Channel repack has begun, and it's not good!

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Mine resolved itself today when I reset the device. If you still have a problem, let me know and I'll step you through what I did

 

I don't think it is.

Again, connect your TV directly to the antenna that your Tivo is using. Scan. See how the repacked channels are identifying themselves.

Tivo knows schedules by a station's call letters or virtual channel numbers. It doesn't care about frequencies. A scan maps the frequency of a stream to a set of call letters or virtual channel numbers. The call letters or virtual channel numbers identify what programming schedule should be applied to the stream contents. If the stream is not identifying itself, the Tivo doesn't know what it's receiving, but it's receiving something.

 

thanks for the offer, but i'm cable + ota, and all is well (for the moment!).

 

thanks for the tip on that one. I forgot to mention 2-3 wasn't fixed.

 

Huh? 43-1 is WKOI, Richmond, IN while 2-3 was WDTN, Dayton OH (which my TV's no longer get via antenna)
This is based on info received on a two TV's with Antennas (no TiVo involved).
The WDTN website links to a Titan TV insert for "what's on" and it shows 2-3, ION TV. The 43-1 tunes also to ION TV and the program material matches what the Titan TV insert gives for 2-3

Further googling finds this in the wiki for "WDTN":

However the last statement there no longer seems to apply (since 2-3 no longer can be tuned on either of two TV's connected directly to antennas).

I'm wondering what "sharing" in the wiki quote means, physically? Is the shared channel actually being transmitted from the WDTN Dayton antenna tower or from the Richmond IN WKOI tower some 30 or so miles to the west?

 

Channel sharing means that TV Station A sold their 6 MHz block of bandwidth for a big bag of cash. They agreed to "share" Channel B's 6 MHz block and continue broadcasting, using Channel B's physical equipment.

So, if Channel A's transmitter was 30 miles from Channel B's transmitter, and you couldn't receive Channel B, you are no longer going to be able to pick up Channel A, since Channel B is really a digital subchannel to Channel A now.

If both channels broadcast from the same antenna farm, you wouldn't know the difference. However, when their plants were far apart, you bet you're going to notice a difference.

 

Additional info regarding WDTN Dayton, WKOI Richmond, sharing, etc.:

I found the signal info part of my TV's menu system. The WDTN channels (2-1 and 2-2) and the WKOI channel (43-1) are all on the same "physical channel" (50). And they all show the same high signal strength. Since (1) my antenna is directional and is pointed to the south side of Dayton (where all the local transmitter towers are located) and (2) I don't remember ever picking up WKOI, located west 30 miles, before now, I strongly suspect the 43-1 is being transmitted from the WDTN Dayton tower. I also doubt that two transmitters only 30 miles apart would be assigned the same physical channel.

I think my picture is consistent with @dstoffa's explanation in his previous post.

 

It seems that WKOI, WDTN, and WBDT have all agreed to share one 6 MHz block of television spectrum. There is no way that all three can share one block and still carry all the digital subchannels. I assume you also may have noticed a drop in picture quality. Programs recorded off this station (and they are all now one station) probably take us less room on the Tivo, too.

Wikipedia now reads this on their WDTN page:

So whatever was being shown on 2.3 is gone for good. No more room at the inn. WBDT got $27.3 million to go off the air, and is sharing WDTN's signal (from wherever their broadcast tower is). WKOI's spectrum was sold for over $20 million. They, too, are on WDTN's stick.

The broadcasts are on all UHF (RF) channel 50, and broadcasts the following streams with these virtual channel numbers from WDTN's transmitter:
2.1 NBC (WDTN-DT)
2.2 Escape (WDTN-DT2)
26.1 The CW (WBDT-DT)
26.2 bounce (WBDT-DT2)
43.1 ionTV (WKOI-DT)

All the other subchannels were dropped, because there isn't sufficient room for them all. These channels will all move to RF Channel 31 in October 2019.

 

We went through the channel repack here in Milwaukee back in January. It took about three weeks in-all for everything straighten itself out for OTA. I did try to force things a bit with channel scans and re-running guided setup once a week (which may or may not have helped get things inline sooner). The thing to watch for is multiple entries of the same channel in the channel list. For me, one channel entry had the new frequency with no guide info, the other channel entry had the old frequency with guide info. Then a few days later, viola, the new frequency entry had guide data!

Good Luck!

 

If you have cable, don’t assume the repack won’t affect you. The cable systems have to follow the dance as well. Here, we had a minor repack of Baltimore stations and Fios messed it up so a channel was missing for over a week. We also lost sub channels due to the sharing. Luckily, most are receivable from DC.

 

The issue is really:

1. People need to be aware that the physical channel is changing during the repack. The transmitter may be moving. They may need to realign an antenna. (And might lose a channel in the process if now the antenna needs to point elsewhere.)

2. The re-packed channel needs to identify its streams properly, so the DVR knows what's what.

3. The user will need to force a rescan once the new packed channel is identifying its streams properly.

 

More HYDRA (The real one, not the OS) propaganda at work..

 

And it wouldn't hurt to have Hulu as a backup along with some network streaming apps.

 

DOH! I missed the sentence in the WDTN wiki page that you quoted and it was the very next one after what I quoted! Interesting that Titan is still showing 2-3 as active. It appears that it was ionTV, so nothing is really lost program-wise due to the repack (since 43-1 is ionTV) except that people who used to get it from a tower 26 miles SE of Richmond will now have to get it from the WDTN Dayton tower 35 miles east of Richmond. It looks like no other transmitters for any channel are closer to Richmond than the Dayton ones. Thus it appears anyone in Richmond wanting to pull in OTA already needed a pretty good directional antenna before the repack. This info is from this web page:
Richmond, IN - TV Channels & Antenna Map

 

From my experience, which may or may not have been the ideal situation, it really seems like doing nothing and being patient worked fine. I will add that in MKE we basically have a tower farm on the upper-eastside that ALL local stations use, so reorienting antennas was not necessary.

To your points: 1) The local affiliate is the one responsible to inform the public about the repack, not TiVo (my locals did this almost annoyingly for a month before the repack). 2) The fact that TiVo/Rovi does need to update it's database to reflect change in actual to virtual channel is accurate. 3) On the TiVo, forcing a rescan should not be necessary, but may be a useful step in forcing the system to update itself.

 

You would expect these updates to occur during the service connection.

Scott

 

Possibly since only frequencies are changed the usual add/drop channel message from TiVo is not appropriate. I guess they don't have a method to notify a user that a rescan or GS is needed. I always get a message when my channels change.

About two months ago most of my local channels changed their QAM channels/frequencies. No message. I only noticed since my lone clear QAM channel moved.