There are very many people in my area that disagree with that. WHBF returned to RF4 last summer. Rabbit ears & other indoor antennas will not pick up their signal. The only solution was to install a roof antenna or spend $25 a month for cable. They have elected to not watch this CBS station. Why pay to get something that was free in the analog days?
We live 28 miles from the tower. Aledo has a cable company, but most people live in the country or small villages that do not have cable. I am disappointed that WHBF has decided to ignore our problems. People in the urban area of the Quad Cities also had problems with the VHF-LO signal. WHBF has now decided to simulcast on a low power UHF frequency.
I am not sure that Distributed Transmission would work. Have you ever traveled through rural Montana & Wyoming? No cell phone services there. The residents either have Directv or DISH with locals, or no TV at all.
Bob 61231
Distributed Transmission would also have its limitations too. Its main intention was for it to be used in place of a single location megawatt transmitter in difficult reception areas such as any type of mountainous or irregular terrain.
The only reason that any broadcaster would choose to go back to VHF is to save money. Given all of the problems with some of the VHF channel assignments, I can't see anyone doing this logically, but the decisions were made quite a while back as to buying new transmitters, antennas, and considering interference to other stations etc. The decisions were made long before all of the VHF reception issue were well known.
There was not enough research done on digital VHF, as the original plan was for it to be all UHF as was done in the European countries that have already gone digital, but the FCC bowed down to pressure from the VHF broadcasters and the NAB. (National Association of Broadcasters)
If you give the VHF guys enough power to equal the reception characteristics of the UHF guys, they would far exceed their assigned coverage areas, and that would not be fair to the UHF broadcasters, as that would increase their coverage area far beyond its intended reach.
The bottom line is that VHF does not work well for DTV, but how do you go back and spend several million dollars again when most broadcasters are already strapped for cash and are still making payments on loans for the currently used brand new VHF transmitters and antennas etc.
I think an outdoor antenna should work at 28 miles, and if so, you could drop your monthly fees for the local channels package on satellite. The broadcasters cannot be fully blamed, as the testing was almost finished when the FCC bowed down and allowed the VHF channels to be used again, and they should share most of the blame for all of the VHF reception woes.
Operating a VHF versus UHF transmitter is like buying a vehicle that requires High Grade gasoline, when one was available that got the job done on regular gas. The UHF transmitter uses the high grade gas (Amount of Electrical Power required), while the VHF gets the same job done on regular gas. (This is only comparing the energy usage of the two, disregarding the coverage issues) This is the reason some chose to go back to VHF before all of the reception issues were known, and it is much less expensive to convert a VHF analog transmitter to digital than to buy a new one at well over $500,000 or more.
Analog UHF transmitters were only about 30% efficient compared to some digital models that are as much as 40 to 60% efficient, with the ratio being how much power they consume versus power output. A lot of the power was used up in waste heat in analog, and analog required the use of two separate tube type (Klystron tubes) or lots of Solid State combined amplifiers, where digital only uses a single more efficient IOT tube, or again, lots of Solid State combined amplifiers. Even the UHF broadcasters will use much less power in digital broadcasting than did the old inefficient analog transmitters.
