESTER, NY WXXI Public Broadcasting Council 4 36 [Const.] [Map]
26 25 WGCE-CD ROCHESTER, NY Vision Communications 10 [Const.] [Map]
28 28 WUHF ROCHESTER, NY Sinclair [Const.] [Map]
29 46 WBGT-CD ROCHESTER, NY Vision Communications 7 [Const.] [Map]

Thanks Joe, you're a wealth of information -- as usual. I guess my last question is: Why don't the stations tell us about this ahead of time, so people like me don't panic?

In July/August some of them did -- if you happened to catch the 10 second notice during the news -- but I don't think they all did, and this time I knew absolutely nothing and then everything went black. I went on one of the station's website two nights ago, nothing at all about it.

We'll see about Sunday. I wouldn't bet either way on it. But then I'm not a betting man anyway. :D

Canandaigua Lake, about 10 miles from me, taken sometime in October:

https://i.postimg.cc/jddp15WV/happyhour.gif


https://i.imgur.com/g20CoTT.jpg

Well Joe, the Bills didn't get it done, but their defense sure kept Brady on his heels! Too bad about the dirty hit on Josh. :(

Another TV question: Fox (31) is my weakest station and I can only get it after the atmosphere changes after the summer heat. I should be getting it by now, or at least an in and out signal, but there's nothing at all, like it doesn't exist.

Is there anything going on with them as far as transmitting problems? If not, then I'll have to get up on the roof and move my antenna a bit -- although I haven't touched it since last winter when Fox was coming in fine. :(

Hey Dagwood,

The Bills game was shown nationally yesterday.
Our local CBS affiliate, KPHO Phoenix showed it.
Two patriots staffers were caught by Sean McDermott
snooping around during pregame. McDermott told
them to get lost. One of those staffers was Brian
Belicheck, son of the coach. The cheap hit on Josh
Allen really pisses me off. Why he wasn't ejected
is beyond belief. Any helmet to helmet contact is
reason for ejection, period. I think if Josh had remained
in the game, the Bills would have prevailed. We will
never know...
WUHF, Fox 31 was and remains on Rf 28. They did not
need to make any changes for repack. You should call
the station to find out if they might be running at reduced
power for some strange reason. It might take several calls.
You might want to get the name of a engineer for future
reference. Wish I had better news
for you.

Joe, the league said that hit wasn't bad enough for the NE player to be ejected. One of the Bills in the locker room (Micah Hyde I think) made the point that if anybody did that "to number twelve," they would definitely be ejected. So true.

No channel 31 yet. It's going to be cold this weekend, I'll see what happens then.

Hi Dagwood,

I contacted WHAM/WUHF and got the following reply:

Joe,



Thank you for your message.



We were scheduled to replace our main transmitter on our broadcast tower due to a change in FCC regulation back in July. However, the crane truck that was supposed to come up to replace the transmitter broke down and was unable to complete the job as scheduled. As a result, we are operating on a backup transmitter with lower power.



I am told by our chief engineer that the crane company in charge of bringing the new transmitter up to Rochester will install it in mid-late October.



We apologize for any inconvenience.



Regards,

Seth Palmer



Seth Palmer

Digital Content Manager, 13WHAM News

o: (585) 321-2258

m: (585) 747-6418

Twitter: @sethpalmer3

13wham.com

Ha, well thanks for that info, Joe. I thought something was not right.

However, I just scanned within the hour and Fox is coming in alive and well -- which doesn't make sense considering he said "mid to late October." :confused:

We just got Spectrum hi-speed here out in the woods but I'm not going with their TV, not yet anyways. I have never paid to watch TV in my life, and I'm not starting now. I get 21 channels OTA (this time of year), plus free streaming.

But tomorrow they are hooking me into their phone and internet. Online I will be going from DSL at 3-4 MPS to 100 MPS. Should be interesting

As always, thanks for your help. :D

That is good news!
You might want to consider getting a Roku.
You would be shocked at how many FREE movies,
shows and sports there are and all free. I don't pay
a penny for tv. Pluto tv on Roku is incredible......
All the best!
Go Bills!!!!!!!!

Hey Joe :D

I did mention that I have "free streaming" in my previous post. :)

So I went from a DL speed of 3-4 MPS to 120. Quite a jump, although I don't really notice it except when DLing a large file, which I tried just out of curiosity. Normal surfing, opening pages, clicking links, the 30+ times speed increase really isn't noticeable.

Living room TV has a Roku stick, which has always worked very well -- no noticeable improvement when streaming with the new high speed.

Bedroom TV is a "smart" TV which I hate (both are Vizeos). Having one remote for everything is nice but the the TV works like crap, even for OTA watching.

When I first got it in 2016 it was ok, but then it would automatically update the "smart" (cough) software on occasion and each time it did things got worse.

For the past year or so, the buttons are so sluggish it's ridiculous. When switching OTA channels there is a big pause; going forward 3-4 channels quickly is a joke, you can't do it.

The pauses when pressing function buttons when streaming were beyond crazy, almost to the point of not wanting to use it. Play, pause, FF, rewind, stop, all would take 10-15 seconds to activate. I thought with the 30X faster streaming speeds it would at least help, but it hasn't made any noticeable difference.

I don't stream on the "smart" (cough) TV that often, but I've though of getting a Roku stick for it and the hell with the "smart" stuff.

FWIW: I never really had a problem with the stream buffering while watching, so no change there either.

I hope I didn't get too far off topic (OTA TV) with this post. :(

At least I won't be blindsided by a completely dead TV, but channel 10 just announced that they (and others) will be shutting down from 12:30 tonight til 5:00 AM "for several days" while they work on whatever.

Is this crap ever going to be finished? :mad:

EDIT: The next morning . . . well they lied, they shut down at midnight, not 12:30. I was just ready to watch an episode of "That 70s Show" and poof -- all of the 8s went dead, along with all of 31s, and all of 21s.

Yes, it is frustrating to lose all reception.
In the end, however, you should have better
reception, better picture and more choices.
We'll see if that turns out to be true.
Please check your Private Messages!
How about those "BUFFALO BILLS."
All the best!
Joe

So . . . Thursday night everything went black at midnight -- every single station.

And no advance warning, unless I missed the 10 second notice that one of the stations MIGHT have stuck in the middle of the news somewhere.

WHEN is this all going to end?

Here we go again: Everything went black at midnight except for NBC (10) and PBS (21).

Well at least this time they gave us advanced warning: All OTA channels will be off Saturday 1am - 9am and same for Sunday, for "frequency changes" or something.

WHEN IS THIS GOING TO END???

Why can't I ever find out any info about this?

If it's for actual frequency changes then you're seeing light at the end of the tunnel.:)

I sure hope so; it's been going on since July, I think.

THANK YOU for responding! :D

Update: My OTA went out again, twice this week, at 12:30 AM. I did get a 10-second warning from one of the channels during the 6:00 news.

Finally, for the first time, I called channel 8 and asked WHEN will all this be over with. I talked to a nice woman who just gave me generic, non-specific answers. I didn't learn anything new.

I also emailed channel 10 last night; probably won't get the (non-) response until Monday.

JOE: The Bills will probably get decapitated tomorrow. :(

https://i.imgur.com/3fG3nhs.gif <--- Josh, Singletary, Gore, etc.

Holiday Greetings, Dagwood.

I do not understand why the stations continue to be off the
air overnight. The repack should be over with in your area.
Don't underestimate the FABULOUS, WONDERFUL, RED, WHITE
AND BLUE, NORTH AMERICA'S TEAM- THE BUFFALO BILLS!!!1

Ha, well Joe we're dead again tonight, EVERYTHING except Fox.

I got a reply from my query to channel 10 the other day and he told me everything I already knew (that you posted here) but DID NOT answer my question, which was WHEN WILL THIS BE DONE? It's been going on since mid- late-July. That's five months.

I just emailed them again, although I'm not sure why. Nobody seems to know anything. It's getting ridiculous. I'd rather go back to analog -- at least it worked 99.9% of the time.

This Saturday: Bills vs. Pats but ONLY on the NFL network which I cannot get. Will those links you sent me a couple of months ago work? Are they free or not?

Thanks Joe!

Sorry to hear the stations are still going off the air
overnight. One or more must be having issues with
their signal/transmitter.
Yet again, a "team" in the Northeast has been caught
CHEATING! Of course, they deny the activity. Marcus
Spears indicates that "Bill Belichick will kill me for
getting caught." Worried about getting caught but not
about cheating?????

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP5VOckSnUg

Dagwood: PLEASE CHECK YOUR PRIVATE MESSAGES.

Joe: So they're still tweaking things around? Seems ridiculous to me, but what do I know.

I saw that story about the Pats the day after it happened, but haven't heard anything since then til you just mentioned it. Haha, their glory days are over anyway.

A local radio guy wondered why would they risk getting an advantage with a nothing-team like the Browns? Good point -- but that was the day after and nobody knew anything for sure then.

The guru of Rochester TV is Scott Fybush. Try emailing him at scott@fybush.com

GOBILLS!!

I too am bummed that I won't be able to watch the Pats beat up on the Bills this weekend. :)

A bit more seriously, there is actually precedent for NFL-Network games being broadcast on the local networks, for especially really big games. It happened in 2007 for the Patriot's final game of their undefeated regular season. From Wikipedia:

ESPN has been saying this is the biggest game for the Bills since the Jim Kelly era. Maybe your local stations will simulcast it? It is certainly worth looking into.

If not, I guess we'll all just need to go old-school and listen on the radio. At least that signal hasn't gone digital yet, in the US at least. :)

With all sincerity, good luck guys!

The game will be shown on WBZ in Boston. Perhaps you could set up a free trial of CBS all access and use a VPN with a server in Boston.

Also, the Patriots have as app that purports to have the game, but I’d fear that is was geofenced to limit viewing to the Boston area.

Thanks Tower Guy! Who does Scott work for?


https://i.ibb.co/9pTHMk7/Bills.jpg

None of the local OTA listings show it. :(

Yes, it's a big game. But even if the Bills win, they're (the offense) still not a SB caliber team. Maybe in a couple more seasons.

But we'll see. :D

Scott produces a program on WXXI and publishes his own web site/yearly tower calendar with cool pictures. We saw each other on Wednesday!

https://www.fybush.com/scott-fybush/

I emailed him and got a good explanation of what is going on. I find it amazing that none of this info was available on any station's website -- or any other website for that matter.

One reason (I'm guessing) is that the amount of people watching OTA TV is so small that nobody cares. The majority of people I talk to who -- like me -- grew up with only OTA TV don't realize that it's still available and that it's FREE.

The public at large, apparently, has come to believe that cable/dish is like electric service: If you want electric you have to hook up to the service so, therefore, if you want TV you have to hook up to cable.

I've had conversations with people my age (69) who complain about their cable/dish bills. I've told them about OTA and it seems like they don't believe me.

Oh well, you can lead a horse to water . . .

At any rate, thanks for Scott's email. :D

The Patriots have announced that the Bills game will be available nationally on their APP (iOS) as well as the safari app on Patriots.com

I've even had "woke" millennials raise an eyebrow because they think I'm stealing the TV service. And they're the ones still on their parent's cell phone and Netflix plans...

https://i.postimg.cc/FHL10dSc/haha-with-sign.gif

Not to defend millennials -- they're always attacking my generation because their life sucks -- but they're too young to remember that OTA used to be the way everybody got TV.

JOE: Bill's game -- internet thing didn't work. They wanted my credit card number, no thanks. Anyway, my very elderly neighbors -- who are NFL fans -- invited me over to see the game (they have cable).

And here we go, yet again: The Rochester stations are going off the air again, tonight at 12:30.

It's beyond being a joke. Having been self-employed since 1985, I cannot understand how a business can survive being as INCOMPETENT as they are. If I'd run my business like the Rochester TV stations are running theirs, I wouldn't have lasted a year.