Recent Changes and Updates
By Trip Ericson on Thursday, May 15 2014, 16:30 - Site Updates - Permalink
I know I've been rather quiet of late, but that's because there hasn't been much to say. Let me give a quick round-up of recent updates to the site.
New Appearance for Live Bandscan Tool
Russ has been doing a rewrite on the code for the Live Bandscan tool. He's implemented the first public-facing piece last month, which is a new viewer for a single receiver. You can see an example of this here:
http://www.rabbitears.info/tvdx/one_tuner_map/1019EECD/tuner1
Ancillary Services Data
TV stations in the US which provide non-audio/video data services are required to submit 5% of gross revenue from those services to the FCC each year. While the filings noting this are public, the CDBS data dump does not contain these records at this time. I recently loaded the data for 2013 into RabbitEars and have made a page for it here:
http://www.rabbitears.info/oddsandends.php?request=anc
New Contours
I wrote some custom code for the TVStudy software that I work on during my day job and it can now produce the various contour lines found on coverage maps on RabbitEars in the format the site code wants, as well as produce actual accurate calculations of HAAT (height above average terrain) for any arbitrary set of coordinates and heights. All of the contour maps and calculated HAATs on RabbitEars have been updated accordingly. If you come across any errors, let me know.
Call Sign Query
Want to know about where a call sign has been over the years? It's not specific to TV; there's now a Call Sign Query tool which will show any call sign record in the FCC's call sign database, which goes back to about 1980. It's not quite finished yet, but is certainly in a usable state, so I'm making it public. You can try it out here:
http://www.rabbitears.info/csq.php
Updated Repack Checker Tool
It's not yet live, but there's an updated version of the Repack Checker tool. (See this earlier post.) Today's Report and Order on the incentive auction indicates that instead of the channels 3, 10, and 20 proxy channels that were released in the public notice last July, all channels will be used for the auction. As such, a new version of the tool has been written in anticipation of new data being provided which will show the results for all channels. When such new data is made available by the FCC, it will be loaded into the new tool and made public.
I think that about covers it. Comments are welcomed and appreciated.
Comments
Well done Trip & Russ on the revamped Live Bandscan Tool. I have two suggestions to make it even better.
First: It would be nice if you denoted the antenna site (use a small white dot or a white pointer, like you use in the DX Tool maps) for each reception map. I don't know about other users, but I would like to know where each bandscan is taking place visually among the plots of the received TV stations.
Second: The maps have one flaw. In places where there are numerous transmitters in one place (the Empire State Building, for example) you could receive many TV stations with different signal strengths, but only one will show up on the map, obscuring the rest. That is why it would be a good idea to also put each station's signal strength next to their call-sign in the "Stations Received" box in the lower left hand corner. This way you can get a quick look at each station's signal status without checking any graphs.
Oops, what I meant was to put a small colored dot matching the station's plot on the map next to their call-sign. Maybe I should proof read better.
Thanks for the compliments! To address your suggestions:
1. Adding the receive site is something I've thought about. I'll put it on the wish list.
2. Multiple transmitters at one site is a problem. I implemented your suggestion, now the 'signal bars' icons on the list is color coded like the icons on the map. You can also click on the callsign and it will zoom in to that location on the map, and put the icon above any others at that site.
Thanks, Russ, for considering my suggestions. Unfortunately, all those signal bars are still all black when I use Internet Explorer. I think Trip knows how to fix this flaw in IE, but I will use Google Chrome to view your site in the meantime.
While I am on a roll, can the numerous "reception locations" to the right of the USA TV reception map be put in some kind of order? Maybe alphabetical by state/province?