Sudden loss of reception after channel move

[RhythmDoctor]

I suddenly lost reception on 1101 in Philadelphia a few nights ago. It went from generally reliable reception for the past 2 years to NOTHING. I went through the BTV logs and found this:

[2009/3/11 21:55:17] Channel 067 10-1 (WCAUDT) has been moved to 034 10-1 (WCAUDT). Any scheduled recordings on this channel have been updated to reflect this change.

The timing corresponds to my loss of reception. All other channels continue to transmit as before - only Channel 1101 is a problem. Is there a way to map the channel back to the prior value in BeyondTV (as a quick test to see if the TV station is actually transmitting on the old channel)? Is there a website where I can confirm that the TV station actually made this change? I've attempted to call and email the station, but my messages have gone unanswered.

Thanks!

[AmandaPlaywythe]

I'm from Philly and having the same problem. I lost Channel 10 and I have also lost channel 12/whyy. I've had my btv setup for almost 2 years and I got notification of a channel change and then they were gone. I have re-run the setup wizard and nothing. I did go to antennaweb.org and there they list the frequency assignement of the station. I compared that to the channel configuration page in the web admin and it appears that they are wrong. Antennaweb.org says that Channel 10's frequency assignment is 67 until June 12th and then it becomes 34. Channel 12 is listed as having a freqency assignment of 50 prior to june 12th and 12 after june 12th but btv has it as 55. BTV has already changed it to 34 and there is no way to change it inside the web admin. Is there any way to fix this?

[AmandaPlaywythe]

In case anyone was wondering

HTPC Setup: Dell GX270 P42.66 | 2.0Gig memory | RocketRaid 1820a with 4 WD 500 SATA RAID 1 | WD 500 gig SATA system drive | Windows XP SP3 | Integrated sound | Radeon x1050 | Hauppauge HVR-950 USB hybrid tuners | Hauppauge HVR-1600 PCI tuner | BeyondTV 4.9 | Beyond Media w/ DVD Library | Roof Antenna | 22' Dell Monitor via DVI |
2 Link Machines: Both with Nvidia GeForce 6200 Low Profile | 1 Dell GX260 and 1 Dell GX270 both small form factor |

[SnakeDoctor]

The same thing happened to me earlier this week. It looks like Zap2It is starting to make the Feb 17 (now June 12) DTV changes. See this thread on how to fix it.

[RhythmDoctor]

Thanks for the help - I was able to get both 10 and 12 digital back again. My reception on the 12 digital channels has always been iffy - works late at night, but rarely during the day - so I did not even notice that it had changed.

FYI, I looked over the other threads and saw how to create a custom lineup on snapstream.net that allowed me to manually enter the correct channel mappings. Then I was able to assign each digital tuner input (I have 1 digital only, 1 analog only, and 2 digital-or-analog hybrids) to the custom lineup. However, I did not have to run the setup program to do this - all the needed commands are available within Web Admin, which I find to be much more user-friendly than the setup program.

The hypothesis that the guide provider failed to delay the switchover until June makes sense, except I am puzzled why they did it on March 11 instead of February. We'll have to keep an eye on what they do in June - if they take an extra month we'll be using the custom channel lineup to make the switchover in June while we wait for them to do it automatically.

There is a nice silver lining in this black cloud. Channels 10 and 12 currently are my most unreliable digital reception. Everything I record on those channel requires me to do an analog recording simultaneously as a backup (in case the digital does not work). Of course, that analog option will no longer be available after the switchover. So I am actually glad to hear that they will be remapping those channels, since it means that maybe I will get better reception on the new frequencies. That's enough to make me hold off on getting FiOS until I see whether things improve in June.

[AmandaPlaywythe]

Thanks folks, I created a custom lineup and voila everything works.

[RhythmDoctor]

FYI, on 3/19 I received a notice that Digital 10 (Philadelphia) was moved from 67 back to 34, and Digital 12 was moved from 55 back to 50. So it looks like the service provider corrected the premature change that caused this problem.

I switched from the custom channel lineup back to the default one, and channels 10 and 12 seem to be working fine.