I have a samsung sir-t451 atsc tuner that picks up 65-1 with no problems whatsoever. I have noticed that Global is not remapping or sending out there call letters. I understand that it should read CII-DT. I think there having problems with there PSIP programming. My other atsc tuner sv-8000hd cannot pick it up at all. I guess it depends on the type of tuner you have and hopefully Global will resolve its PSIP problems and this should become a non issue.

I'm 25 miles or so from the Rochester transmitters, and they're not very strong here west of them, even with a great signal amp. When 10 and 13 go back to those currently analog channels, signal strength may go up substantially. I believe their 58 and 59 uhf signals are directional, and not to the west of Rochester.

I work in microwave radio and plotted the signal loss from Rochester to my place in Caledon. By rights, I should get them in. In reality this happens only about one evening every week or two. The reason being is their weak signals to the west. I'm guessing this is to ease frequency re-use to the west of their location. This is very unfortunately. :(

FYI: For those interested.

I recieved a message from OMNI via email, something about sport thing that I dont undertand, but more importantly, an official DT launch in June 7th - which I do understand.

***************
***************


For immediate release:

Rogers OMNI Television Celebrates TWO Firsts:
First-ever Multilingual Coverage of UEFA Euro 2008 ™
&
Digital Over-the-air for Toronto on Rogers OMNI.1 & OMNI.2
Beginning: Saturday, June 7th at 12 NOON ET

TORONTO (May 8, 2008) – Rogers OMNI Television is pleased to announce the beginning of a new era for Diversity Television in Canada, marked by two firsts: the kick-off of its exclusive multilingual coverage of this summer’s UEFA European Football ChampionshipTM AND the launch of Digital over-the-air transmission for Toronto-based viewers of Rogers OMNI.1 and OMNI.2.

The action begins Saturday, June 7th at 12:00 p.m. ET with the LIVE, tri-lingual coverage of the competition’s first match, between Switzerland and the Czech Republic, simultaneously on:

•OMNI.1 – in Italian; play-by-play and colour commentary by Vito Caressa and Sandro Piccinini;
•OMNI.2 – Chinese bi-lingual play-by-play and colour commentary by: Alex Chum in Cantonese and Ran Tao in Mandarin.

“Rogers OMNI Television once again leads the way, now building on our reputation for covering sports in multiple languages, with the combined launch of our first UEFA Euro 2008 ™ coverage and our eagerly anticipated, Digital* over-the-air transmission,” says Malcolm Dunlop, Executive Vice President, Programming, for Rogers Media Television “We’re proud to usher in this new technology ‘OMNI-style’ with tri-lingual coverage of the first game followed same day by another match for Portuguese language viewers – plus, we’re introducing coverage in Greek and Polish for soccer enthusiasts in those language communities.”

Background information on the UEFA Euro 2008 ™, including player and team profiles, is available online @ [Link: omnitv.ca] with scheduling information to be posted as it is confirmed.

About Rogers OMNI Television:
Rogers OMNI Television is a free over-the-air system consisting of regional broadcasters with the collective mandate to reflect Canada’s diversity through the airing of inclusive and accessible programming: multilingual/multicultural stations OMNI.1 (CFMT) and OMNI.2 (CJMT), along with the recently acquired (April, 2008) channel m in Vancouver BC, and two newly granted (June, 2007) licences for similarly mandated ethnocultural stations in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta; all are owned and operated by Rogers Communications in the Rogers Media division.

*(Digital over-the-air transmission in Toronto on channel: 64 for OMNI.1 and 44 for OMNI.2)

Its good to hear that OMNI is finally going live fulltime and its not just more sporadic testing. It appears that they are using the Euro 2008 soccer championship as their kickoff date (pardon the pun). This event occurs every four years and is second only to the World Cup in international interest.

Update:

CIII-DT on

41.1 Virtual Channel
65 Frequency

is now currently working on MCE.

I found this website http://www.rabbitears.info with listings of digital stations including Toronto and some other Canadian listings. They are listed in order of U.S. market size. Buffalo and Toronto are #50. Rochester is #78. Vancouver is listed under Bellingham #14. This page has links to official FCC reports for some stations, mostly the ones flash cutting or changing channel. [Link: rabbitears.info]
The most interesting bits for us are:

WPXJ DT ION 51 53 23 905.' 455. kW DA 20080219AYG Will halve analog power 06/01/08, then flash-cut on 02/17/09. (ed: switching to 23 -go to page and click FCC link for details)

WNGS DT RTN 67 47 07 1348' 15.5 kW DA 20080207AOA Will retain current service until 02/17/09, and will then switch to DT-07

WHEC DT NBC 10 58 10 502.' 30.0 kW ND 20080212ACD Will reduce power around August 2008.
WHAM DT ABC 13 59 13 499.' 10.5 kW ND 20080219AIW Will flash-cut on 02/17/09

WPXJ and WNGS are not going to use their transitional channels. 58 and 59 Rochester are going to be switched overnight to 10 and 13. No simulcast period.

PC based tuners may have more flexibility where it comes to PSIP or other programming issues.
My TV is Toshiba 37HL95. Last week I was able to receive Global 65.1 then it failed again.
After several rescans , hard resets, factory default resets still no Global 65.1 or CHCH 18-1 . Both channel show signal around 90% .
Global TV merely acknowledged my E-mail. Engineer at CHCH stated that he only had 3 E-mails with PSIP problems from Viewsonic TV owners.

Anyone with similar problems, your comments will be appreciated.

global 65.1 will not set in my channel memory as either 65.1 or 41.1. I have a sharp aquos. the only way i can get to it is by manually typing in 65.1 or saving 65.1 in favorites via the remote. this actually works not too badd as i save my canadian channels on 2 of the favorites buttons and the american cahannels i like on the other two buttons. Directly seeking 41.1 never works for me you must go to 65.1 and then it usually maps to virtual 41.1 but still behaves like 65.1 as using channel down from 41.1 still takes you to city 57.1.

The way my Sony HDTV receiver works, it only reads the PSIP during the initial scan, and then caches the entire thing... so if it worked the first time, it will continue to work until I scan again. On the other hand, if it didn't work the first time then it won't start working right until I scan again (which as been somewhat of a pain with channels like CFTO that had some trouble with their PSIP going in and out), and it never knows about new subchannels or other station changes until I scan again.

On my older Samsung tuner, it would "auto add" HD channels as you found them (meaning it cached the virtual channel), but it would re-check the PSIP each time for changes or updates.

If a tuner doesn't know about a channel then you'll have to tune in the "real" frequency; it sounds like there's something invalid about the Global PSIP that's stopping the Sharp from saving the virtual channel information for later usage.

Daniel,
You have spoke of having a pair of antenna on your tower.
I believe they were reflector yagi in nature, right?
What did you use to gang your antenna?
I'm just playing around with stuff to see what I can discover for myself
I see all these combiners out there, but each input is for a different band.
not what I'm trying to achieve...

I used a mast mounted splitter/combiner... one specifically sold for low insertion loss when combining (1/2db I believe). It's been a while now, but I could have sworn it was a Channel Master... but I can't seem to find any sign of them making such a thing right now.

I've seen the "jointenna" product under the channel master name...
but that's about it, and it's a band insertion device.
so far, the hdtvprimer has some good info for ganging antenna.

No, this was a regular full-band splitter/combiner. I then hooked my VHF antenna into the mix with the preamp.

I just got an HDTV, going to upgrade my satellite to HD on Directv. As far as over the air HD channels are concerned, would i be able to receive Toronto HD channels from Grand Island easily?