Anybody know the status of the stations other than WHIO? I didn't see any requests for extensions on the FCC site, although I talked to a tech for WDTN (ABC) in a Subway the other day, he thought they had received an extension.

WDTN did indeed file for a CP extension in the last couple of weeks. WBDT has had a extension granted.

WRGT(Fox) has had a app filed with FCC for DTV operation on Channel 30 since late 1999, but have yet to be granted a Construction Permit. WPTD is PBS and therefore doesn't have to be on air until May 2003.

WRCX-LP 51 has had a STA to move and operate on Channel 40 since late January, and although they did go off air while WKEF-DT 51(NBC) broadcast the HD Olympics, they have been back on air on 51 since then.

Also, WRCX-LP was granted a Construction Permit to move to Channel 40 just last week. Hopefully, WKEF-DT 51 will be back on the air shortly.

Also, most Dayton folks should have good luck picking up the Cincinnati area DTV stations with the use of a outdoor antenna. I know of a fellow North of I-70 who pulls in most of the Cincy DTV's, and a fellow in Kettering who was able to pull them all in, most with 95~100 readings while using a roof mounted Radio Shack VU190, no preamp.

You can go to the below link to find the CP Extension filing information, WDTN and WBDT's exhibit's explaining their reason for needing more time are attached to their CP extension apps. Specify "Digital TV", "CP Extension", and "OH" for State to narrow down the search results.

http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/app_sear.htm

I also find the following link handy for searching for station info:

http://www.fcc.gov/mb/video/tvq.html

I recently moved from the Cincinnati area to Centerville. Just when I finally got my old setup working well, I had had to start over. (All of my HD equipment stayed in a dedicated HT.) So anyway, I've been playing with several different antennas (getting ready for the Fall season) and I noticed WKEF 51-1 lost audio a few days ago, and over the last couple of days has been off all together.

I called WKEF/WRGT and talked to one of the engineers. He didn't know the transmitter was off. He told me its probably because they just significantly reduced their power on both stations. I told him I'm pulling WRGT at 100%, then he agreed to have someone check KEF.

When I asked why the power was reduced, he said that Sinclair corporate ordered them to cut power to reduce costs. He said, "they don't want to spend $7000 per month when they can spend $1000 on a station nobody is watching." What a bunch of sh*t! Sinclair just doesn't get it! :mad:



P.S. is anyone else in the dayton area? send me a message and maybe we can get a count....

Sinclair. Sigh.

I'm located between Middletown and Germantown, 13 Miles from the Dayton towers. I'm having no problem with WRGT-DT, although I'm now getting 81~82 readings from the SNR meter on my digital receiver with my lo-gain antenna instead of the 92~94 I was getting before their power drop.

WKEF-DT though is a strange story, the audio came back about a week+ ago for me, then I lost them completely Saturday afternoon. Unless they are running at 10 watts or off an antenna on the ground instead of their tower, I should at least be able to get a digital sniff from them with my hi-gain antenna.

I also have a "non-digital" indication that WKEF-DT is still putting a strong signal into here -- but it seems to have a problem. It could be something on my end, although I never had a problem pulling in WKEF-DT, WRCX-LP which used to be on 51, or Dx'ing on 51, or for seeing "clean snow" on 51 when not receiving any station there.

I tried a little trick involving the AFT(automatc fine tuning) on an analog non-screen blanking TV that allows its analog tuner to "wander" up a little onto 51 when tuned to blank channel 50. This has the result of producing "big noisy digital snow" on 50 when WKEF-DT is on air -- I'm seeing the "big noisy digital snow" just as intensely as usual when WKEF-DT is on air, and I'm also getting a continuous 173 HZ(more or less) audio tone when the analog TV is tuned to 51. Normally, of course, all I would see or hear on 51 with an analog TV, whether or not WKEF-DT were on air would be nothing but snow. I've investigated about everything I can think of at my location that might cause interference with no luck ... Weird!

KEF is still giving me a big zero on both receivers. (I've got a hughes E86 and an RCA F38310.)

Now it looks like WHIO-DT is off too. Hmmm.

Looks like Dayton's not ready for prime time. I guess I had better fine tune my VU-190 and get it pointed to 205 degrees!!!

Yes, that's what I get too from KEF on my digital receiver(also a F38310), a big 0 since Saturday afternoon. I hope that when the engineering staff "checks" on it, they actually try a reception test.

WHIO-DT is up at 7pm, the last few days however they've been up and down ... It seems that they'll go off air occasionally for a few minutes(or hours sometimes), then come back up. They do seem to be reasonably good about passing CBS HD, although they had just SD for the game last Saturday. For that matter, overall WKEF-DT was good at passing though NBC HD when I could see them(nice too when I could hear them<g>), but WRGT-DT has never done anything but 4x3 SD that I have seen. The analog actually looks better, and unfortuently the situation with Fox Cincy(WXIX) Isn't much better.

Hopefully, that 205 heading will work well for you .. It should with a outdoor antenna unless you're in a low spot with really bad terrain/building blockage in that direction. A preamp might help you out as well, although the Dayton stations might cause some preamp overload problems for you. "Down that way" is a 188 degree heading for me, With preamp and a VU210 35 feet above ground(although I'm down in a small steep valley) I get all 5 Cincy/N.ky DTV stations currently on air with no dropouts here (33~38 miles), with readings of 70~88. I'm probably about on the edge for the KET/PBS station in N KY though, although if you're in Centerville, you can't be too much farther "crow fly" wise from Cincy than I am.

Good luck!

The guy at KEF asked me to call back tomorrow if they don't come back up, so we'll see. He also said the audio problem was due to an equipment failure. They had to order a replacement card from Canada, and there was a delay in customs. It sounds like they have had several equipment "problems." He said they lost the ability to upconvert their signal locally, so now all they can do is pass the network feed directly to the transmitter.

The 205 heading works great. I can pull WKRC-DT, WXIX-DT, WLWT-DT, and WCPO-DT all with a signal greater than 50 with my VU190 mounted in the attic. All of the cincy stations are between 204-207 degrees from me. I can't get WCET-DT at all, but it was weak when I lived in Mason. I'm tempted to try a channelmaster 4228. The narrow beamwidth shouldn't hurt me, but I might have problems with WCPO-DT on VHF. The radioshack double bowtie doesn't do any better than the VU190's yagi.

My biggest problem is splitting the signal to the two different receivers. I had (2) 1Ghz-4db gain splitters in line, and each lowered my signal strength by 20 points or so. I tried a preamp, but it made things worse. I need to try it without the spiltters in line to see what it does.

The fun continues! (I guess I'll go watch CSI...)

At 10:00am, it looks like WKEF-DT is fixed. I'm seeing(and hearing them) on 51-1+2, with readings from my receiver via my lo-gain Dayton antenna(CM3010) of 70~76. No longer hearing the audio tone on channel 51 with the analog TV. My readings from WKEF-DT before the power decrease were 87~88 with the CM3010.

BUT, I'm now getting a big fat 0 on WRGT-DT 30! And, I'm now hearing the audio tone that was on 51 now on channel 30! I'm also not seeing "big noisy digital snow" with the analog TV on 30, something I do get from WKRC-DT 31 if WRGT-DT were "really" off the air. Can't check the digital snow on 29 since WXIX-DT transmits there. If there is a signal on the frequency the NTSC tuner can't "wonder up" to the edges of the channel above it to see an indication of a digital signal in the form of "big noisy digital snow".

I wonder if they have swapped some piece of evidently "bad" equipment from WKEF-DT to WRGT-DT?

Since the power decrease, although my readings for WRGT-DT(when I could see them) and WKEF-DT have decreased with my lo-gain antenna, when using the high gain VU-210 which is also mounted higher, there is no change in the readings from the signal to noise ratio meter on my receiver for either station.

Evan, I've PM'ed you with some "antenna stuff" that might help you out. Also, that PBS station you are talking about that's on air is WCVN-DT, KET/PBS, Covington, KY -- According to their website it looks like they are planning on having PBS HD by November. Spoke with WCET-DT as well as Dayton's Think TV people recently, and they plan to have their stations on the air (all with PBS HD) "on or around" May 1,2003. WCET-DT's antenna is going to be on WLWT-DT's tower, So you should have a good shot at it too. WLWT/WCET have had their analogs at Low power since June, while they are working on the tower to support permanant WCET-DT/WLWT-DT antennas. WLWT-DT's current antenna is a temporary side mount job, the new one is going to be higher, and should improve reception.

From Mike DeWeese at WDTN:

The digital transmitter and antenna have been installed.

Their engineers are performing tests on the new equipment this week.

We are waiting on some equipment to enhance the ABC signal before going on air.

We should be transmitting around November 1, 2002.

I guess the folks at WDTN must have seen me in the garage last night assembling my new CM3671 so I can pick up WCPO all the time. God knows how I'm going to hoist that big monster up on the roof. :(

Originally posted by Paul210
I guess the folks at WDTN must have seen me in the garage last night assembling my new CM3671 so I can pick up WCPO all the time.

LOL :)

Paul,

Thanks for the WDTN info.

A rope should work to pull up the antenna, just be careful it doesn't bang into anything on the way up ... doing the job when it's not windy is also a good idea. Keep in mind, it seems to defy the laws of nature, but in practice those antennas do get heavier the higher up you are.

Hey guys,

Just wanted to let you know that there is someone else in the area. About 6 months ago I was on the board a lot doing research but in the end decided to wait for the new sets with dvi. My wait finally ended on wednesday when my sony 51ws500 was delivered, I was like a little kid on christmas. I am using a borrowed DTC-100 until the next generation stbs are out. I have two unamplified antennas, a VU-190 on the roof pointed at cincy and a RS double bowtie for dayton. I am able to receive all 5 cincy digital channels (most in the 75-85% range, except pbs24 that is at 35-65% so it is watchable sometimes) and the RS double bowtie works great (85-90%) for dayton, although they have been on and off since i first set up my antennas and the DTC-100 two weeks ago.

I am really looking forward to the Florida/Tennesse HD game tomorrow. I have a screenshot of the florida/miami that someone posted here and can't wait to see some football with that kind of PQ in my living room.

I knew that Nitewatchman was here since he helped me quite a bit 6 months ago, but I am glad to see that there are others even located even closer on the board.

Justin

Justin,
Congrats on the new toy. I'm just wondering being south of town how well you receive WCPO. I just put up a monster Channel Master UHF/VHF antenna with hopes I could pick it up more than just late at night. No luck, though. I'm north of Dayton, just south of I70, and pretty high up. I thought it would be a piece of cake considering our elevation up here and CM's best antenna that I chimney-mounted about 10 feet above the house. I can't wait for WDTN to go live so I'll have an ABC affiliate I can receive all the time.
Paul

Paul, just wondering, if you can easily point that thing towards Columbus, can you pick up a good signal from WBNS 10?

Hopefully, your antenna would reject its signal enough off the side lobe, but I know interference from them has been an issue for some folks that are roughly between Cincy and Columbus. Here, I can usually point my hi-gain antenna towards Columbus and get enough of a signal from WBNS to get an analog lock, and often a analog pic, yet it's very, very rare that it causes problems for my WCPO-DT reception if I have antenna headed South towards WCPO.

Jeff,

I can't receive 10 or 4 in Columbus except occasionally at night, and only when I aim the antenna directly at Columbus. I'm wondering if the lack of WCPO reception has something to do with the way VHS signals travel vs. UHF. I don't have a problem with any other Cincinnati stations, but they're all UHF. It's kinda funny that I get a stronger signal from WCPO when I can receive it than from any other Cinci station, but it fades during the day. Signals from all other stations are rock-solid and never fluctuate at all.

Paul

Paul,

That's very odd. That's the sort of situation one might expect if using a UHF only antenna to pick up VHF signals from out beyond a few miles. I'm pretty much at a loss to guess what is happening in your situation. The CM3671 should work very, very well for VHF and UHF signals within 50-60 miles or so from you, possibly more for VHF. Even though WLWT 5 is currently operating at low power while they work on their antenna, WCPO 9, WCPO-DT and WKRC 12 Cincy should be blasting in there 24 hours a day.

Back when I went to WSU many years ago, I used rabbit ears in an apartment from near I-675 on 444/broad street in Fairborn, and through brick walls could pick up 5/9/12 Cincy (although not all that great) as well as 4 Columbus, but I couldn't get a hint of the Cincy UHF signals.

My guess is that maybe there is something you have happening with your setup that is blocking signals at VHF frequencies. Can't really think of what it could be though. Are you using a preamp, if so, what is the manufactruer's model#, and do you have something else in between your antenna and receiver besides the matching transformer(balun), splitters and coax?

VHF Signals generally travel a little farther than UHF becuase the wavelengths are longer they can bend more easily around hills, and the curvature of the earth. Especially so with the Lo-band VHF channels 2-6. WCPO-DT's coverage map indicates their signal should be receivable from almost as far North as Troy. You can see the map on their website, at a link off the equipment page here:

http://www.wcpodt.com/equipment.html#

Also, Paul, what do the Analog VHF stations in the area look like? Do you see a lot of noise on those channels? Impulse noise interference is generally more of an issue with VHF than UHF, perhaps there is some man made noise that's happening during the day close by in your area that is gone at night.

Jeff,

Thanks for all your insight and suggestions.

My setup on the antenna is pretty standard. Regular RG6 coax into one splitter, then into the STB-only about a 25' run. I took the splitter out of the equation just to see if signal increased but it didn't. The install is a standard chimney mount with a new CM rotator, two 5' sections of mast, single story ranch, good elevation in this plat. The only thing I'm not really happy with on the antenna setup is the ground. The mast is painted so I think I need to drill into it and screw down the ground wire just to be sure it's really making a good electrical connection.

My analog reception seems pretty interference free. No video noise. And the analog channel 9 is my strongest station from Cinci. Usually it rivals the locals. 5, 12 and 19 have some snow on the analogs but the digital versions come in just fine. Some nights I can pick up analog WAVE (channel 3) out of Louisville on a little 19" set in the bedroom.

I'm not using an amp. I tried one a couple weeks ago and didn't have good results. Although it really boosted the signal strength, it killed all the distant channels so I took it back.

Paul

Sorry for the length of these, Paul, it's amazing how long something can get with this kind of stuff.

Boy, that's a bummer you can't pull in WCPO-DT consistantly. It certianly sounds like your VHF reception is working very well. Since you are so close to Dayton Towers and probably have to point right through them from your location to aim at Cincy, just about any preamp would probably cause more problems interference wise than it solves gain wise, because Dayton analogs 2,7,16,26,45 are probably causing intermod and overloading the amp which is probably scattering noise and everything else onto channels which should be clean.

There are "usually fairly expensive" ways of trapping out those strong signals so you can get good results with a preamp(although you wouldn't be able to see them then with the specific antenna being used), but it's probably not worth all the fuss, especially since in the future we don't really know yet which channels the local DTV's will end up using.

The only other thing I could guess of besides poor signal strength(which certianly seems to be the problem you're having with WCPO-DT) would be that you are getting some sort of weird interference to 10 -- or even though you can't see or hear it, WBNS signal may be raising the noise level enough most of the time to prevent good reception of WCPO-DT.

I can't imagine that it would be possible to get overload at the tuner from a Dayton local that would "scatter" it's signal onto 10, since the closest frequency used would be ch. 7. Since your getting good reception from 9, this certianly shouldn't be an issue. Luckily, tuner overload onto 1st adjacent channels to Dayton 2,7,16,26,45(12-13 Miles) and WKOI 43 (TBN) Richmond, IN(12 Miles - tower is actually between Trenton and Oxford, OH) is my only real issue here, and it only happens when I have the antenna headed near those stations. For 2,7,16+22, it actually happens to some extent without a preamp, but the preamp makes it worse. This isn't a problem though, as from my location, the preamp does happen to do more good than harm.

Harmonics, or Spurious transmission from a very close by high power FM transmitter shouldn't be an issue either as the 1st harmonic of an FM transmitter that would affect Ch 10 would have to be on 96~98.5 MHZ, and there aren't any on those frequencies in Dayton. 99.1 could really affect only Channel 11, and you would have to be awfully close to their tower, with a very high gain setup.

I'm sure you've thought of this, but if that 19" TV is of the non-screen blanking type, tuning it to 10 and seeing if there is anything there besides normal, clean snow+ "white" noise audio can give you an indication of interference present.

BTW, along with 4+6 Columbus(76 Miles), I get WAVE here all the time to some extent(1/2 the time or so it's watchable, but the audio is fine 99% of the time) if antenna is headed correctly, at 95 Miles out, I'm not actually that far away from the edge of WAVE's predicted coverage area, which reaches out 72 miles "curvature of earth" wise because they have an extremely tall tower that is about 500 feet higher elevation wise than most of the stations in this area. Also, thier low VHF frequency lets it "bend" around the earth farther.

Once WDTN gets on the air(fingers crossed for Nov 1), I hope it doesn't take too long for them to pass all the ABC HD!

Jeff,

Thanks again for all your input. We probably should have PM'd instead of doing this here. What was the topic of this thread? <g>!

Yes, let's hope WDTN gets it together.

Paul

Paul,

I just checked the signal meter on the dtc100 and got this:

10-73
24-88 (Strange - I have never seen anything over 65 on this before)
29-82
31-89
35-63 (Lower than usual)

From some info Jeff gave me a while back I am at 926ft ASL. I don't know 1/10th as much as Jeff on receiving air waves with an antenna but I do have one suggestion based on my brief experience. If it is not hard to do, move the antenna around. When I started I had my antenna mounted on an old mast on the side of the house up maybe 10ft above the roofline and maybe 30 ft from some large pine trees pointed at cincy. I got only flickers on the cincy channels 0%-35% but I got all of the dayton locals at 90% with it pointed at cincy. I lowered it to only 5 feet off of the roofline so that I could start playing with preamps and tweaking its direction easily and I noticed that after I lowered it my signals began to get more reliable. I know that lowering the antenna should not help performance but it did. So I decided to mess around with its position some more. I built a temporary mount out of some wood so that it was mobile. I next moved it to the middle of my roof (another 30ft away from the trees) and all of the cincy digitals went from almost nothing to strong watchable signals. But now the daytons were all very low and unwatchable (an inconvenience that I now need 2 antennas but I figure a small price to pay for getting all of the cincy channels). Unfortunately, the wife was not happy with the antenna growing right out of the middle of our roof so I decied next try the backside of the roof. The signal didn't go down at all - if anything it got a little better. So for now the antenna is in the middle of the backside of the roof on its temporary mount, invisible from the front side of the house. The wife is happy and of course so am I. I will probably move it around some more when I get time before I mount it permanently. So sometimes with this stuff it sort of seems like black art. I hope you have luck with whatever you try next and hopefully they will get WDTV up soon.

By the way, everyone was drooling over the Florida/Tennessee game yesterday. It made it painful going back and forth to the OSU/Cinci game:). I noticed the feed from 41 out of dayton seemed much less pixilated than the 31 out of cincy feed. On 31 all of white Tennessee jerseys we pixilated horribly while i didn't notice it on 41 at all. Anyone else have a similar experience?

Justin

Justin,

Sounds like you are enjoying your new setup :cool:

You're probably seeing the 88 reading on 24 this morning because of enhanced atmospheric conditions(Tropo). I'm seeing Lexington, Ky stations(108 Miles) last night and this morning, but they started fading at 11:30am. The reduced numbers on 35 you're getting are probably because of the same, due to WLIO 35 Lima, Ohio, or possibly a KET that transmits on 35 from Hazard, KY adding additional "noise" to 35 via "atmospheric bounce".

WHIO-DT was certianly the station to watch for the game yesterday, WKRC-DT was having all sorts of problems.

Jeff,

Thanks for the PM. I was out of town over the weekend, so I just saw it this morning. I'm going to try and mess with this stuff again this week. I gotta squeeze every db possible out of this setup!

Justin,

It's good to hear you are seeing 24 at 88. I just checked, and I'm only getting 0-6 on my hughes E86. I think I'm going to try moving my antenna around to see if it helps. (not an easy task with a VU190 wedged through attic rafters!) I've noticed the same thing you have. If I move my RS-DoubleBowTie around I get wildly different readings.

Are you combining the signals from your two antennas? Or do you have then in different antenna inputs?

I am not combining the signal, the dtc100 has 2 antenna inputs, I have experimented with combining them into one input without much luck. this will be a big issue for me as soon as I get my own stb - all of the new generation stbs only have a single antenna in. I will probably end up getting a remote control a/b switch to deal with this.

My signal on 24 is back around 30% where it usually is, at night it will usually go a bit higher and is watchable, but nowhere near 88%.

I noticed some some strange behavior during the browns game yesterday on both digital cbs channels. Cinci 31 would stay pegged at 88% without variation but I was getting audio dropouts. Dayton 41 was 79-84% but every few minutes it will go down to almost zero causing a dropout. All of the other channels both cinci and dayton were fine. Today it seems like the audio dropouts on 31 were gone and but the strange behavior on 41 continues. Wierd since I watched the whole Tennesee/Florida game on 41 without a single problem on saturday. Could the tropo be causing this?

Thanks, Justin

Justin,

I think 31 was having a problem with its datastream on Sat&Sun, the radar on 31-2 was fine, and signal was solid as normal. I often notice the signal disappear completely on 41 on occasion, sometimes for seconds, sometimes for minutes and sometimes for hours. Not positive, but I'm Pretty sure the problem is originating at the station.

It'll be very, very rare(if ever) for tropo(Other stations on the same channel from a long distance) to affect strong signals like WKRC-DT and WHIO-DT to any great extent in your location, especially to the point of causing dropouts. Digital receivers see analog stations as just noise, and unless those signals are very strong(which tropo signals usually aren't, especially if your antenna isn't pointed right at them), your receiver can easily see your local station through that noise, although your readings may drop a bit from normal occasinally due to "noise" from long distance stations.

Also, A/B switch and seperate feedlines is probably going to be your best bet w/o 2 inputs, don't think you'd have very good luck combining the 2 antennas for Dayton/Cincy reception.

Is anyone seeing WRGT-DT? I'm still getting the same thing from them as I was from WKEF-DT last week. Nothing from the Digital receiver, With a analog tuner/receiver, still hearing the strange audio tone on 30 that was on 51 until it was fixed.

Also, with the intention of a short explanation, I don't know if I really said that quite right in the above post concerning interference to local stations from distant stations on the same channel via tropo.(i.e., skip/atmospheric bounce.)

It certianly is possible for tropo to affect local stations to the point of causing dropouts, I've even seen it happen on 10 and 24(but very, very rarely), but not on 31 or 41 because they are so strong here. Although a 41 in Louisville often puts some sort of signal into here when skip is happening, which I thought might be a occasional problem for WHIO-DT, but I haven't seen it be a problem. It will be interesting to see what happens when WBDT-DT 18 gets on the air, as I often see a very strong signal from an 18 in Lexington, KY.

Tropo interference most likely won't cause a rapid flucuation in readings however, from what I've experienced, if interference from a distant station is a cause, I think you'll see lower readings than normal for usually a fairly extended period of time, along with, more rarely, dropouts. Other sources of interference can cause rapidly fluctuating readings and dropouts however, especially if you aren't getting a strong signal from the local station.

Also, keep in mind, AFAIK concerning any receiver out there at this time, the meters and indicators on our recievers don't indicate actual signal strength, even if they are saying that they are. They are giving us an indication of the signal to noise ratio, data errors, and the ability of the receiver to correct for multipath conditions.

Personally, I've never seen multipath be any sort of issue for digital reception from my location, even with antenna way off target to an extent which produces severe multipath(ghosting) on a station's analog counterpart. Even when the antenna is moving, or a plane flies through the signal path and produces ghosting on a digital's analog counterpart(on same tower), I've never seen a problem with multipath for DTV reception.

How far you can point your antenna off target from a local station and still receive a signal can be an indication of actual signal strentgth however, and is the only way I know of to have a chance of seeing how strong a signal actually is with our current crop of DTV receivers.

From what I understand, our receivers only require about 16DB of signal over noise for good reception of DTV signals. If the actual signal strength is at or just over that threshold, it can still produce high readings on our receivers just as a stronger signal would, but, it is also more susectable to interference(an increased noise level) than a real, stronger signal would be.

Hope this helps, getting enough Signal over Noise is a very, very big part of reliable OTA DTV reception.

Jeff,

I have not seen anything on WGRT-DT in at lest a few days. After I posted last I found out in the cinci thread that everyone was having audio problems on 31 over the weekend as well - this appears to be fixed today or at least substantially better. I think that my problems an 41 are over for now as well with a little bit of antenna adjustment. I watched CSI on 41 last night without any problems. CSI was beautiful, I finally got the jaw drop reaction from my wife:)

Justin

Really wish I had a pic of some of the jaw drop reactions I've seen, I really get a kick out of that :D

Noticed that 35 Cincy had NBC HD at 8, 51 Dayton didn't at 8, and at 8:30, 35 looked like they were having problems with the HD feed+dropped it switched to SD(right at the "available in HD part), but at 8:30 51 now has HD ... Solid blocks of HD from the "big 3" networks tonight, I could be wrong, but I can't recall that happening since perhaps the Olympics:cool:

Jeff,

It looks like WRGT-DT is off of the air. Maybe Sinclair is further reducing power by only driving 1 transmitter at a time~!

All of this prime time programing is great, but it's a hard adjustment for my wife. She is a time shifting addict! At least once a week, she asks me, "can't Tivo record this?" Looks like I need to start working on a HD-PVR!

She's also moving quickly past jaw dropping, on to becoming a critic. She made me switch over to SD last night during NYPD-Blue. We were getting a lot of video noise on WCPO-DT. Why does this stuff only happen during prime time....

I can tell by the audio tone I'm hearing on 30 with an analog TV that they are most likely putting a signal out(the tone switched from 51 to 30 last friday when WKEF-DT majically "appeared".), It's just that our digital receivers can't see it at all. It seems to me that they should find some way to monitor their digital signal.

I did call WKEF/WRGT once during Olympics when WKEF-DT had SD when NBC changed the Schedule(WLWT-DT had HD) though, got the newsroom who wouldn't transfer me to engineering(said they weren't there), so we ended up having a very long+confusing conversation about HD feeds and such. To their credit though, within a few minutes, there was HD on WKEF-DT.

Originally posted by Evan


It looks like WRGT-DT is off of the air. Maybe Sinclair is further reducing power by only driving 1 transmitter at a time~!



Yes, but are we really missing that much with WRGT-DT being off the air? I don't think so! Just what the world needs--another standard def digital channel. IMHO, if it's one or the other, I think they've got the right one up and running now.

Let me try this again. WRGT-DT DOES have some sort of signal on the air. They are using the power for both transmitters. But there is something WRONG with the signal(just as it was for WKEF-DT last week) and our Digital Receivers can't detect it!

Meant to put in my last post that I emailed them about the problem last night, still haven't heard back from them.

I also really could care less about the SD from WRGT-DT, as the analog looks better. It shouldn't but it does.

Does anyone else notice blue vertical lines in WHIO-DTs picture? :confused:

I've noticed this several times, but always forget to ask.

During dark scenes, I get 3-4 thin vertical lines in the lower left quadrant of the screen. If you think of the 4:3 black bars for scale, the first line is just inside the frame on 4:3 material, and the rest are spaced about a half black bar apart.

WHIO-DT is the only station that does this, and they only show up on black material.

hmmmm.....

Evan,

Haven't seen anything like that on WHIO-DT, or the "video noise" you had mentioned in an earlier post that you were seeing from WCP0-DT the other night, but I might not have been viewing those stations at the "right time". Did notice WHIO-DT didn't have CBS HD last night at 10, WKRC-DT did.

Did see some weird "Ghosting of blue colors" from WKEF-DT's HD during one of the triple crown races that wasn't present from WLWT-DT, so "stuff like that" is possibly coming from the stations although I would suspect it to be rare.

--------
On another matter, I got through to "someone" at Sinclair concerning WRGT-DT's difficulties now and WKEF-DT's last week, hopefully something will come of it. As mentioned before by Paul, it's "no big deal" that we can't see WRGT-DT SD right now, but I'm trying to follow through on the issue so hopefully the same thing doesn't happen again at WKEF-DT, or if WRGT-DT ever gets around to doing Fox ED.

If I understood it correctly, The Sinclair person I spoke to did mention that we have the station(WKEF-DT) to thank for taking the initiative for providing HD, so WKEF-DT people if you're listening , Thanks a million!

Originally posted by Evan
Does anyone else notice blue vertical lines in WHIO-DTs picture? :confused:

I've noticed this several times, but always forget to ask.

During dark scenes, I get 3-4 thin vertical lines in the lower left quadrant of the screen. If you think of the 4:3 black bars for scale, the first line is just inside the frame on 4:3 material, and the rest are spaced about a half black bar apart.

WHIO-DT is the only station that does this, and they only show up on black material.

hmmmm.....

Evan,

Yes, you aren't the only one that's seeing this. I'm glad to hear you say you're seeing it, too! I keep forgetting to ask about it myself. I thought maybe it was just something in my STB.

Paul

Strange on the WHIO-DT lines. I just watched about all of ET and am now watching Survivor on WHIO-DT, and haven't seen them, even when it's dark/black. (RCA F38310/Internal receiver fairly equivilent to DTC100 for OTA reception). I wonder what the difference is that you guys are seeing it and I'm not ... I did see a "moire"(or whatever you might call it - kinda like looking through a windowscreen) pattern during ET however.

Spoke with WKEF/WRGT CE today, during our converstation he mentioned ER would be in HD tonight :-). Really enjoyed our conversation and getting a bit of his perspective. Seems like a great guy. He said they would soon be installing a new PSIP generator they've just received, not sure if it's for one station or both.

One thing I gathered from our converstion, I think there is a lot more involved on the station's end for DTV transmission/HD pass through than what I had previously imagined, especially at this stage of the game. As I have suspected, I think most of these stations want to get out the best signal/HD service/etc. they can, but I think all sorts of problems of difficulties can occur.

Jeff/Paul,

I haven't had a chance to reconnect my antenna to my RCA F38310 to see if the lines are there. I don't remember seeing them before on that set. My main setup is a hughes E86 connected to a pioneer pro-710HD. It is very noticeable on that set.

I'll try and call WHIO today, now that I know it's not me:cool:

The new NBC Show "American Dreams" Looks good in HD on WKEF-DT! Thanks again WKEF-DT!

WLWT-DT Cincy appears to be off air.

Too much HD tonight! ;)

I'm wondering if WKEF-DT boosted power again? I've noticed my signal strength has been higher.

I missed American Dreams, but I did catch the Sopranos on HBOHD last night!:D

I agree, I think it's time to start looking a building a HD-PVR....

Looks like WRGT-DT finally got their problem straightend out, I'm seeing them again now at 5:30pm, and the audio tone I was hearing that was present on 30 is now gone.

Evan, haven't noticed any change from WKEF-DT since they've lowered power. I have really no way of measuring signal strength besides how far I can rotate antenna off target and still receive the station --- I never tested this with WKEF/WRGT before they lowered power, so I wouldn't be able to compare the change in actual signal strength.

In any event, with my hi-gain antenna there was no change in readings(those aren't signal strength readings) from my receiver after WKEF-DT/WRGT-DT lowered power, on my lo-gain antenna, readings from both stations dropped a few points but I still receive perfect DTV reception from both as long as nothing else is "wrong" with their signals, or if they are off air.

WKEF-DT seemed a little slow with NBC HD tonight, as it wasn't there at 8, but was sometime afterward (Thanks if someone called them!)

Leno is HD too, I'm not a big Leno fan, but there's a guest I want to see tonite :-)

BTW, Hard to tell, but I think WRGT-DT's SD looks a little better than it used to... Now if they'd only do Fox ED ...

It appears WRGT has done us a great service and got their SD up and running again (<g>). Just curious if anyone is receiving anything on their sub-channel, 30-2. I'm showing a signal there but the receiver just flashes up the 'no signal' banner.

Just a "blank" on 30-2 here Paul, was seeing that before they had their problem as well -- BTW, their CE told me yesterday it was a problem with their exciter, which I believe is the "thing" just before the transmitter which "sends" the signal into the transmitter/antenna system and may have a bit to do with what frequency/etc. the signal is transmitted on.

Would be nice if they'd put UPN or something on 30-2 though, even if they had FOX ED there would still be plenty of "room" for something non-HD on the 2nd subchannel.

HD looked good from WKEF-DT last night, Leno is even doing some of his "on the street" stuff in HD now. Wish they'd have more female guests though ...

My Hughes E86 locks on 30-2 then shows me old fashioned analog snow! :D I even get the old fashioned noise to go with it!

Usually, it will say "channel unavailable" if there's not a signal.

Evan,

That's an interesting feature ;-)

On 30-2, do you still get indications from your receiver's "meter" of a digital signal as it is in my case? I get a lock on 30-2, same indication from meter as on 30-1, but 30-2 is a blank screen. Or is it, I suppose, switching to the NTSC tuner+displaying what is visable on 30 analog wise? Digital Subchannels are a feature of PSIP/etc, any programming contained on multiple subchannels is included in the same signal, on channel 30 in this case.

Also, If you tune to say, 50, 40 or 62, do you just get a blank screen and "channel unavailable"(which I think is what you are saying), or do you see the old fashioned snow and noise? If you do see the snow, does 40+50 look any different than 62? (WRCX-LP Dayton may be transmitting on 40 now however, although I haven't seen them yet)

"Normally", when a proper digital(8VSB) signal is being received on an analog non-screen blanking TV, old fashioned snow+"white noise" would be all you would see on a channel that a digital station is broadcasting on.

Depending upon how the NTSC tuner(might be specific to the set being used) uses it's AFT(automatic fine tuning) feature, you may be able to see an indication of a digital station broadcasting on a channel directly adjacent to the channel you are tuned to in the form of "big, noisy looking" snow. I see this if tuned to 1st adjacent channel below a digital in the case of one of my analog TV's, but only if there is no other station (digital or analog), or "interference" on the channel right below the digital.

Jeff,

The E86 signal meter only shows the main channel level. As I understand it, the sub channels are just framed with the address of the sub-channel?

The E86 blanks all of the low signal stations (just like the F38310/DTC100.) Usually I get a black screenon low signal channels, but its threshold is just a little bit lower than the RCA. I'm guessing something is fooling the E86 and its not blanking the picture. Either that, or fox has a new format. Maybe they could call it fox-ULD "Ultra-Low-Definition.";)

30-2 seems to be the only channel that does it. I don't get anything on other adjacent channels.

Speaking of other channels, I keep checking 50. Anyone see anything on WDTN-DT yet? Any test signal yet?

Originally posted by Evan

...The E86 blanks all of the low signal stations (just like the F38310/DTC100.) Usually I get a black screenon low signal channels, but its threshold is just a little bit lower than the RCA. I'm guessing something is fooling the E86 and its not blanking the picture. Either that, or fox has a new format. Maybe they could call it fox-ULD "Ultra-Low-Definition.";)

Evan,

You crack me up!


Originally posted by Evan

Speaking of other channels, I keep checking 50. Anyone see anything on WDTN-DT yet? Any test signal yet?

I keep checking and hoping, but I haven't seen anything yet. What I would give to be able to get an ABC affiliate. :rolleyes:

Paul

Originally posted by Evan
Jeff,
As I understand it, the sub channels are just framed with the address of the sub-channel?


Yes, I think you're thinking about it right. Take 51-1 and 51-2 for example. If I'm thinking about this right(think I'm fairly close anyway), All that programming is basically in the same datastream sent with the 1 signal from WKEF-DT, but something at the station is added (via a PSIP function I think) to let your receiver know which "bits" go to which subchannels. Earlier in the summer, I occasionally saw both WKEF and WRGT digitals put out a strong signal my receiver could recognize on 30 and 51, and yet the receiver couldn't even get a lock on any of their subchannels(30-1+2, or 51-1+2) because I think the "right info" wasn't sent with the bitstream in order for my receiver to get a lock on the subchannels+display programming.


I'm guessing something is fooling the E86 and its not blanking the picture.


That would be my guess too ... Perhaps it's expecting information in the datastream to be "assigned" to 30-2, but isn't getting anything, so is defaulting to NTSC tuner and yet for some reason is not giving you the normal screen blanking function.


Either that, or fox has a new format.
Maybe they could call it fox-ULD "Ultra-Low-Definition.";)


LOL! That's the ticket! :eek:


30-2 seems to be the only channel that does it.


Lately, I've been seeing something similar on WCVN-DT 24 in N. KY -- During an autoscan, my receiver finds "something" on 24-10, and it goes "through" 24-10 when doing a channel surf, reciever shows a signal just as it does on the lockable(all with programming!) 24-3~24-6 Subchannels, but it doesn't get a lock on 24-10 in contrast to 30-2 with WRGT-DT. This is with my "off-air Guides"(channel remapping/program guide info/auto time set) turned off. With "off air guides turned on, the "viewable" subchannels remap to 54-1~54-4 alongside their analog on 54, and the "blank one" doesn't show up as it does on 24-10 without remap.

WKEF/WRGT CE did tell me they were planning on installing a new PSIP generator soon that would help STB's detect their station's better, perhaps the 30-2 will disappear then, and channels might remap as well.



Speaking of other channels, I keep checking 50. Anyone see anything on WDTN-DT yet? Any test signal yet?


Nothing seen here, according to Paul's post, we probably won't see them until Nov 1. I suppose they might put a test signal on the air before that(If they haven't already at 3am or something when we weren't looking), but keep in mind they can test everything except the antenna/transmission line by running the signal from the transmitter into something called a "dummy load".

I'm looking forward though to seeing some new signals on the air soon! For more HD surely, but I was also like a kid at Christmas when I first saw WCVN-DT shortly after their sign-on in late January, and when WKEF-DT came on early for Olympics, then signed back off, then WRCX-LP came back and signed off 51 permanantly at 12am on 5/1/02, and then WKEF-DT/WRGT-DT signed on in the morning on 5/1/02. Must be sorta what it was like back in the 40's and 50's, It's neat to see "new stuff" after seeing the same analog stations for years and years.

Oh yeah guys, for "shorthand" I referred to a "digital" signal above, but signals(Energy at Radio Frequency wavelengths - "RF" for short) aren't "digital" or "analog", only the information contained in them is.

I agree with the kid at Christmas feeling. I mentioned that to my wife last night, while she was making fun of me for complaining about the WHIO-DT blue lines. (Which reminds me - gotta call them today.)

Good night of Dayton HD last night (both CSI & ER.)

CSI seemed softer than usual, and there were a couple of shots with heavy artifacts during the initial casino scenes. The picture looked identical on WHIO-DT and WKRC-DT, so it wasn't the station. Must have been the CBS feed or the source material.

ER looked good. Sure was a nice of NBC to give us HD at the last minute. I just wish WKEF-DT would turn up the juice. I get WHIO-DT with my VU-190 pointed at the Cincinnati towers - 125 degrees away from the source! I have to switch to the RS-D-bowtie to get WKEF-DT.

Called WHIO-DT on Friday and talked to an engineer about the blue lines. I'm not sure if he believed me or not! I took a picture and emailed it to him, but I haven't heard anything back yet. I'll try and remember to take a picture during CSI Miami tonight. If I get a good one I'll post it here.

Also, I invited the engineer (Steve Hardy) to join this forum. I sent him a link, hopefully he can join us....

Good man Evan! I know all about the "believeability" issue. These guys are so used to dealing with "kooks and morons" calling the station, but they need to(and should) understand that in most circumstances I think, this HD+DTV thing is a different matter entirely -- especially for those of us who forked out the $ expecting the same type of service from digital channels that you see from analogs. And besides, We want our HDTV!

I realize the engineering guys are having to do double duty by having 2 stations on air instead of 1, but it certianly can be very frustrating for us. If FCC could more closely monitor some of the stuff that goes on, I'm sure they wouldn't like it either. IMHO that's exactly the sort of thing they should be doing more of, instead of their interest in auctioning off EM Spectrum ... To me, it's kinda like auctioning off the air that provides lift for aircraft. Oh well.

Things should get much better once the analogs go off air. It seems to me, "common sense wisdom" would indicate that broadcasters should be looking forward to the day they shut off their analogs, and that they should be doing everything they can to hasten the transistion instead of viewing their digital stations as a nuisance, which sometimes seems to be the case.

Noticed WRGT-DT was off air for a couple of days(really off air this time), but is back now with their SD. Just checked "Crossing Jordan" from WKEF-DT, and it's SD. Sigh. Wonder if it's a network issue, as I'm sure it was last night for "Boomtown", or a problem at the station. Will be glad when WLWT-DT Cincy gets back on air, it really is nice to have a backup especially with all this new NBC HD stuff. This sort of backup doesn't yet work as good as it does in "Star Trek" <g>, but it's better than nothing.

Originally posted by Evan
Called WHIO-DT on Friday and talked to an engineer about the blue lines. I'm not sure if he believed me or not! I took a picture and emailed it to him, but I haven't heard anything back yet. I'll try and remember to take a picture during CSI Miami tonight. If I get a good one I'll post it here.

Also, I invited the engineer (Steve Hardy) to join this forum. I sent him a link, hopefully he can join us....

In addition to the blue lines (which I can live with), it is getting quite annoying the way WHIO-DT drops off the air for a couple seconds. It happens every 5-10 minutes. I thought maybe they would get that problem figured out considering it's been happening for months. It's to the point now where I won't watch them during prime time. WKRC-DT seems to be a lot more reliable.

Originally posted by Paul210
it is getting quite annoying the way WHIO-DT drops off the air for a couple seconds. It happens every 5-10 minutes. I thought maybe they would get that problem figured out considering it's been happening for months. It's to the point now where I won't watch them during prime time. WKRC-DT seems to be a lot more reliable.

Yes! I had found out back in December that I wasn't the only one seeing the "stopwatchable dropouts to 0" every 5-10 minutes on WHIO-DT! Sometimes when it happens, they are off air for more than just a few seconds also.

I haven't noticed the "stopwatchable dropouts" in quite a while from WHIO-DT, but that may be because I watch WKRC-DT most of the time! I did watch most of the game on Sat. without seeing it however.

After insuring it wasn't a problem with my setup or a reception problem, I asked them/told them about this issue back in DEC 2001 and never received a response. For that reason, and the fact that WKRC-DT usually does such a good job, I've pretty much neglected trying to contact them again.

I'm seeing a problem with WKEF-DT now. Beginning last night sometime, I'm getting a strong signal, and readings as normal, but my receiver won't lock on 51-1~2. My guess is it's a PSIP issue at the station, it may be specific to certian receivers. Have seen this happen a number of times last summer. I told them about it, hopefully they'll pay attention this time.

I'm also having problems with WXIX-DT since last night, either something is increasing noise level on 29, or they are running at very low power. Currently getting readings in the mid 50's (normally they are in the 80's), and a lock, but just a blank screen. Usually, my receiver locks with a 29 reading, and produces pretty much dropout free reception if it hits a 40 reading.

Sigh.

Update:

I've figured out the WXIX-DT problem I was having that was mentioned above. It was most likely tropo interference, from a KET analog that broadcasts on 29(WKSO) out of South Central KY. As the tropo is beginning to dissipate around 11:45am, WXIX-DT video is coming back. Strange though, as I've only seen WKSO lower readings from my receiver in the past, and rarely. Once, I was lucky enough to see them when WXIX-DT went off air. Becuase the interferening station lies in the same direction as the desired local, there is really nothing I can do about it, as a "better antenna" won't help.

I also noticed that WKEF-DT is back to normal now, not sure if they did something, or if this was also tropo interference issue as well, from a 51 near Columbus. If it was a interference issue though, it's odd, as it didn't lower the readings I get from my receiver.

This sort of thing is going to be more and more of an issue as more digital stations come on line, one that won't diminish until the analogs go off air. Unfortunetly, I think most people won't know what is going on when interference from a distant station occurs.

Anyone want to make a little wager on whether WDTN will even be testing by 11/01/02?

You betting for or against?

I'm a pessimist, or a realist, however you look at it. I'm betting against! :) If they are testing, I doubt it'll be anything live that we can see.

Shoot!

I was hoping you were betting FOR... :D


No takers here!

No takers here either, although I think there is a much better chance they will be up on 11/1, unless they can give FCC a real good reason as to why they would need a 2nd extension!

WKEF-DT is off air now, CE reports that they have lost their Studio to Transmitter fiber Link to the WKEF-DT transmitter, and that they'll try to be back on air tomorrow. I would imagine that is what was causing the problems I was seeing.

So much for having a Cincy/Dayton NBC backup, LOL they are both off air now!

Well, as a follow up, I've been checking WXIX-DT off and on all day, and I continue to experience reception problems. Never had a reception problem before with them. Audio/video dropouts and much lower readings than normal during all hours -- So I doubt if interference from a distant station is causing all the difficulty. Probably shouldn't have said so earlier, as from previous experience, I would expect to be able to see/hear something from the interfering station on my analog only TV if it were strong enough to cause WXIX-DT difficulty.

Hmmmm. I haven't checked WXIX-DT lately. It will be nice when this technology moves beyond "hobby" stage with the local stations. When was the last time their analog signal was down several times a month?

Last night we watched NYPD Blue on WCPO-DT and I was really impressed with the PQ. The source material, ABC feed, and WCPO-DT broadcast bandwidth seem to be much better than WHIO-DT/CBS/CSI&CSI-Miami. During the NYPD fast cut scenes, just after commercials, we didn't see any pixallation. We regularly get pixallation on CBS.

I wonder if the whole CBS programming package is going to be lower bandwidth? If the HDTV - "It's all here" promo and prime-time programming are any indication, it looks like CBS might wanna check out ABC.

I don't want to knock CBS, cause I love having the HD programming. It would just be nice if they would do the extra 5-10%....

What to you guys think? Do you see a difference?

Evan,

Yes, I see a difference, although I haven't noticed much of a pixellization problem from CBS with anything besides live sports and the "It's all here" promo. I'm guessing that it's because our local affiliates might not give entire bandwidth to HD because of datacasting/etc.

CBS uses 1080i, as does NBC. Pixellization wasn't a problem during NBC HD Olympics, or any other NBC programming via WKEF-DT or WLWT-DT.

ABC, however, uses 720p HD, which (I think)requires a little less bandwidth for mpeg compression, and whose 60fps progressive nature also most likely "helps" to cut down on "jaggies". Although WCPO-DT upconverts the source material to 1080i for broadcast, the source material(ABC Feed) is 720p format.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Got a note from WKEF-DT CE reporting that they are back on the air as of 10:30AM! Took a quick look at 11, and I'm receiving them fine here.

Concerning WXIX-DT, I'd be interested to know what you guys are seeing, I'm becoming convinced again that it's some sort of interference problem I am experiencing lately. I noticed last night that I could aim antenna way off target from Cincinnati, and that made all the dropouts/breakups go away.

As the night progressed, I ended up having to point farther and farther off target to get dropout free reception, last time I looked, only a 2 or 3 degree difference in heading, with antenna pointed over 90 degrees off target towards Indianapolis would work! At the same time, If antenna was headed towards their Tower, I get a blank screen, and an occasional bit of audio. The same thing happened night before last, with things improving during the day yesterday, but still with audio/video breakups and lower readings than normal.

So, I'm back to my original guess. Since I can receive them fine if I point antenna way off target, it surely seems like CCI from a distant station, but it's awfully surprising it has had an effect 24 hours per day! Only other thing I can think of, is some other sort of more localized interference, but, if that is so, it's awfully strange it's varying in intensity, as Interference from a station received via skip would. Don't think it's anything on my end, such as the preamp going south, as all else is normal.

Jeff,

I've always had to point my antenna a little off center to get a clean lock on WXIX-DT, but never that far off. When the meter on the Samsung indicates full strength, it has drop-outs and is very pixellated. If I aim it about 6 degrees or so West of their tower, the meter goes lower but then I get a perfect lock.

I don't know if it's changed any the past couple days as I haven't watched WXIX, but I'll check it tonight when I get home.

Paul

If you guys are tuning around tonight, you might want to do some looking/scanning/autoscanning to the Southwest. Especially right now, you might be surprised at what you see. Careful though, if you catch the DX bug, the wife might start hiding the remote from you<g>

I've been occasionally scanning for Tropo DX today off and on, and the way things look, If it's been like this the last few days, I can certianly believe Tropo induced interference from WKSO 29 Somerset, KY (188 Miles - It's Antenna is at a whopping 2503FT ASL) has been a factor for my WXIX-DT reception. Especially since it's right on the same heading as WXIX from my location. Unfortuently, I can't really see it through WXIX-DT's digital snow, or get an indication of a "pipeline" from Somerset area into here, as they are the only Somerset station I know of, except for their Digital, WKSO-DT which is unfortunetly on 14 as is local WPTO 14 Oxford analog. I have seen fairly continious CCI to local WCVN 54 (KET) the last few days, most likely from WPXK 54 in Jellico, Tennessee (I've seen WPXK actually visable instead of WCVN when they have been on air, on average it probably happens about 1x per month. I haven't seen WBXX 20(220 Miles) also in Southern TN since Sunday, and I see that one quite often when things are decent to the south since its tower is way way up there. Many times, the skip will jump right over Lexington, and I'll see WBXX, etc instead.

I've continuously seen good signals out of Louisville, Lexington, Indianapolis and even Terre Haute(WBAK 38, 161 miles) pretty much all day long Today. WTTV Bloomington, Indiana(93 Miles) has been solid all day long, although it looks like I'm now seeing CCI to it from a more distant station on 4. Easy to see the CCI when watching an analog station! Also, Currently, many of the Louisville stations are currently in here almost as strong as locals, WHAS 11 and WLKY 32 are really booming in here right now.

Folks in KY have been reporting seeing stations from 500 Miles away out of arkansas, alabama and Missouri off and on since Sunday morning. There's been so much analog noise, I'm not having much luck with Digital DX, but on Sunday, I did see a station briefly pop up on channel 33 out of Tuscaloosa, AL.(453 miles). I wasn't able to fully ID or log it, but info from another Dx'er in Indianapolis who did ID it indicated I was seeing the same dumb infomercial they were broadcasting at the time.

While more common in Gulf Coast states, This is rare in our area to see DX stations via tropo continuously, day and night, but it certianly is happening today. It might get really wild later tonight or early tomorrow morning.

Jeff

Sorry to repeat myself in Cincy thread and here, but to follow up on this issue, my WXIX-DT reception is back to normal this afternoon, and the distant stations are all gone since sometime this morning. Getting Solid 88 reading, no dropouts when aimed towards WXIX-DT tower. Last time I looked though, there was no audio, but my guess is that the problem is coming from the station.

Looks like WHIO-DT was down early in the evening last night. They were back up in time for CSI. ER looked great on WKEF-DT, although they forgot to switch to HD for the first minute or so.

You gotta love prime-time in HD!

I still think that CSI and CSI Miami are about as good as I've seen for HD PQ. Now if they could only get that Saturday football game to look that good... <sigh>

Originally posted by Evan
Looks like WHIO-DT was down early in the evening last night. They were back up in time for CSI. ER looked great on WKEF-DT, although they forgot to switch to HD for the first minute or so.

You gotta love prime-time in HD!

You're right--you gotta love prime-time in HD. But so many opposing shows...which one to watch...geez, now I need an HD recorder. It really pains me to tape on VHS anymore. How quaint! :rolleyes:

I was just Channel Surfing, and for the first time ever I caught the It's all here promo on WHIO-DT --- YUCK! The compression artifacts are far, far worse than I've ever seen them on WKRC-DT, and I thought they were bad there up until the last few weeks! There is NO WAY they are giving it the entire bandwidth that they could be, they must be datacasting or something.

As of right now I am not getting any audio on WXIX-DT, is it still like that for you guys? Also, are WRGT-DT and WLWT-DT still off air? - I am not seeing those either.

Thanks, Justin

Justin,

Yep, WLWT-DT still off air, For the last few Days, WXIX-DT has had no Audio except for during Fox Feeds that I've noticed.

WRGT-DT is off air, They were off air last weekend as well. Just a guess, but I'm thinking they are doing this to save $ on power bills, as I believe the FCC allows this sort of thing.

Next time I'm in contact with their Chief Engineer, I'll ask. Really, this isn't a problem for me, as their analog on 45 looks just as good as the digital SD--- I suppose though that it could be a problem for those who get a ghosty, poor signal from the analog from indoor antenna/etc.

But I can certianly live with it, even if they were to stay off air on a temporary "permanant" basis, and put the money saved from running their transmitter into equipment for passing through Fox 480p ED, or for running WKEF-DT at higher power so that folks in outlying areas have a better shot at receiving them.

Just my .02

Jeff

Nither WXIX-DT or WRGT-DT pass the 480p when available? If not, that sucks. My wife is excited for the new season of Boston Public which i think is supposed to be in 16x9 480p. Even if they don't pass the 480p I would still rather watch in 16x9 on the digital feed (I would need some audio though).

WRGT-DT doesn't pass the 480p feed, at least not so far.

WXIX-DT does pass Fox 480p occasionally -- The only problem is, they don't often do it correctly and it turns out being in "Weirdscreen" instead of Widescreen -- It looks like they don't process the Fox 480p feed correctly, and if programming is 16x9, it ends up "squeezed" into 4x3, If it is supposed to be 4x3 480p, it ends up squeezed into a square, 3x3 frame -- Prdocing Tall, skinny, squeezed looked people among other things.

Hopefully though, they have the "weirdscreen" issue worked out, there have been signs(They've done it right a few times in last couple of weeks) lately that they have it straigtened out -- Took them at least over 8 months to do it though! You can look through the Past Cincy threads for further info on the "weirdscreen" problem.


Didn't catch the game last night, and there wasn't audio on WXIX-DT for the Green Bay Vs. New England game Yesterday afternoon, but other than that in the last week or so, although their Local programming etc. hasn't had audio, the feeds from Fox, including the Baseball games, Have had Audio.


I also watch "Boston Public", and am looking forward to the New season and hopefully being able to see it in Widescreen on WXIX-DT!

Just checked while eating lunch, and audio is back on WXIX-DT for upconverts/local programming! Hopefully it will stay that way.

WRGT-DT is back on air as well, just like last week, "off for the weekend".

BTW, "American Dreams" and "Boomtown" looked Great on WKEF-DT last night!

Sorry portions of this post are duplicated in Cincy thread, sometimes it's difficult to seperate Cincy/Dayton issues!

YUCK! - It's all here Pixellization on WHIO-DT

Jeff,

We watched WKRC-DT last night, and I agree, it's a lot better than WHIO-DT when it comes to pixellization. Even CSI-Miami was very good, much better than it looked on WHIO-DT last week. If I call WHIO again (I still haven't heard back on the blue line problem) I'll ask them about their current bandwidth setting.

For now, I'm sticking with WKRC-DT....:cool:

Originally posted by Evan
YUCK! - It's all here Pixellization on WHIO-DT

Jeff,

We watched WKRC-DT last night, and I agree, it's a lot better than WHIO-DT when it comes to pixellization. Even CSI-Miami was very good, much better than it looked on WHIO-DT last week. If I call WHIO again (I still haven't heard back on the blue line problem) I'll ask them about their current bandwidth setting.

For now, I'm sticking with WKRC-DT....:cool:

Evan,

If you're making a call to WHIO, you might also want to ask them why they keep dropping off the air every 10 minutes. They keep beating their chests about having a digital station, but so far it leaves a lot to be desired. Blue lines, pixelization, signal drops...it's all here!

Paul

Paul,

It's all here --- LOL.

I've been watching WHIO-DT quite a bit just to see about the every 10 Minute or so signal drop thing, but It's been quite a long while since I've seen it happen -- Probably a month or more, although I have seen them off air completely for more extended periods since then. I Might be watching at the "right" times though, instead of the "wrong" time.

Jeff,

It was still happening this weekend when I was watching. I guess maybe I'm the one that's watching at the 'right' time.

Paul

Paul,

I've definitely seen the problem before, just not recently. in fact, last winter and spring it was so bad you could pretty much use a stopwatch and predict when the dropout to 0 would occur.

At first, I thought it was a reception problem, related to the fact that I'm at the worst possible bearing concerning the radiation pattern(according to FCC info) their antenna is "situated" for, which is the case most likely to reduce any possible interference issues with a 41 analog in Louisville. In fact, I'm probably exactly on the opposite side of their tower from their DTV antenna(although that shouldn't be a problem from my distance).

However, I soon found out back in the spring that everyone else I talked to in Dayton area was experiencing the same thing, no matter where they were. It's Difficult to diagnose on our end though, as it "looks like" some sort of interference or multipath problem, except for the strange "almost stoppwatchable" aspect of it.

I explained the problem in detail in a message I sent WHIO, but I never received a response so pretty much gave up since we generally get such good service from WKRC-DT. It certianly would be much more of an issue for me though if I were in say, Sidney, Ohio or Richmond, IN, or other areas close enough to Dayton and too far from Cincy.

Paul/Jeff,

I haven't called WHIO back, been too busy. (That and my wife makes fun of me for calling the TV stations...:rolleyes: ) We ought to figure out all of the things we need to ask, and each call in short order. I don't think they take single callers seriously. Do you guys know who is in charge at WHIO?

Hopefully we'll have another station we can call in 2 weeks. ;) I need WDTN-DT for NYPD Blue. I kept getting lots of picture noise last night on WCPO-DT. My signal meter would peak at 100, but bounced down to 50 every 2-3 seconds. I ordered a Channel Master 7777 amp, but its on backorder. Hopefully it will do the trick.

Evan,

Excellent idea concerning having more than 1 person try to contact them around the same time period. Maybe then they'll get the idea that somebody is watching their station.

I have no idea who to try to contact at WHIO, I certianly haven't had any luck at it. I believe I sent them a message not too long ago with link to this thread inviting them to either join us, monitor us or both.

Hard to say what's causing the problem you are seeing on WCPO-DT, but, the preamp will hopefully do the trick. Strange that you're actually seeing noise though, perhaps it's a "feature" on your receiver similar to what you get on 30-2.

Just as a guess: Perhaps WBNS 10 Columbus analog is occasionally increasing noise levels enough to produce a problem. From my location, only once that I can recall, and only for a few minutes have I seen CCI from WBNS 10 Columbus be strong enough to cause dropouts on WCPO-DT when my antenna was aimed correctly, but I can almost always get an analog lock on WBNS's signal if I aim antenna towards Columbus.

Also, I can often see WBNS through WCPO-DT's digital "sparkly" snow -- on analog TV if headed towards Columbus --- While I can't see a digital station's snow on the channel it's broadcasting on when it's "by itself", I can detect it when an analog signal is coming through it. Best way I can describe it is, it makes the weak analog look like it has "sparkly, Big snow" in with the signal.

My guess is, the Closer to Columbus(76 Miles from me) you are, the more that noise from WBNS would be an issue, and the more important having a very directional antenna would be -- Preamp might also keep the WCPO-DT signal above the noise enough 99+% of time, especially from your location.

Even if you can't detect WBNS signal if you point antenna towards Columbus, I think it's likely that its signal is raising the noise level at least a little on 10 for you --- probably all the time, but even moreso when atmospheric condtions are good towards Columbus -- Doesn't take much "enhancement" with a decent antenna setup to see a station from 76 Miles, which would probably be more like 60-65 miles from Centerville.

Take it easy,

Originally posted by Evan
Paul/Jeff,

I haven't called WHIO back, been too busy. (That and my wife makes fun of me for calling the TV stations...:rolleyes: ) We ought to figure out all of the things we need to ask, and each call in short order. I don't think they take single callers seriously. Do you guys know who is in charge at WHIO?

Hopefully we'll have another station we can call in 2 weeks. ;) I need WDTN-DT for NYPD Blue. I kept getting lots of picture noise last night on WCPO-DT. My signal meter would peak at 100, but bounced down to 50 every 2-3 seconds. I ordered a Channel Master 7777 amp, but its on backorder. Hopefully it will do the trick.

Evan,

Doesn't your wife know you're doing important work? :D

I don't know anyone at WHIO. It really hasn't been worth my effort considering how well WKRC comes in up here in God's country. When I get ticked off, I just switch the channel. I'm sure WHIO's advertisers would like to know that.

I'm with you on the WCPO reception. It reads about 1/2 way up on my meter, then goes to zero--back and forth. Rarely can I get a lock. I hope that guy at WDTN wasn't being overly optimistic when he gave that on-air date of 11/1/02.

Paul

Originally posted by Paul210
ticked off, I just switch the channel. Paul


Pretty much my sentiment too, as long as the "other channel" is on the air.

It's working for even another channel tonight too. WKEF-DT - No HD for ED..... But our "backup" is back! If you guys haven't checked Cinci thread tonight .... WLWT-DT came back up this afternoon, and has ED in HD right now :cool:

Not trying to bash WKEF-DT though, they have been doing a great job lately providing NBC HD -- But right now they aren't.

I keep telling the wife we are pioneers! She thinks we're geeks:eek: Can you believe she would rather watch SD than a beautiful HD picture with a few seconds of picture/audio loss every minute? - I keep telling her she needs to get her priorities in order...:D

Not sure what was causing my WCPO-DT problems, Last week it was at 95-100% strength. The noise I see are the little squares you get when the signal is interrupted for just a second. I haven't checked it since Tuesday. Do you usually get a solid signal on WCPO-DT Paul?

I've got two names at WHIO. I talked to Steve Hardy a couple of weeks ago, and didn't hear back. I've also been forwarded to the voicemail of Chuck Eastman. Not sure if either are the right guys though.

Evan,

From what you described in your last post, I think it's very possible that impulse noise is causing you problems for WCPO-DT -- Interference from Impulse noise is generally more of a factor for VHF than UHF, and more of an issue the weaker a signal actually is. Among other things, It can be caused by such things as a ignition system from a vehicle driving fairly near your antenna, appliances shutting off and on in your house, even an overhead fan that is on or "nearby" the A/C circut your receiver or preamp uses.

Lightning is the only natural source of impulse noise I can think of, and since I most likely get a stronger signal from WCPO-DT here, a very close by lightning strike is the only thing that causes the "blocky "green" noise" (that doesn't necessarily cause a complete dropout) to WCPO-DT -- In fact, it's only happened 1 time that I've noticed, and the lightning strike that caused it was way too close to my house for comfort!

Concerning WHIO-DT, I have no doubt that the problems you guys are seeing are most likely originating at the station, but the problem I have with contacting them about it at this time is that I'm not seeing any problems currently except the "too much" compression issue during SEC football and "it's all here" promo.

I certianly didn't expect, nor did I have any desire to be a HDTV pioneer(i.e. "geek") ... I suppose it was kinda dumb for me to think so, but I thought that we were 1/2 way through the transistion, and that I would always see HD from local stations when available, as well as the same general level of service from the digital stations that is provided via analogs!

Silly me;) ... It really hasn't been "that bad" though in our area, but it could certianly be much better! I never thought that being a DTV viewer would require "work"(Contacting the stations, etc) - In a way, it's kinda fun, and I certianly don't mind when the "work" does, or at least "seems to" do some good(as in: when the station actually listens to us) ... But, it does get old. Especially when your counting on HD for such and such programming to show invited guests/etc.

I'm afraid I agree your wife on the dropout issue however, I wouldn't be able to stand that even once a day, let alone once per minute! Luckily, the only problem with dropouts I've really had was when I was seeing the every 10 minute stoppwatchable variety from WHIO-DT.

Update: I forgot to mention, an attic can be an especially bad location where picking up impulse noise off antenna is concerned, especially if there is A/C wiring for your house in the attic. Unfortunetly, a preamp will most likely make things worse if interference from impulse noise is a problem.

Also, again, keep in mind the meters on our receivers tell us virtually NOTHING about actual signal strength. In the best of circmustances, an attic installation will cut actual signal strength 25-50% from what would be achieved via a rooftop antenna. Search AVS hardware area+local reception info area for "impulse noise" and/or attic for more info.

Originally posted by Evan
Not sure what was causing my WCPO-DT problems, Last week it was at 95-100% strength. The noise I see are the little squares you get when the signal is interrupted for just a second. I haven't checked it since Tuesday. Do you usually get a solid signal on WCPO-DT Paul?



Evan,

I usually get just what I was telling you; the meter bounces from half way to zero. I dare not call it signal strength as my friend Jeff will give me thirty lashes. Sometimes, late at night, it will actually stay at half and I'll get a lock and a really good picture. Of course, that never happens when NYPD Blue is on. :mad:
My friend Jeff did a topo map for me and there is a hill between me and WCPO's tower which may be affecting my ability to get a lock. It's funny though that WCPO's analog is my very best Cincinnati station, pq-wise.

I can understand your wife not wanting to watch signal drops every minute. Sorry, Evan!

Paul

Paul,

Certianly was never my intent to "lash" or "correct" you or anyone! I'm just trying to help+save some time and frustration if I can without making my responses even longer ;-) -- Along with trying to give as accurate and complete account of my OTA reception as possible, also in hopes that it might assist others.

I Hope my posts don't come off as "mean sounding" though, I certianly didn't intend that to be the case by stating things in as much of a "matter of fact" manner is possible, which is a bit difficult to do where OTA reception is concerned, as there are so many variables involved --

However, it would be even more difficult for me to put a "candy coating" on the stuff, and I think would even make it more confusing -- I know I am often easily confused! Also, my only intent is to try to help out and give something back via AVS as AVS was a great help to me when I was researching HD, OTA and HT stuff around a year ago.

There are often so many variables to figure out, and my respones on your WCPO-DT reception Paul may have been confusing, but in combination with the small bit of terrain blockage you have,(and possibly a bit of extra noise from WBNS) ... I DO think that along with those factors, signal strength is the main issue in your case where your WCPO-DT reception is concerned--

You're I think about 17 miles farther out from tower than I am, and probably 10-15 more "crow fly" miles farther out than Evan is. In other words, you're most likely "Close to the Edge" for a antenna at rooftop heights in the specific circumstance of WCPO-DT transmitting antenna height and concerning the power level they are running. I certianly could be wrong though, just telling you what I know concerning these things, and what I think might be the issue as always.

In any event, 2 weeks until WDTN-DT supposedly comes on line ... Fingers crossed here that they will "do it right", including ABC HD from day 1.

Jeff,
Good grief! Chill out. It was all tongue-in-cheek. You are the last person I'd bash. You help me too much! And I appreciate it!
Paul

Jeff,

I thought the same thing regarding impulse noise. I checked the whole house, if it was impulse noise, it wasn't coming from here. Must be those pesky neighbors, with their cable TV and their SD TVs!! :D

Not sure what it is/was. I guess I'll see next tuesday.

RE: WHIO-DT, I'm waiting for my preamp so I can reconnect my F38310. I'll compare the picture head-to-head with my main set. The blue lines are ALWAYS visible during dark scenes on the hughes STB. Until then, it's gonna be WKRC-DT....

Paul,

That's cool, no problem. kinda figured that, I just have seen folks get awfully "sensitive" on this forum(not "here" though) with this kind of stuff on occasion and wanted anyone else reading our stuff to know what was going on from my end more than anything else I suppose.

Evan,

You Never know, might be "spooks" ...(Insert Twilight zone theme) :-) -- I'm sure you've noticed that Impulse noise is especially bad(and easy to detect) when it happens on analog Lo-VHF band stations with weak signals. Cincy 5 might be a good one to look at to see if it has much static, especially since they have been at low power the last few months while they do their tower work.

Something weird was happening here once from impulse noise, I'm almost sure it involved the utility lines/transformers/etc. and something arching in a "spark gap" type of manner "somewhere" nearby.

Just heard from the WKEF-DT CE, He reports that WKEF-DT has increased power again recently :cool:

Also, he mentioned something very encouraging relating to their "process" of providing NBC HD on a regular basis.

Well,

Noticed WKEF-DT wasn't passing HD for Leno last night, and today audio was missing on 51-1, so they must be having problems again. I'm glad I can switch to WLWT-DT for NBC HD!

Bummer on WKEF-DT!

I was just going to say, things have been looking pretty good here in the Dayton area. WHIO-DT looked great on Monday, I wonder if they allocated more bandwidth to 41-1? The picture seemed better than usual (except for the 4 blue lines.) Of course I didn't see the "IT"S ALL HERE" promo:D

Watched the world series game on WRGT-DT last night, does the WXIX-DT picture look any different? (WXIX-DT isn't strong enough for me to get.) The picture I saw looked exactly the same as when I stretch the SD picture with my TV.

Also, WCPO-DT came in loud and clear for NYPD Blue :cool:
My signal strength was a solid 85.....

Evan,

That's good news on WHIO-DT! I look forward to catching the next football game and seeing what it looks like.

Noticed last night shortly after making my last post that WKEF-DT was back to normal, and providing NBC HD :cool:

World series looks a little better than WRGT/WRGT-DT's SD on WXIX-DT as they upconvert everything to 1080i --- but it's not widescreen. However, WXIX-DT has been doing a good job providing the 480p "ED" Widescreen and 4x3 480p stuff from Fox lately --- This is not HD, but looks roughly as good as a progressively scanned DVD. WRGT-DT AFAIK or have noticed only does 4x3 SD at this time.

I would think you should have a good shot at WXIX-DT from your location. An outdoor antenna setup of course is always a good idea.

Originally posted by Evan
Bummer on WKEF-DT!

I was just going to say, things have been looking pretty good here in the Dayton area. WHIO-DT looked great on Monday, I wonder if they allocated more bandwidth to 41-1? The picture seemed better than usual (except for the 4 blue lines.) Of course I didn't see the "IT"S ALL HERE" promo:D

Watched the world series game on WRGT-DT last night, does the WXIX-DT picture look any different? (WXIX-DT isn't strong enough for me to get.) The picture I saw looked exactly the same as when I stretch the SD picture with my TV.

Also, WCPO-DT came in loud and clear for NYPD Blue :cool:
My signal strength was a solid 85.....

Evan,

It seems strange that you cannot receive WXIX-DT. Are you trying to receive them on 29? That is their channel assignment and it maps to 19. I get them just fine up here near Englewood, but I do have to rotate the antenna a little further west from the other Cincy towers. Their picture is definitely better than WRGT's standard def.

I tried the old "A-B" last night between WHIO-DT and WKRC-DT. WKRC still has the superior picture from what I'm seeing. A LOT less pixellization. And WHIO did run the 'It's All Here' promo last night. It looked terrible. I haven't seen the mystery signal drops lately, but the blue lines are still there.

Paul

Interesting on the differences between WXIX-DT and WRGT-DT. My signal on WKRC-DT and WXIX-DT is marginal. On occasion I get WXIX-DT, but most of the time I get the old screen blanker. I get WKRC-DT, but I have signal drops. (Hmmm, I'm still waiting on a back-ordered pre-amp....)

WCPO-DT and WLWT-DT are both pretty solid right now. (knocking on wood!)

I'll have to try WXIX-DT during the game tonight.... now, where did I put that roll of tin foil?

I keep checking on channel 50 for any signs of activity from WDTN. Nothing so far. I was hoping they would at least have a test signal of some sort. :(

6 Hours, 35 Minutes until the end of November 1. No sign of WDTN-DT as of yet. No sign on FCC site as of yet that they have filed for a 2nd extension.

There is also no sign of the Other 2 stations in our area that were "projected" by TitanTV to began broadcasting today.

TitanTV now shows WDTN-DT and the other two stations live date as being "under review".

I'm Not getting that "kid at Christmas" feeling today as of yet.

Paul,

Hard to say on WDTN-DT. I'm thinking they will be up soon, but I wouldn't want to bet on it. Will keep my eye on the FCC site to see if a 2nd extension request rolls in from them. If I recall correctly from info posted on other threads at AVS and, from what they told FCC in their first CP extension app, they have missed several "expected" on air dates for July and August 2002, so it's hard to want to wager on what might happen. ;) \

Surely would have been nice if WDTN-DT had been up with ABC HD tonight though, as WCPO-DT was late in providing HD for "Gladiator". Missed much of the first 30 minutes of the movie while instead I monitored a Gladiator thread in the programming area as well as contacted WCPO-DT via email about the situation.(Won't call Cincy long distance for this kind of stuff, sorry guys, I'm too cheap for that). Not sure when WCPO-DT flipped the switch, but know it wasn't before 9:15pm, and I didn't get back to screen until 9:30pm. Although I've never seen "Gladiator" before tonight, I just couldn't bear to watch it pan'n'scan SD. Now, I will probably have to rent the DVD in order to watch the first 30 minutes/etc.

Concerning WKEF .... Although I watch the Cincinnati stations more than Dayton, I have been tuning into WKEF-DT lately for NBC HD since they've been "generally" doing such a great job providing the HD, even though WLWT-DT seems reliable for NBC HD too. In addition, I think WKEF-DT does a better job with the bandwidth than WHIO-DT does.

Which reminds me, I did a test during ER in HD last night with eyes about 6 feet from screen and I'm still seeing compression artifacts during fast action on WLWT-DT that I'm not seeing on WKEF-DT for some reason.

All things considered, I think WKEF-DT is the #1 DTV station in Dayton these days. Which is saying a lot considering their ownership. Heck, they even came on air 3 months early for HD Olympics even though they had to displace Dayton's WRCX-LP off 51 temporarily at the time to do it.

Hmmm.

Did some digging on FCC site, and if the info is correct, it appears that WDTN-DT's first CP extension expires on 12/5/2002. Although I know a CP extension is usually granted for 6 months, I had thought that all DTV stations that had a 5/1/2002 deadline only had until 11/1. I guess not. Except, that is, stations that were denied an extension, who were given an extra month, until 12/1.

Think we will see WDTN-DT on air by 12/5/2002?

Originally posted by Nitewatchman
Think we will see WDTN-DT on air by 12/5/2002?

I sure hope so. I used to get WCPO-DT intermittently but now it's very rare that I can get a lock. I don't know what's changed. I'm tired of watching ABC in blurry analog.

When I checked yesterday I noticed that WHIO-DT had the SEC HD game in .... SD. It looked good in HD via WKRC-DT. By now you'd think WHIO would know there is HD football at 3:30p on Saturday from CBS ..... Could be wrong, but since they had CBS HD last night, I'm guessing this was a "flip the switch" problem.

I was wondering if I was the only person that noticed WHIO-DT's lack of HD yesterday. It seems that someone trying to sell HDTV's would make a call to them considering the big Samsung promotion on CBS. Imagine going to Sears to watch that game and seeing SD. I don't think that would sell too many people on buying an expensive TV.

I finally reconnected my RCA F38310 to the antenna. I was curious as to the state of the WHIO-DT 4 blue lines on this set, since my Hughes E86/Pioneer 710HD consistently shows the problem. Well, guess what? I get (ONE) faint blue line on the RCA. I haven't had a chance watch a lot yet, but I did see one of the lines the other night. I've also found that the lines seem to show when there's a significant amount of blue content on the screen. ( not just a darker scene as I thought earlier...)

I'll watch more tonight to see if I can see more then one line. I'll get the camera ready too....

Also, I've found the RCA is more sensitive to signal quality than the Hughes.

Well, I checked the RCA again last night during King of Queens. All four lines are definitely there. If I sit right in front of the set and look at the lower left corner, they show up during blue/black content. They also show during some of the 4:3 commercials with 2 lines in the black bar. They aren't as obvious as on my other set, but they are visible.

I didn't get a good photograph yet, I'll try again today.

Also, still no WDTN-DT:(

I wonder if WHIO even has a clue that they're there? I sat right in front of my TV last night and there are definitely 4 blue lines in the lower left quadrant.

On the good side, the mystery 'every 10 minute signal drops' have been gone for awhile now.

C'mon WDTN-DT!!!

I noticed last night that WHIO-DT now has a sub channel--41-2. I wonder how much that's going to affect bandwidth? Also, still watching for anything out of WDTN-DT. Absolutely nothing yet. :(

Just checked at 9:45 and 10pm, and noticed WHIO-DT has CBS HD tonight ... But WKRC-DT doesn't! Also, WKEF-DT has L&O at 10 in HD ... and WLWT-DT is off the air at present(as has been the case much of the fall season).

Way to go CBS and NBC Dayton :)

Originally posted by Evan
Well, I checked the RCA again last night during King of Queens. All four lines are definitely there. If I sit right in front of the set and look at the lower left corner, they show up during blue/black content. They also show during some of the 4:3 commercials with 2 lines in the black bar. They aren't as obvious as on my other set, but they are visible.

I didn't get a good photograph yet, I'll try again today.

Also, still no WDTN-DT:(

I get the blue lines on channel 41 too! My STB is a DTC-100. I figure it's a problem with the station as it's the only channel I have problems with. I only notice it when there isn't much else on the screen.

Hello All!

Thanx for the link to the Dayton thread! Don't know why it didn't turn up on a search...

O.K., where can I get an STB locally? Does anyone carry the RCA DTC-100? What are your opinions of this STB?

Thanx!

Griff

p.s., if anyone on the Cinci thread mistook my comment about intruding, that was NOT my intent. please accept my apology if you were torqued by it. I find these forums an invaluable asset, and wouldn't want to alienate the members.

Thanx Again!

Griff,

Welcome to the Dayton thread!

Not sure about the RCA. Most of the hot talk lately seems to be about the Zenith HD-SAT520 or the equivalent Sony model. I've seen where some people like the newer Samsungs. The majority of the boxes available locally seem to be the Samsungs or the Hughes. I haven't read anything outstanding about the Hughes.
You may want to read of other users' experiences in the hardware forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=25

Paul

Welcome Griff!

I had a DTC-100 about a year ago. Now I have a hughes E86. Of the two, I would go with the hughes, it has a much better program guide. As far as the picture goes, they both produce a great HD picture.

I agree with Paul, check the hardware forum. The DTC-100 was 1st generation and the E86 was 2nd. I would give the 3rd generation boxes a serious look.

Good Luck!

Anybody seen a signal on 50 yet (WDTN)? Their FCC extension expires on Thursday.

I've been checking 50 every day or so. Haven't seen a thing!

I canx the Samsung today. It was the 151, and I think I'd be better off waiting and looking at some of the newer boxes and their features. One of the complaints I had was the inability to use this box as a switcher. Do any of the boxes offer this option. I only have 2 inputs,a dn they're both being used by TWC HD box and prog scan DVD.

Griff

Griff,

I have no idea if any STB for OTA DTV/HD have component inputs/switchers in them, I haven't heard of any but it does seem like it would be a nice feature, even for Cable STBs since most HD displays have a limited number of Component inputs. There may be some A/V receivers out there that offer Component inputs+switching, however, if that's another option for you.

All,

No sign of WDTN-DT here yet either. Unless they file for a 2nd CP extension with FCC soon, seems like they'll turn into a pumpkin on 12/6 ;)

WBDT-DT 18 (Dayton WB) did get their 2nd CP extension granted by FCC recently. According to the info sent with the app, the antenna and transmission line is up, and the Transmitter is on site, as it has been since August. However, for some reason, the Transmitter manufacturer(Thales) has to Install and Comission the Transmitter, which they can't do until Late Dec/Early January. I believe WBDT-DT's current expected on air Date is Mid-January. Last I spoke with them several months ago, they weren't sure when they would have WB HD. For some reason, I've been enjoying "Everwood" and "Smallville" as of late, sure would be nice to see them in HD instead of seeing the "Available in High Definition" banner in SD. My fingers are crossed though, since I'm sort of doubtful that WSTR-DT Cincy(Sinclair) will have WB HD. BTW, WSTR-DT is another station, which should have turned into a pumpkin on 12/1, along with WKOI-DT (TBN). Both WSTR and WKOI have filed for a 2nd CP extension, although the 1st one was denied by FCC. LOL.

Last I spoke to WPTD-DT 58's (ThinkTV/PBS Dayton)CE, they were planning on being on the air "on or around" May 1, 2003, with PBS HD too. Who knows, maybe we'll see them sooner than that.

Has anyone in East Dayton, or East or SE(Xenia, etc) of Dayton Pulled in WWHO-DT 46, whose tower is near Chillicothe? My understanding is that they are doing WB HD (They have both UPN and WB programming), and are running at full power, 1000KW ERP from a nice, high tower. So, those in East Dayton, or east of Dayton should have a good shot at them with a decent outdoor antenna setup. They are a little far out for me though, at 70 miles with a big hill I have to aim through.

Guess what?

WDTN-DT has filed(apparantly Yesterday) for a 2nd CP extension with FCC. Link below(PDF file) is the info attached to their extension app explaining why they need more time. Per this info, hopefully it won't be too much longer before they are able to apply for the STA mentioned. I hope it's for more than 10 watts.

http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getattachment_exh.cgi?exhibit_id=99451

Jeff,

Thanks for the info on WDTN. I'll be happy if it is only 10 watts, as long as I can receive it! Just be thankful that you can receive WCPO-DT. I'm tired of watching ABC in blurry analog.

Also, you guys on the Cincinnati thread are a bunch of teases talking about WCET's HD they were transmitting yesterday! I'm drooling in anticipation of a PBS station.

Paul

Paul210,

What channels are your currently receiving in HD.
I just setup a Zenith HDV420 OTA tuner. Haven't really been able to determine any HD broadcast in Vandalia, OH.
I have a RS Double Bow tie in the attic. Can pull in 30-1, 41-1, 41-2,51-1, 51-2, and cincy 5-1.
In the afternoon, 51-1 came in strong , and 8:00 PM Sunday, when American Dreams came on , the signal dropped to "bad".
Thanks

Jon

Jon,

Welcome to the forum!

I have Channel Master's largest uhf/vhf antenna chimney-mounted with a rotator. I can receive 51, 41, and 30 from Dayton. I can also receive 31 (maps to 12), 35 (maps to 5), 29 (maps to 19) from Cincinnati, and intermittently I can receive 10 (WCPO-which maps to 9). I have in the past, when conditions are very favorable, been able to receive 34 in Cincinnati and a couple stations in Columbus. I'm located just S. of Englewood.

If you've read any of this thread, I'm sure you've seen where we are all anxiously awaiting WDTN to bring up the rear with their digital transmitter which will be on channel 50. We've been expecting to see something from them for quite awhile. When they become active, that will give you a local ABC affiliate in addition to the NBC and CBS that you can already receive. You may have noticed that WRGT (the local Fox affiliate) is broadcasting in standard definition only on their digital station.

I'm sure you could do better if there is any possibility of getting that antenna outside. Still, I'm surprised to see that you can pull in 5-1 from Cincinnati with it mounted in the attic. That's exceptional from your location.

Paul

Thanks for the welcome, Ive been reading the forum for about a year.
I'm just starting , but I have researched a lot for the last two years. I just bought a widescreen the past month, and trying to do a little as my budget allows. I just couldn't wait any longer I had to see what HDTV I could receive. So I pickup the 420 tuner on Sunday.

I was surprised too, I tried to put the bowtie antenna it in a spare bedroom , but couldn't pickup much of any thing. So I drug it up to the attic , ran some R6 up, connected it . I just couldn't pick up WGRT (45) analog. Every other UHF analog channel in the area came in clear
When I connected the HDV420 receiver, it locked in all channels I listed.
When I ran across 35 from Cincy(5-1) , it will only scale to 4:3.
WHIO-DT comes in very well on 41-1 and 41-2.
I was puzzled why the signal on 51-1 & 51-2 degraded to poor on Sunday night?? While I could still receive 5-1 from Cincy in sd.
Have you noticed this before?

I also emailed WHIO & WDTN about their HD status, never receive a response.

Jon



I plan on putting up a modest tower, or roof mount in the spring. I believe my location is one of the higher points in Montgomery county.

Jon,

I haven't had any problems with WKEF, but I do have a monster antenna.
I think you're right about your elevation.
I emailed WDTN in the past and got a response. I sent them another one last week looking for an update but they haven't responded to that one, yet. I'll post their response here if I get one.
CBS (41-1) has the most HD programming to date. I'm sure you'll enjoy the primetime stuff this week. I think that CSI and CSI Miami are some of the best looking shows they offer, IMHO.
Enjoy!

Paul

Paul,

Yes, definitely let us know what you hear from WDTN-DT if they answer this time ... Haven't seen that they have filed for an STA with FCC as of yet, although their recently filed CP extension app seemed to indicate they would be filing for a STA soon.

Jon,

Welcome. Concerning WRGT 45 analog, they were completely off the air for much of Saturday(but the digital was on the air!), and I believe they are now running at lower power levels than normal.

Haven't noticed a problem with WKEF-DT here. I'm 12 Miles SW of their tower between Middletown and Germantown. NBC has dropped the HD ball quite a bit in the last week , neither WKEF or WLWT had "American Dreams" in HD last night -- Because of a problem at the network, not at the stations.

I've pretty much decided to get a 2nd STB here to use in a variety of ways, and I'm also pretty sure it's going to be a HDV420. Noticed the CC by Dayton mall had one hooked up, and tuned to WKEF-DT or WLWT-DT yesterday afternoon, the turk antenna on the settop wasn't doing all that great of a job at it though! I also happened to notice at BB yesterday that they actually Had an HD loop showing on their Plasmas ... In actual HD! Part of the loop was some of the HD Cincy footage from PPS that WCPO-DT was airing last week.

Jon,

Welcome to the forum!

I'm guessing WKEF-DT was degraded due to their low power level. Since they cut back their broadcast power, I get a lot of drop outs on 51.

On your antenna, I've played with a RS Double-bow-tie in the house and up in the attic. I found it was very location sensitive. I could move it around a few feet and my signals would change significantly. You might try moving it and see if WKEF-DT improves. I have a RS VU-190 mounted in the attic, pointed at Cincinnati. When I put the double-bow-tie in the attic, my signal levels were close to the UHF levels on the VU-190.

Vandalia ought to be a good location for a fixed antenna mount, you probably point the same direction for Dayton and Cincinnati stations!

Enjoy your new toy!

Jeff,

It's just amazing that we're starting to see PBS digital stations up and running but WDTN can't seem to get it together. Maybe I can catch all the ABC reruns in HD this spring.

I'm sure you've probably watched NYPD Blue in HD on WCPO. How good is the pq? Would you say it's on par with some of the better shows on CBS?

Paul

I bought the HDV420 at CC on Sunday. Just been playing with it, manual does tell much, but it's a pretty simple piece of hardware.
The sensitivity appears to meet my needs, as you can judge by my quick thrown together antenna.
I read on other forums that the close caption doesn't work, but I haven't tried that yet.
This being my first one I'm not sure yet whether it is "good" one or not.
One good thing about CC right now, they will take returns on anything, no questions, until January 30, 2003. So I thought I will try it . I believe I will be satisfied with the Zenith hardware, it's the programing , or lack there of, that seems to be frustrating everyone now.

So I will play with it tonight, and drive my wife crazy:

Paul,

NYPD Blue looks great. I would say it is similar to ER in PQ. I'm surprised you can't get a lock on WCPO-DT. They seem to be as strong as the other cincy stations. (besides the whole VHF thing!)

Jon,

I hear you on the wife! If I reach for the remote during one of the prime-time shows, my wife lets me know about it!!

Evan,

That I can't receive WCPO-DT is what's driving me crazy! I went out and bought a new CM 3671 vhf/uhf antenna, mast, rotator, mounts, coax, etc. I thought it would be a piece of cake. As I've told Jeff, they're the clearest analog station I receive--just can't get a digital lock except on the rare evening of 'tropo'. All the other digitals in Cincy come in just fine. I gave up short of putting up a tower. I just couldn't justify that kind of money for one channel, especially with WDTN supposedly on the horizon.

Paul

Originally posted by Evan
I'm guessing WKEF-DT was degraded due to their low power level. Since they cut back their broadcast power, I get a lot of drop outs on 51.



Evan, WKEF-DT was running at 1/4 power only for a few weeks a few months back. Their Chief Engineer informed me in October that they had increased to "full power" levels. Has this situation changed? I haven't noticed a difference in their signal here since then, although I couldn't really tell much of a difference when they were at 1/4 power.

WKEF-DT Full power allocation is 138KW ERP, but, according to the STA they are operating with, they are running 95 KW ERP --- Except when they were running at 1/4 power, at which time they were running approx. 20KW ERP. Their antenna is non-directional, so it should have a circular radiation pattern.

From what I understand, Per FCC rules, they must operate with the power levels/etc. their station is authorized for, and would need to get a new permit(STA in this case) to operate their facilities at different power output, or with a different antenna/etc for any extended period of time. Exceptions occur because of RF exposure Regs when workers are on or near their tower, and when technical problems occur.

Since WKEF-DT operates on fairly high frequency on the UHF TV band however, "generally speaking" it takes more power than a lower frequency would, especially so for enough of the signal to "reach" an indoor receiving antenna. Anyhow, I've heard from Cincinnati area viewers who receive them fine with a medium sized Yagi mounted outdoors.

Joe,

In case you haven't seen it, Here's an excellent review of the HDV420:

http://www.projectorexpert.com/Pages/zenith.html

This review(and its DTV receiver/multipath results), the price, comments on AVSHardware area and the fact it has a RGB output is what has led me to this STB. I Really have no need for the EPG stuff/etc, I'll mostly be using this with a PC monitor and a "old fashioned" analog TV/VCR. I suppose it is also in the back of my mind that if the DM1(Basically a DTC-100) module ever fails in our F38310, it also will work a backup OTA ATSC tuner for the HT!

Enjoy the HD,

Oops! Sorry about all the quick posts.

Paul,

I've really never paid enough attention to NYPD Blue, but from the little I've seen of it, it looks good. Pretty much everything looks really good on WCPO-DT for that matter, I think perhaps "The Practice" has the softest look to it. Some of the HD movies I've seen on WCPO-DT have been among the best HD PQ I've seen. Superbowl should look very good (presumably on WDTN too!)

WCPO-DT upconverts everything to 1080i BTW(even 720p from ABC), and probably does a much better job of it than our STB's could.

Jeff,

I didn't know that WKEF-DT bumped the power back up. I really haven't been checking the Dayton stations much, except looking for 50! Since I added a preamp and distribution amp to my setup, it's more directionally sensitive (or maybe distance sensitive.) I get the 4 major networks from Cincy at full strength now, but WHIO-DT and WKEF-DT are marginal. I think the gain from my preamp/amp might be overdriving dayton, the strong stations are bad, but I get WRGT-DT perfectly. I guess it's time to experiment again!!

Paul,

That's a bummer. Hopefully WDTN-DT will be up before the superbowl. Did the antenna help you get anything else?

Evan, Yeah, as close as you are to the Dayton towers, your preamp could be overloading, which causes noise(Intermodulation) from strong stations to be scattered all over other channels. If your antenna is aimed away from the close by stations however, hopefully it will reject enough of the signal off the side and back to alleviate any intermod problems from the Dayton station -- It's the antenna that is directionally sensitive, not the preamp --- In addition to the good thing it does in helping you out with the Cincy stations, the preamp also adds noise, and, in addition might make it more difficult for your receiver to correct for multipath, especially so if the antenna you are using is not pointed towards the Dayton Towers -- Which of course it can't be from Centerville if It's aimed towards Cincy!

If you're using both a mast mount amp and a distribution amp, from what I've experienced, what the distribution amp will end up mostly doing is adding more noise than anything else -- Sounds like it's working for you for Cincy DT's though. Also, keep in mind, a preamp doesn't really increase the signal level coming in from the desired station like getting the antenna outdoors would.

Using a seperate, low gain antenna for Dayton reception would most likely be a good option for you, with A/B switch if necessary, and you don't have 2 antenna inputs on your STB ---- A simple "Bowtie" or UHF loop antenna might work well from Indoors for the Dayton DT's, although a directional antenna(you should need a relatively small one for Dayton from your distance), aimed toward the towers, and mounted outdoors is always the best idea.

Also, I'm sure your Cincy reception would improve greatly if you could get the antenna out of the attic. If your current antenna(VU190 I believe) isn't aimed towards Dayton when you're trying to get the Dayton stations, dropouts due to multipath and rejection of a good amount of the signal strength off the side/back of the antenna should be expected. I wouldn't be surprised if you could pick up All the Cincy area stations with good results, even WCET-DT(At low power currently) and WCVN-DT(In N. KY with a antenna lower than the others) if the antenna were mounted in a reasonably high spot outdoors.

Hope this helps+Good luck,

I received this email reply today . Dec. 17, 2002. From WDTN
I emailed :
.Are you currently transmitting ABC's HDTV feeds to the TV2 viewing area?
If not when are you planning on doing so?

Reply:
Not at this time. Possibly in a week..

I know it was a rather wordy reply, but this is what they sent.

Well hopefully WDTN may be up with something before New Years.

Jon

Originally posted by Evan

Paul,

That's a bummer. Hopefully WDTN-DT will be up before the superbowl. Did the antenna help you get anything else?

Evan,

Not really. I've got higher relative signal strength readings from everyone, but I can't receive anything now that I couldn't before with my old junk antenna. Costly experiment, not to mention a day tramping around on the roof. I tried two different amps and they just killed everything except the locals. Must have amplified the noise and multipath. I would love to try a different STB to see if that helps, but that's also a pricey proposition.

Paul

Jeff,

I pulled the distribution amp last night and saw a signal strength increase on WCET-DT and WSTR-DT. ;^) It didn't help WHIO-DT and WKEF was of the air? I agree the antenna is the directionally sensitive piece, but without the PREamp I pull Dayton stations 120 degrees away, at full strength. Go figure!

I'll try replacing the distribution amp with a splitter when I get the time. I installed the distribution amp to replace splitters before I got the preamp. The best splitters I tried caused too much signal loss. I need to retry splitter with the preamp.
I hear you on the outside antenna, but given the stations will continue to increase power, and since I get a full strenght signal on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX with an attic mount, it seems like too much work.

I do have an A/B switch and a RS double bowtie connected to my E86. Its pointed at Dayton. I only use it when one of the Cincinnati stations go off of the air.

Paul,
It sounds like we have been down the same road with amps! I found that downstream splitters were the biggest culprit with my earlier setup.

On testing STBs, I've got two right now, the RCA-F38310 and Hughes-E86. I've been comparing them recently and they are very close. I've been paying particular attention to WCET-DT. When I can lock the station on one STB, I get it on both. When one STB has drop-outs, they both do.

Hopefully I can compare them on WDTN-DT within a week! Picture this, we might get that "kid at Christmas" feeling on Christmas!! Cool....

Originally posted by jparin
I received this email reply today . Dec. 17, 2002. From WDTN
I emailed :
.Are you currently transmitting ABC's HDTV feeds to the TV2 viewing area?
If not when are you planning on doing so?

Reply:
Not at this time. Possibly in a week..

I know it was a rather wordy reply, but this is what they sent.

Well hopefully WDTN may be up with something before New Years.

Jon

LOL. As Evan mentioned, I'm hoping for that "kid at Christmas" feeling ... probably a longshot though. Anyhow, in the reasons WDTN gave to FCC for needing to file a second CP extension(I provided a link to it somewhere on last page), They said they would soon be filing for an STA with FCC ... I've yet to see one pop up in FCC database ... Usually, it takes a week or two after they pop up there before they are granted.

It "looks like" the facilities are ready to go, and that they just need to write up(and have reviewed by their lawyers/etc) their STA request. So, it would seem like it should be soon ...

However, I did notice that as of Yesterday, FCC granted WDTN's 2nd CP extension, filed on 12/5. Sooo, if nothing else I guess they'll be up by 6/16/2003 for sure. They can't get a 3rd extension, 2 are all that are allowed.

Evan,

I split the feedline 4 ways, and the mast mount preamp I use does a great job in helping to "combat" the loss from the splitters. If it weren't for the TV Dx'ing I do, WCVN/WCVN-DT, WCET-DT presently and the Low power Cincy analogs though, I wouldn't need the preamp as the other Cincy signals are very strong.

Don't know what time you were checking WKEF-DT last night, but I didn't see them off the air. Leno was in HD, which I stayed up to check since it seems NBC has dropped the HD ball quite a bit in the last week.

BTW, FWIW, I had No difficultly installing my outdoor TV antennas, the main one with rotor has been there since I put it up 10 years ago(If I remember correctly, it took about an hour or so). Of course, it helps that the tower, feedline/preamp and rotor cable was already there. Anyhow, It's been "hands off" since then. It just sits up there doing its thing, pulling in all the stations w/o dropouts or problems. The other one (A CM3010) is side mounted to the tower and aimed towards Dayton, I put it up last year and have no problems with it either.

Originally posted by Nitewatchman
I did notice that as of Yesterday, FCC granted WDTN's 2nd CP extension, filed on 12/5. Sooo, if nothing else I guess they'll be up by 6/16/2003 for sure. They can't get a 3rd extension, 2 are all that are allowed.


Oh Geez...I guess I'll just go start constructing my 40' tower right now.

Paul,

LOL! If past experience with station on-air dates is any indication, 6/16/2003 or later sounds about right ...However, I don't want to "jinx it" so I probably shouldn't say anything, but somehow I think in this case, given WDTN-DT's "excuse" for not being up by 12/5 that we'll see them "fairly" soon.

For WCPO-DT, I think your best bet would be if you could find a "sweet spot" for your antenna, although I realize that's a little hard to do if it is mounted on the Chimney ... Or, as another option, ... you could try adding a Antenna specifically "cut" for Channel 10 to your existing mast(this could be combined with your existing antenna onto the same feedline with a CM "jointenna" or perhaps a simple combiner(splitter used backwards), or a mast side mounted to your house ... Among other Hi-quality OTA antenna and preamp related items, Blonder-Tongue makes excellent single channel cut antennas, although they are often a bit expensive($250-300 for Channel 10 for example).

You can most likely get a 30' or so tower for that kind of dough though, mabye even for free if you have a neighbor who wants his old one taken down. The more expensive towers in the $$$$.$$ are made of aluminum, and are crank-up towers/etc. I don't know where you get them at anymore, but the Steel towers are much cheaper. Only drawback is you need to maintain them and do rust removal/paint them every 10 years or so. Also, the ones I have are 20-30+ years old, and are made of quite heavy guage galvanized steel, some of the newer ones may be of lighter guage steel, and may quickly rust to nothing if they aren't properly maintained.

Anyhow, Blonder Tongue Antenna page at Starkelectronics is here:

http://www.starkelectronic.com/btp1.htm

Blonder-Tongue Site is here:

http://www.blondertongue.com/

Article in Dayton Business Journal Today concerning Rex "Gearing up" for HDTV. It mentions there are only 2 Stations in Dayton putting out a digital signal(WHIO+WKEF) and leaves out WRGT-DT. LOL.

Also, it says little about STB's/DTV receivers. Here's the article:

http://dayton.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/2002/12/16/story3.html

BTW, unless it's my Eyes(?), I've noticed that WRGT-DT's SD PQ has improved considerably recently(noticed it sunday), It's best noticed when Fox programming is being broadcast --- Furthermore, I also noticed while WRGT-DT has been up as normal, WRGT 45 analog was off the air again a good portion of Yesterday evening/night -- In fact, I just checked and they are still off the air! Maybe they are completing the analog shut off early! <just kidding!>

Article in the Dayton Daily News, Friday Dec 20, 2002.
Don Loose , who writes a weekly A/V technology article for the paper , spoke with WDTN, Channel 50, engineer , Jim Atkinson. Mr Atkinson states , WDTN-DT50 , plans to be on the air by Christmas.
Now is all fairness he didn't say which Christmas.
However Don Loose is a very good writer, he keeps up-to-date on all audio and visual technology. I have found his past articles informative, and sometimes way above my techinical understanding of a/v physics.
Maybe it will come to pass .

Jon

Jon,

Finger's crossed for this Christmas! If Paul's been Good, perhaps Santa will bring ABC HD to Dayton ;-)

Also If you haven't seen it, Several of Don Loose's articles on HT A/V are posted here, Including articles on HD, and the OTA "situation" in Dayton.

http://www.audio-etc.net/articles.htm

Originally posted by Nitewatchman
Finger's crossed for this Christmas! If Paul's been Good, perhaps Santa will bring ABC HD to Dayton ;-)


I guess I haven't been good. :rolleyes:

Paul,

How's that tower coming? :D

At our neighborhood Christmas party last week, a neighbor asked me about HDTV (he noticed my 3-LNB sat dish.) He said that someone told him WDTN-DT was on the air as of the previous weekend. When we got home I double checked! -Bummer.....

Evan,

Bummer is right! Looks like I may be finding someplace else to watch the Superbowl other than my place. So you say you live in Centerville? :D

Paul

The Audio Etc web site has been moved to a different URL (as well as the Don Loose articles). The URL is now http://www.audioetc.tv/articles.htm.

I just hit and it seems to be down right now.

Electronica,

Thanks for the URL update ... BTW, It works if you take off the period at the end ;)

http://www.audioetc.tv/articles.htm

A couple of questions:

1) I have a DST-3000 STB. It takes 4 full seconds for 7-1 and 45-1 and only 2 seconds for 22-1 to appear on my screen after being selected. I see the same delays if I punch in their actual UHF channel numbers (41-1, 30-1, and 51-1). Anybody else see these type of delays and differences between the channels?

2) Anybody have a URL for the most recent Don Loose article in the DDN indicating that WDTN-DT would be up and running "by Christmas"? The Audio Etc. site hasn't been updated since his original set of articles a year ago.

Gindie,

1.)Takes less than 2 seconds here for all 3 to appear on a Zenith HDV420 and a DTC100(Actually, the DM1 module internal to a F38310 Integrated HDTV). I have channel remapping turned off on the DTC100, the Zenith doesn't remap any of the Dayton channels, although it remaps all the Cincy ones, currently, except for WCET-DT 34.

2.) DDN doesn't seem have any of the Don Loose articles on their website, including the latest one. They do have an online database which contains text from everything that's been printed in DDN (and more) going back to 1990, but there are fees involved to view the content. Searching the Library is free though. I tried it, as well as the search function on their main page with no luck.

http://library.activedayton.com/

Hello everyone,

I've been lurking for about a month now and figured it was time to jump in and say hi. I thought some of you may be interested in what DT reception is like up here in Urbana.

I'm using a 16 foot ChannelMaster's VHF/UHF chimney mounted w/rotor. I can currently receive 6 OTA digital broadcasts at 80+% and 3 others intermittently. Here are the details:

Dayton
WHIO-DT (41), WKEF-DT (51), WRGT-DT (30)
20-30 degree arc centered on 235

Columbus
WCMH-DT (14), WBNS-DT (21)
20-25 degree arc centered on 97

Chillicothe
WWHO-DT (46) (UPN)
very narrow arc, 137

I can also receive WLIO-DT (20) (NBC) out of lima pretty well on 325 degrees if the weather is good. Like most of the posters here, I've had little luck pulling in an ABC DT broadcast. Occasionally I get snippets of WSYX-DT (13) out of Columbus, as well its sister staion WTTE-DT (36) (FOX). They're both still broadcasting low power, so until they boost the signal or WDTN goes live I'll be out of luck, as CIncy is way too far.

The latest word is that I'll (hopefully) be able to receive another 3 stations sometime this month ... WBDT-DT (18) (WB) Springfield is scheduled to go live on the 15th, and two PBS stations, WPTD-DT (58), Dayton and WOSU-DT (38), Columbus are supposed to begin broadcasting this week. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

Ingo

Welcome, Ingo!

Thanks for the update. I didn't realize that WPTD-DT was that close to going live. That's really going to be sad if they beat WDTN-DT.

Paul

Yes, indeed, welcome to AVSforum Ingo. I was beginning to wonder if there was anyone up that way with a DTV receiver! Sounds like your antenna setup is working well, and that you are in an excellent spot for reception of the Dayton/Columbus and Lima stations. I believe the stations you mention are all between 38-50 miles or so from "center" of Urbana. WWHO should be farthest, at just over 49 "crow fly" miles.

You might want to drop WLIO's Chief Operator (Fred Vobbe) a note, along with a signal report, including info on your location, antenna setup/Receiver etc. Their digital station is on Channel 8 however, not Channel 20. FCC had originally allocated channel 20 for WLIO-DT, but, WLIO was able to get this changed to VHF 8, probably to have a shot at better coverage and at lower power.

Center of Urbana looks to be 48 miles "crow fly" miles from their tower.
WLIO-DT is currently operating under a Low Power STA from FCC, with a non-directional antenna 160ft above ground. They are currently putting out a whopping 430 watts ERP(effective radiated power) or so. Anyhow, you'll find contact info near bottom of the page here:

http://www.wlio.com/dtv/index.asp

Concerning WBDT-DT, I haven't spoken with anyone there in quite a while, but as per info they have sent FCC, as long as the folks from Thales aren't delayed further in commissioning their transmitter, hopefully we'll see them by Jan 15, possibly sooner. You just never know though, their 2nd CP extension doesn't run out until May or June 2003.

Unfortunetly, It often seems to be the case that these stations will wait as long as they possibly can before switching the DTV transmitters on, most likely to save on power bills, and because they often don't seem to think many(if any) of us are out here watching. I was told back last summer that they might not have WB HD to start off with, but that we should keep our fingers crossed.

Also, when WBDT analog used to be WDPX, and WTJC before that, their tower was on the West Side of Springfield, just 12 Miles or so from Urbana. However, a couple of years ago, they moved the transmitter/tower site to the location of the rest of the Dayton Towers(Except for WWRD-LP 55 "America's store", which is currently near Bellbrook/Centerville), all of which are very close together on the "hill" in West Dayton, Just South of U.S. 35, and between RT 4 and I-75. WBDT-DT will also be transmitting from this location in Dayton, not from Springfield.

Concerning WPTD-DT, last I heard from their Chief Engineer back in August, they were planning on being up "on or around" May 1, 2003. However, I heard much the same from WCET-DT Cincy(PBS) at that time, and they came on the air in Early December. So, I was wondering, where you had heard the info on WPTD-DT? I did see a sort of "promo" the other night on their analog sister station, WPTO 14 in Oxford Ohio, involving Lexis-Nexis and their digital stations, If I didn't know better, from the promo I would have thought the digital stations were already on the air!

BTW, FWIW, the on air dates from sources such as TitanTV/etc. are more often wrong than not. WDTN-DT's on air date at one time was July 15,2002, for example. While they did have a 1/1/03 on air date listed for WPTD, it has now changed to "under review". Last I'd heard from sources in Columbus, WOSU-DT also was planning on a 5/2003 "or so" on air date.

Don't mean to "dash" anyone's hopes concerning on-air dates/etc., but so far, it seems better to be "cautious" about our enthusiasm until the stations are actually on the air and providing good service(i.e. HD especially).

Of course, since many of these stations don't seem to think hardly anyone is watching their digital stations, by all means, contact them with signal reports/etc. and let them know that your family is, or will be watching! Some sort of contact info for the stations can usually be found at the station's websites or in the phone book -- URL's for websites for stations are shown in the listings here:

http://100kwatts.tmi.net/listings.html

A little bit of hopefully good news ...

An application for WDTN-DT to operate with an STA(Special Temporary Authority) has just appeared on FCC site, as of today (1/6/2003).

Tech details(power/antenna height) on the STA have yet to pop up on the FCC TV query site, I'll post the info as soon as it does.

In any event, for DTV STA's It usually takes less than 10 days-2 weeks or so for FCC to grant an STA, if they're aren't any "problems" with the application. What happens after the STA is granted is hard to say. I've seen it be months between the time a STA is granted and the station goes on the air, but generally, stations do go on the air soon after the STA is granted. Example, within hours of approval by FCC of WCET-DT Cincy's STA, they were on the air. WKOI-DT 39(TBN), Richmond, IN(Tower between Trenton and Oxford, Ohio) had their STA granted on 10/10/02 and they are still not on the air ... WSTR-DT also had their STA granted in October 2002, and weren't on the air until mid-December. However, In the cases of the latter 2 stations mentioned, they both asked for a 2nd CP extension although FCC DENIED their 1st extensions -- In WKOI-DT's case, their transmitter manufacturer couldn't install the equipment necessary to meet their expected 12/1/02 on air date.

If I were to take a wild guess, and glimpse into a crystal ball, I'd guess WDTN-DT may be on the air sometime "relatively" soon ... Say, within a month or so.

Anyhow, here is the link to page with info on WDTN-DT's apps to FCC:

http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/app_list.pl?Facility_id=65690

Thanks for the info, Jeff. I suppose it would be too much to hope for them to be on the air with HD by January 26th. Too bad it's ABC that's got the Superbowl.

Paul

Great news Jeff. I guess we would have to call that progress, since they need the STA.

I'm bummed about the superbowl! I'm out of town that weekend!! It will be interesting to see if my wife watches in HD or SD while I'm gone....

.....I'm betting SD.....

Just noticed something I neglected to look at earlier ... The application file number seems to indicate WDTN-DT filed for the STA on 12/17/2002! (All the newer apps use the date of filing for the file #).

In FCC's most recent rule modifications for DTV STA's during the transistion this is what it says about STA filings+the "timing" involved:

"35. Once the Commission has granted a DTV STA request, the licensee or permittee will be
authorized to commence digital service as specified in the STA. The Commission will make every effort
to act on DTV STA requests within 10 days, absent oppositions or unusual circumstances."

The enitre text of the FCC MO&O containing this, among many other interesting items can be found here:

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Orders/2001/fcc01330.txt

Anyhow, lets hope there aren't any "oppositions" or "unusual circumstances" that delay the procedure, and that we'll see the STA granted very soon ...

(Jinx Alert ahead!)

Hopefully, with some luck, we'll be seeing a test pattern or programming on WDTN-DT any day now ... Given the DDN article shortly before Christmas, I'm beginning to think that maybe they were planning on being up by Christmas, but now they are waiting on the FCC --

Tech info from FCC website on the STA WDTN-DT filed for follows. Nice to see a fairly high power STA! Looks like their antenna is 158ft higher than what their full power CP allows for, at 1952FT Above sea level(ASL), 1060FT above average terrain. This should allow for a Max Coverage area of about 62 miles or so, although their High UHF frequency(which requires more power to cover the same area as low UHF, and VHF especially) would probably make it a little more difficult to pull in from fringe or areas with signal blockage issues from terrain/etc. Probably "roughly" the same coverage area as the other Dayton stations. WKEF-DT 51 especially, which is currently running 95KW ERP, with a non-directional antenna at 2020FT ASL.

WDTN OH DAYTON USA (Digital)

Licensee: WDTN BROADCASTING, LLC
Service Designation: DS Special Temporary Authority (STA) (digital)

Channel 50 Special Tem
File No.: BDSTA -20021217ACD Facility ID No: 65690
CDBS Application ID No.: 622018


39 ° 43' 7.000" Latitude Zone:
84 ° 15' 22.00" Longitude (NAD27) Frequency Offset: None
Effective Radiated Power (ERP): 125. kW ERP
Ant. Height Above Average Terrain (HAAT): 323.0 meters HAAT
Ant. Radiation Center Above Mean Sea Level: 589.0 meters RCAMSL
Ant. Radiation Center Above Ground Level: meters RCAGL

Not directional
Not in a Border Zone
.


39 ° 43' 7.000" Latitude Zone:
84 ° 15' 22.00" Longitude (NAD27) Frequency Offset: None

Per a post from Jim in Oxford on The Cincy Thread, WKOI-DT 39 (TBN) Is on the air -- Anyone in Dayton, Preble co, Or Richmond, Indiana pulling them in? Their Tower is between Trenton and Oxford, Ohio, and their Directional antenna is optimized towards their Community of license, Richmond, Indiana --- Some areas of Dayton should have a better shot of them than I do, might be difficult from South Dayton however.

My understanding is, they were waiting on personel from their transmitter manufacturer (Thales) to complete the buildout of their DTV station ... My understanding also is that WBDT-DT Dayton is also waiting on Thales to finish the installation, and commission the Transmitter ... In other words, Hopefully, we'll also see WBDT-DT 18 Dayton Soon!

Attached is a plot of their antenna's Radiation pattern, and the elevation plot from their tower to mine:

Originally posted by Nitewatchman
Per a post from Jim in Oxford on The Cincy Thread, WKOI-DT 39 (TBN) Is on the air -- Anyone in Dayton, Preble co, Or Richmond, Indiana pulling them in?

Jeff,

They're just a blip on the signal strength meter up here. No lock.

Okay, I'm showing my ignorance here; what is TBN?

Paul

Paul,

TBN=Trinity Broadcasting Network (Religious). Their analog is on Channel 43, Tower would be roughly SW of your location.

Of the 11 Dayton/Cincy area DTV stations on the air so far, WKOI-DT is the only one I can't get ... which is no problemo, just hope I can get the rest which aren't on the air yet.
---------------------------------------------

Concerning WDTN-DT, I heard from a fellow(an AVSforum member) who toured WISH-TV/LIN facilities in Indy earlier this week .... What does this have to do with WDTN? Well, LIN, who now owns WDTN will eventually be controlling WDTN/WDTN-DT (The switching for HD/ETC) From their facility in Indy! I saw some nice photos of the Control room which is controlling a few LIN stations currently, with more stations to be added in the future, it really looks like a first class operation.

Graciously, he asked them about WDTN-DT for us, as well as letting them know we are waiting for them in Dayton. Word from there is, they *think* WDTN-DT should be on the air by Superbowl time. Also, evidently, a LIN engineer was/is in Dayton this week working on WDTN-DT facilities.

Still probably best to cross our fingers and take a "wait and see what happens" attitude, but it's nice to get some info from another source. Especially since, looking back through this thread, the info we've gotten so far concerning WDTN-DT has been somewhat akin to listening to the Boy who cried Wolf ....

---------------------------------

Noticed last night that WKEF-DT missed a switch to HD during ER after a commercial break, and I looked a couple of times, and NO HD for Leno either. NBC HD was fine via WLWT-DT Cincy.

Just an idea, but, it might be advantageous to pester them(in a nice friendly manner) a little if anyone gets the chance when you notice they miss the switch to HD. I've done it several times, so they are probably sick of hearing from me ... You might want to call, or send a note via their website/etc.

Don't you have them on speed-dial? :)

Thanks for the update!

If anyone wants to check it out, Pics and info on WISH/LIN Indy facilities (Inlcuding of a control console/Displays similar to the one that will be used to control and monitor WDTN) are available here:

http://www.dxfm.com/WISH-TV/WISH-TV.htm

I'd like to have that stuff in the first pic in my basement!

Also, Update: I'm able to pull in WKOI-DT 39 this afternoon, now that the wind has died down. Just barely into the "normal" range on the HDV420's meter, but, it's solid and I'm getting no dropouts.

I am new to the HDTV thing so this may be the silly question but here goes. I am receiving the following locals from here in Springfield:

4.1 - WCMH - NBC - Columbus
30.1 - WRGT - FOX - Dayton
30.2 - WRGT - FOX - Dayton
41.1 - WHIO - CBS - Dayton
41.2 - WHIO - CBS - Dayton
51.1 - WKEF - NBC - Dayton
51.2 - WKEF - NBC - Dayton
98.-- - No idea what this is. I always get a searching for signal.

My main goal here right now is getting ABC from either Columbus or Cinci. Obviously for the superbowl. I have a Sony HD100 receiver and an antenna on a tower that is probably 15 years old or more. The antenna is run with RG59 which I am going to rewire with RG6 soon. I believe there is a channel master amp on it as well but I am not sure. It is mounted in a hard to reach place. I have 2 questions. Should I receive any more stations and where can I point my antenna to receive ABC?

Forgot a 3rd question: It seems like station x.1 has the widescreen format while station x.2 fills the screen. This is on a standard 4x3 TV. What is the difference between the channels? What will I see between these channels once my 730HD arrives Tuesday?

Ragnus,

Center of Springfield(at SR 72 & US 40) is 66-68 Miles from the "main" Cincinnati Towers(Would be to the SSW of Springfield), including Cincy ABC -- So, you're most likely just a bit out of reach for them under normal receiving conditions. Perhaps of a bit further added difficulty, ABC Cincy, WCPO-DT 10 (may remap to 9-x) is on the same channel as analog WBNS 10 Columbus, which would probably add quite a bit of noise off the side of your antenna from your distance.

Columbus digital stations currently on the air on the Other hand, I believe would be about 41-42 Miles East and well within range. I believe WOSU(No digital on air yet) and perhaps some other station(s) has a tower North of Columbus, which would be roughly 50 Miles ENE of center of Springfield. I would think you should also be getting WBNS-DT 21 (May remap to 10-x) CBS Columbus, as well as WWHO-DT 46 (may remap to 53-x) UPN/WB Columbus/Chillocothe, which would also be 44 Miles from center of Springfield, but to the SE. The other 2 Columbus stations currently on the air however, WSYX-DT 13(may remap to 6-x) (ABC) and WTTE-DT 36 (Fox_ (May remap to 28-x) are, I believe currently running at Low power levels and may be difficult to pull in. Additionally, I don't have the latest info(you might want to check the Columbus thread), and I could be wrong, but I don't think WSYX-DT is equipped for HD from ABC as of yet. Also, FYI, WCMH-DT broadcasts on channel 14, they send data out to remap to 4.1 so they are next to their analog channel. Some stations do this remapping, some don't. None of The Dayton stations, currently, remap. I have no idea where the 98 is coming from, perhaps you're getting remapping info from one of the Columbus area stations that for some reason, on your receiver is remapping to 98.

Looks like you're getting all the Dayton stations which are currently on the air. Dayton towers are 27-28 Miles SW of center of Springfield. Hopefully, WDTN-DT 50(May remap to 2-x) will be on the air soon with ABC HD, that would probably be your best bet at this time.

On the x.1 and x.2, these are multiple subchannels, used by the stations to multicast either different programming, or at different resolutions/etc. In the case of the Dayton stations currently:

WRGT-DT 30.1 - Simulcast of WRGT 45 analog programming, they do 480i SD 4x3 only.
WRGT-DT 30.2 - All I've ever gotten is a blank screen, are you getting programming there?
WHIO-DT 41.1 - CBS HD (16x9 1080i) when available, otherwise, it's WHIO's "standard" 4x3 SD programming upconverted to 1080i (with black bars on the sides to "fill out" the 1080i 16x9 ATSC format)
WHIO-DT 41.2 - Simulcast of WHIO's standard programming, in 480i SD 4x3. Sometimes this one is there, sometimes it isn't.
WKEF-DT 51.1 - NBC HD (16x9 1080i) when available, otherwise it's WKEF's "standard" 4x3 SD programming upconverted to 1080i ((with black bars on the sides to "fill out" the 1080i 16x9 ATSC format)
WKEF-DT 51.2 - Simulcast of WKEF's standard programming, in 480i SD 4x3.

Hope this helps, and good luck. Fingers crossed here that WDTN-DT will be on the air soon with ABC HD for those who can't get WCPO-DT Cincy!

I watched the Jets/Raiders game yesteday on CBS-41 out of Dayton. I noticed a lot of shots that would look really great and clear, but as soon as there was a lot of fast action on the screen sometimes the picture would become really pixilated (blocky) and then return to normal. Is this a problem that occurs with the cameras, the local station, or my equipment? My STB is a DTC-100. I also notice this pixilation sometimes on the CBS "It's All Here" promos. Unfortunatly I've also seen this happen while watching HDNet.

Could the DTC-100 be at fault?

Originally posted by jafo
I watched the Jets/Raiders game yesteday on CBS-41 out of Dayton. I noticed a lot of shots that would look really great and clear, but as soon as there was a lot of fast action on the screen sometimes the picture would become really pixilated (blocky) and then return to normal. Is this a problem that occurs with the cameras, the local station, or my equipment? My STB is a DTC-100. I also notice this pixilation sometimes on the CBS "It's All Here" promos. Unfortunatly I've also seen this happen while watching HDNet.

Could the DTC-100 be at fault?

No. What you are seeing are compression artifacts, and For the most part, I think it's the station who is to "blame", usually due to the fact that they aren't allocating the full amount of bandwidth possible (19.39Mb/s) to HD. My guess is, WHIO-DT is probably allocating around 14/15Mb/s to 41-1.

We've been discussing this issue here this morning:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=1741098#post1741098

Greetings

I live in Washington Twp, a couple miles due West of downtown Centerville, off of Miamisburg-Centerville Rd (AKA 725, AKA Franklin St).

I am the proud owner of a 5 day old Mitsubishi WS-55511 HDTV with built-in tuner. My wife and I love the HD shows! WOW! The old stuff is marginally acceptable, and very acceptable, given the HD stuff!

I have a RS VU-90XR (the relatively small one) in my attic, pointed towards the "Dayton Complex" of antennas (about 330 degrees for me). I can get the usual channels 30,41,51 . I am waiting (and daily looking) for 18, 50 and 58 !! (especially 50!) For the Super Bowl, I guess I will have to swing my rig around and point to Cincy.

Has anyone told WHIO about those blue lines? I've seen them since day one. Have other cities reported these?

I've enjoyed spending the last hour or so reading past posts about whats happening in Dayton HD, I'm glad I now have others to communicate with!

take care,

Buckeye1010

Buckeye,

Welcome to AVS and the "Dayton waiting for 50, 18 and 58" club!

Welcome Buckeye!

I called WHIO on the blue lines a few months back. I think they thought I was a nut job!

I'm guessing they monitor their HD programming on a small screen. I have a 38" RCA that hardly shows the blue lines, but on my 64" pioneer you can't miss them!

I live about 8 miles SE of you. As far as waiting goes, I get all of the Cincinnati stations , but my antenna is pointed at Cincinnati. The Dayton stations are close enough, I still receive them without pointing the antenna at them. (I do get occasional drop outs though.)

Glad to hear the wife likes it! That's half of the battle out of the way!

Good luck...

An answer to my e-mail to Fred Stone, Chief Engineer of WPTD (PBS, Analog 16, Digital 58) inquiring about DTV (and HDTV):



ThinkTV will inaugurate its digital television service in Dayton on May 1st.
Although WPTD will transmit on Channel 58, digital television receivers will display it at Channel 16 (16-1) along with our current analog signal (16-0). During multichannel operations, the additional "standard definition" channels will be found on 16-2, 16-3 and 16-4. ThinkTV16 will be fully operational with multichannels in the Fall--probably around September 1.

Thank you for your query and thank you for watching ThinkTV.

Fred

Evan - I think I will have to swing things around for the Super Bowl, and as you say, I might have enough power in the back lobe, to keep it in place!

As far as the wife goes - she's been begging for HDTV for a while now. I kept telling her all the usual reasons to hold off. On January 1, 2003, Morris had a 24 month no-interest sale. Thats all we needed to hear! The time has come! I'm training her well - she knows about avoiding those black bars!

Lets hope WDTN gets their act together!

-Buckeye1010

According to FCC site, WDTN-DT's STA was recently granted on 1/14/2003.

The following quote is what WDTN told FCC in the exhibit attached to their 2nd CP extension app from December :

"WDTN requests a brief extension of time to complete construction and file a license application for WDTN-DT. The DTV station is constructed and ready to begin operation as soon as WDTN's STA is issued".

The entire exhibit explaining why they needed add'l time is here (requires PDF)

http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getattachment_exh.cgi?exhibit_id=99451

WDTN-DT's 2nd CP Extension was Granted By FCC, it expires on 6/16/2003. It SHOULD be a moot point however, since they have filed for an STA, and specifically told FCC that they would using the STA, basically ASAP.

Sooo, granted, it doesn't specifically say "we'll start transmitting as soon as we get the STA", but, for all intents and purposes, it certianly seems like that is what they are saying, and it should be the case.

-------------------------------------

In the exhibit attached with WBDT-DT's 2nd CP extension app, WBDT-DT also attached a letter from Thales, their transmitter manufacturer. This is a portion of what it says, the letter from Thales says basically the same thing:

"Thales has informed WBDT-DT that they do expect to have the installation and commissioning of the transmitter completed by January 15, 2003" ....

Full exhibit #1, including the letter from thales on pg. 2 are here(requires PDF):

http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getattachment_exh.cgi?exhibit_id=86370

Exhibit 2, with info that indicates that antenna and feedline are installed, Transmitter is on site, installation of the Transmitter and other equipment were to have began in Early October/etc:

http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getattachment_exh.cgi?exhibit_id=86371

WBDT-DT's 2nd CP extension was Granted by FCC, it expires on 5/26/2003. However, it seems to me they should be on the air as soon as the transmitter is commissioned. I suppose the Key word here per the info mentioned above in WBDT's case is "Expect", which I suppose could also mean in reality, since they have until 5/26/2003, we may not see them until 5/27/2003.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

If we don't see these stations soon, I'll send them a email or letter and ask them about the above and HD.

Oops!

WDTN-DT is on the air! Just saw them switch on the transmitter at 2:20PM!

Update: Getting a strong signal here(13 Miles SW of their tower) from WDTN-DT.

WDTN-DT 50 is remapping to 2-1 on a HDV420, and currently running a single subchannel. Currently appears to be the "standard" 4x3 programming being upconverted to either 720p or 1080i with black bars on the sides.

Nice catch Jeff!

Congrats!!!

Evan,

It actually sort of startled me, I was sitting here working, thinking I had turned off the DTV receiver, I had the video monitor off, but, I have one of the Audio outs from the reciever going through a small mixing board(etc, etc, etc, blah blah blah), and I jumped a couple of inches out of my chair when the audio suddenly came up at 2:20pm!

More surprising was that the thing was actually tuned to Channel 50 at the time!

Oh yeah, I emailed them a signal report, and would encourage other's here to do the same ...Don't really know if this is the best place to send it, but I Sent mine to:

wdtn@wdtn.com

WooHoo!

I just received the following email from Mike Deweese at WDTN:

Just a quick note to inform you we are on the air with our channel 50 digital television. There will be some high definition programming in prime time. We have plans to air Super Bowl in HDTV on January 26, 2003.

YES!!! :D

Originally posted by buckeye1010
YES!!! :D

ABC HD too! They did the switch perfectly the 1st time, Right at 8pm ...

Looks great too :cool:

Thanks WDTN!

Originally posted by Nitewatchman
ABC HD too! They did the switch perfectly the 1st time, Right at 8pm ...

Looks great too :cool:

Thanks WDTN!

Jeff,
Can't comment on WDTN's PQ,but did lock on enough to make a "legal ID",with video/audio.The LP in Indy on 50 makes it a little tougher.Right at 71mi from here.

DTV log #73

WWHO 53 S/F but not a peep on DT-46,with WTHR DT on the same channel.Dxing is getting to be more of a challenge every day.Oh well,it's still fun!

PS,WKOI on 39 is consistent here,but it's very weak.Around 39-42 on the DTC.

Later,
GregB

Originally posted by MAX HD
Jeff,
Can't comment on WDTN's PQ,but did lock on enough to make a "legal ID",with video/audio.The LP in Indy on 50 makes it a little tougher.Right at 71mi from here.

DTV log #73

WWHO 53 S/F but not a peep on DT-46,with WTHR DT on the same channel.Dxing is getting to be more of a challenge every day.Oh well,it's still fun!

PS,WKOI on 39 is consistent here,but it's very weak.Around 39-42 on the DTC.

Later,
GregB

Greg,

Congrats on the new log! That an excellent catch considering the present conditons I'm seeing and your distance.

I think you'll like the WDTN PQ when you get a chance to see it.

Besides the "balancing and trade offs act" it has always been to DX from here, Dx'ing is also becoming more difficult here too. Mainly, I'm really, really looking forward to analog shutoff. I counted up the locals earlier tonite, there are now 32 of them, 12 DTV's and 20 analogs most of them are very strong. Local #33, WRCX-LP Dayton still doesn't appear to have made it back to the airwaves after being booted off 51 by WKEF-DT, and I'm not positive, but I don't think W66AQ Dayton is on the air any longer. I have 3 Semi-locals on Low-VHF too, although I don't know exactly why I call them "semi-locals" as I see WAVE, WCMH and WSYX all the time, WRTV 6 and WTTV 4 are there quite often too. Generally speaking, at least those don't hurt my Es logs on 3,4+6 too much, unless the tropo coincides with Es, which does seem to happen quite often. Thank goodness for directional antennas and the few LP stations I can steer around if the DX is coming from the right direction!

I think I've missed some good chances at WWHO 46(69 Miles) in the last few months(It would probably help if I didn't leave the antenna aimed South most of the time<g>), but I haven't seen them here yet either and 46 is clean in that direction. My antenna is looking at ground about 300ft away in that direction, although I do usually see 53 quite often, although not lately.

Thought it would remain dead as a doornail tonight, but I'm seeing a little stuff going on here too. Things seem a bit unstable on Hi-VHF tonight, but WKYT-DT is close to a lock at times. Analog UHF's from Lex, Lou and Columbus are solid but generally quite weak, seems perhaps a bit more stable on mid-hi band UHF. Seeing a little of the familiar CCI to WCVN from WPXK Jellico too, although I'm not seeing much of anything from WBXX 20 Crossville, TN or from WKSO with WXIX off air now.

It is hard to gauge from here what is really "going on" many times, I'm guessing it's one of those "in all directions but very weak" sort of nights. My only truly terrain issue free directions are Directly South within about 10 degrees "width" or so, and ENE also within about 10 degree "width" or so -- This is due to the way the stream course runs which carved the little valley I'm in. W and NW is the worst, with terrain rising almost 300FT above my antenna within a few miles, Directly North and east towards WWHO is pretty bad too.

Take it easy,

I wonder if a bunch of us Daytonites could get together to tour a TV studio - with an emphaisis on technology and HD? I know my wife and I would be up for it. Thoughts?

-Buckeye1010

Does anybody have WDTN-DT show up in their program guides?

I have a Toshiba STB and I can't get 2-1 or 50-1 to show up in my guide or the channel up/down on my remote. I have to manually punch it it. I've never had this problem before with the new stations.

Jeff,

Maybe it's just me,but I've noticed all of the UHF channels seem to be *snowier* than they were a couple years ago.Do you think a strong DT channel,or a combination of strong ones, could bleed snow further than one adjacent channel?

Let me know when you want to get started on that 300ft tower.I'll be right over<g>!
GregB

gindie - on my Mits 55511, I had 50 previously punched into the memory. When I surfed yesterday, 50 was gone, and there was a 2.01.

-Buckeye1010

Originally posted by gindie
Does anybody have WDTN-DT show up in their program guides?

I have a Toshiba STB and I can't get 2-1 or 50-1 to show up in my guide or the channel up/down on my remote. I have to manually punch it it. I've never had this problem before with the new stations.
WDTN-DT does strange things with my Dish 6000. From the "Add Local Channel" menu I punch in 50 and it locks the signal. The local channel listing shows two subchannels 2-1 and 2-2. I manually select 2-1 with no problems. But if I manually select 2-2, the screen locks up for about three seconds and comes back as 50-1. The other times it exhibits this behavior is when a station has switched off its PSIP. But if I readd WDTN-DT it goes back to showing 2-1 and 2-2.

I suspect WDTN-DT is sending PSIP data that is confusing the receiver.

jim

I don't get a 2.02 - just 2.01 (as of last night)

-Buckeye1010

It remaps to 2-1 on the HDV 420 here it doesn't "do" program guides, I have remapping/program guides turned off on the DTC-100, and I get 50-2 on it.

Originally posted by MAX HD
Jeff,

Maybe it's just me,but I've noticed all of the UHF channels seem to be *snowier* than they were a couple years ago.Do you think a strong DT channel,or a combination of strong ones, could bleed snow further than one adjacent channel?

Let me know when you want to get started on that 300ft tower.I'll be right over<g>!
GregB
Greg,

It's amazing how complicated a subject "noise" can be!

My guess is(and it's just a guess), Theoritically and generally speaking, unless a DTV transmitting facility is "on the fritz" and is putting out "stuff" where it isn't supposed to be I wouldn't think so, at least in a "perfect" world with such things as tuners that are "perfectly" selective, where extremely strong signals didn't overload tuners and preamps, and preamps didn't add a little noise in the mix to begin with.

On the other hand, (I thought it was me too) things do seem to look a little noisier here these days pretty much everywhere on the "clean" channels, and of course we don't live in a "perfect world". I haven't seen anything new here except CCI* that can directly be "pinned" on such and such new station coming on the air, and I haven't seen that the newer local DT's coming on the air on adjacent, or nearly adjacent channels affect the other locals in any way nor have I been able to directly attribute more noise on the "clean" channels to any of the new locals coming on the air. Anyhow, I suppose with so much RF flying around and with more to come, in the real world, in many circumstances I think things are just bound to be noisier. My guess is, things will "quiet down again" after analog shut off.

* - Such as "sparkles" most likely from WUAB-DT often seen as CCI to WTTE -- the sparkles were never there before WUAB-DT hit the airwaves, but are present just about anytime I see WTTE nowadays.

I do know that if one's receiver and antenna is in the middle of "nowhere", it certianly seems to get much, much less noisier all around. I haven't been to such a spot in a few years, but, I know of one such area, in and around Blue Creek, Ohio. There are only a few TV transmitters(the close ones aren't extroidanarily high powered ones either) closer than 75 miles. From a spot on a ridge(1160FT ASL) there, in the middle of the forest using a small Yagi(no preamp) mounted on a fence post, just about everything within 75 miles(Cincy, Morehead, KYHuntington, WV/etc) are locals, and the Dayton and Columbus VHF's(90 Miles) are locals. And, the "snow" is much, much less noisier over there, even when using the cheap tuner on a $20 portable Black and white TV.

In 1998, From an even "quieter" spot at "the cabin" near that location(1/2 mile away and down the hill, at 800FT ASL), a spot which has far more significant terrain issues than I have here although I didn't "offically" log it, I pulled in my most distant tropo catch so far, with the same cheap B&W TV and a small, hand rotatable<g> Yagi 15' above ground. That catch was, KLVY 11, Fargo, ND, a little over 900 Miles from that location. Also, on that same evening, I saw many other stations with perfect quality, Including Indy, Louisville and Terre Haute. Had perfect reception from WKMJ 68 all night, that being the first time I had seen WKMJ. Granted, I think it was a "Super Tropo" from the West sort of evening, but I was still surprised Because of the terrain blockage issues in every direction "down in the holler" there, only WLWT 5 Cincy(76 Miles) and WSAZ 3 Huntington are locals(and just barely), WDTN 2 semi-local. The hills even block a station from 12 miles away, WPBO 42 Portsmouth.

There is also a ridge nearby there which is among the highest spots in Ohio at around 1320FT ASL, the ridge is actually cleared off, and has farms, and houses with TV antennas on top ... That, or a similar location is where I would like to put my tower(s) for Dx'ing someday!

Anyhow, I'd really like to see a VHF/UHF noise study performed with sensitive equipment, and concerning the increasing amount of RF present from NTSC and ATSC stations. At the very least, It seems such a study would be a very difficult undertaking, in order to distinguish CC noise from other sources/etc, since stations from 100's of miles away can and certianly do often raise noise levels a bit on the channel they are broadcasting on, even under dead band conditions.

Getting WDTN-DT 50 here in Grovetuckey with very few dropouts. Must be about 60 miles. WSYX-DT in Columbus is low power and has more dropouts. They are not presently broadcasting HD but that may change as soon as tonight. Can't wait to see Drew HD and 5.1

Hello all.

I just received the following email from the chief engineer at WDTN that you may be interested in reading:


Mike DeWeese forwarded your e-mail to me concerning our DT signal. I
was not aware that a local forum addressing HDTV existed. I read a few
of the most recent archived messages. I perceive some warranted
frustration on behalf of viewers due to the delays preventing WDTN-DT
to begin broadcasting. I regret if those delays gave anyone the
impression that WDTN was not actively engaged in the migration to
digital television. The owner of WDTN is totally dedicated to the
ideals involved in new technology and have supported our efforts to
serve our viewers to the very best standard possible. Any and all
delays are my responsibility. I mitigated the delays due to my desire
to broadcast the best digital signal possible.
I would enjoy the opportunity to discuss the entire digital process
with you and all other viewers that are interested. If you and others
want to take a tour of WDTN, just call the station and we can set it up
at a convenient time for all involved.
I like the pictures of WISH that are posted on the forum. I can show
you how all that integrates into our station here in Dayton.
Thanks again for your signal report and please encourage all to e-mail
their reports to me.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon,


Jim Atkinson
Chief Engineer
WDTN
WDTN-DT

atkinson@wdtn.com

I'm getting wdtn-dt on my samsung on indoor antenna. Good signal and no pixel breakup . No secondary ch. however

Richard

Hi Gang

I encourage you all to send your reception reports to Jim Atkinson, his email address is a couple messages above this one. I just exchanged a nice email with him. He wants to hear from us.

He says that they do plan to transmit a 50-2 SD, resulting in only a slight reduction in data rate on 50-1 to 14.5. Ther reason it's not up yet is a manufacturing problem, which was promised to be fixed on Monday. He says for the Super Bowl, they will forego the 50-2 and transmitt 50-1 at the entire 19.3 data rate.

Do we want to do a group tour of WDTN?

-Buckeye1010

I sent a report to WDTN about being able to receive their signal. Received a nice response from Mr. Atkinson
____________________________________________________
Thanks for the signal report. We will broadcast all ABC HD and are
upconverting our NTSC to 720P when ABC is not HD.

Thanks again,

Jim Atkinson
Chief Engineer
WDTN
______________________________________________

Paul and all,

Thanks for the info from WDTN's CE, and for sending your signal reports. I'm sure he's happy to hear their signal makes it to portions of the Columbus area.

I've been busy here, and haven't had a chance to watch much, but I'm really interested in seeing what HD 720p they are sending looks like, since AFAIK, none of the other local stations send out 720p natively, I think even WCPO-DT Cincy is still upconverting to 1080i. I did notice that WDTN-DT upconverts look Very good.

I'll also send their CE a note here in a bit. I probably won't be able to "make the tour" anytime soon, but I think it would be very interesting, for those who do go, make sure to tell the rest of us about it!

I am watching the game here on CBS 41.1 and I have noticed a couple of things. First off, I am watching on a Sony HD100 receiver on a Pioneer Elite 730HD. It looks incredible! I have noticed that the blues and yellows are really bright. The goal posts on extra point kicks jump out at you. There were some guys in blue jackets and black/yellow stripe vests that were crazy bright. Is this normal or is it just that my TV is brand new out of the box and not calibrated yet?

Second question: during certain camera angles I can see almost like a pixelated picture. I notice it most of the time on a close up of a player. The player is clear but the background is a little pixelated. It is not bad but noticeable.

Third question: When they switch cameras the picture is slightly pixelated for about 1-2 seconds and then it clears up. This is only when the cameras change. Is this a broadcast thing or is it the receiver being a little slow to decode?

Fourth and final question: It seemed like there was a camera on the sidelines that always had the bars on the sides. Is this because the camera is not and HD camera? On that note and this may be something for another part of the forums but why are the bars on the sides?

Regnus,

#1 - Concerning the "Bright Stuff" you were seeing, just a guess, but you might want to adjust your Picture settings a bit, i.e. Turn down the Contrast/brightness("Picture/Black Level/etc) to the level that looks best. The "default" settings your TV is set to is most likely what we call "Torch Mode", which pretty much also means "Burn out my phosphors quicker, and give me uneven phosphor wear with the Black bars/etc. This sort of "Torch Mode" is really only useful in very bright areas such as what you get in a retail establishment where TV's are sold.

#2+3 - This is due to the fact that WHIO-DT doesn't allocate the Full bandwidth "avalible" to HD on 41-1, and that Fast action, high detail/etc. HD Video requires more bandwidth than the "usual" filmed stuff you see on CBS. What you are seeing are compression artifacts. Instead of giving it the 19.39Mb/s NECESSARY for HD Video, they "sqeeze" the bandwidth to somewhat less than that, my guess is 14-15Mb/s or so, in order to fit in a 2nd Subchannel of SD (41-2), and they also may be doing some sort of datacasting. We've discussed this earlier, and I provided a link to the Cincy thread where we were discussing it in more detail. Although WKRC-DT Cincy CBS does the same, It looks better than on WHIO-DT, so I watched WKRC-DT tonight instead, as usual. I believe, WBNS-DT 21 Columbus allocates the full 19.39 Mb/s to HD, if this is still the case, my guess is, you wouldn't have seen the pixelization on WBNS-DT.

#4 - Yes, the reason one of the cameras on the sidelines had the bars was because it was not an HD Camera, and, also probably because it was a Wireless Camera which for some reason didn't provide video in a 16x9 frame, thus, you get a 4x3 frame with black bars on the sides. At least, the more attractive sideline announcer had a HDCAM though<g> There were also cameras used in the end zones etc. which were also SD, although they were used in 16x9 widescreen mode. However, most of what you saw was via "real" HD Cameras, in real HD.

Hope this helps, I enjoyed the game in HD tonight as well. For a long time there(over a year since I had gotten HD), I thought I'd Never see a NFL game in HD! I'm hoping for a bit better game for the Superbowl though, We had a run of Great Games there for a while that are going to be hard to "beat!" Fiesta Bowl, Browns Vs. Bucks, SF VS NYG(the last part anyway), and last Week Tenn Vs. Pittsburg.

Jeff

At least the Superbowl should look good considering there will be no sub-channel on WDTN-DT. Maybe some of the other stations could learn a thing or two about giving the full bandwidth to HD. We bought our HD equipment for the PQ but I don't think some people realize that. I really don't understand the reasoning behind a sub-channel with nothing but a SD simulcast.

I just received a response from WBDT-DT concerning my inquiry asking them about on-air date and if they would have HD. This is the reply I received:

Jeff,

Although I'm not the expert person to answer your questions....I'll answer what I know then pass along your email to the person that knows best.

I think we plan to have our digital signal up by May. But unfortunately...we won't be HD yet. But emails like yours will help convince all concerned that we need to get the HD going. I personally want it too.

So, feel free to tell anybody you know to write into the station regarding this matter. The more the better.

Thanks,

Chris Iller
Dayton's WB26 Promotions

------------------------------------------

Soo, by all means folks, send these guys a note, letter, or give them a call letting them know you want HD from the WB and WBDT-DT! The email address I used was:

questions@wb26tv.com

Other Contact Info:

WB26 WBDT-TV
2589 Corporate Place
Miamisburg, OH 45342
937-384-9226
937-384-7392

Thier website is here:

http://www.wb26tv.com/index.asp

-------------------------------------------------

Mr. Iller has been quite helpful concerning my previous inquiries, and I appreciate his interest, in HD especially. As we know, WB Cincy Digital Does not offer HD from the WB currently nor do we know their future plans for HD since I don't believe anyone has received a response from them, which leaves us Dayton/Cincy folks pretty much in the dark for WB HD, except for a few who live farther "east" and may have a shot at WWHO-DT 46 Chillicothe.

Thanks,

Along with my signal report and other comments I recently sent WDTN-DT's CE, I also asked if WDTN-DT would be doing DD 5.1 anytime soon, as well as inviting him to Join us here on the forum whenever possible. This is a portion of his reply:

"Yes, I will attend the forum as time permits. I am in the process of converting all of our news acquisition to DVCPRO from Beta and the centralcasting install on our end.
Yes, we will broadcast surround very soon.

Thanks again,

Jim"

----------------------------------------------

Does it get "any better" than this? Thanks Jim and WDTN-DT!

I hope some of you caught the ABC movie 'The Rock' on WDTN-DT last night. The picture quality was absolutely amazing! It was nice seeing very fast moving scenes without motion artifacts. I couldn't detect even one flaw. OUTSTANDING! Many thanks to the folks at WDTN!

I saw it, great demostration of HD quality. Hat's off to ABC and WDTN.
BTW: I have yet to recieve anything in 5.1, is it just me. Has anyone in the local area received any 5.1. ?
I am assuming that everything I can receive is just broadcast in stereo, and it's not my setup.

Jon

Yes - the Rock last night on WDTN DT was superb looking! WOW! If I recall, they had their .02 turned off, to make the true HD signal look better. Hats off to controlled quality! They did have a .02 SD signal up yesterday, for the first time but it still had the black bars (when I saw it)

A few things I have noticed, I'd be interested in hearing from others on these:

1) WRGT-DT - channel 30 appears to be down?

2) When WRGT-DT - channel 30 has been up, the PQ has not been very good (very dark, for one thing). I realize they are only doing 480i, normal SD, but when I compare it to analog WRGT ch45, I seem to get a better PQ there. Is it just me?

3) WKEF-DT - channel 51.02 has the audio balanced to the right side. Is it just me?

-Buckeye1010

Buckeye,

I wasn't receiving anything from WRGT-DT last night. Their pq does look better to me on analog 45 also. They seem to be having problems keeping both transmitters running lately.

WKEF-DT-2 does have the audio balanced to the right side.

Paul

WRGT-DT looks way too dark to me too, not much reason to watch it except for the times that the analog has been off the air or at very low power over the last month or so.

I wish they would do Fox Widescreen though, It would be nice not to have to rely on WXIX-DT! I asked them and Sinclair about Fox Widescreen several times, and never received an answer.

I compared "The Rock" last night between WCPO-DT and WDTN-DT, and It looked just a little sharper on WCPO-DT, my guess is because WCPO-DT upconverts to 1080i(I THINK they still do at least), which probably does a little better job of it than the upconverters in our setups do, as most of us have displays that do 1080i natively, but not 720p .... It really wasn't much of a difference though. I've also noticed that the non-HD on WDTN-DT has the best looking PQ of any upconvert out there! On a "old fashioned" SD set, it is honestly the best PQ I've ever seen on it.

Everyone send those letters into WBDT-DT and let them know we want HD from the WB !(see my post on last page concerning this matter)

Originally posted by jparin
[B Has anyone in the local area received any 5.1. ?
Jon [/B]

The Only station I've seen Do DD 5.1 in Dayton/Cinci is WCET-DT 34 Cincinnati. Per my post on the last page concerning info from their CE, it looks like WDTN-DT will be doing DD 5.1 sometime soon.

It appears that WDTN-DT might be testing their DD5.1 capability. At 1:15pm I caught part of a Super Bowl preview and the audio kept dropping out. I looked at my audio receiver and the 5.1 indicator light came on. Then, right after that the audio dropped out again and 2.0 came back. I never actually heard any 5.1 audio, but this repeated several times until I turned it off.

Hopefully, we'll have 5.1 in time for the Super Bowl tomorrow!

Now that all of the major networks are broadcasting OTA in Dayton, does anyone know when Dayton TimeWarner Cable will begin to carry the HD versions of these networks? A

I'm watching Mission Impossible on WDTN-DT. My audio receiver indicates 5.1, however I'm only getting front audio.

Also getting bad lip-synch on the network feed, but not on the local cut-aways.

Was switching between WDTN-DT/WCPO-DT for MI (No lipsynch problem on WCPO-DT - They do DD 2.0/prologic only), and noticed that WDTN was able to get the lip-synch issue straightened out after a while.

My audio receiver was also indicating DD 5.1 from WDTN-DT tonight during the ABC feed, (switches to DD2.0 during local ad inserts) way to go WDTN :-)

Update: Oh yeah, it was great to see MI in OAR 2.35:1 as well! Looks like it might have been a national issue for at least the ABC east coast HD feed concerning only the front two channels of audio "via DD 5.1" tonight, per this thread :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=218390&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

And this thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=218389

Did you see WDTN news tonight? Although Guy Fogle never verbally pointed it out, his graphic giving the time of the Super Bowl included info. about watching the game in HDTV on Channel 50!

Hi all -

I just wanted to stick my head in and say hi. I have been following the Dayton thread for sometime and as of a few weeks from now, I will finally be taking the leap to HD.

As a cursory question to Paul (I am located in western Butler Twp), did you use a bowtie antennae at all when pulling in Dayton channels, or have you always used your outdoor CM? I do not really have the option of putting up an outdoor mast. This either leaves the attic or a bowtie. I was just curious on your experience since we are roughly in the same area.

When I actually get everything up and running, I'll let you all know. Thanks for the wealth of information....

Mike

The DD 5.1 is excellent! Little bit of a synch problem though.

DD is great. I hgave noticed a lot more non HD cameras than the CBS games though. Not that big of a deal but come on this is the superbowl. One thing I would like to know from others is the location of the clock. The top of the clock is off screen. I am only seeing half of the time. Is this WDTN or me?

Originally posted by Nitewatchman
The DD 5.1 is excellent! Little bit of a synch problem though.
Hey. It's a football game so you only notice it during the halftime show. Shania was way out of sync. From Oxford I choose WDTN-DT instead of WCPO-DT because of DD 5.1. (Anybody from WCPO listening)???

Absolutely loved the movie trailers ("Matrix Reloaded") that were in Hi-Def/DD5.1.

Only problem was the score "bug". I can see the score, down and distance, but the time remaining was cut off on my set. Did anybody have their TV setup so that the down and distance were viewable (not that it mattered much)??

jim

The video was pretty good, not many artifacts. However, I think it still could have been better because WDTN indicated they were going to devote the entire bandwidth to 50-1 (2-1). However, they multicasted on 50-2 the entire game.

Just saw that WDTN News at 12a ran as their top story a piece on a Superbowl HD party --- Although they mentioned HD and the analog shut off, they still didn't mention WDTN-DT, go figure.

Jim,

I was doing so much stuff I ended up not watching much of the game, but from what I did see, I didn't notice any missing info, had all the score/down and Distance and Time remaining info on a 16x9 screen, as well as on a seperate setup via a PC monitor and STB hooked up via composite inputs and downconverting the 16x9 to a SD (4x3) display.

The HD movie trailers were excellent! I watched WDTN-DT for the DD 5.1 and better PQ than WCPO-DT(for less compression artifacts mostly) as well.

WCPO-DT had school closings for a portion of Alias, WDTN-DT didn't, Sooo, guess which station I also watched for Alias even though I missed out on 5.1 since I had to put on the wireless earphones?<g>

Gindie,

I didn't see a 2nd subchannel from WDTN-DT here. Was it SD? I only got the HD on 50-2 on my DTC-100(Actually internal to a F38310 Integrated HDTV) which I have set so it doesn't remap channels, and just 2-1 (HDV420) on my receiver which does remap. 50-2 and 2-1 are the same subchannel, some receivers(such as the DTC-100) see it as 50-2, some may see it as 50-1, either of which remap to 2-1.

Maybe I am all screwed up. I have a Toshiba STB. When I punch in 50-1, it immediately switches to 2-1. When I punch in 50-2, it stays 50-2 with a picture of similar PQ as 2-1. That's what I was doing during the game and made me assume that they were multicasting, since I was seeing a picture on two different subchannels of 50.

What I didn't try was punching in 2-2 to see what happened.

Gindie,

I don't think it's you that's "screwed up" <g> -- This Channel remapping stuff can get complicated as different receivers seem to handle "stuff" a bit differently, and if you have a combo DirecTV/OTA receiver, the APG from direcTV can "think" a little differently about this stuff too.

I'm quite sure you're "actually" seeing the same "actual" subchannel whether you tune to, 50-1(2-1) or 50-2 but for whatever reason, your receiver, or the APG from DirecTV is doing something Funky ... It'll probably be "worked out" by either WDTN-DT folks(perhaps when they do add their 2nd SD subchannel it will "fix things") or when new Guide info for WDTN-DT from DirecTV is sent to your receiver.

Originally posted by MNLang
As a cursory question to Paul (I am located in western Butler Twp), did you use a bowtie antennae at all when pulling in Dayton channels, or have you always used your outdoor CM? I do not really have the option of putting up an outdoor mast. This either leaves the attic or a bowtie. I was just curious on your experience since we are roughly in the same area.

Mike

Mike,

Welcome to the forum!

I've always had an outside antenna. I purchased the CM in Sept. to replace a smaller antenna that came with the house. I would guess from your location you could receive all the Dayton stations with an attic mount or possibly a bowtie if you're lucky. Let us know how you make out with your reception.

Paul

Thanks to WDTN for the Super Bowl in HD! Video was excellent. Definite audio sync problem though, as was the case for Mission Impossible the previous night.

Did anybody happen to catch the HD test stuff WDTN was running at 11:00 PM Saturday night? Beautiful! Older comercials and promo stuff for about 5 minutes, then they switched it back to the simulcast of the news. Bummer! They were just getting ready to show the space shuttle take off. I bet that would have looked nice.

Paul,

Yes! I agree. Oh, BTW, the Audio Sync was just fine last night for Alias via WDTN-DT.

I think you saw a portion of the "HD Test Loop" ABC sends out on their HD feed when they don't have programming, but last I heard, it isn't supposed to be broadcast. ABC themselves actually "messed up" one night a month+ back or so and switched to it right in the Middle of Alias!

I've seen other little bits of it before too on WCPO-DT, but I'd surely like to see the whole thing someday!

Originally posted by zibs
Now that all of the major networks are broadcasting OTA in Dayton, does anyone know when Dayton TimeWarner Cable will begin to carry the HD versions of these networks?

That's the million dollar question! They're going to have to offer something competetive before I plunk down what they're asking for digital cable.

Just noticed when tuning to 2News, WDTN-DT has now added the 2nd, SD subchannel. On the DTC-100, (with off air guides off), It's showing up as 50-3, and 50-2 is remapping to 2-2 on the HDV-420.

Hello All. I thought I'd post an email I received from Jim Atkinson at WDTN just to keep you all posted in their progress:

Just a quick note to let you know that we now have 50-2(2-2) up in SD
at 4:3.

If you have watched 2News, you noticed that a blanking occurs whenever
the lower right "2" bug is inserted or removed. This problem is a
result of the the upconversion process. I am looking into keying this
bug in a different place in the signal chain which will bypass this key
from the digital input. For now, if you are watching 2News on 50-2, the
key will not cause the blanking as the signal goes directly to the
encoder.
Maybe you have been watching when we were setting up some equipment by
broadcasting an HD test loop from ABC. I don't have a schedule as to
when ABC sends the test; but I will find out and let you know. I will
be using this test and thought you, or others, would like to use it
also.

Thanks for watching,

Jim

Time Warner now has NBC and FOX HD channels mapped out, but at least last night, I wasn't getting an HD signal -- has anyone else tried them yet?

I'm also seeing these new Time Warner Cable stations:
Channel 722 WKEF HD
Channel 745 WRGT DTV

I'm seeing SD signals on these channels, but I haven't tuned in during an HDTV broadcast. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, though.

zibs,

FOX doesn't do HD, at best, they do 480p Widescreen, more or less progressive scan DVD quality. What's even worse though, is that so far, WRGT-DT only does 480i 4x3 SD, not Fox Widescreen. Perhaps since they are now being carried on Cable, this will change.

Although "generally" WKEF-DT does a good job passing through NBC HD, they've been sporadic at it as of late. For instance Last night, there was no NBC HD from them, although WLWT-DT Cincinnati had the NBC HD shows, as is usual.

As for the other Dayton Digitals, Noticed that WHIO-DT has been off the air today, but they just came up in the last hour or so, they currently have CBS HD, and WDTN-DT has the ABC HD movie. Hopefully, TWC will add those two stations as well. Not sure what the TWC channels will be, but OTA WHIO-DT is on 41 (might remap on TWC to ??7, and WDTN-DT is on 50 (remaps to 2 on our OTA receivers, might remap to TWC channel ??2)

Update: 9:10pm - Noticed once again, WKEF-DT doesn't have L&O(SVU?) in HD, although WLWT-DT does. Just wondering, are you getting NBC HD via Dayton TWC?

Welcome to the Forum,

Jeff

Time Warner channel 722 (labeled WKEF HD) is not yet HD tonight (Saturday) for Law & Order: SVU.

Yes Jeff, my Time Warner observations are Dayton TWC South Suburbs.

zibs,

Thanks. I suppose they could be having a technical problem, but if not, Guess we'll have to start pestering them again, although all I really NEED to do is switch channels to the Cincinnati NBC DTV affiliate.

Zibs - Can you tell me how the TW box hooks up to your set? Is it through the set's componet 1080i connections, or ? I'm curious. Are they going to charge extra for HD? Is their a webpage for this stuff? I fired TW last year because they seemed to be dragging their feet on the HD issue.

thanks

-Buckeye1010

This morning I sent a nice email to Dayton Daily News, asking them why they don't indicate the HD shows. I also asked them if they even knew about the existance of channels 41, 50, and 51. They call their Sunday TV supplement "Channels" but yet they don't even mention the three best looking channels in town! I think the press needs to tell the public more about the good stuff out there! If you want to email the DDN Channels editor, here is her email address: jennifer_peterson@coxohio.com

-Buckeye1010

Does anyone know when Dayton is going to have PBS and the WB HD channels?

buckeye1010,

Time Warner will supply you an HD cable box at no charge. They just exchange your old box. Yes, the HD box has component outputs which connect to your HD compatible TV. To date, only HBO and Showtime HD are available. I only subscribe to HBO, so my only HD experience is with their HD channel, which is the same programming as the "main" HBO channel. There is no additional charge for the HD channels or HD box.

I would love to see them carry the local networks in HD, that way I wouldn't have to purchase an HD receiver and antenna. Also, I know my family would have trouble switching between the cable box and the HDTV receiver STB, in addition to my TV only having two component inputs (the second is being using for a progressive scan DVD player).

If someone would let me know when WKEF is back to broadcasting OTA in HD, I will check to see if the Time Warner channel is in HD.

Originally posted by breedingamies
Does anyone know when Dayton is going to have PBS and the WB HD channels?

Looks like the digital stations should be on the air in May 2003, and that WBDT-DT won't have WB HD at first. There is more info farther back in this thread.

Originally posted by zibs

If someone would let me know when WKEF is back to broadcasting OTA in HD, I will check to see if the Time Warner channel is in HD.

Zibs,

They have had HD in the last week or so, I'm not positive when the last time was, only that they didn't have HD last night, or Friday night. Unless they are having some sort of problem, It's quite possible someone there just forgot to "throw the proverbial HD switch", which is why it is sometimes helpful(In addition to being a PITA for us when we are trying to watch TV!) to call the station/etc. and remind them.

According to NBC's schedule, Everything from NBC tonight from 8-11pm should be HD, so you might want to check it out :

http://www.nbc.com/nbc/header/TV_Schedule/

Update: I sent WKEF/WRGT's Chief engineer a note, asking him about the recent "loss" of NBC HD from WKEF-DT, as well as when WRGT-DT will have Fox Widescreen. If I hear anything back from him, I'll post info.

Just want to confirm what you guys are saying. I'm in Centerville with Time Warner. I see the HD WKEF and WRGT channels on the box, but I like you, still no confirmed HD (or even "Fox widescreen") through either of them. As Zibs requested, Nitewatchman, if you could drop a post on here when you start getting something OTA on WKEF, we'd appreciate it. I'll flip around tonight and check if I get any HD.

Sorry guys,

As of 8:37pm, No HD from WKEF-DT for American Dreams tonight, It looks good in HD though from WLWT-DT Cincinnati. I'd guess that if/when WKEF-DT does do HD again, You'll see it via cable just as we do OTA. The cableco should get the same signal we OTA viewers do, whether it be OTA or via Fiber at the Cableco Headend.

I did notice that HD listings no longer show up on TitanTV(I *think* they used to) for WKEF-DT, although they do for WLWT-DT. That might not mean much though, since TitanTV HD listings are often inaccurate.

As I mentioned earlier, if/when I get a response from them on this issue, I'll let you know. Can't hurt for more of you guys to contact the station so they know I'm not one of three out here as well.

Update:

Another thought, just making sure, but I am assuming that you TWC guys are getting the 4x3 programming from WRGT/WKEF, in WKEF's case, 4x3 SD upconverted to 1080i with Black bars on the sides of the 4x3 frame on a 16x9 screen?

acs236,

I've yet to see Fox Widescreen from WRGT-DT since they came on the air 5/1/2002. "Currently" they do 480i 4x3 SD only. Unfortuntely, this means we have to rely on WXIX-DT Fox Cincinnati for Fox Widescreen, which they have had troubles with at times. They did have Fox News Sunday in Widescreen this morning, and it looks like they have things "set" correctly for tonight.

It often seems strange to me that "coincidences" often seem to happen in the HD world, such as TWC in Dayton first adding 2 stations which aren't "currently" doing HD, or Fox widescreen for that matter, while the other Two Dayton Stations are very reliable about HD, currently.

Yes Jeff, I'm getting 4x3 SD converted to 1080i on my widescreen on both the WKEF and WRGT Time Warner channels.

Jeff, do you have any suggestions for email addresses or telephone contacts for pestering WKEF/WRGT?

Thanks for the info.

I guess I'm somewhat relieved that the problem with WKEF-DT might be source related as opposed to a problem with Time Warner -- though I'm not really sure.

That's strange that Time Warner would have added a channel that's not even HD yet (WRGT).

I can't really tell what sort of signal I'm getting on the WKEF and WRGT, but I'm not sure it's even upconverted. It looks different than the standard WKEF and WRGT channels, the colors are different, a little bit better picture, overall. For HD HBO I won't get a picture at all through the svideo (only component), but with these two channels I will get a picture through svideo.

But yes, I'm getting a picture with black bars.

Zibs,

You can try the Contact info(Phone#'s etc) listed on their website -- :

http://www.nbc22.com/feedback/index.htm

Last year around this time, WKEF-DT came on the air early for HD olympics, and I DID have some luck getting them to switch to HD via a call to their Newsroom on a Sunday afternoon, although it took a 20 minute converstation to do so, and they wouldn't switch me to engineering or master control. At the time, a large Logo on WLWT-DT over the ski-jumpers speed info was bothering me<g>

Another way to address WKEF-DT/WRGT-DT issues, is via the email address given at the following page, which is the site of the company that owns WKEF and I believe has a LMA for WRGT, Sinclair(note, I have had some luck using this email address as well) :

http://sbgi.net/dtv/

Perhaps, for TWC subscribers, contacting TWC(If you can get hold of someone who actually knows something about DTV/HD), may be of help/use as well.

Although I certianly would like to do so, I don't feel comfortable sharing more "personal" contact info without permission from those involved.

In order to "get through" to WKEF/WRGT on previous occasions(some of my "findings" on various issues are posted much earlier in this thread), I ended up having to go through a corporate person at Sinclair Broadcasting, who is(or was) an AVSforum member.

Many times, if stations don't hear from viewers when something is "wrong" (No HD for example), they assume that noone is watching(I'm not necessarily referring to WKEF-DT). Granted, IMO, this should have NOTHING to do with how they operate but sometimes it does.

Thanks for trying and good luck -- I think if they get a "ton" of phone calls or emails on HD via their "standard" contact info, it would be a good thing, and that they would take notice.

Well,

I haven't heard back from WKEF. Since my last post, still No NBC HD from them that I've noticed. Except for "ED" last night, the HD from the Cincy NBC affiliate has been fine.

To be honest, this "contacting the station" thing is really getting old and in some cases, is beginning to deter my enjoyment of HD, and TV in general. I suppose that, if the average Joe gets HD "hooked up", but never ends up seeing it, then the best thing to happen to TV in a long time suffers. For whatever reason that HD or Fox widescreen is "missing" or is problematical from some stations, it is not something this viewer will forget, and at the same time, I'll remember the fine job WDTN-DT and some other stations are doing at present. I understand this DTV+HD is a difficult and expensive thing for stations, however, it is for us as well! I had hoped I was supporting local broadcasters+the Economy by "doing HD+DTV", It certianly was not my intention to become their "enemy", which sometimes seems to be the case.

On another matter, I was perusing websites last night, and noticed a "UPN 44" section on WHIO's website. There certianly isn't a UPN station on the air in Dayton, so I'm wondering, is UPN 44 something only Dayton cable viewers receive? Also, I was thinking, If WHIO-DT must have the 2nd SD subchannel, the least they could do is put this "UPN 44" thing on it, so it would at least serve some purpose for OTA viewers.

Originally posted by Nitewatchman
I was thinking, If WHIO-DT must have the 2nd SD subchannel, the least they could do is put this "UPN 44" thing on it, so it would at least serve some purpose for OTA viewers.

Jeff,

I thought you knew the real purpose of simulcasting on WHIO's 2nd subchannel was to induce motion artifacts on the first channel! :D

Your proposal of broadcasting UPN 44 on 41-2 makes WAY too much sense. ;)

Paul

Surprise!

ER is in HD on WKEF-DT at 10:08 PM.

Update: Looks like the board op missed the switch back to HD after a local ad insert at 10:33pm, I'm bailing and switching to WLWT-DT. The switching has been rough, also, as compared to the smooth transistions on WLWT-DT. Sigh.

Update #2: At 10:45pm they caught it, HD is back. Hopefully, from now on(that's a big hopefully<g>) we'll see the rest of the HD from NBC and WKEF-DT as well. Next up: Leno at 11:35pm. Fingers crossed.

Update #3: Leno in HD at 11:35 on WKEF-DT! They're on a roll! For any of you folks who have been around Dayton for a while(Say 25-30 years or so),I'm 1/2 expecting to see Duffy the Dog pop up next in HD ;)

Maybe we should volunteer to intern at WKEF, so we could help them learn the switching phases of the network HD transmissions??

Jeff,

How about Malcolm? :) Wow, Clubhouse 22. You're really showing your age now!

Do you guys think SHOCK THEATER will be in HD this weekend? :D

Dr. Creep will look better than ever.....

Crap, I watched the ER on my other television, thinking that WKEF was stuck in terminal SD mode. I'll have to check it again. Anyone with TWC get ANY HD on WKEF yet?

Darn! I wasn't watching the WKEF HD Time Warner channel during either ER or Leno.