As one clever print ad put it, after Aug. 31, there will be "no more snow in Canada". As you may remember, in 2009, all US TV channels were required to permanently change their signals from analog to digital to produce a clearer HD-quality picture for over-the-air channels that, from a distance, tended to produce fuzzy, snowy images when viewed as UHF channels with the old rabbit-ears antennas. Well, this week, Canada finally joined the 21st century in TV transmission as this past Wed. they too went to all-digital as all of the major networks shut down their analog signals for good and went high-tech. Of course, for anyone that wasn't aware of this beforehand, this would cause problems if they were trying to watch certain channels and then seeing them disappear without explanation. Even those people who knew what to expect are still a bit puzzled as well. For example, in print and TV ads like the one I mentioned above, it clearly stated that if you subscribe to cable or you own a satellite, you shouldn't have any problems. The changes are only noticeable for those people who still use antennas. But I soon discovered that it's not the case. I have 2 TVs in my house that are used for digital cable, channels 1-999, and they all work. The other sets all have basic cable, 2-99, and at least half of the channels after 14, including CNN, MuchMusic, HLN, Spike, Rogers SportsNet and many others are simply gone and can only be seen with a converter box (which really stinks!). I'm not going to bother with that for now because it's not worth it, so what I did instead was I decided to buy an RCA indoor digital antenna to see which of the digital channels I could pick up, specifically which channels I could get which aren't on my cable lineup. According to an excellent site called TV Fool, if the stars are aligned properly and the moon is hitting Venus or something like that and my antenna is positioned at a certain angle, I should be able to get something like this:


TV Fool (http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d83871b824186c1)

On the chart, the strongest signals are listed in yellow and the weakest are in the darker colours. Under any conditions I can easily pick up NBC (2.1), CBS (4.1), ABC (7.1), and PBS (17.1), as well as Global (41.1), CBC (5.1), CTV (9.1), and CTS (36.1), which is a local channel. I can also get a few of the subchannels I've been reading about here, including RTV (2.3), which won't be around for much longer and which I'm praying heavily will turn into Antenna TV fairly soon. The other classic TV station that I've been looking forward to seeing is Me-TV, but the Buffalo feed is at 67.1, and that's almost impossible for me to pick up. But not for long, I hope. According to the Buffalo-based blog "Still Talkin' TV" by Alan Pergament, a solution could be at hand:

"Once the digital conversion in Canada occurs Wednesday any interference problems with other channels will be eliminated and WBBZ (Buffalo's ME-TV station) can petition to increase its signal strength. That should allow the station to expand its reach into Toronto."

I'll believe that when I see it, or even if I can see it. Meanwhile, I'll keep experimenting and see what turns up. A couple of days ago, for a brief time, I even managed to pick up a couple of stations from Rochester, NY so anything's possible for now.

i don't think the digital transition went very well here - at our little set in the lunchroom at work we went from getting 8 channels to 2 (and those mostly freeze up and go in and out all the time) and we now get literally no stable channels over the air at home, i tried 3 different antennas.

snow isn't really that bad compared to a blocky mess of pixelation or "no signal"

Not so lucky here Sal .... :(

Living just north of MTL, all I'm picking up is the local Canadian feeds (CBC, CTV, Global, SRC, TVA and one PBS station just across the border ...)

You guys in Southern Ontario are so lucky!
All I want is my ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX!!! ... I don't think there's an Antenna-TV or RTV affiliate in VT. or northern NY (this would be a bonus!)
If there is, I'm going to put an external antenna on the roof just for the retro channels ;)

The digital standard sucks and never should have been implemented.