DTVuser2009

O-O

So if a station is nightlighting, does that mean they're not going to broadcast full power digital broadcasts?

Piggie

The nightlight deal has been in the works for a long time. I am pretty sure we talked about it here on this forum, but I am enough forums who knows.

It's still the end of analog as you say there are only PSAs running.

There are two kinds of nightlights. Some stations applied to be "The Nightlight" for a town. This obligated them for 30 days of a rolling PSA, and they have to post weather alerts etc. They were also allowed to run the local news.

The second tier of nightlights were more in the class of "If you want you can". After this last Nielsen report came out a lot of them that could if they wanted did. The requirements for if you want you can is you didn't interfere with a digital station cutting to your old analog channel. Some even applied to nightlight at part power, some where told they had to cut power to nightlight due to a new digital on their channel nearby.

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I am in the situation you talk about. WTLV is on RF 12 analog and RF 13 digital on the same antenna. They are having to wait to stop nightlighting to turn up the power on the digital side or they would ruin their new antenna with too much power. Many are doing this same thing.

WTLV was a "if we want" station, so they choose to only nightlight 2 weeks. They were not even going to do it until that last report came and with Jacksonville being one of the least prepared cities.

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I am seeing in on E-Skip coming in from all over the country this morning, it's the same PSA. Sad thing it's the best PSA I have seen. The one they should have shown for the last 3 years! More bad planning.

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Total aside, if you have a low band antenna, the E skip has been intense since yesterday on channel 2-6, so this is the last chance to see a lot of that.

__________________
The more I understand, the less I know.

Piggie

Its a mileage my vary thing.

Of the three nightlights I can see now, that are not skip, only one of them is on low power digital until they turn off their analog. The other two stations are full power digital, and full power analog just like before the transition, it's just now the analog is showing a loop over and over saying "FIX IT!!"

__________________
The more I understand, the less I know.

Orrymain

Is there any way of knowing what stations in a local area are nightlighting, or is it just a matter of changing channels to see who is on the air?

bicker

Here's the full (June 11) list of nightlight stations:

http://www.fcc.gov/DA-09-1303A2.pdf

Orrymain

Yeah, I saw it in another post somewhere and discovered that two of my stations are nightlighting. One was the PBS station, and that surprised me a lot. The other is the big station in town, so that was expected. That's probably why they have all that dtv education going on today.

1inxs

I started a thread for this back on May 24, 2009
Analog transmissions to continue after the final DTV transition

DTVuser2009

One of our stations is nightlighting here, so i guess for that particular station i will see the PSAs since they show on the digital side as well. at least it's only one station, PBS i think.

The only change i noticed so far is that Digital Sub-channel 9.2, which originally was the standard def variant of 9.1, and offered the same programming, sadly is a local channel that shows things such as the happenings in high schools, local charities, yawn.

Now i guess i will have to live with the DVS service for the blind which means every cartoon on PBS's 9.1 is going to have a constant 'play-by-play' which is very infuriating. such as watching Curious George you hear background static such as 'George turns his head' and 'a bird flies by' as if it were a football game. i cannot turn the blasted annoyance off!!!! it's supposed to be on SAP, according to PBS's website, but the SAP is off. so is stereo. still hearing it?

1inxs

The easiest way to find out who's nightlighting in your broadcast area is to either switch your tuner to the analog side and do a scan or if you currently use a CECB for DTV you can do analog passthrough if your CECB includes it. You will see what network is still broadcast in analog.