ATSC 3.0 is on the air in Pittsburgh!
June 17, 2020TVNewsCheck.com reports Sinclair Broadcast Group’s WPGH-TV (53), and WPNT-TV (22), and Hearst Television’s WTAE-TV (4) have become among the first in the nation to begin broadcasting in ATSC 3.0 (or NextGen TV. The new technology is able to support a wide range of features currently in development. That includes immersive audio and video up to 4K, broadcasting to mobile devices, personalized viewing tools, and perhaps most importantly advanced emergency alerts providing rich media rather than simple text messages. The technology will also allow full integration with 5G technology.
PBRTV.com alerted you in May to the FCC approval of the license modifications back in April. The technology has been in development for a decade and the local stations involved have been planning and preparing for at least a year.
WPGH and WPNT’s new ATSC 3.0 signal is using the antenna that WPNT had used to carry its programming. Over-the-air viewers will have to rescan their sets and boxes to get WPNT’s regular broadcast.
The technology is expected to be at stations in the top 40 markets by year’s end.
Are you an over-the-air viewer? Please let us know what you had to do.
Are you a user of the advanced technology? What are you able to see?
Email us: info@pbrtv.com
It appears that the other channel 22 subchannels are now gone after I performed a rescan.
I really enjoyed Comet which is not carried on cable.
I rescanned and still get 22 with all of the same subchannels. Interestingly though when I click up one channel from those it now takes me to 3 new channels with no picture or sound which are designated “10-3 TEST”, “10-4 TEST”, and “10-5 TEST”. This is on an older ATSC 1.0 television. I have no equipment that’s compatible with ATSC 3.0.
The other day I was not getting 22 or 53 main channels (22.1 & 53.1), but the sub channels were there. I rescanned the TV and all is OK. I did see a promo telling viewers to rescan on 22 but never saw a promo on 53 for rescanning.
53 should not have needed the rescan. It continues with ATSC 1.0 on the transmitter and antenna it did before the switch. They’re using the one WPNT used until the switch. That’s why the rescan was needed for it.
Getting 22 and 53 here in Johnstown, Pa. 22’s sub channel’s are harder to get here because they riding Wtae 4 signal. Channel 4 has a lousy signal east. I can get tae with extreme yagi’s and filters. I am near Laurel Mt.
Folks aren’t going to like this answer. I use cable TV, which includes the local, over-the-air channels. I never paid much attention to whether a show I liked to watch was on an over-the-air channel or a cable channel. I only watch the shows that seem interesting based on story premise, stars, and whether or not I liked previous episodes. When I read this article, and started considering whether this would have any impact on me, I realized there are no shows on the networks that WPGH and WPNT carry that I want to watch. I really don’t care much how good the signal is if I don’t want to watch the shows.
When I rescanned to get 22, I noticed that 53.1 was coming up as “no signal,” but 53’s subchannels were there. After scanning, 22 & 53 were both there. Weird! I still have trouble receiving WTAE TV.
It’s been a few days of constant rescanning and I’m about to give up. I’m too far north of the city to pick up a watchable WTAE signal on 4-1 from Buena Vista. (You call this progress; I used to pick up Wheeling and Steubenville back in the analog days.) My VIZIO M502i-B1 TV sometimes scans in 4-1, 22-2, 22-3, and 22-4 but there’s not enough signal there to lock onto them. I do get a roughly 75% signal from WTAE’s Oakland repeater on 4-3, but there’s not even a hint of the (so I’m told) accompanying 22-5, 22-6, 22-7 whenever I do a rescan. Honestly, I’m far more upset about not being able to watch WQED reliably due to constant RF interference since they switched to VHF low in the last repack.