The History of UHF TV in America?

[ThaDood]

Being one who's worked for a UHF TV station, for like 7 years, I can appreciate this site.    https://uhfhistory.com/index.html

[ThaDood]

While I'm at it, remember the Weird Al flick that ripped the UHF TV thang years ago? Wellllllllllllllllllllll...      https://tubitv.com/movies/305029/uhf

[NQC]

Hey ThaDood,

UHF went on here in Boston in  1953 w/WTAO /DuMont.

Failed/ off air 1/56. Back on air  continuous  since  1962 under new ownership.

FWIW, my UHF timeline is a  little fuzzy. I am pretty sure we never had a TV top converter box ( we got 4 VHF Ch's then). So we had to wait until my Dad bought a UHF capable TV.

This could have been as late as 1969.

And OT/ FWIW, our first FM receiver was also around '69 . FWIW,  this kitchen  radio was for my MOM - FM was NOT  given to  young kids back then.

MY first FM could have been a late as '73 or '74 (when I was 14 !). 

(with 4 kids, Dad  ran on a "budget").

UHF was initially  considered "second banana " (and  frankly a bit cheesy or dull )   compared to the "big  budget " stations like WBZ-TV.

 But  2 or 3   movies on Sunday ( and other programming ) eventually won us over  to UHF   .

In later years    UHF  often actually BEAT BZ and the other big  VHF's .

de NQC

[skeezix]

Here in the Minneapolis area, back in the early 80's, we had 17, 23, 29, and 41. 17 was PBS. As I remember, 23 & 29 had some good stuff. 41 was up in St Cloud and also had good programming, but it was at a distance and was weak here. But with analog, weak was still ok with patience. Weak digital today? Forget it. I sometimes have problems getting a UHF station from about 15 miles away putting out several hundred kW. Why? Who knows... I rarely watch TV these days, its primarily radio. That's where the action is.

Then there was ch 14... which was scrambled HBO from a tower downtown Mpls (as I recall). I think very early on it was not scrambled (1980 or 1981), then went scrambled and it that was that. I had read about a descrambler, but never pursued it.

My how the times have changed.

I did find this interesting from the website:

Lee's proposal would have moved FM up to 342-362 MHz, just as it was finally recovering from having been moved from 42-46 MHz to 88-108 MHz less than a decade earlier.

I have a couple of radios with 42-46 and 88-108, but had never heard of the 342-362 MHz proposal.

I'd propose to extend the current FM band down to 65 MHz.. A 65-108 MHz FM band would be great, as it would give a lot more room which also included OIRT & Japan.

[ThaDood]

A little 'off-topic' for TV, to talk about a proposed FM BC Band up in 300MHz, but... If, the FM BC Band was to be from 342 - 362MHz, there are perks & jerks to it. The perks??? Better S/N Ratio, with less noise from computer spurs, lightning, electrical interference, etc. Better penetration in buildings in urban areas. Smaller antennas could mean nice beams to put up. Oh... And, better distance from Tropo PROP, (DX'ers would like that.), but practically no Sporadic "E" effects. The downside jerks??? Mobile picket-fencing effects are way more pronounced. Foliage absorption attenuation is very pronounced up there. Long cable runs mean lots of attenuation there as well. And, penetration of signal in rouge / mountainous terrain would be even more difficult. (However, the plus-side there would be for more localized broadcasting for rural communities.) The US military has the band today, and I doubt that they'll give it up anytime soon. Propagation-wise, to compare to is what the current TV CH13 is like, in the lower 200MHz region. So, imagine propagation that's between what VHF TV CH13 and UHF TV CH14 would be. Just my $0.02 worth here.   

[NQC]

Hey All,

Military aircraft is above and below the
“ proposed “ second FM band.

Not sure how fuzzy the USAF would be about the idea.

FWIW, Car  remotes run on one or more UHF aircraft frq.

 Anyway they are crazy low power, so may not matter re interference issues.

Back in ancient times, we had channel 27 running scrambled  movies for pay .

The would come out to your house and install a UHF yagi on your roof pointing towards the tower (not sure how much THAT install would cost you ! ) .

Apparently they then gave you a box . But being off the air not sure how they could deactivate recover the box if you stopped paying

( HONOR system ? Good luck.Drive by  remote RF shutdown? DOUBT it . Collection agency ?).

Someone came up with a ridiculously simple boot leg box ( a slug tuned coil in line on the center conductor in a shielded box - plastic screwdriver required ).

It cleaned up to watchable, but not great either.

The entire venture was technically ill advised, a scam or both .

It eventually folded.

No one ever bothered to their Yagis down.
 They were a reminder of this “ venture”for years afterwards.

NQC

[ChrisSmolinski]

Pay TV arrived in the DC (ch 50) and Baltimore (ch 54) areas in the 80s, IIRC branded as Super TV. A bit later than other cities IIRC, and they only lasted a few years before cable TV market penetration was enough to take away enough of their listeners. Both stations stayed on the air afterwards as regular TV stations. As I recall, they ran unscrambled programming until around 7 pm, maybe earlier on weekends. This may have been an FCC mandate?

I do believe they could disable boxes remotely via addressing. The scrambling was the usual - mess up the horizontal and maybe vertical sync enough so a regular TV could not lock on, and move the audio subcarrier frequency. They may have inverted the luminance and chroma signals as well? there were 3rd party boxes on the market of course.

Aha, wikipedia has a page about them, some of my vague memories were mostly correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_TV_(American_TV_channel)