Around Ohio

I must be getting old, but I am a bit confused about all this digital television transition.

We have cable TV at our house, so no need to worry there. But we just stayed somewhere where, uh, what’s the deal with the TV? Oh, I see, it’s got a digital converter so we have to use one remote for the channel changing and another for volume (and both to turn things off).

Got that figured out, but the instructions say to run scan on your TV “because channel numbers in your area may have changed.” This fits with the
FCC’s Final Decision on Digital TV Assignments.

Yet, as I flip around I see Columbus channels are still 4, 6, 10, 28, 34, 51. Huh? I don’t get it. Or are they going to change later? Seems implausible. I’m confused.

Your Buckeye, John Kazalia.

UPDATE: Okay, I found the answer: When the digital TV system was being designed, engineers knew both the analog and digital signals cannot be on the same channel. They also knew that TV stations around the country spent years and lots of money promoting their channel number and that would be lost when they changed numbers. A system was designed to keep the old channel numbers in the public’s eye.

Here is how it works. We will use Channel 10 for the example. The analog transmitters operate on Channel 10, just like they have for the last 50 plus years. But the digital transmitter is actually on Channel 21. There is a signal within the “digital data stream,” called PSIP . The PSIP signal tells the channel display on your TV screen what channel number to show you. In other words, the TV set creats a virtual channel and tells you it is on Channel 10 (10.1 to be exact) when it really is on Channel 21. So, after you get your antenna up and working and you set channel scan, you can forget about Channel 21.