UHF (film): Difference between revisions

* [[Technology Marches On]]: The UHF band in general. There's a long history which (at least in the US) goes back to [[The Fifties]] - although the history in other countries (like the UK) will differ:

** US TV was originally VHF only; the loss of Channel 1 to land-mobile by 1948 (and of everything above channel 13 to military use) left only a dozen channels, causing interference between the hundred pioneering stations then on-air. The Federal Communications Commission stopped licencing new stations until an additional seventy channels (UHF 14-83) could be opened on an experimental basis in 1952. They didn't require TV makers include tuners for these frequencies until 1964, so eighty of the initial 100 UHF stations were out of business in their first year. By [[The Sixties]], UHF was seeing some use for educational TV (NET, and its successor [[PBS]]) or specialised uses such as Spanish-language broadcasting. Top-of-the-line rooftop antennas were routinely rated "100 miles VHF, 60 miles UHF". The further up the dial, the worse things became. With so few available VHF channels, there was only room for three mainstream commercial networks ([[CBS]], [[NBC]], [[ABC]]) at best. Fourth-ranked [[DuMont]] was bankrupt by 1956.

** Cable TV (and, later, satellite TV) served as an "equaliser" to some degree, allowing [[FOX]] to launch as a fourth network in 1986, taking many of the former UHF independents as affiliates. TV receivers were also improving; instead of two mechanical dials (set one to 'U' for UHF, clunk through up to seventy empty channels on the other to find the individual UHF station) one remotely-controlled electronic tuner could cover all channels. In 1989? "Weird Al" already knew the trope was becoming dated in the cable TV era, and wanted "The Vidiot" as a title, but fell victim to [[Executive Meddling]].

** The need for more than three major stations in each market meant that the system had to expand onto UHF. By 1994, CBS had lost the NFL deal to FOX, which took advantage to poach existing affiliate stations. A dozen stations owned by "New World Communications" in multiple markets dumped CBS for FOX. In the worst example, this forced CBS to buy a "U-62" station in Detroit outright for $24 million in sheer desperation.

** The final straw which made "UHF as low-budget independent" a [[Discredited Trope]] was the digital television transition. Over-the-air TV had been losing valuable UHF spectrum to mobile telephone companies for years; UHF 14-83 becomes UHF 14-69 (in 1983) becomes UHF 14-51 (in 2009-2011) becomes UHF 14-36 (by 2021). US stations were forced to convert to DTV so that more TV could be squeezed into less space using digital compression. The new system had "forward error correction", which transmits a few spare bits so that receivers can recover from the white noise that made analogue stations "snowy", and could get more signal out with less power. Great for UHF, but the system performs poorly in the presence of "impulse noise" from motors and appliances which briefly, repeatedly wipe out the entire channel – with the once-valuable low-VHF channels hit worst.

** Suddenly, broadcasters who'd been on VHF for more than half a century (mostly [[CBS]] and [[NBC]] affiliates, as the strongest networks of the 1950s) were abandoning these channels, leaving VHF 2-6 a wasteland, to stay on UHF digitally. The worst spot on the dial is no longer analogue "U-62" (which no longer exists, as of 2009-2011), it's "digital VHF 2". While VHF 7-13 are still in use digitally, in some markets the feds have ''paid'' broadcasters to move to now-unwanted low-VHF frequencies so UHF spectrum can be profitably sold. [[And Now You Know]].