Planned outages: KQET (DT25) 4/10, KQED Plus (DT54) 4/12
We will be shutting down the KQET (DT25) transmitter on Fremont Peak on Tuesday, April 10th, from about 11am to 11:30am, for planned maintenance work.
We will also be doing maintenance for KQED Plus (KQEH DT54 transmitter on Monument Peak) on Thursday, April 12th, also around 11am to 11:30am.
Comcast Cable customers will not be affected by these outages. Most Over the Air (OTA) TV tuners will restore the signals automatically at the end of an outage this short, but a few OTA viewers may need to manually re-add the channel.
KQED Plus (DT54s) short interruptions Wed 4/11
PG&E is planning an all-day outage on Monument Peak Wedneday 4/11 from apx 7:30am to apx 5pm. Over the Air (OTA) transmission from our DT54 transmitter should experience very short interruptions for only a couple minutes each as we switch to the back-up generator in the morning, and back to the main power when PG&E concludes their work. Most OTA receivers should automatically restore the signals after outages of such short duration.
KQED Life, starting Thurs 03/29
(Comcast 189, DT54.3)
Due to a technical malfunction March 25-26, the computer which archives our copies of television programs started deleting program files, resulting in a loss of thousands of episodes. Since it began with shows in position #1 and worked forward, it means the loss is primarily of older programs and series, which generally air on KQED Life. Since these are older shows, most are not currently being fed out to stations, so it will take awhile for us to rebuild the inventory.
This means a significant change to the “non-prime” KQED Life schedule for the next 4-5 weeks at least, starting Thursday 3/29. From 6am to 7pm, plus midnight-1am, KQED Life will be a “mirror” of KQED TV9. Since 7pm-midnight is generally filled with newer programs, KQED Life will be able to maintain its own schedule for those 5 hours, plus maintain their early morning repeats the next morning 1am-6am.
We currently do not know how long the program recovery process will take, so will be working with this revised schedule at least through April. We are leaving the currently posted May 2012 schedule on the website for now, in hopes that we’ll be back to normal by then. Please keep an eye on this page for further updates.
early Wed 3/14: planned outage DT9 Over the Air
Sutro Tower is installing new equipment this week, which will require all stations (TV & Radio) to each spend a portion of one overnight period off the air. If all goes well, the outages will last only 2 to 4 hours, beginning shortly after midnight.
Stations have been divided into three groups, with Group 1 going off-air late Monday/early Tuesday, Group 2 off late Tues/early Wed, and Group 3 off late Wed/early Thur.
KQED TV9 is part of Group 2, so we anticipate DT9.1-3 being off-air Over The Air late Tuesday/early Wednesday, beginning shortly after midnight, for 2-4 hours.
Comcast Cable and satellite service viewers should not be affected by this work.
Sat 1/28: planned maintenance at Sutro Tower, SF
Sutro Tower needs all stations transmitting from there to switch to their auxillary antennas on Saturday (1/28) morning by 8am so they can do some tower work. This includes KQED’s DT9 signal. They hope to be done by noon.
Most OTA viewers should see little or no change in their reception during this time, but some more distant viewers may experience problems. If that happens, most tuners should automatically find the signals again once stations are back on their main antennas, but a few viewers may need to do a rescan.
Comcast Cable viewers of KQED TV9 will not be affected by this work.
Tues 1/24: KQET DT25 digitization problem resolved
As of 1:45pm Tuesday 1/24, we believe the KQET digitization issues affecting Channel 25′s signal delivery to viewers in the 831 area via most paid service providers have been solved. Other carriers are confirming a good signal. (Over The Air viewers and Comcast Cable customers were not affected by the problem.)
Mon 1/23: KQET DT25 digitization problem has returned
The storm and high winds took our KQET transmitter on Fremont Peak Off the Air a couple times Saturday, and our digitization problem has returned.
What is perplexing is that Over The Air (OTA) viewers are reporting a solid signal, and are not having the pixelation and audio problems that other viewers in the 831 area are experiencing. We are working with the manufacturers of our equipment to troubleshoot our system, trying to find the source of the signal corruption, and where in the signal path it is entering.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and will update this post when we have any further news.
Comcast Cable customers are also not affected by this issue.
Wed 1/18: KQET digitization problems
Update: we completed all repairs to our transmitter on Wed 1/18. Our signal is now back to full power, and solid.
Over the Air Viewers and Service providers using the KQET DT25 signals from our transmitter on Fremont Peak northeast of San Jose have been seeing intermittent pixilation of the image and other digitized issues with the sound (a “Max Headroom” effect). We are awaiting parts from one of the manufacturers of part of the equipment, and hope to have the problem resolved soon. We apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your patience while we put repairs in place.
Wed 1/11: DT54 power levels update
Our DT54 transmitter on Monument Peak has been alternating between regular and auxillary antenna service (and thus lower power at times) since last Friday as another station on the tower works on their antenna, and as PG&E replaces damaged power lines leading up to the transmitter.
The hope is that both tasks will be completed by their respective companies by later this evening, and tranmission on DT54 will be back to normal operations by Thursday morning at the latest, perhaps even by some point Wednesday night.
Mon 1/09 4:45pm: KQED Plus DT54 transmitter off-air
5:25pm Update: Luckily, an engineer from another company was already on the mountain, and able to reboot us earlier than expected. DT54 is back on the air.
Our DT54 transmitter on Monument Peak is currently off-air, affecting Over the Air viewers, and some cable and satellite customers. Our engineer is on his way to reboot the transmitter, but as it is a long drive, this outage will last at least into the early evening. However, we expect the outage to be short enough that most tuners will re-acquire the signal automatically once it’s restored.
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