Scans, scans, everywhere a scan

Well, it has been quite a while since I last posted, mainly due to family matters, helping people with their residential technology and some custom programming barcode scanning projects. But barcode scanning is not the type of scanning I'm going to write about today.

I was checking the local news websites and came across a notice on ABC-7 and NBC-2's websites announcing the upgrade of their broadcast tower (there is a cool video of the broadcast tower shot by a drone ascending the full height). This work is part of the FCC's ‘Spectrum Repack' initiative, designed to move TV broadcast signals to make room for 5G wireless services and applications for mobile devices. This reminded me of an article I read in a publication a while ago about how this will affect 'Cord Cutters' like me.

Basically, anyone using an antenna to watch Over The Air (broadcast) TV will have to occasionally 'rescan' their channels to properly receive the signals from the broadcasters who will be changing their broadcast frequency signal. Which stations are affected and when will this happen? The FCC has a very good website with the caption: "Broadcast TV Transition: What to Watch For" to explain all of this and give you pointers on how to perform a 'rescan' on various brands of TVs. There are some great links on the left-hand side of the page:

One item to note in the menu is the 'TV Reception Map'. If you click on this, it will send you to another page where you can key in your zip code and see the TV stations and their channel numbers in your area.

Here is the coverage for my zip code:

In the listing, you see a column called 'IA' which stands for 'Incentive Auction' If there is an 'R' in the column, then that station received a new Radio Frequency (RF) channel and will be 'moving' its signal. If this is the case, then you will need to 'rescan' in order to find that station after the move. How do you know when the move will take place? If you click on the Callsign letters (WINK for example), you will see more information:

The red circle indicates the radio frequency (not the actual TV station channel). In this case it is the same, but if you click through the other channels, you will see that their RF channel is changing. The unfortunate thing is that there is not a specific date of the switch for that station, but rather a two month 'window' (look at the green underline) for the change to take place. I'm sure the stations will run crawlers on the screen and public service announcements that the channel will be moving and to remind you to do a rescan on your TV. However, this can present a problem for our household because there are programs that we record through our Alexa Recast on stations that we may not watch for sometimes up to a month later. This opens the possibility that we may miss the announcement that the broadcast signal is 'moving'.

In my case, all of my TVs are connected to my Amazon Fire Recast, so I will simply have to remember to have the Recast rescan channels on a weekly basis. It would really be nice if I could ask Alexa to have the Recast automatically rescan the channels, but that option is not currently available. I guess I'll just set an Alexa reminder to rescan channels on a weekly basis.

One additional note, if you click on the "Consumer Toolkit" link it will take you to a page with some documents like "Quick Start Guide" and "Remote Control Guide" which explains how to start a rescan for major TV brands.

So, if you use an antenna and you find that a TV station you once watched is no longer available on your TV, you'll probably need to rescan your channels.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Phil