The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum » CITY-DT transmission issue

Evuguy · September 9, 2025 10:15 pm

Just a heads-up to those who watch CITY TV Toronto via antenna that they are currently not sending any PSIP tables. These are needed to make their stream ATSC compliant. Depending on the firmware your TV uses, you may just end up with a blank or no signal screen on 57-1 or, your TV may suddenly remap 57-1 to 18-1, the latter being the RF channel CITY actually broadcasts on. Otherwise, the other two OTA Omni services from Rogers are working fine. Can only guess their CITY encoder lost the file that plays out this data.

Radiowiz · September 9, 2025 10:21 pm

I thought channel 18 (UHF) is City TV's new OTA home? (regardless of what future steps are to be...)

RadioActive · September 9, 2025 10:26 pm

Evuguy wrote:
Just a heads-up to those who watch CITY TV Toronto via antenna that they are currently not sending any PSIP tables. These are needed to make their stream ATSC compliant. Depending on the firmware your TV uses, you may just end up with a blank or no signal screen on 57-1 or, your TV may suddenly remap 57-1 to 18-1, the latter being the RF channel CITY actually broadcasts on. Otherwise, the other two OTA Omni services from Rogers are working fine. Can only guess their CITY encoder lost the file that plays out this data.

So that explains it. Thanks for providing that. I was going crazy adjusting the rotor on my antenna, and getting nothing but black. Even if the signal strength and signal quality were both at 100 - the best reading you can get. Now it makes sense.

I wonder how long they'll leave it that way.

TomTV · September 9, 2025 10:32 pm

Thank you evuguy, I too was adjusting my outdoor antenna wondering what the beeswax was going on (since the signal strength was showing up as fine but there was no picture).

RadioAaron · September 9, 2025 11:03 pm

Radiowiz wrote:
I thought channel 18 (UHF) is City TV's new OTA home? (regardless of what future steps are to be...)

Physical channel 18, virtual channel 57-1.

RadioActive · September 10, 2025 10:04 am

More than 18 hours later, and they're still not back OTA. Wonder how long this will take (or given the cable leanings of their owners, if they're in any hurry to fix it.)

Evuguy · September 10, 2025 9:15 pm

Yep, still broken as of this evening. That's 2 days now, as I first noticed it on Monday evening. I would think Rogers MCR would monitor the return feed. Could be that as long as they don't tune away and back again they may not see the problem. Will be interesting to see how long it stays like this. Essentially, I suspect a good portion of their OTA viewers can no longer receive it.

RadioActive · September 10, 2025 9:18 pm

I sometimes wonder if this is deliberate to try to force people onto cable. They wouldn't do that, would they? Must be my imagination...or is it?

Evuguy · September 11, 2025 4:34 pm

I can't see them wanting to alienate the portion of their audience that use OTA. It would generate negative press and run the risk of hurting Rogers reputation (think negative option billing for cable from the mid 90's). Eyeballs are eyballs and the more you say you have, the more you can charge advertisers. As well, CITY would be in violation of their broadcast licence if they made their OTA signal unreceivable and would need to re-apply to the CRTC for CITY as a cable specialty channel. They would also lose must-carry status.

Anyway, I thought they had fixed it today but it would seem they have restored some of the PSIP tables but - they are now encoding with H264 video! So, my old 2009 vintage TV now shows 57-1 and gives me the sound but no picture. Newer TV's will decode H264. Note that MPEG-2 is the approved video encoding standard for ATSC.

So, let's see how long this boo-boo lasts! Maybe they are just testing?

Last edited by Evuguy (September 11, 2025 4:35 pm)

RadioActive · September 11, 2025 4:44 pm

Testing for what?

RadioActive · September 11, 2025 6:28 pm

Evuguy wrote:
I can't see them wanting to alienate the portion of their audience that use OTA. It would generate negative press and run the risk of hurting Rogers reputation (think negative option billing for cable from the mid 90's). Eyeballs are eyballs and the more you say you have, the more you can charge advertisers. As well, CITY would be in violation of their broadcast licence if they made their OTA signal unreceivable and would need to re-apply to the CRTC for CITY as a cable specialty channel. They would also lose must-carry status.

Anyway, I thought they had fixed it today but it would seem they have restored some of the PSIP tables but - they are now encoding with H264 video! So, my old 2009 vintage TV now shows 57-1 and gives me the sound but no picture. Newer TV's will decode H264. Note that MPEG-2 is the approved video encoding standard for ATSC.

So, let's see how long this boo-boo lasts! Maybe they are just testing?

I just checked and the signal is back for me.

rk12 · September 11, 2025 8:08 pm

I am receiving audio only now for City on my Tablo and 2 tv sets.No picture

RadioActive · September 11, 2025 8:12 pm

Well, at least it appears they know about it and are working on it.

TomTV · September 11, 2025 11:23 pm

11:20pm and I'm only getting audio as well.

RayDeeOh · September 12, 2025 8:06 am

I have 3 older tv's circa 2012 . All of them are receiving audio only but one of them shows an error message that it doesn't support H264!. I was able to tune to 18.1 for a day and it worked but now when I punch in 18.1 it reverts to 57.1 audio only. That is still the case as of 8:05am

Last edited by RayDeeOh (September 12, 2025 8:08 am)

tvguy · September 12, 2025 8:13 am

Getting video and closed captioning at 8 am Friday but no audio. 2223 vintage Amazon (Toshiba) HDTV set.

pinto · September 12, 2025 8:41 am

Hmmm.. I have a "newer" Sony, just tried (8:40am) and it came on as 18.1 then changed right to 57.1 with full video and audio.

rk12 · September 12, 2025 9:01 am

Response from City TV is we had encoder failure and are using a back up unit .Suggested rescanning or waiting for full repair.

rk12 · September 12, 2025 5:06 pm

City tv 57.1 is working again , back to MPEG 2 no guide data.

Evuguy · September 12, 2025 9:50 pm

Would seem like they don't have a hot spare encoder to switch to and had to cobble something together. They started out with just an MPEG-2 transport stream, which a lot of TV's will not like. That also caused the 18-1 to appear for some. Then, they got some basic ATSC tables flowing to fix the channel placement issue but had the wrong video codec that orphaned older TV's. While BDU's no longer rely on the OTA feeds, there is still a significant number of people (the cord cutters) that do. Probably more now than there has been in decades.

RayDeeOh · September 15, 2025 6:41 pm

Although channel 57 CITY is back up,I still can't get channel info on the current or next upcoming program. Does anyone have insight as to when that gets fixed?

Evuguy · September 15, 2025 8:46 pm

I don't, sorry. They are still missing some ATSC tables and the EPG is one of them. Right now, it's a bare-bones stream just to keep them on air.

RayDeeOh · September 16, 2025 8:28 am

Thanks for the quick reply.

Evuguy · October 4, 2025 9:43 pm

Things continue to develop on the home of Hudson & Rex, CITY has restored the full ATSC table info so you will now see EPG info. The only problem is it just shows "Event xx", so not very helpful. Also, they have remaped the service from 57-1 to 57-2. Some receivers may just detect the update and display the channel as such. Others may require a rescan.