Digital channel election
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A digital channel election was the process by which
Process
Stations could choose to keep their initial
Many stations have chosen to keep their new channels permanently, after being forced to buy all new
Most broadcasters were bitter at having to purchase digital equipment and broadcast a digital signal when very few homeowners had digital television sets. The FCC allowed broadcasters the opportunity to petition the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for special temporary authority (STA) to operate their digital facilities at low power, thereby allowing broadcasters additional time in which to purchase their full-power digital facilities. However, the FCC gave a stern July 2006 deadline for all full-power television stations to at least replicate 80% of their current analog coverage area, or run the risk of losing protection from encroachment by other stations.
Most stations made an election in the first round, and most of those received their requested channels. Applicant conflicts with neighboring stations had to request a different channel in the second round. The third and final round occurred in May 2006.
Some stations requested that the FCC assign the best available channel.
Considerations
Aside from the practical considerations above, there are also technical considerations which are based on the physics of the radio spectrum. These affect the radio propagation of DTV just as with other signals.
The low
Furthermore, channel 6 abuts the FM broadcast band at 88 MHz, possibly causing and receiving interference from adjacent channels. (The FCC refused to remove this band from the bandplan, because taking the high UHF channels instead would bring in more money at auction. This also contradicts what has been done in every other country that has forced a DTV transition, all giving up the VHF bands.) A completely unaddressed issue is the use of HD Radio on 88.1 FM, where the lower sideband overlaps the far upper sideband of digital TV channel 6.
The upper VHF (
The UHF band contains 55 channels from 14 to 69, which excludes
Effects
Channel elections generally will not affect consumers in the long run, because
However, most ATSC tuners must re-scan for stations that change their RF channel. On some, this is as simple as manually punching in the new RF channel, at which point the decoder will read the PSIP data and re-map to the proper channel number. However, this may not delete the original mapping, leaving the original "dead" channels interleaved with the new ones (such as 5.1 old, 5.1 new, 5.2 old, 5.2 new), or possibly confusing the receiver (and the user). In many cases, a receiver will not automatically add the new mapping at all if an old one exists. Completely re-scanning will normally solve this, but may not pick up stations that are weak or temporarily off-air during the scan, causing the need to manually enter them (if this is even possible with the given receiver).
Where stations are moving to a different frequency band (such as