Cincinnati HD Broadcast Channels

[TvPat]

I went to Cincinnati over the weekend and had the chance to to a scan of the digital channels on an HDTV. I picked them all up with rabbit ears near downtown Cincinnati on the first scan.

Some things to note:
- 2 stations have weather channels
- The CW is on a subchannel of the CBS station, SD only
- WPTO 14 PBS has 5 subchannels, 4 SD, 1 very pixellated HD
- WPTO analog transmitter is in Oxford, but WPTO-DT is in downtown Cincinnati at much higher power
- total of 11 digital PBS stations
- WCET PBS simulcasts their regular programming in HD instead of the PBS-HD schedule
- WCVN turns off two of their SD channels to broadcast their HD channel from 8 to midnight

Here are the stations:

5-1 WLWT (Cincinnati, NBC)
5-2 NBC Weather Plus

9-1 WCPO (Cincinnati, ABC)
9-2 9 WeatherTracker

12-1 WKRC (Cincinnati, CBS)
12-2 CinCW (CW)

14-2 ThinkTV 14 WPTO (Oxford, PBS) (transmitter in downtown Cincinnati)
14-3 ThinkTV 14 Prime (Rebroadcast of prime time schedule)
14-4 ThinkTV 14 Learn
14-5 ThinkTV 14 World
14-6 ThinkTV 14 HD

19-1 WXIX (Cincinnati, Fox)
19-2 Message that The Tube is no longer broadcasting

48-1 WCET (Cincinnati, PBS) (HD simulcast of analog programming)
48-2 CETWorld

54-1 KET1 WCVN (Covington, PBS) (Kentucky Educational Television)
54-2 KET2
54-3 KET KY Midnight - 8 PM, KET HD 8 PM - Midnight
54-4 KET ED, off the air 8 PM - Midnight

64-1 WSTR (Cincinnati, MyTv)

[hdtvnewbie]

Closely related to your story, I was playing around with my new Zenith DTT900 converter box. I reactivated the old outdoor antenna and rotor last night in East Columbus/Reynoldsburg. The tropos were just right and the signals were booming in ......

from Dayton (in order of signal strength) ....
WHIO (CBS, AccuWeather)
WDTN (NBC, WeatherPlus)
WPTD (PBS)
WBDT (CW)
WRGT (Fox)

WHIO was coming in most consistently of all the channels.

===========================

from Cincinnati (in order of signal strength) ....
WKRC (CBS, CW)
WLWT (NBC)
WSTR (MyTV)

===========================

I also have to say I was pretty impressed with the WPTD channel offerings, which looked just fine on my 32" analog set. WOSU's 3 channels seem so lame by comparison. With 5 channels, I also was curious as to how they were able to get out an HD signal. An odd thing about WPTD is that there is no channel 16.1, with the channels labeled 16.2 through 16.6. I was reading about WPTO. You can barely get the analog signal in Hamilton County. Apparently they are using the WXIX tower in Cincinnati for their digital signal. Makes me wonder how the Cincinnati market will be able to support 3 PBS stations. It simply has to hurt WCET's begathons. It kind of reminds me of all the religious bottom-fishers on LPTV ..... do you really need 5 stations full of preachers?

Also, I was flipping back and forth between WLWT Weather Plus and WCMH Weather Plus. It seems that the WLWT version is heavier on local cut-ins, using more of their local talent. WCMH seems to be on auto-pilot by comparison.

I was unable to get Zanesville (45 miles), Athens (59 miles), Mansfield (55 miles), or Huntington, WV (106 miles) which used to come in fairly regularly this time of year back in the old days before I got cable. I got a signal from Lima (86 miles) but was unable to lock in.

It freaked me out to see all of these distant signals come in so crystal clear. Most of the channels are gone tonight, but I'm thinking of investing in an amp to see if I can get the Dayton stations (77 miles) regularly. I can see some potential in having those channels in terms of shifting football games. Otherwise, the Dayton stations seem kind of lame.

[festivus]

Man, I would love to be able to pull in the CBS Lima station on the days that WBNS shows the Bengals instead of the Browns. Put I believe that it's a low power station so the likelihood of locking it in would be pretty small I think.

If you're a Bengals fan and could consistently get a Dayton station you may be set for the season.

[Scott]

Man, I would love to be able to pull in the CBS Lima station on the days that WBNS shows the Bengals instead of the Browns. Put I believe that it's a low power station so the likelihood of locking it in would be pretty small I think.

If you're a Bengals fan and could consistently get a Dayton station you may be set for the season.

Pat would probably know, but I wonder if Dayton is a black-out station. I hated when I lived in Cincy and the home game wouldn't sell out and the game would be blacked-out locally. Of course, that was 10 years ago. I'm not sure what their attendance average is now.

[TvPat]

If a Bengals game does not sell out, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Lexington are blacked out. A station is blacked out if the grade B signal (approximately 35 miles) penetrates the 75 mile radius of the stadium.

[hdtvnewbie]

I just stuck a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 HDTV card into my computer and must report that the reception level where I'm at is very good. Tonight was a good reception night and with an outdoor antenna I was able to receive all local channels PLUS WDTN, WHIO, WPTD and WKOI in HD and WPTD, WBDT and WRGT in Analog. It's a work night, but I'm sure Cincinnati would also come in loud and clear tonight if I felt like playing with the antenna.

In terms of reception, the performance of this card matches the performance of the Zenith DTT900 HDTV Converter Box. There is some clipping of the sound every now and then, but for $49.99 what do you expect?