VHF-low DTV signals

[Matthew Osborne]

Out here in the "hinterlands" of the Albany NY market (Schenectady to be exact), we are one of the few places which have a DTV channel on the VHF-Low band (WRGB has reverted its signal back to RF channel 6).  Eager to see how this would work in the "real world", I woke up this morning and ran the rescan on all of my TVs.  On both analog sets with converter boxes, the rescan ran without a hitch and I immediately got WRGB-DT on RF channel 6 with no noticeable interference issues (unless I run the paper shredder or other 'noisy' electrical equipment, of course).  My LG CRT HDTV set from 2005, however, was a bit more tricky.  The rescan ran, but it did not pick up channel 6.  I had to manually add it, and it showed up with 'No signal' for at least 30 seconds before suddenly coming on.  I changed the channel, then went back to 6 and noticed it once again showed a signal meter level 0.  Just as before, about 30 seconds later it suddenly showed up, but the
 signal was having periodic audio dropouts.  I left it on for about 20 minutes, and gradually the dropouts ceased and now I can change channels and come back to 6 with the signal immediately coming up unlike before.  Its almost like the tuner in that holds the old RF channel in memory for a while, and kept reverting to RF 39 each time I changed to 6.  But after a while, that old mapping cleared out, the tuner somehow adjusted to the signal (is this even possible on a unit that old??) and all now seems to be well.  Also, since the audio dropouts cleared up, I am now seeing signal strength of about 80% on it (For the record, I have rabbit ears with a UHF loop antenna on all of my TVs in the house).  

I know Bangor ME is another one of these markets (with WLBZ-DT reverting back to RF channel 2).  Any word from people up there yet as far as signal quality/reception now that they're back on 2?  I am very interested to see how these cases turn out in the real world, and if the reception issues screamed about by some will come to fruition or not.  (Silly side note - I love a couple of the posters on AVSForum that I've seen complaining about having issues with the VHF-Low DTV channels, even though they are clearly using UHF-only antennas).

                                             Matt Osborne
                                             Schenectady, NY