Putting HDTV on the map in Oklahoma

Today is the day!. I believe KOCO analog is going to go off the air at 9AM today. I am not sure about the other stations, so let us know what is going on out there.

The final DTV cutoff is tomorrow. It is about time. Newsok.com had an article about the DTV transition tomorrow.

I’m not sure about the rest of the state, but KETA-DT has recently been added to Suddenlink’s HD offerings in Stillwater. I noticed it at a friend’s house on Saturday. Then Monday, I help a friend rescan his channel lineup and found the channel is being send via clear QAM so it can be added whether or not you have a digital package that includes HD channels. Given that OETA has some of the best HD offerings in the state and more local HD content than any other local station, this is great for my friends with cable.

While watching my recording of ABC’s This Week…, I noticed that KOCO’s crawl about the DTV transition mentioned parts of several counties that may lose its signal when its analog signal is terminated at 9 a.m. on June 12, 2009: southern Garvin, northern Stephens, southwestern Grady, northeastern Comanche, southwestern Caddo, northeastern Washita and eastern Custer.

This loss of signal is attributed to a change in the radius of KOCO’s coverage area. Those counties are not mentioned on KOCO’s Countdown to Digital Television, but it is suggested that viewers in those areas might receive ABC programming from KSWO-DT in Lawton. For reception issues, KOCO recommends calling them visiting www.dtv.gov/maps.

On a related note, I am now getting a pretty strong and stable signal from KOCO-DT in Stillwater. I was able to add it to my Mac-based EyeTV 500 tuner yesterday and there were no breakups of my recording this morning. The signal was not as good on my Dish 211K receiver last night during the NBA playoff game, but I wasn’t able to lock in a signal at all on my EyeTV for weeks so this is a good sign.

ggore writes:

…we received the following notice today from KWTV:

KWTV News 9, Oklahoma City, will have a maintenance outage this Saturday night. Actual date/time of outage will be 12:30 AM

Update: Mr. Gore notes in his comment that this outage, scheduled both for over the air and KWTV’s fiber optic cable feed to Cox, will last until 6 a.m.

I switched all my recording of KOCO-DT from the Mac over to my Dish 211K receiver and it failed to record “This Week…” this morning so both of my receivers are getting a very poor signal. I guess there won’t be any NBA Finals for me this year…

On the EyeTV tuner for the Mac, I did a complete rescan to try and lock in a better signal, but that has only made things worse since it didn’t find KOCO-DT at all. I tried adding KOCO-DT back manually and it only shows a 40 percent signal, not even enough to lock it in to the tuner.

In the nearly 6 years I’ve been getting it, since June 13, 2003, I’ve never received a signal that low from KOCO-DT. There have been times when it was low enough that it was unwatchable, but now I can’t even add it to my channel list. They must have adjusted their profile to offer more power to the south, but screwed those of use to the north in places like Stillwater.

Dennis

The last three times I’ve tried recording something off of KOCO-DT with my EyeTV and my Mac it’s failed. So, now I’ve missed the last two episodes of Lost and my whole season of recordings is messed up. Is anyone else having more problems with KOCO than usual?

I thought I saw this one day last week on KFOR channel 4 in OKC, but wasn’t certain.

I forgot to mention this last week, but OETA has begun carrying some movies in HD on Friday and Saturday nights as part of B.J. Wexler’s OETA Movie Club. The Movie Club’s intro has been in HD for many weeks, but “Hotel Rwanda” is the first actual movie I’ve seen them carry that was in HD.

Last night, Dish added the following HD channels to its lineup…

These are available even if you only have the old Dish Absolute package or one of the Turbo packages:

• Comedy Central (channel 107)
• Country Music Television (channel 166)
• Spike (channel 168)
• BET Jazz (channel 371) *

These channels were added if you have one of the Turbo packages, but not the Absolute package.

• Nickelodeon (channel 9416)
• MTV (channel 9484)
• VH1 (channel 9507)
• BET (channel 9510)

* Added on April 1, 2009 along with SD versions comedy central for Absolute customers. As near as I can tell, BET Jazz has never shown anything in HD.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Suddenlink channel listing has been updated to include instructions for how to find the channel linkup in your city. The channel lineup now includes the new Discovery channels added to HD Basic in Stillwater last month.

KWTV-DT is adding a third transmitter cabinet this weekend that will bring their transmitter power up to 62KW and hopefully increase their reliable coverage area to what it should be. Their signal will be offline for a few hours while the change is made.

At 9 AM today OETA stations KWET and KOET have ceased analog broadcasting.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced today that the backlog for digital television converter box coupon requests had been cleared and that the government now had sufficient funding to send out more.

via DTV Coupons Are Here Again - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com.

KOMI-DT, Woodward ion station, has moved their signal to UHF channel 34. They had been operating on channel 24, which prevented KOKH’s signal from reaching into western and northwestern Oklahoma. This move has alleviated reception problems out here and now KOKH is coming in just fine.