What's Wrong With My #@%@!#$ TV??

The Secret Code

Tue, 25 May 2010 01:34:57 GMT

A week doesn't go by that I don't get at least a couple of phone calls or emails from viewers asking why CBS13 or CW31 have been off the air.

"Off the air", I ask? "Surely, you jest!"

Off the air is not in our vocabulary!

What happens is that these converter boxes will sometimes just lose a channel.

Quirky little devils, they are!

So, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Well, not really a secret, but let's just consider it the secret code.

If you suspect that to be the case, pick up your remote for the converter box and punch in the appropriate number, from the table below, for the channel you are missing. If the channel pops in, then your box lost that channel in memory and you need to do a channel search/scan.

You Want To Watch	Punch In This Number
3	35
6	9
10	10
13	25
19	18
29	48
31	21
40	40
58	46
64	26

A View From The Top

Sat, 01 May 2010 03:12:04 GMT

If you watch CBS13 News and Good Day Sacramento (and, really, why wouldn't you?), you often hear us mention our US Bank camera.

This is a building at 9th and J, in downtown Sac, which is a key location for us.

We have a camera on the roof....

And, microwave antennas on the side....

And, it is a key, strategic location for us to bring you the news from just about anywhere within about 25 miles of the building.

The view, above, is looking down from the top of the building. Cesar Chavez Park is at the bottom of the building's east side.

Now, where else can you go to get these exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at your favorite television station.

We are your fav station, right?

They Make Great Pets

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 02:14:38 GMT

Anyone remember that song, They Make Great Pets, by Porno for Pyros?

We have several pets here.

Seven, to be precise.

Technically, they're robotic cameras. Real robots that do all of the camera work for most of our shows under the supervision of one of our highly qualified operations personnel.

To Mike Graves, however, these are his pets. Mike is one of our engineers and he has adopted these bots has his own.

We have seven resident bots and, every once in a while, just like any pet, surgery is required.

Mike is the surgeon here, and a talented one at that.

After all, who else would attempt operating on one of these electro-mechanical nightmares?

All Stations Should Have One Of These

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 01:56:00 GMT

We recently completed the backup transmitter facility for CBS13 and CW31.

Can you believe it? We're two of the few local stations to have operational backup facilities.

What a concept!

Good thing we did that, by the way.

The day after we got this thing going, we had a fire at the CW31 primary transmitter location. Without skipping a beat, we switched to our shiny, new backup tower and our Good Day Sacramento viewers didn't know the difference.

To have a backup facility, you need one of these...

It's called a transmitter

And one of these...

It's called a tower

And, on top of that, you need a few guys (wearing boots)...

It's called a boot wearing, fearless guy!

To install one of these...

It's called an antenna

Oh, and it also helps to have a megabuck or so in the bank.

That Pesky Second Audio

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 03:17:56 GMT

All too often, almost daily it seems, I get at least one call from a viewer who hears something other than normal program audio on one of our stations.

That's because the viewer is listening to the second audio channel which may have one of the following on it:

1 - Spanish language audio

2 - Descriptive audio for the blind

3 - Normal, main program channel, audio

4 - No audio

Typically, I get these calls from very upset viewers who are sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that some moron at the television station threw the wrong switch and isn't monitoring the sound.

Once I calm them down, we can generally work through the problem.

On most sets and converter boxes, there is a button on the remote which can accidentally be pressed, throwing the television or converter box into the second audio mode.

If this happens to you, look for a button labeled as follows:

AUDIO

- OR -

MTS

- OR -

SAP

Press it and you will probably get an on-screen menu which will walk you through the process of getting normal audio back.

Below is a typical remote control for a Dynex TV, which is the Best Buy brand. Note the button labeled "audio"

Our New Truck!

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:11:55 GMT

Yeah, so we have a new truck....

You know we have more of these things than any other station around here, right?

So, what's the big deal?

Our new truck is rather green.

Nah, not the paint.

It's what's inside.

You see, most trucks like this use generators to power the equipment inside. Generators use fuel and burned fuel just adds more crud to the air we breath. Generators are also a maintenance headache for us.

So, we just purchased a new truck that operates the equipment using a power cell.

It looks like this and will power the truck for up to 5 hours before it needs charging.

But, this is no battery. In fact, it isn't even a battery.

Here are the high points:

Safe: No carbon Monoxide (that means no bad stuff for our reporters and photographers to breath)

Quiet (this means that you don't hear than darn generator noise in the background during a live shot)

No maintenance (nothing to fix!)

No fuel consumption (significant operating cost reduction.)

No emissions

Recyclable and environmentally responsible (there is no hazmat component)

Nice, eh?

The Other Digital Transition

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:00:22 GMT

Not too long ago, all of the local television stations switched from analog to digital.

Not the analog to digital transition you're thinking of, however.

We're talking about a FCC mandated transition to digital of the news gathering system microwave system used in this country. The frequency spectrum, in the 2 GHz band, we have used over the years has always been split into seven separate channels.

Several years ago, the FCC proposed transferring two of those seven channels to another service. The loss of two channels would have been devastating for the broadcasters. A deal was struck and resulted in carving seven new channels into the remaining spectrum...only possible with digital microwave equipment.

And, so it happened.

A few weeks ago, all seven channels were fired up simultaneously for testing purposes here in Sacramento. The picture shows live trucks from Channels 3, 10, 13, 19, 31, 40, and 58, side-by-side, in the Cal Expo parking lot.

Everything worked. The local stations are happy and you, the viewer, will continue to see the news live, from anywhere, when it breaks.

New Year - More Techie Blogging

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:47:06 GMT

I haven't done a post in a while.

Seems that there has been a little bug associated with my blog and the way it is displayed on some computers.

Our guru's fixed it, so I am off and running again in 2010.

Let's start off with viewer mail...

From C, in Garden Valley - I like watching channel 13/31, but for those of us that don't pay for TV, are finding it more and more difficult because of the ever increasing pixelation, during a favorite program. It is becoming very discouraging to have to wait for the transmission to come back, and now I've just lost watching the end of a program, because the channel does not come in. If it says no signal, that's exactly what it means. I'll probably need to watch another channel. Sorry, but I'm pretty tired of this.

From L, in Groveland - I get my HDTV reception via antenna and it's generally quite good. I'm having a periodic problem with 13 &31 for the past few days with lots of dropping out, even all day toay. Any suggestions? Have you changed something that requires a channel rescan?

From L, in Garden Valley - This may just be a comment not a complaint but until last week the reception with my exterior HD antenna was fine. I received upwards of 54 HD channels then suddenly last week I was not receiving KOVR. I have auto scanned numerous times but channel 13 doesn't usually show and when it does, it won't tune for more than a few seconds. I live on a mountain top, 2000 feet and have reception as far away as stations in the Monterey area, San Mateo, the entire Bay area and all other Sacramento stations. What gives? Did you change your power output in the last week or so?

These are typical of many emails and phone calls I have received over the past few weeks.

There is a pattern.

(1) Virtually all of the viewers with this particular complaint live in the foothills.

(2) The number of viewer complaints and phone calls increases dramatically on foggy days.

But, Bob, the Valley is fogged in, not the foothills.

Yeah, I know, but the fog is caused by an inversion layer, high pressure and other fancy meteorologically nasty words that Dave Bender uses frequently. With our transmitter towers located in Walnut Grove, right in the middle of the Valley, and sticking up above the fog layer, the fog layer causes the signals to bounce around even more than they normally do in the foothills.

Digital television HATES signals that bounce around and hit your antenna from more than one direction.

You still with me on this one?

A digital converter box or television wants to see only one signal. If you live in Garden Valley, it wants to only see the signal coming from the tower in Walnut Grove. It does not want to see the signal directly from the tower along with another one which has gone from the Walnut Grove tower, bounced off of the fog layer and hits your antenna a second time. Add that to signals that bounce off of the hills and that spells death to your digital television reception.

So, what to do?

Well, there is not a lot that you can do in the short term. I had been recommending the Channel Master 4228 antenna to foothill viewers but that antenna is no longer in production. Instead, they are selling the 4228HD which, unfortunately, is not quite as good an antenna. For those in the hills, I would try the Antennas Direct DB8.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Advancements to the digital television system are underway which may improve your reception.

It requires that we broadcasters modify some equipment...and we will be doing this.

It also requires a next-generation converter box or television on your end and these are not available yet.

Frustrated?

Pray for wind and rain.

It makes the fog go away!

Our New Project - The Antenna

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:04:02 GMT

Your antennas look like this.

Or this.

We need an antenna for the tower shown in my last post. Now, broadcast antennas are built to order. You just don't go to your local Radio Shack to find one.    So, who better to go to than Jampro Antennas, located right here in River City. Jampro is one of just a handful of broadcast antenna manufacturers world-wide.    Last week, Richard, our Transmitter Supervisor and project manager for this endeavor, dropped in on Jampro to check on the progress of our antenna. Here are a few shots of the antenna, currently under construction.

And lookie here, they're also building an antenna for KVIE, Channel 6.

Check out our antenna, right next to the Channel 6 antenna. Now, why is theirs bigger than ours? Actually, you are only seeing one fourth of ours in the picture.

Lots of copper.


And, they have the equipment to test everything before it goes up on the tower.

BH

Our New Fun Project - Transmitter

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:00:09 GMT

Even though most of you people out there watch us via cable or dish, we do still believe in transmitters. You would be surprised just how many out there watch the pictures coming directly from our transmitters in Walnut Grove.

So just who watches us via our transmitters?

Most who are on cable in the hinterlands.

Dish Network and DirecTV customers.

Outside antenna users.

Indoor antenna users.

So, we have this big backup tower, all 1,500 feet of it, that used to house our backup analog transmitter for KOVR, Channel 13.

Shortly following the June 12th analog shutdown date, we had the analog transmitter scrapped and pretty much emptied the transmitter room.

A couple of weeks ago, we took delivery of a brand new transmitter which will provide the backup signals for both KMAX, Channel 31, and KOVR, Channel 13.

This is a liquid cooled, solid state, transmitter. It is cooled using heat exchangers, which are kind of like the radiator in your car.

The actual transmitter will be assembled into these two racks.

The devices that actually generate the signal you watch on Channel 13 or Channel 31 are called "exciters". The transmitter has two of them.

We hope to have all of this operational by the end of December.