New to forum. Excuse my "posting naivete".

So I watch OTA HDTV from all major networks from my 3rd story apartment building in Hollywood. I use a simple Pinnacle PCTV HD USB stick with Vista Media Center. I replaced the bundled antenna with a Radio Shack version which memorizes the channel positions and re-adjusts the antenna position and gain. Antenna is by window. I've used the antennaweb.org thing. I'm feeling good. UP UNTIL YESTERDAY.

Basically all local broadcast networks have perfect reception - all green bars until yesterday when Fox (kttv - channel 11 locally, and kcop, channel 13 locally) complete went dead on me. No reception. Just GONE! I've tried every variation of positioning, gain... etc. NO Luck.

Ok... WTF? Anyone else with me? Ideas?

Thanks.

Check the LA OTA thread at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13370816#post13370816. You should also check the threads for posts on the Pinnacle PCTV HD USB tuners. I have seen a number of posts from people who can no longer get stations using their PC tuners because of errors in a channel mapping file. There was a recent detailed response in the Washington-Baltimore thread for example.

I don't know why I imagined a simple solution involving tin foil... but alas...

Still curious to know if EVERYONE in the Los Angeles area pulling OTA HDTV from Fox (Kttv) is now in the dark? Or is just pinnacle hd Ultimate stick users?

Both KTTV Fox 11 and KCOP local 13 (my upn) went dead at same time. I understand they share some equipment. Obviously a big clue here.

Following up on this, there are problems with a Vista Media Center file. If you need to fix this, you would have to substitute the physical channels for the LA stations. See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13410999#post13410999.

Still haven't actually fixed Vista's media center to tune these channels, but definitely found the issue.

According to "Green Button" - starting 3/21/08 in L.A. EPG data has been corrupt for KTTV and KCOP. Probably in the last EPG update it downloaded the bad tuning info.


KTTV: should be 11.1 physical 65, in EPG its physical 11
KCOP: should be 13.1 physical 66, in EPG its physical 13
<-the above 2 were correct but went wrong since last week

Following advice from prior post, I found C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\EPG\prefs\atscprefs.xml

And corrected 11.1 tune 11 to 11.1 tune 65, and the same for 13.1 to 66. Saved the XML file and ran Vista Media Center.

And then CRASH CITY. Vista MCE didn't like that I'd changed it's xml data. Now that I know the info is corrupt on two specific stations - I'm wondering what the procedure is to completely wipe out all EPG -and then fix the two problem channels WITHOUT crashing MCE.

Or in a perfect world, can the data service who provides Media Center get their act together?

So anyone on this road with me? Trying to find the step by step guide to correcting the corrupt data in the XML file without crashing... or wiping it clean, and making sure it uses the correct tuning data.

I'm in LA too...check out this thread. Worked for me.

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/251355.aspx

I'm in LA. It happened to me too. It looks like a Microsoft disconnected us all from channel 11 and 13 starting yesterday. Bad... WTF is a good title for this thread.
The fix above worked.