I've been gearing up early for the changes to Canadian broadcast television that will occur in 2011. There are two good reasons to consider changing your setup if it is anything like mine.

1) Some Channels will move back to VHF
This is important because unlike older houses in the area we refit our house with a newer antennat that was for the most part dedicated to UHF band signals. We catch some VHF signals already when using the original NTSC tuner in our television, but they are not at a viewable level.

This means that we will supplement the missing VHF reception with a dedicated VHF antenna, which is a good choice considering most of our VHF channels in Niagara and Hamilton will come from Toronto. This means that we can redirect the UHF antenna down toward Erie, Pennsylvania.

(I should note that we typically do not move the antenna on a regular basis, if the system is built right for your local stations you know which signals and from where that you are looking for.

2) Channels will power-up on UHF
More power - the biggest benefit of the permanent switch is the higher level of dedicated power. This means fewer dropouts on distant stations and in some cases 'new' stations will appear like CityTV (Toronto) and SunTV (Hamilton).

I didn't originally make the choice to switch over to ATSC/Broadcast signals for 'more channels' but it is niece to have them. These are both local channels with quality programming that my online peers believe would be missed in their communities if they had the poor reception that Niagara residents do.

I will be adding a signal strength (low and high) list to the ATSC page to emphasize the changes coming.