Virtual TV channel
The RF station may be the station your TV section utilizes to broadcast its sign. Before the transformation to electronic, television channels had been usually identified by their channel number, and a lot of men and women knew that a certain community was on a particular television station. While analog broadcasting was being eliminated and all television programs had been changing to electronic broadcasting, it absolutely was necessary for it programs to continue to broadcast their analog indicators on their initial RF channels, and in addition broadcast their digital signals on another RF station. However, since the television place utilized their particular broadcast station included in their particular identification, they wanted to hold making use of the exact same channel number. Allowing this to happen, the newest digital tv broadcasting standards (ATSC) supplied television stations the capability to continue to use their particular initial channel quantity and also inform it set-to tune toward new RF broadcast channel whenever their particular virtual channel number was selected. The first station quantity is called the digital channel quantity, and it'll be followed by an interval another quantity (3.1, 7.1, etc.).
One of the benefits of changing to electronic when it comes to television stations is that they now have the capability to transmit one or more program at the same time for a passing fancy RF channel. How many extra networks they can broadcast depends upon the resolution of this system (SD vs. HD, text only, songs only, etc.). The second quantity inside their digital station quantity indicates this one of the extra programming resources through the same television station has been viewed (10.2, 10.3, 10.4, etc.).
Whenever choosing an antenna, it's important to comprehend the distinction between the RF broadcast station and the virtual station. Antennas are created to receive particular ranges of RF networks, while the antenna has to be chosen the RF channel you wish to get. television stations broadcast in 2 broad frequency ranges, labeled as VHF and UHF. RF stations 2 through 13 are considered VHF, and RF channels 14 through 51 are considered UHF. Being get the stations, the antenna has got to be created for the right frequency range. It's very common today to discover that TV programs using digital stations 2 through 13 are in fact using RF broadcast networks in UHF range. Although not as common, some television channels making use of virtual channels 14 through 51 are in fact sending in the VHF range. An antenna created for just UHF channels cannot work effortlessly for RF broadcast networks within the VHF range, and an antenna made for only VHF channels cannot work effortlessly for RF broadcast networks within the UHF range.