San Diego Off-Air TV Viewers Need To Rescan Again: Musical Channels is Finally Over
As mentioned in a previous post, now that musical channels is over and everyone is on the air on their final (many have been reassigned) TV channel, if you still watch TV from an antenna (off the air) and not via cable, U-verse, or satellite, your TV or box needs to relearn the TV landscape.
Here in San Diego, KUSI-TV has made a minor-yet-significant change subsequent to last weekend's historic reshuffling. This is because they were digitally identifying themselves as being on Channel 18 which is, in fact, the "channel chair" they sat down in when the music stopped. But the text you see on your TV when you change channels is not necessarily the actual FCC-assigned channel number. It's called a PSIP and is a simple a tag that each station sends on its data stream showing its virtual channel. It could say "Eat at Joes" but that would be messy, and incorrect. But it does say the call letters and can say either their actual channel or, perhaps, their former channel, because that's how people have known them over the years.
The Man steps in
KUSI elected to say KUSI-18 because 1) it's a fact and 2) a Low-Power Spanish-language station now occupies Channel 51. But the FCC says that, without a waiver, stations need to identify themselves by their former, analog, channel number. Are you losing track yet? Good. Shows you're thinking. Anyway, this rule means KUSI must sent KUSI-51 as its PSIP code. So, if you watch off-air TV, you should rescan to get this new change that was effective today.
RESCANNING May Be Trickier Than You Think
Some DTV sets and converter boxes get confused during a rescan and do not dump their old memories before adding new channels, sometimes causing memory conflicts. One solution is to manually delete all the channels and then execute a rescan. The other is to follow the FCC's newly-announced procedure called "double rescan." Steps 1-3 are apparently designed to dump the old memory. If you think this is confusing, you're right, and you shouldn't have to do it again for a LONG LONG TIME. [Thanks to respected industry newsletter, The CGC Communicator]
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