Digital (P25?) on 453.8375mhz in Toronto

[ocscan]

Hearing digital on this frequency. In line of site to the CBC license listed in TAFL, but not sure if its CBC or coming from the states. If anyone has a APCO25 capable scanner they may want to give it a listen.

 

[RainbowSix]

It is CBC.
They have a 3 or 4 channel low power APCO-25 in house repeater system.
It also might be encrypted.
They have been APCO-25 for over a year and a half now.

R6

 

[ocscan]

So the CBC has an APCO25/Encrypted system right beside the um.. er.. CSIS office in Toronto...but not at any other studios...

Cool....

 

[exkalibur]

Last time I was at the CBC (August), they were using UHF SP50+ portables which are certainly not P25 or encrypted. This was security anyhow.

 

[mrweather]

Hmm. And our national broadcaster needs Astro and encryption why...?

 

[mciupa]

Hmm. And our national broadcaster needs Astro and encryption why...?

Competition , if you want to break news before BellGlobeMedia ,Canwest Global,Chumcity,Rogers,Standard ,Quebecor . . . etc.

 

[exkalibur]

Why? Because they can. In all seriousness, competition is pretty fierce umong the big broadcasters. I'm sure this had a lot to do with CTV's move to the Harmony iDEN system. The Privacy Plus system CFTO was on before gave them better coverage than they have now, so they certainly didn't switch because of better coverage.

Interestingly, a vast number of media outlets in the GTA don't even have a single scanner so it's probably not as bad as one might assume.

 

[jellotor]

If you look at the Toronto BBM numbers for CBC's 6pm newscast you'll quickly realize that no encrypted P25 radio system is going to help them attract viewers...

 

[mciupa]

If you look at the Toronto BBM numbers for CBC's 6pm newscast you'll quickly realize that no encrypted P25 radio system is going to help them attract viewers...

. . . . . .

 

[EJB]

Graeme Graeme Graeme:Are you saying your corportations News department is better than the motherships?

LOL

Actually CH is pretty good. Global on the other hand.... :-(

 

[jellotor]

Eric, you're just saying that because you live in Burlington now...

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be making CBC money...but there's no question they're uncompetitive as far as local news is concerned. Despite what some might think, CFTO owns that market (and others) and they own it because they work it. Hard. You don't see the same sort of drive from the CBC with it's Toronto news.

 

[EJB]

True Graeme. I'll give u that about CBC's abysmal local coverage.
I always liked CH news and never liked Globals slanted coverage.
For radio News CBC's lords over anyone elses the waste land that is Soutnern Ontario's radio media. IMO.

 

[mikewazowski]

Guys, according to Rainbow6, this is an inhouse system. They won't be doing much news crew dispatching on an inhouse system.

I don't think the competition is going to be parked outside the building waiting to scoop a CBC news exclusive.

Does the CBC even do local Toronto news?

 

[EJB]

Mike: They have local radio and a half hour of local news on TV

 

[jellotor]

It's entirely possible that an in-house radio system at the CBC is used for staging, maintenance, engineering and all sorts of other stuff. The building on Front Street is a huge operation and it may well be that in the depths of, say, the CER there's not much cell coverage and an in-house radio system made more sense. I can remember my times in certain cable head ends where I could barely hear anything on my cell phone due to the cooling system...would have been handy to have a Moto HT.

And why P25? Again, nothing but guesses here but CBC has never been known as a capable shepherd of public money...and perhaps there is some benefit to having a narrowband P25 system in a building with tons and tons of RF...

 

[exkalibur]

Just a thought, but perhaps it's got something to do with interference. Digital doesn't mess with analog broadcast components like analog radio does.

 

[mrweather]

Good point. Maybe going Astro helps in that regard.

Although, during a tour of the Front Street facilities a couple of years ago, they were making the switch to an entirely digital capture, mixing and distribution system within the control rooms.

 

[jellotor]

Digital capture, mixing and distribution is all well and good (I assume you're talking about audio) but the bottom line is that most wireless mics and IFBs/intercom beltpacks operate in analog. I'm not up 100% on my wireless mic technology (my wireless is a relatively obsolete Sennheiser ew100 that operates at around 512 MHz) but I don't believe digital wireless mics are all that common yet.

You think for a second about how many wireless devices there could be in that concrete fortress of taxpayer money and it begins to boggle the mind...