KGW-HD fixed the Late Night Leno shows audio issues last Night!

KATU 2-1 OTA was fine here Last Thursday 3/15/07 . I didn't see any issues @ all. KGW on the other hand was still having the audio issues this last Monday 3/19/07 .

> Couple days ago KATU-43 had a very low signal strength, quality was 0,
> no packets received at all. Perhaps the transmitter was on, but wasn't
> getting any signal? Problems with the new encoder? Thursday they were
> up, but the signal was horrid. Today (Friday) they are doing much better,
> signal strength is back up to the normal range. Signal quality still isn't
> back up to normal, perhaps another day or two of tweaking will fix that.

Well, eleven days later, KATU digital hasn't gotten any better. Signal quality
is still down at 0-30%, resulting in lots of reception problems. KATU analog
is okay.

Is something still broken at the station? Is there any hope for improvement?
I've not been having issues with KATU either, maybe it's time to check your antenna and coax, or look for new obstructions.

KGW-HD fixed the Late Night Leno shows audio issues last Night!
You may have spoke to soon...

Good to see that someone at KOIN wasn't asleep for that long. At 9pm last night, the tOSU game switched over to some aquatic thingie...but no more than 10 minutes later the game was back on. Was pretty sure that the 9pm show was set to come on no matter what (as the basketball game was scheduled to end by 9), and that it was quickly rectified.

Thanks KOIN and Lee!

Disclaimer: I have not read through this entire thread, so my appologies if these questions have already been addressed.

My house is in the Beaverton area, located SW of Sexton Mountain (i.e. behind the hill without direct view of the towers). I know for fact that I get real weak analog signal, and have no reception of HD local channels with an indoor antenna. I do not want a rooftop antenna, so my solutions for reception of HD content are:


Antenna in the attic (not sure if it could receive the signal)
Comcast Cable
Directv
Dish Network


Although FIOS broadband is currently available, I'm not sure when the TV service will become available in our area.

Although I will be very happy to get the local channels without paying for them, I would be willing to sign up for a provider. I currently subscribe to DirecTV, but don't have the HD service from them. I might be able to get a better deal (on equipment and subscription fees) from Dish or Comcast as a new customer.

My dilemma is choosing a route to get the best HD content. What do you recommend? Do I have a chance of getting local channels based on my location? (Is there a way to test the signal strength without buying and installing an antenna in the attic first?)

If I'm not able to pick up the local channels with an antenna at my location, would you recommend cable or one of the DVB guys?

Thanks for your help.

You probably already know this BUT, just in case, they are now finishing installing fiber optic cable throughout WA Co. for FIOS TV etc......and estimate could be ready by 1st of 2008 if not before. I have been looking SO FORWARD to that and then being able to leave DISH - BUT - looking at FIOS prices now, does not looks like they are going to be any BIG Saving to me now.
What you might do, in your case, as you wait maybe for FIOS TV option, is SEE if Comcast still offers a Buy Your Dish From You DEAL.....I did that once with them and cut a "FAT HOG" for ONE year committment from them.....then went back to DISH.

Good Luck!

PS - You might call Radio Shack about "trying" some of their antennas - one GOOD thing about R.S. is they have NO Hassle Return Policy.

If you are located behind the hill and currently get lousy analog reception your chances of getting decent digital OTA are probably pretty low as well. I had D* since '94 myself and recently hooked up with Comcast because I was tired of crappy HD quality and also tired of not having a HD DVR. I could have signed up for the DVR with D* but did not want to spend money on it along with committing to 2 years of service, without any commitment from them that they would begin providing better HD quality when their new sats go up late this year.

Comcast did give me good "dump the dish" package pricing that will take me through the time Verizon should have Fios up and rolling. Their HD PQ, while not perfect, is a definite step up from D*. It's still a bit over compressed but not nearly as bad as D* and at least the 1080 channels are full resolution which is evident. Of course, having the HD DVR is simply WONDERFUL after five years of no way to time shift HD. Comcasts' feeds of the local HD channels are very good too. I have very particular eyes and there *may* be a difference that a person could tell in a side by side demo. But I can't say I discern any significant difference just flipping back and forth between them and their OTA counterparts.

Hopefully when Fios hits we'll then have an option for non-local HD that's given fully adequate bandwidth and even better PQ.


ron

Do I have a chance of getting local channels based on my location? (Is there a way to test the signal strength without buying and installing an antenna in the attic first?)
If you send me your exact coordinates and expected antenna height, I can provide estimates of signal strengths for you. That way, at least you'll know if OTA is completely out of the question or something that's workable.

Best regards,
Andy

> I've not been having issues with KATU either, maybe it's time to
> check your antenna and coax, or look for new obstructions.

I was getting quality of 60-80% before whatever it was that broke
approx. March 7th. Now it is 0-30%. My antennas, coax, etc. are fine.

I can see the towers from my roof. My antennas are in the attic,
protected from the elements, etc. I have plenty of signal strength
without amps. I have added attenuation to insure I'm not overloading
the tuner and generating intermod distortion. The UHF analogs are
beautiful, no snow, no ghosts, no interference. Numbers below are
from a 5th generation demodulator, today (Friday the 23rd).

Sorting tha data various ways doesn't reveil a pattern. What am I missing?

Sorted by frequency

actual signal signal tower
channel strength quality

KPXG 4 62-68 70 center
KOPB 27 87 55 center
KPTV 30 87-88 75 west
KRCW 33 75-76 55 east
KOIN 40 78-79 50 east
KATU 43 62-71 0-30 east
KNMT 45 0-82 0-10 east
KGW 46 85-86 70 center
KPDX 48 75 45 west

Sorted by signal quality

actual signal signal tower
channel strength quality

KNMT 45 0-82 0-10 east
KATU 43 62-71 0-30 east
KPDX 48 75 45 west
KOIN 40 78-79 50 east
KOPB 27 87 55 center
KRCW 33 75-76 55 east
KPXG 4 62-68 70 center
KGW 46 85-86 70 center
KPTV 30 87-88 75 west

Sorted by tower location

actual signal signal tower WGS84/NAD83
channel strength quality Coordinates

KOIN 40 78-79 50 east 122.7327
KRCW 33 75-76 55 east 122.7328
KNMT 45 0-82 0-10 east 122.7334
KATU 43 62-71 0-30 east 122.7342
KPXG 4 62-68 70 center ?
KOPB 27 87 55 center 122.7458
KGW 46 85-86 70 center 122.7458
KPTV 30 87-88 75 west 122.7481
KPDX 48 75 45 west 122.7519

Coordinates from http://bbauer.gomen.org/pdxdtv.htm

You probably already know this BUT, just in case, they are now finishing installing fiber optic cable throughout WA Co. for FIOS TV etc......and estimate could be ready by 1st of 2008 if not before.

I already have FIOS internet service, but I haven't heard an exact date for their TV service availability in Beaverton...

SEE if Comcast still offers a Buy Your Dish From You DEAL.

I never thought of that! I will give Comcast a call and see what deal they can work out for me. I rather not get in to a long contract (over 12 months), knowing that FIOS is right around the corner.

Comcast did give me good "dump the dish" package pricing that will take me through the time Verizon should have Fios up and rolling. Their HD PQ, while not perfect, is a definite step up from D*. It's still a bit over compressed but not nearly as bad as D* and at least the 1080 channels are full resolution which is evident. Of course, having the HD DVR is simply WONDERFUL after five years of no way to time shift HD.

It's good to know that Comcast quality is better than D*. I happen to have a lifetime Tivo service (grandfathered before Directv licensed the service from Tivo and started building their own DVRs), so the family is definitely used to time-shifting programs already. It would be really hard to go back! :cool:

Hopefully when Fios hits we'll then have an option for non-local HD that's given fully adequate bandwidth and even better PQ.

I am really looking forward to FIOS. I certainly hope the added bandwidth allows more channels with less compression, and better PQ.

If you send me your exact coordinates and expected antenna height, I can provide estimates of signal strengths for you.

Andy, you've got PM!



Thanks all of you for the help.

>Originally Posted by R11
Comcast did give me good "dump the dish" package pricing that will take me through the time Verizon should have Fios up and rolling. Their HD PQ, while not perfect, is a definite step up from D*. It's still a bit over compressed but not nearly as bad as D* and at least the 1080 channels are full resolution which is evident. Of course, having the HD DVR is simply WONDERFUL after five years of no way to time shift HD.

>>Posted by Mehdi.
It's good to know that Comcast quality is better than D*. I happen to have a lifetime Tivo service (grandfathered before Directv licensed the service from Tivo and started building their own DVRs), so the family is definitely used to time-shifting programs already. It would be really hard to go back!

Comcast better quality than D*? Perhaps you had a bad connection or something, because our D* quality is fantastic. I would VERY STRONGLY recommend you do some more research on that Comcast vs D* claim. On HD Quality, I personally would rate things like this... 1) OTA, 2) D*, 3) Cable. Now of course, this is a personal observation, but easily verified.

Comcast better quality than D*? Perhaps you had a bad connection or something, because our D* quality is fantastic. I would VERY STRONGLY recommend you do some more research on that Comcast vs D* claim. On HD Quality, I personally would rate things like this... 1) OTA, 2) D*, 3) Cable. Now of course, this is a personal observation, but easily verified.I am only speaking of HD content. It's widely known that D* has sub par HD PQ. You are aware that they are actually currently being sued due to their "HD-Lite" aren't you?

It wasn't always that way. As I said before, I had D* service since '94 and I started watching their HD programming just about 5 1/2 years ago. Back then all they had was HBO-HD and HDNet. They both had single transponders all to themselves and looked outstanding. Some of the video on HDNet was simply jaw dropping. When they did the Winter Olympics in '02 they were the most vibrant, eye popping images I had ever seen coming from a TV. Better than the OTA simulcast from NBC/KGW (8-1). Then as D* added new HD channels they began to stack them two and in some cases three up per transponder. They reduced the output resolution and employed stat muxing to make them "fit". People mused about them possibly doing some additional "filtering" which would have reduced the dynamic range of the resulting PQ. I'm no expert on any of that but the resulting effects were easy to see to me. PQ ever since has been all over the map from pretty good to downright crappy depending on the time and current programming. But nothing ever looked really good any longer. Along with the obvious motion artifacting, the pictures no longer had the razor sharp crispness or any nice "pop" to them. They often looked dull and washed out, lacking depth. During football season the last couple years when they have had to also make room for HD games in their Season Pass offering it's been the worst.

For non critical viewers or people with lower resolution sets or that like to sit far back it's probably not a big issue as it's a matter or degree (especially on the lowered resolution issue). I understand Comcast PQ varies from system to system. But from what I've seen myself and seemingly all reports from people in the PDX Comcast thread, the local Comcast puts out a pretty good product. I believe Comcast as a entity has a policy of not reducing resolution. Yes, they still have bandwidth issues and over compress resulting in some motion artifacting in the most challenging programming, but it's been much better even in that respect than D* was IMO. I believe you are the first person I can remember saying they actually thought D* had better PQ in the PDX area... You didn't happen to be using the S-Video output on your Comcast box were you? Just kidding :)


ron

Andy, you've got PM!
See the attached radar plot for the analysis for your area. Longer bars represent stronger signals. Details about each transmitter is given in the table to the right of the plot.



My interpretation:

- Yes, it looks like the signal strengths are good enough to work in the attic. I think you'll do reasonably well with channels at a level of -90 dBm or higher (under "Rx_dBm"), give or take.

- I'm not sure what your attic space is like, but I'd recommend getting a pretty high gain antenna like the Channel Master 4228, if possible. Since all the channels pretty much come from the same direction, it's OK to use a highly directional antenna. The extra gain will also help you maintain a safety margin to do a better job handling bad weather, multipath interference, and other fluctuations in the environment.

- I would try this WITHOUT any amps to start with. There are some really strong analog channels in the area, so skipping the amp will avoid having to deal with overload issues. However, that means you will lose a bit more signal in the cable and splitters. If you do not install any amps, then you should be careful to keep the cable lengths short and never split the signal.

- If you decide you need an amp (because you have a long cable run or if you split the signal), then you'll need to select a pre-amp that is less prone to overloading. The Winegard amps are a little better than the Channel Master offerings in this respect.



I hope this helps. Good luck!



Best regards,
Andy

- Yes, it looks like the signal strengths are good enough to work in the attic. I think you'll do reasonably well with channels at a level of -90 dBm or higher (under "Rx_dBm"), give or take.

Andy, thanks very much for the analysis. I just have one question: Does this take my house altitude in relation to the hill in front of our house into consideration?

I do have plenty of room in my attic for the Channel Master 4228 antenna!

Thanks again for your help!

Andy, thanks very much for the analysis. I just have one question: Does this take my house altitude in relation to the hill in front of our house into consideration?

I do have plenty of room in my attic for the Channel Master 4228 antenna!

Thanks again for your help!
No, the simulation does not know about buildings, but it does take into account terrain effects. The simulation is estimating the theoretical signal strength at an imaginary point above a "naked Earth". I used the coordinates you sent plus an estimated antenna height based on the typical size of a house. The resulting signal strengths represent what's available "in the air" around that point in space. From there, you need to factor in all the stuff between "the air" and your tuner (e.g., building loss, antenna gain, amps, cable loss, splitters, etc.).

If you are directly behind a house that is obstructing your signal, then there may be some signal loss that was not accounted for in the simulation. If the other house is about the same height as yours, then the effects are usually small enough to ignore.

Best regards,
Andy

After hearing a lot of discussion about the Directv HR10-250's problems pulling in OTA reception, I added a splitter to my antenna line and plugged one directly into the TV's tuner. The signal strength numbers went from mid 80's to upper 90's (except CBS that went from ~72 to 76).

Given the large fir tree between me and the antennas on the hill, and the consensus that the HR10-250 suffers from multi-pathing issues, is there an easy solution for curing multipathing issues??

I'm currently using a "medium multi-directional" antenna in the attic. I tried a more directional antenna in the past, but didn't get any better results. Here's the antennaweb info for my place. I'd like to get everyone in the 90's through my tivo if possible.

Any help is appreciated.

* yellow - uhf KOIN-DT 6.1 CBS PORTLAND OR 10° 7.2 40
* yellow - uhf KPDX-DT 49.1 MNT VANCOUVER WA 2° 7.3 48
* yellow - uhf KGW-DT 8.1 NBC PORTLAND OR 4° 7.4 46
* yellow - uhf KATU-DT 2.1 ABC PORTLAND OR 10° 7.2 43
* yellow - uhf KOPB-DT 10.1 PBS PORTLAND OR 4° 7.4 27
* yellow - uhf KPTV-DT 12.1 FOX PORTLAND OR 4° 7.3 30
* yellow - vhf KPXG-DT 22.1 ION SALEM OR 10° 7.2 4
* yellow - uhf KRCW-DT 32.1 CW SALEM OR 10° 7.3 33

After hearing a lot of discussion about the Directv HR10-250's problems pulling in OTA reception, I added a splitter to my antenna line and plugged one directly into the TV's tuner. The signal strength numbers went from mid 80's to upper 90's (except CBS that went from ~72 to 76).

Given the large fir tree between me and the antennas on the hill, and the consensus that the HR10-250 suffers from multi-pathing issues, is there an easy solution for curing multipathing issues??

I'm currently using a "medium multi-directional" antenna in the attic. I tried a more directional antenna in the past, but didn't get any better results. Here's the antennaweb info for my place. I'd like to get everyone in the 90's through my tivo if possible.

Any help is appreciated.

* yellow - uhf KOIN-DT 6.1 CBS PORTLAND OR 10° 7.2 40
* yellow - uhf KPDX-DT 49.1 MNT VANCOUVER WA 2° 7.3 48
* yellow - uhf KGW-DT 8.1 NBC PORTLAND OR 4° 7.4 46
* yellow - uhf KATU-DT 2.1 ABC PORTLAND OR 10° 7.2 43
* yellow - uhf KOPB-DT 10.1 PBS PORTLAND OR 4° 7.4 27
* yellow - uhf KPTV-DT 12.1 FOX PORTLAND OR 4° 7.3 30
* yellow - vhf KPXG-DT 22.1 ION SALEM OR 10° 7.2 4
* yellow - uhf KRCW-DT 32.1 CW SALEM OR 10° 7.3 33


As long as you're not experiencing any signal breakups it doesn't matter if your signal is 100 or 50.
If you do have multipath problems then a directional antenna and critical aiming with maybe an antennuator is the solution.

You may have spoke to soon...

Well, I will have to check again!

While the claims of better HD picture is hard to quantitate, the fact that D* does not offer the HD signal of KOIN and KATU on their new MPEG 4 package is not in question
Clearly we are small potatoes in their minds, but it is in my mind no longer acceptable!! :mad:

Michael,

IIRC, it took a long time for D* to come to agreement to add KOIN when they first rolled out SD locals way back when as well. The two butted heads for some time before it finally got done. I don't seem to remember the same for KATU though. I think they came to agreement right away or shortly there after.


ron

SInce KOIN is under new management, I would think that the old problems between KOIN and D* would no longer be an issue

That's a good point. I forgot all about that... Although, with the new owners it's possible it could be even worse too :D.


ron

I get that it takes two to Tango. But it still seems that there would be a shared interest in getting the signal out to as many people as possible.
From the stations point they will have potentially fewer eyes watching as more and more people want to see an Hd picture
From the providers point, it has to be harder to sell their service, when two of the four local HD stations are not included in the package
Very frustating
Thanks for the replies

SInce KOIN is under new management, I would think that the old problems between KOIN and D* would no longer be an issue
DirecTV has been sitting on a proposal from KOIN since December. No response so far.

Mr WooD:
Thanks for the info
I guess I harken back to my original comments that we are small potatoes to them.
Not acceptable while they are happy to accept my monthly fees
Understand I have been a D* subscriber since 1997.

I am only speaking of HD content. It's widely known that D* has sub par HD PQ. TheJory, it occurred to me I should further clarify this statement I made. I didn't mean to include or imply anything about the HD locals from D*. I never subbed to them and have had no experience viewing them at all. From the comments I've read since they rolled them out though, the Mpeg4 HD locals have gotten generally very good reviews. Hopefully they will provide the rest of their HD channels the same treatment once they get their increased capacity when their new sats are up and operational.


ron

Disclaimer: I have not read through this entire thread, so my appologies if these questions have already been addressed.

My house is in the Beaverton area, located SW of Sexton Mountain (i.e. behind the hill without direct view of the towers). I know for fact that I get real weak analog signal, and have no reception of HD local channels with an indoor antenna. I do not want a rooftop antenna, so my solutions for reception of HD content are:


Antenna in the attic (not sure if it could receive the signal)
Comcast Cable
Directv
Dish Network


Although FIOS broadband is currently available, I'm not sure when the TV service will become available in our area.

Although I will be very happy to get the local channels without paying for them, I would be willing to sign up for a provider. I currently subscribe to DirecTV, but don't have the HD service from them. I might be able to get a better deal (on equipment and subscription fees) from Dish or Comcast as a new customer.

My dilemma is choosing a route to get the best HD content. What do you recommend? Do I have a chance of getting local channels based on my location? (Is there a way to test the signal strength without buying and installing an antenna in the attic first?)

If I'm not able to pick up the local channels with an antenna at my location, would you recommend cable or one of the DVB guys?

Thanks for your help.




you're a DTV customer now, call their Customer Retention group, tell them you are interested in HD and are looking at cable and FIOS, they should be able to throw a very attractive offer your way (free install, major equipment discount, etc.). However, they only carry two local stations in HD, the rest are in SD.

DirecTV has been sitting on a proposal from KOIN since December. No response so far.



one issue is that DTV is waiting for their two satellite launches this year to increase bandwidth. No point in signing contracts with no place to put the stations.


OTOH, it is annoying that Portland only has two HD stations on DTV where other markets have 4-6. I hope DTV moves on this soon.

just for laughs, I turned my antenna (DB-2) 45 degrees off axis from the broadcast towers. Much better reception on all channels. Go figure.

just for laughs, I turned my antenna (DB-2) 45 degrees off axis from the broadcast towers. Much better reception on all channels. Go figure.
Perhaps you're getting multipath. Usually the strongest signal is in the horizontal plane but you might be picking up a reflected signal.

It may be that the signals are coming in too strong. This will reduce the signal strength since TV signals are horizontally polarized (at least around here). Turn it 90 degrees and you won't receive anything except maybe reflected signals.

one issue is that DTV is waiting for their two satellite launches this year to increase bandwidth. No point in signing contracts with no place to put the stations.
This information is incorrect.

DirecTV currently has two functioning Ka band satellites that are being used for local HD channels. DirecTV has plenty of capacity available to carry KOIN HD.

Unfortunately for DirecTV these satellites can only be used for locals because they only do spot beams. The two new Ka band satellites that DirecTV is launching this year are designed for national coverage. Those are the birds that will bring you countless new shopping channels in Hi Def.

DirecTV has a national HD bandwidth shortage; they have a plethora of local HD bandwidth available.

KOIN HD is not available from DirecTV for purely business reasons.

The two new Ka band satellites that DirecTV is launching this year are designed for national coverage. Those are the birds that will bring you countless new shopping channels in Hi Def.

:D

KOIN HD is not available from DirecTV for purely business reasons.

A similar long delay also persisted when they started carrying Portland locals initially. KOIN was the last of the network station they added back then too.

I recorded "Desperate Housewives" last night on my DirecTV DVR (OTA HD Channel 2-1. When I watched it the picture froze a couple of times for a few minutes during the show. The closed captioning worked to show the show was still going on. Anyone have this happen when watching it live or was it my recorder?

I recorded "Desperate Housewives" last night on my DirecTV DVR (OTA HD Channel 2-1. When I watched it the picture froze a couple of times for a few minutes during the show. The closed captioning worked to show the show was still going on. Anyone have this happen when watching it live or was it my recorder?

No, it's not your recorder. KATU reports problems with the HD feed from ABC. Several have reported the problem both OTA and via Comcast. I just hope they git it fixed by Wed., but sooner would be better.

I saw it as my wife was finishing up watching DW before we had to go leave. Looked like it would jump in spots and then just stop again. Tried a reboot after the program was over and it looked like it has just frozen up on that channel. Other tuner was fine, so I bet it's another ABC fault (that channel drops audio quite a bit for me on the HR10-250 OTA).

>> I recorded "Desperate Housewives" last night on my DirecTV DVR (OTA HD
>> Channel 2-1. When I watched it the picture froze a couple of times for
>> a few minutes during the show.

> No, it's not your recorder. KATU reports problems with the HD feed from ABC.

Didn't notice any problems with the analog broadcast, it certainly didn't freeze
for a few minutes. Does KATU generate the analog signal from the HD feed, or
is there a seperate source?

The problem I noticed is that we seem to have missed a few episodes?

----

KGW digital had 10-15 minutes of dead air (black screen, no sound) on
the 31st. No dropped packets or other reception problems to explain it.

Moving from San Diego to Vancouver, WA soon. Right now I have D* with all the locals HD and the HD package. Picture is great at times and bad at others.

Wondering if any of you guys would recommend either to keep D* in Vancouver, WA or go with Comcast Cable. To get out of my D* contract it will cost me around $175. I don't mind paying it if Comcast is that much better.

Any suggestions?

Only 2 local channels are avaiable in HD on DirecTV right now.

Wondering if any of you guys would recommend either to keep D* in Vancouver, WA or go with Comcast Cable.

Do you have DVRs from DirecTV? I have 4 DirecTiVos (but SD only). Comcast's equivalents are a lot more expensive.

To me SD with a good DVR is worth about 10x as much as HD with a crappy DVR.

Also Comcast can be pricey if you don't get a bundle, quite cheap with one of their deals.

Do you have HBO? Thru DirecTV it's $12 (or less), Comcast wants closer to $17.

So the answer is "it depends".

Not getting too much help here but this is what I do have....

HR20-700
Records MPEG4, OTA HD, and everything else.
HD Package is around $10/mo.
The only premium is
HBO and SHO obviously at around $12 per. $17 is ridiculously in my opinion.

Whats the local OTA HD reception like? I have an RCA indoor one in San Diego
that is positioned right behind my 60" and I receive everything except FOX.

If Comcast is going to kill me on the monthly price, then I'm sticking with D*
considering that they are expanding nationwide HD this year, especially if I can
receive everything OTA with an antennae.

If you guys can
give me a great reason to switch to Comcast than please let me know!!!!

Whats the local OTA HD reception like?

Local reception depends a lot on exactly where you are. There are lots of small hills and medium size buildings around the area.

Generally people report good results with outdoor antennas. Indoor antennas are usually more problematic, but probably due to multipath rather than signal strength.

Scoonie,

I live on the eastside of Portland and had D* for years. When I made the leap to HD, I was unwilling to write a $500 check for a new D* box, so changed to Comcast. I hated every minute of it. The DVR box was crap, slow and buggy and I thought the picture substandard. I put a Silver Sensor in my attic to receive the locals and my picture quality was better on a $25 antenna than on my $90/month cable. So I bit the bullet and bought the D* box and went back to DirecTV.

All of the locals in Portland come from two towers that are close together. If you have a clear shot at the tower from your new place in Vancouver, you won't have to worry about the locals on D*. If you don't have a clear shot, you're going to have to go higher. So it does depend.

All the best and welcome to the area.

peejayemm

Sorry for being a stickler on details ;-) It bugs the hell out of me when misinfo is repeated over and over despite correct info being available. All the Portland locals do not come from 2 towers. Most of the locals come from 2 towers with Fox 12 being on tower 3 slightly west of the two and 49 being on tower 4 slight west of the 12 tower. The 4 towers while looking close together from a distance are spread out over an area perhaps 1/4 mile. If this was the midwest we could say they were all from the same tower and it wouldn't matter and no one would be affected nor care. Here in Portland we have many hills ,trees and some tall buildings. So depending on where you are some channels may come in great while others very poorly. Even channels on the same tower can have different reception issues due to the fact that each channels antenna is on a different area of the tower. One channel can end up behind something and the others not depending on where you live. It took me a long time to figure out why I had issues with channel 12 and not the others. My location puts something in between me and channel 12 and not the others. Lucky for me I get a great analog picture on 12 . 12 digital will be moving back to VHS 12 and perhaps that will fix things for me or perhaps I'll have to do without FOX.

Not getting too much help here but this is what I do have....

HR20-700
Records MPEG4, OTA HD, and everything else.
HD Package is around $10/mo.
The only premium is
HBO and SHO obviously at around $12 per. $17 is ridiculously in my opinion.

Whats the local OTA HD reception like? I have an RCA indoor one in San Diego
that is positioned right behind my 60" and I receive everything except FOX.

If Comcast is going to kill me on the monthly price, then I'm sticking with D*
considering that they are expanding nationwide HD this year, especially if I can
receive everything OTA with an antennae.

If you guys can
give me a great reason to switch to Comcast than please let me know!!!!
I, too, live in Vancouver and get all of the HD Portland channels with my outdoor antenna. There are no trees in my immediate vicinity. My zip code is 98682. As mentioned above, the answer is: "it depends".

I, too, live in Vancouver and get all of the HD Portland channels with my outdoor antenna. There are no trees in my immediate vicinity. My zip code is 98682. As mentioned above, the answer is: "it depends".


So what is your setup? Including antenna brand/setup?

I, too, live in Vancouver and get all of the HD Portland channels with my outdoor antenna. There are no trees in my immediate vicinity. My zip code is 98682. As mentioned above, the answer is: "it depends".


Can you also include what channels you receive and total cost?
Thanks

Not normally a hockey watcher on tv, but today's Blackhawks/Stars game literally has no announcing on (only on 8.1), so all you here are the players themselves, the fans, the p.a. announcer, and the refs whistles. The broadcast announcers are barely audible, but easily able to tune out once you get into the game.

Thanks NBC and/or KGW for this unintended great piece of HDTV!

I don't watch much hockey either (I've literally never seen a hockey game in SD) but I also thought this non-traditional sound mix was fantastic! Every wack and scrape on the ice was crystal clear, you could hear a guy (a coach?) yelling how much time was left on the power play ("Forty seconds", "Twenty seconds!") and they had the deafening sound system miked up 100% so you could hear the venue's announcer (a woman, how cool!) and the booming loud music almost as if you were there. The TV announcers whoever they were were barely audible.

I'm sure it was a typical NBC mistake though.

NOt unlike that football game on CBS a while back. I think it was FLorida. I wish they would give us an alternative sounds option of no announcers and field sounds only.

NOt unlike that football game on CBS a while back. I think it was FLorida. I wish they would give us an alternative sounds option of no announcers and field sounds only.


Yeah, that was Florida/Florida State from 2005, there was no announcers on that one, was like you were at the game.

A number of years ago HDNet aired a hockey match where they did the whole 2nd period without any announcers IIRC. I believe they billed it as a "sights and sounds of the NHL" presentation or something like that. It was great. It's been some time since I've been to one, but I used to go to the local Winterhawks games fairly regularly and the HDNet game really picked up the flavor and feel of being there live.


ron

> I wish they would give us an alternative sounds option
> of no announcers and field sounds only.

They could put the field sounds on the front channels
and the announcers on the rear channels. Then the
user could adjust the volume levels as desired.

Is anyone broadcasting F1 this year?

I don't think anyone would tolerate hearing the announcers behind them. NFL on NBC was careful to only put the announcer's voices in the center channel. You could almost wipe them out by unplugging the center channel (unless your receiver lets you turn it down all the way). The one possible problem was that their voices would be picked up by the subwoofer so they'd sound something like the parents in a Charlie Brown special. Adjusting the cutoff frequency or turning the subwoofer off would solve that problem

A lot of work to get rid of the announcers, but at least it was possible.

I know this isn't an OTA channel, but on the Golf Channel HD feed on Comcast, the announcers voices come out of the left channel (or is it the right??) and the crowd noise/golf swings, etc. come out of the right (or is it left?). I suppose you could adjust the balance so as to eliminate the announcers, but I personally find this very annoying.

I purchased a rooftop antenna from Radio Shack about 1 1/2 years ago. I don't know what brand it is? I get the CBS, ABC, Fox, NBC, and PBS affliates without any chronic problems. Occasionally, FOX is an issue...but not often enough that it causes us any major headaches. Cost was about $25, IIRC?

Just checking to see if this place just died or what? 8 days without any messages?
Maybe that DNS change that happened??
Of course if this note doesn't post, I'll know what the problem is :-)

Hmmm, the note posted. OK?? :confused: :confused:

OK, I'll post something. Has anyone noticed problems with David Letterman the last couple of shows (Friday and Monday)? I use cable to access, but I suspect it's a KOIN problem rather than Comcast. Video is fine, but the audio snaps between Dolby Digital and Dolby PL II about once a second. It drives my receiver crazy. It happened only on Letterman, not on other CBS shows (at least not the other network shows I checked last night).

OK, I'll post something. Has anyone noticed problems with David Letterman the last couple of shows (Friday and Monday)? I use cable to access, but I suspect it's a KOIN problem rather than Comcast. Video is fine, but the audio snaps between Dolby Digital and Dolby PL II about once a second. It drives my receiver crazy. It happened only on Letterman, not on other CBS shows (at least not the other network shows I checked last night).

I experienced the same exact thing. I rarely stay up that late but on Friday I was just surfing and ran into that problem. When I switched to OTA I didn't have that problem. The cable feed was not watchable because of that audio issue.

I experienced the same exact thing. I rarely stay up that late but on Friday I was just surfing and ran into that problem. When I switched to OTA I didn't have that problem. The cable feed was not watchable because of that audio issue.
AHA! Thanks. Now we know who the culprit is.

For fun I wanted to see if the original Battlestar Galactica was as bad as I remember it so I tried to tune in our low-VHF PAX station on my UHF antenna. Incredibly it worked! I might not need to buy a VHF antenna when KGW and KPTV move back to VHF.

For fun I wanted to see if the original Battlestar Galactica was as bad as I remember it so I tried to tune in our low-VHF PAX station on my UHF antenna. Incredibly it worked! I might not need to buy a VHF antenna when KGW and KPTV move back to VHF.
I've not had problems picking it up with my Silver Sensor either.

The original series is still campy fun. If the new series had a different name, you'd hardly know they're related.

The original series is still campy fun. If the new series had a different name, you'd hardly know they're related.
It's also fun to see how the production values of television shows have completely gone through the roof in thirty years. Not only were the sets cheap in the old BSG (you would expect that) but there's no attempt to do anything dramatic with the lighting or camera angles. Every scene is light it up, shoot it, and hurry to the next scene, like they were filming a live show. Series took just as long to shoot but I guess they didn't have an army of talented art directors and production crew whose job it is to give their show a distinctive look. Now today's TV shows look more stunning than most movies did back in the 70's.

I did not link this, but in the HDTV programming section there is a thread about a CBS exec stating that multicasting hurts PQ. I don't know about everyone else but I would love to see only one CBS/ABC/NBC digital channel that was respectively having all the available bandwidth. I would rather see the best available PQ -vs- having additional channels that zap bandwidth.

I wonder if Lee could chime in on this topic.

KATU (ABC) doesn't have a subchannel. For some reason they recently dropped their bitrate to 15 Mbps but they're not yet using this extra bandwidth and it hasn't affected their HD quality very much.

KATU (ABC) doesn't have a subchannel. For some reason they recently dropped their bitrate to 15 Mbps but they're not yet using this extra bandwidth and it hasn't affected their HD quality very much.
Are you looking at the raw data being transmitted? KATU may simply be devoting bits to something like USDTV. (http://usdtv.com/) Not literally USDTV since they're defunct.

Yes, KATU has only one channel and is padding the bandwidth with null packets. You can't hide things in an MPEG-2 transport stream.

Just got an HDTV and hooked into the PDX Comcast feed on Friday. What's the verdict on Comcast? Is their picture quality suspect? Overall I like what I see but I suspect I'm getting a slightly "dirty" signal at times -- some channels more than others.

Just curious what others have experienced.

Just got an HDTV and hooked into the PDX Comcast feed on Friday. What's the verdict on Comcast? Is their picture quality suspect? Overall I like what I see but I suspect I'm getting a slightly "dirty" signal at times -- some channels more than others.

Just curious what others have experienced.

Have you calibrated your tv?

Have you calibrated your tv?

Professionally or disc? No. Just did adjustments using my eye. Would calibration using an Avia really make that much of a difference?

What I mean by dirty is that there's kind of this "fuzz" noticeable in the background -- especially on dark scenes. For instance while watching Planet Earth "Caves" last night on Discovery HD the dark cave scenes had what looked to be like millions of tiny flies in the really dark shots.

What I mean by dirty is that there's kind of this "fuzz" noticeable in the background -- especially on dark scenes. For instance while watching Planet Earth "Caves" last night on Discovery HD the dark cave scenes had what looked to be like millions of tiny flies in the really dark shots.
That's camera sensor noise or film grain if it was shot on film. It's an unavoidable situation of shooting in dark conditions.

Now that you have HD, you can finally see the imperfections in the medium that your old TV blurred out.

I'll have to check the Caves broadcast to see what you're talking about. I only watched it for a bit inbetween NBA/NHL yesterday.

Avia discs only calibrate the DVD input (unless you transfer those settings to your main tv watching input).

I'll have to check the Caves broadcast to see what you're talking about. I only watched it for a bit inbetween NBA/NHL yesterday.

Avia discs only calibrate the DVD input (unless you transfer those settings to your main tv watching input).

Yeah if you could check out any of the planet earth series and let me know if you notice any "fuzziness" in the background, especially on dark scenes, I'd really appreciate it.

Troubleshooting - gotta love it

The "fuzz" you are seeing is probably not a result of comcast's feed. I have comcast and their feeds of the local HD channels look very close in PQ to their OTA counterparts to my eyes. I think what you are seeing is a typical artifact seen on many digital, fixed-pixel displays. Swarming pixels, dancing pixels, dithering etc are names the effect often goes by. Shadow areas and expanses of red are where it often shows up. Some displays are better than others at reproducing solid darks and reds without any "noise" but most show at least some at times. Having a less than stellar feed probably compounds the problem as well I think.


ron

General consensus seems to be that Comcast has one of the better quality HD feeds, even if the quantity is less than desirable. Beyond that, other than a few isolated reports, it's also reported to be superior to E* and D*, so other than OTA you have little choice currently for finding something superior.

My experience has been that OTA holds a slight edge over Comcast on my equipment however I wonder how much of that has to do with the decoder used and not with the signal itself.
Even within Comcast, switching models of their boxes can cause a perceived difference in image quality.

What I mean by dirty is that there's kind of this "fuzz" noticeable in the background -- especially on dark scenes. .

I venture to guess it has to do with black level performance of the TV set. I have the same problem with my Sony Grand Wega RP LCD tv (circa 02-03). Dark backgrounds seem to be a matte of dark gray, kinda washed out and not very detailed. FYI, I saw the same poor black level with OTA and Comcast broadcasts, and concur with others about Comcast signal quality being on par with OTA.

HZ

I venture to guess it has to do with black level performance of the TV set. I have the same problem with my Sony Grand Wega RP LCD tv (circa 02-03). Dark backgrounds seem to be a matte of dark gray, kinda washed out and not very detailed.

HZ

If you buy into what Mr. Bob says he can do for RPTVs, (did they make RP LCDs back then??) you may just need a lens and mirror cleaning. If you pour over this thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=695922&page=43&pp=30 you may be able to do it yourself. Lots of people have added their own how to's.

OFF-TOPIC: I apologize for posting OT here, but I can't think of any other way to reach members of this forum linving on the Portland area. Anyway, I'm looking for a recommendation on a local professional to do a wall installation of a Plasma TV. The electrical outlet and A/V cable conduit are already in place and I got the mount. So the only thing to do is the actual installation. If anyone have a recommendation, please send me a PM. DON'T post it here as I don't want to hijack this thread.

I live in the Salem area and was wondering what the best OTA antenna would be for this area. I'm running the DTV HR20-700.

I live in the Salem area and was wondering what the best OTA antenna would be for this area. I'm running the DTV HR20-700.
While you are waiting for someone from Salem to weigh in here's a link to posts that mention Salem from earlier in this thread.
You will have to dig through them, but there's antenna info.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/search.php?searchid=3830095

While you are waiting for someone from Salem to weigh in here's a link to posts that mention Salem from earlier in this thread.
You will have to dig through them, but there's antenna info.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/search.php?searchid=3830095

I am logged in, but when I click on that link I get:

Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.

hmmm, I just used the "search this thread" link at the top of the page and used "Salem" as the search term.

I live in the Salem area and was wondering what the best OTA antenna would be for this area. I'm running the DTV HR20-700.

I live in NE Salem, near N. Salem High, and I put up a ChannelMaster 3020 VHF/UHF/FM combo antenna, and it works great - the digital stations in PDX come in without problem, but I haven't tried to fine-tune it enough for the analog signals, however. It needs to be aimed at around 1-2 degrees for the PDX digital signals. At this time, I think that all the HDTV/Digital signals are on the UHF band, but after 2009, some will be reallocated to VHF, which is why I bought the combo antenna. I picked this up at Fry's in Wilsonville for $70, the chimney mount was $13, a 5ft mast was $6, and you'll need a run of RG-6 cable as well. It's a huge antenna, around 13 ft long when assembled, but again, that's mostly for future VHF use.

You could get by for now with a mid-range UHF roof antenna to pick up the digital signals easily enough.

Hope this helps.

pm 7600,

Can you get Eugene stations in Salem?

pm 7600,

Can you get Eugene stations in Salem?

I haven't tried. The rated range on my antenna is 60 miles for UHF and 100 miles for VHF, so I suppose I could, but I'm not using a rotator, and it's pointed North now.

I haven't tried. The rated range on my antenna is 60 miles for UHF and 100 miles for VHF, so I suppose I could, but I'm not using a rotator, and it's pointed North now.

I lived for a while just South of Salem and had much better luck with the Portland stations than those from Eugene. There were not as many Eugene digital stations on the air when I tried last and depending on your location you will probably have a cleaner shot at Portland. Unless some new Eugene stations have come on the air over the last year I would say stick with the Portland stations for now.

wrong thread.....

Anyone else experiencing pixelation on broadcast of NCIS on 6-1? I'm in Gateway area.

I didn't have any trouble with NCIS on 6-1 but had a lot of pixellation on Law & Order CI on 8-1. I'm near Lloyd Center.

I just checked the Directv website and they now broadcast KATU (2) in HD. When did they add this channel and does anyone know when KOIN (6) will be added?

The wind is probably affecting your signals. Good to hear KATU is on board.

I just noticed the KOIN 6 local 6 oclock news was in HD! A first for local news stations in Portland?

Well, it isn't in HD, but it is in Digital Widescreen. There a few stations in LA doing local news in HD, but I haven't heard or seen it done anyplace else yet. I imagine the costs to upgrade the cameras alone are pretty steep.

I just noticed the KOIN 6 local 6 oclock news was in HD! A first for local news stations in Portland?

Well, it isn't in HD, but it is in Digital Widescreen. There a few stations in LA doing local news in HD, but I haven't heard or seen it done anyplace else yet. I imagine the costs to upgrade the cameras alone are pretty steep.


Are you sure? It looked really sharp. I have a 1080p screen and it really seemed like it was pretty similar to HD broadcasts.

Are you sure? It looked really sharp. I have a 1080p screen and it really seemed like it was pretty similar to HD broadcasts.
See the details on the local "media insiders" web site.

http://www.oregonmediainsiders.com/node/963

Does KPDX digital ever broadcast widescreen? Everything
I've seen is 4:3 pillarboxed, even when the original
material would have been widescreen.

Does KPDX digital ever broadcast widescreen?
You bet it does whenever MyTV is broadcasting something in HD like its low low low rated prime time programming.

MyTV has broadcast only one movie in HD. I can't even remember what it was.

http://home.pacifier.com/~scowl/hdtv/mytv1.jpg

Here is a good explanation from their engineer:

This was posted on the AVS Forum website by Lee Wood, KOIN's Chief Engineer:

"Lest I be misquoted you can get a replay of the KOIN Widescreen story at koin.com.

KOIN has been broadcasting CBS programming in HDTV since December, 1999. This will be our third HDTV Super Bowl.

We have long wanted to move to shooting news in 16:9 so that we could build our archive with material with a longer useful life. The change this week is that with the installation of new HDTV studio cameras in December the last impediment to producing our local news in 16:9 has been removed. Graphics have been reworked for 16:9, field cameras are now shooting in 16:9 and side panels are being added on 4:3 material to maintain the 16:9 aspect ratio. This is not to imply that EVERYTHING is shot in HDTV. Most material is still shot in standard definition with a 16:9 (local) or a 4:3 (news feeds) aspect ratio. This is just the first step and why I implored that we not call the news HDTV. It is widescreen, it is digital (had to give the marketing folks something) and it is a distinctly different product than what was being produced last week (count the hairs on the studio anchors head). The product that goes to air is still 'standard definition', but a very much better standard definition. It is the first step."



Are you sure? It looked really sharp. I have a 1080p screen and it really seemed like it was pretty similar to HD broadcasts.

You bet it does whenever MyTV is broadcasting something in HD like its low low low rated prime time programming.

MyTV has broadcast only one movie in HD. I can't even remember what it was.



They also had a bikini contest in HD a few weeks ago.
I was surprised I didn't see a thread about it in the programming forum. :)

In fact, they're playing a movie in HD as I type this. (Chain Reaction)

General consensus seems to be that Comcast has one of the better quality HD feeds, even if the quantity is less than desirable. Beyond that, other than a few isolated reports, it's also reported to be superior to E* and D*, so other than OTA you have little choice currently for finding something superior.

My experience has been that OTA holds a slight edge over Comcast on my equipment however I wonder how much of that has to do with the decoder used and not with the signal itself.
Even within Comcast, switching models of their boxes can cause a perceived difference in image quality.


:)

LOL!

Being as this is an OTA forum I was wondering if anyone knows if the new Tivo Series 3 can record TWO HD OTA channels? I know it can do two cable HD channels as it has two cable card tuners. But I'm wondering if it can do duel HD with it's OTA tuner.

Also, I get a bunch of channels just using a cheap powered rabbit ears type antenna. Some of the digital channels do go in and out sometimes, and a few of the digital channels only work if I hold the antenna in a different location. Will getting an outside antenna greatly improve my reception? Do I need a VHF/UHF antenna I'm really only interested in the channels that come in Digitally being as all the major networks have digital channels now, and it is my understanding that the Digital channels are all UHF.

> Also, I get a bunch of channels just using a cheap powered rabbit ears
> type antenna. Some of the digital channels do go in and out sometimes,
> and a few of the digital channels only work if I hold the antenna in
> a different location. Will getting an outside antenna greatly improve
> my reception?

A good "outside" antenna is nearly certain to get you much better reception,
even if it is indoors or in the attic. It will be more directional, which
gets you a stronger signal and less multipath. A "powered" (amplified)
antenna may be overloading from FM stations. A FM trap ahead of any
amplifier will help. One disadvantage of powered antennas is that it would
be difficult or impossible to insert a FM trap ahead of the amplifier.

> Do I need a VHF/UHF antenna I'm really only interested
> in the channels that come in Digitally being as all the major networks
> have digital channels now, and it is my understanding that the Digital
> channels are all UHF.

Note that some of the shows on OPB are currently broadcast only on analog.
(And others only on digital, so we currently need both analog and digital
tuners.)

Currently KPXG broadcasts digitally on channel 4 (VHF-LO). (The 22.x
numbers are fake, it is really broadcast on channel 4.) Some people
say that all the HDTV broadcasts are UHF, which is technically true
since KPXG is digital but SD not HD.

In less than 2 years, the analog stations go away, KPXG moves to UHF,
and 3 stations (KGW, KOPB, KPTV) move the digital broadcasts from
UHF to VHF-HI. At that point, we need VHF-HI and UHF.

You might get good VHF-HI reception with a UHF antenna. Or not.
I get good reception of KPXG ch4 using a YA-1713 VHF-HI antenna.
Your mileage may vary. Note that a VHF-HI antenna is smaller than
a VHF-LO antenna.

See the first article in this thread for more details on the local
stations.

Being as this is an OTA forum I was wondering if anyone knows if the new Tivo Series 3 can record TWO HD OTA channels? I know it can do two cable HD channels as it has two cable card tuners. But I'm wondering if it can do duel HD with it's OTA tuner.

Yes, the TiVo Series 3 will record two HD OTA shows at one time. I'm 35 miles east of Portland in Vernonia and use a large outside antenna with a pre-amp and have no problem receiving the digital OTA locals. The TiVo has two ATSC, two NTSC, and two QAM tuners in it and can record from any combination of the two at one time. It's a spendy device but there's nothing else out there that can do what it does.

I was previously using an RCA DVR2160 attached to my Toshiba DLP TV to record digital broadcasts but it's functionality was very limited. I couldn't even watch an already recorded show while recording another with it!

I know this isn't an OTA question, but just wanted to run this by you:

http://salem-news.com/sports/may212007/blazers_comcast_052107.php

Does anyone know if Direct TV will be able to get this station? I know that they have the Comcast equivalent on the East coast available on sports pack, but do you think they will carruy this station like they carry FSNW?

My concern is that now we have a team worth watching, and it appears that those of us who don't like being screwed over by an unethical cable company are going to be blacked out on all but 21 games, and ALL of the HD games.

Any thoughts Direct TV users?

Does anyone know if Direct TV will be able to get this station?

Is the Portland Tribune credible?

On the day he resigned, Patterson put the Comcast contract at $130 million over its 10 years.

That's a lot of money! Either Comcast will use the situation as competitive leverage over DirecTV or they will extract a princely sum from DirecTV for the rights.

http://www.portlandtribune.com/sports/story.php?story_id=117978242256971900

Why is it that the Digital Channels on UHF come in so much better than the regular VHF channels? When those networks move their digital channel from UHF to VHF will the signal be just as hard to get as the current analog channel is?

DirecTV has a Comcast channel, Comcast SportsNet (West), Channel 656. I would imagine they would put them on that channel.

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/packProg/channelChart2.jsp?assetId=1100069

> Why is it that the Digital Channels on UHF come in so much better
> than the regular VHF channels? When those networks move their
> digital channel from UHF to VHF will the signal be just as hard
> to get as the current analog channel is?

You have digital vs analog and VHF vs UHF. You need to figure out
*why* your VHF analog reception is poor.

What is wrong with your VHF analog reception?

"Snow" is a signal to noise problem.
"Ghosts" is a multipath problem.
Other analog problems are generally some form of interference.

http://www.kyes.com/antenna/interference/interferencedex.html
http://www.kyes.com/antenna/interference/tvibook.html
http://www.kyes.com/antenna/antennadex.html

How far are you from the transmitters? What kind of antenna are
you using? Perhaps you have a UHF-only antenna, or your VHF
antenna is broken.

How is your reception of KPXG digital? Despite the fake 22.x
channel numbers it is actually transmitted on channel 4.

How is your reception of UHF analogs such as KPDX 49 and KPXG 54?

Problems with digital reception show up differently than
problems with analog reception. You don't get snow, ghosts,
etc. Instead you get blockiness, clicks in the audio,
and if it is bad enough you lose it completely.

DirecTV has a Comcast channel, Comcast SportsNet (West), Channel 656. I would imagine they would put them on that channel.

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/packProg/channelChart2.jsp?assetId=1100069



DirecTV is also still bitching and moaning with the Comcast Philly channel, don't be so sure that DirecTV, Dish, and Verizon are going to jump all over the "Blazer" channel. $2.00 a head is a little much.

KPXG's digital channel doesn't come in at all. Their local UHF channel doesn't come in too well either though. Their Digital VHF channel is located considerably further away then their local UHF channel, but it's my understanding that both are relatively low power stations compared to FOX for instance.

I am using an amplified rabbit ears type antenna that has both UHF and VHF antennas. Both the digital and VHF transmissions of KGW for instance are around 41 miles away according to antennaweb.org the digital channel comes in very well, with the occasional hic-up. The analog channel comes in faintly, not a lot of ghosting or anything, just a sort of snowy picture with low quality sound as well. Antennaweb.org shows the analog/VHF KGW channel as needing a green antenna but the UHF/Digital channel is in the yellow. From what I can tell, yellow means stronger reception possible, so smaller antenna needed, green means a largen antenna is needed. That's my point, why is it that though VHF is broadcast with far more power than UHF the VHF needs a larger antenna?

> KPXG's digital channel doesn't come in at all. Their local UHF
> channel doesn't come in too well either though. Their Digital
> VHF channel is located considerably further away then their
> local UHF channel, but it's my understanding that both are
> relatively low power stations compared to FOX for instance.

Yes, KPXG-DT is only 16 KW, compared to the full power VHF-LO
stations KATU (2) and KOIN (6) at 100 KW. (VHF-HI needs
more power than VHF-LO for the same coverage, and UHF needs
more power than VHF.)

> I am using an amplified rabbit ears type antenna that has
> both UHF and VHF antennas.

Rabbit ears are not very directional and have very little gain.
An "outdoor" antenna will be more directional (less multipath/ghosts)
and more gain, giving you a stronger signal (less snow).

> Both the digital and VHF transmissions of KGW for instance are around
> 41 miles away according to antennaweb.org the digital channel comes
> in very well, with the occasional hic-up. The analog channel comes
> in faintly, not a lot of ghosting or anything, just a sort of snowy
> picture with low quality sound as well.

Snow means you need a better signal to noise ratio. Can you upgrade
to an "outdoor" antenna? It doesn't necessarily have to be outdoors,
it can be in an attic, garage, or even indoors if necessary.

Unless things change, we will not need a VHF-LO antenna after the analog
cutoff in Feb 2009. A VHF-HI antenna is smaller than one that also
gets VHF-LO, and the specs are slightly better. There aren't a lot
of VHF-HI antennas to choose from. I got the YA-1713 and it works well.

If you upgrade the UHF as well, you should be able to reduce the
hic-ups. The 8-bays are said to do slightly better than the Yagis
in attics. Consider the PR-8800, 4228, and DB-8.
Outdoors, the Yagis are said to do slightly better than the 8-bays.
The XG-91 is popular and said to work well..

> Antennaweb.org shows the analog/VHF KGW channel as needing a green
> antenna but the UHF/Digital channel is in the yellow.

That is strange.

> From what I can tell, yellow means stronger reception possible,
> so smaller antenna needed, green means a largen antenna is needed.

A higher gain antenna will always give you a better signal. Yellow
just means you might be able to get away with using a smaller
antenna. Splitting the signal for multiple TVs, multiple DVR tuners
means you need more signal.

> That's my point, why is it that though VHF is broadcast with far
> more power than UHF the VHF needs a larger antenna?

KGW 8 is 316 KW, KGW 46 is 1000 KW. Both are full power, the
UHF needs more Watts because it is UHF.

A VHF antenna is physically larger than a UHF antenna because
VHF wavelengths are longer.

I don't know why antennaweb says you need a higher gain antenna for
KGW 8 than for KGW 46. Keep in mind that antennaweb is an estimation,
and is sometimes wrong. Although it seems to match what you are
seeing, your indoor antenna is getting by on UHF, but not on VHF.
It could be that your location is somehow bad for VHF. Usually
it is the other way around, since VHF can get through trees, walls,
and such better than UHF.

O.K. so I'm wanting to get a rooftop antenna. I would like to have excellent UHF reception as so many Digital channels are UHF, and except a few, most will remain UHF. But of course I also need good VHF reception. I don't want to have to order an antenna online as I want to be able to easily return an antenna that doesn't work out without the shipping hassles, plus when I can I prefer to support local business.

What should I be looking at? Combo antennas I have seen look like they have big VHF array, but just a small bowtie array for UHF.

Any suggestions?

> O.K. so I'm wanting to get a rooftop antenna. I would like to have excellent
> UHF reception as so many Digital channels are UHF, and except a few, most will
> remain UHF. But of course I also need good VHF reception. I don't want to
> have to order an antenna online as I want to be able to easily return an
> antenna that doesn't work out without the shipping hassles, plus when I
> can I prefer to support local business.
>
> What should I be looking at? Combo antennas I have seen look like they have
> big VHF array, but just a small bowtie array for UHF.

The combos are usually log periodic VHF plus Yagi with corner reflector UHF.
From what I've read, you get better reception from seperate VHF and UHF
antennas than from the combo antennas.

I upgraded last summer. I tried to find something locally, but about all I
could find were the combo units, and low-end ones at that. Perhaps you
will have better luck. I did find weatherproof RG6 quad shield at Lowes.

If you get the Winegard YA-1713 VHF-HI (or possibly the Antennacraft Y10-7-13)
plus one of the better performing UHF antennas there isn't really any reason
to return them unless they are defective from the factory or the shipping guy
manages to drive the truck over them. If you have one of the best models what
are you going to upgrade to? Changing the location (even just a few inches
for UHF) can make more difference than the difference between the better
antennas.

http://www.winegard.com/
http://www.channelmaster.com/
http://www.antennacraft.net/

http://www.solidsignal.com/
http://www.warrenelectronics.com/
http://www.summitsource.com/
http://www.starkelectronic.com/

I just happened to notice tonight a widescreen picture for the 10 O'Clock news on channel 12.1. Are they broadcasting in "digital widescreen" like KOIN or is this true HD? And anybody know how long they've been doing this?

Thanks!

Chris in Vancouver

Yes, it just started last night. I don't think it's true HD but it looks better than Koin.

What a nice surprise and a big improvement. Hopefully this will put more pressure on the other locals to up their game too.
If you happen to stop by, Thanks Ed, looking good!!!

Earl

I haven't seen this yet but IMO, KPTV has always had the best looking upconverted news (studio shots anyway) in town. One other thing I noticed a couple days ago was KATU actually threw up some blue side bars during their news for a while. In the process it looks like they've finally moved to the standard 4X3 as opposed to the slightly zoom/cropped 14X9 faux-widescreen they've been saddling us with since the beginning too. Maybe more in the works there as well?


ron

... In the process it looks like they've finally moved to the standard 4X3 as opposed to the slightly zoom/cropped 14X9 faux-widescreen they've been saddling us with since the beginning too. Maybe more in the works there as well?


ron

Didn't notice the 4x3 improvement on my set (receiving via comcast). KATU news had a small time/temperature on the right sidebar and it was chopped off a bit.

HZ

Yeah, it's the usual 14x9 now. I haven't noticed the blue side bars since either, and I only saw them briefly at the time. It looked like maybe they were testing or something?


ron

I live in the Salem area and was wondering what the best OTA antenna would be for this area. I'm running the DTV HR20-700.

If your interested in an outdoor antenna, the Consumer Electronics Association has a cool site which can help you determine which type of antenna is required for your location.

AntennaWeb (http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx)

Is KOIN having encoder problems? Picture freezes, then
switches from widescreen to pan-and-scan pillerbox.
(And the white stripe across the bottom.)

Dunno about the rest, but the white/gray stripe on the bottom is because they're broadcasting 1080 lines but the MPEG header says it's 1088 lines. This has always been kind of a problem because MPEG-2 requires the resolution to be divisible by 16 and 1080 isn't, but 1080 lines is the original analog HDTV standard that ATSC was modeled to support.

Most stations just put 1080 lines in the header and the receiver will stretch the screen by eight pixels so they won't be visible.

So the ATSC standard actually requires an "illegal" number of lines?
Nice going, ATSC committee.

Got a better look at the KATU blue side bars Sat night as they had them up for the whole newscast this time. Medium blue with a diagonal black swath starting near the bottom left and finishing across the top right.

And I have to say, the new KPTV widescreen is much appreciated when Stephanie K is doing the weekend weather segments.



ron

I saw those bars and my first thought was, burn-in. :D

I have yet to see any mention of KPTV news other than in this thread.
No comment from Ed even, and he's good about posting and answering e-mails.

So the ATSC standard actually requires an "illegal" number of lines?
Nice going, ATSC committee.
The 1080 line HDTV standard predates ATSC by about ten years and was established before they even thought about doing it digitally. It wasn't their decision.

It's not really a big deal because you can scale the image to any resolution in the MPEG header but the image will still be made of 16x16 pixel blocks. The problem is that KOIN is sending 1920x1088 in the header when it should be 1920x1080 like on all the other 1080i stations.

I have yet to see any mention of KPTV news other than in this thread.
Yeah, KOIN was yelling "Widescreen news!" from the roof tops when it first started but KPTV is acting like their widescreen newscast is some sort of secret. Come on KPTV guys, give yourself some credit!

LOL, well KOIN has noticed, they no longer claim "The only" digital widescreen news....

help with antenna.
I just moved downtown and now I can't get any reception. I'm next to Keller Auditorium on Harrison. I'm on the 11th floor of a 20 floor concrete building. I'm in the south east corner so the building is blocking the signal. There is also another building next door.
I tried my old rabbit ear and a radio shack amplified rabbit ear and couldn't get anything.
What antenna should I try next? any suggession? I was able to get all channels with an attic antenna when I lived in Hillsboro. It really bites that I live closer and couldn't get anything.

Has anyone noticed that KATU has been running their blue sidebars all the time for the last day or two? They were running them during Good Morning America (which I believe is HD), which was pretty annoying.

I am viewing them with Comcast QAM, can people with OTA confirm that the blue sidebars are there all the time?

help with antenna.
I just moved downtown and now I can't get any reception. I'm next to Keller Auditorium on Harrison. I'm on the 11th floor of a 20 floor concrete building. I'm in the south east corner so the building is blocking the signal. There is also another building next door.
I tried my old rabbit ear and a radio shack amplified rabbit ear and couldn't get anything.
What antenna should I try next? any suggession? I was able to get all channels with an attic antenna when I lived in Hillsboro. It really bites that I live closer and couldn't get anything.
I'm sure someone will be along with a much better idea but what I would try is a directional indoor, such as the Silver Sensor, and see if I could pick up a reflected signal off a building in back of you instead of going through your building.

Has anyone noticed that KATU has been running their blue sidebars all the time for the last day or two? They were running them during Good Morning America (which I believe is HD), which was pretty annoying.

I am viewing them with Comcast QAM, can people with OTA confirm that the blue sidebars are there all the time?
What you see is the same as what OTA sees.

What you see is the same as what OTA sees.

I figured as much, I just thought it bizarre that they'd be hiding 16x9 content behind those sidebars. Is there someone at the station that forgets to turn them off after the news, or is this being done on purpose?

I'd say from the looks of it that the new sidebars always on is deliberate, though I imagine they are supposed to turn them off during HD programming. (I've only noticed them during SD programming)

Most likely someone in marketing thinks they look good and has no clue about some TV's and burn-in or else they don't care.

When I checked into GMA this morning before I left for work it showed full 16x9 HD. A large part of the show content is not HD though of course. Are you sure the side bars were up during actual HD material and not just an upconverted SD segment? As far as the blue side bars and burn in goes, they should be much better from that standpoint than the blank/black pillars...


ron

When I checked into GMA this morning before I left for work it showed full 16x9 HD. A large part of the show content is not HD though of course. Are you sure the side bars were up during actual HD material and not just an upconverted SD segment? As far as the blue side bars and burn in goes, they should be much better from that standpoint than the blank/black pillars...


ron


Yeah, you could tell it was 16x9 content because a portion of GMA's/ABC's logo was peaking out from underneath the bars. Regardless of burn-in issues the bars are annoying, if they'd just keep them during the news I'd be ok with it (I can watch another station's news), but I hate the idea that they'll be there for all 4x3 programming.

It was probably just growing pains then and they haven't got everything dialed in yet. As far as the bars go, I don't mind them myself especially since they are static. I don't care for those that have movement to them though...


ron

The fact the bars are narrow because of the 14:9 format they use, makes them better than they could be. :)
Really I don't mind them so much either, mostly because I watch very little SD programming anymore.
I would think the two-tone bar would be more likely to cause a noticeable pattern than a monotone bar though.

I wonder if a "provider" - ABC, KATU, Comcast - delivers a signal to your TV that causes your TV to incur screen burn-in, are they liable? I would think that you should be able to trust the television signal going to your TV from the provider not to cause damage to your TV.

I would hope that most people would educate themselves on how to properly use their television so as not to incur screen burn-in. Also, any provider would not be liable for any damages to a television that results from their signal.

Screen burn-in on today's tv's? I guess if you only watched non-HD television non-stop (tv running) for a good couple of weeks.

No KyleXY fans here?
KATU fell apart tonight, several seconds of green screen followed by horrible audio buzzing and going in and out of HD as they were apparently trying to fix it.

Reminds me of the old days. :D

Hi Everyone, I'm on 14th Ave North of Broadway in NE Portland. I just canceled my Comcast Cable and would like to get Hi Def OTA signals. I have a 46 inch Costco Sony Bravia and have never hooked up an antenna so am a real newby here.

Is there any consensus of which antennae works best here in the Portland metro area?

Many Thanks,
Kirby

No KyleXY fans here?
KATU fell apart tonight, several seconds of green screen followed by horrible audio buzzing and going in and out of HD as they were apparently trying to fix it.

Reminds me of the old days. :D

Yeah, I noticed that too but on my DVR via Comcast. I was going to post something on the C* thread but decided beating up on KATU was fruitless since they seemed to be on top of it.

Not sure yet if I'm an XY fan, this was the first one I tuned in on. From the ending it looks like I could become an XX fan, though. ;)

I also noticed the sidebars on KATU DT (now tabbed "HD2"). Now I haven't been watching KATU much since LOST ended but that bug with the time/temp is going to be a problem if it stays up during HD material. Can't they make it more transparent?

Anybody else having dropouts with the US Open today? I tried both OTA and the Dish local with the same results.

Hi Everyone, I'm on 14th Ave North of Broadway in NE Portland. I just canceled my Comcast Cable and would like to get Hi Def OTA signals. I have a 46 inch Costco Sony Bravia and have never hooked up an antenna so am a real newby here.

Is there any consensus of which antennae works best here in the Portland metro area?

Many Thanks,
Kirby
I'm on NE 9th Avenue just north of Broadway and I get 21 HD channels with a Silver Sensor indoor antenna. You can the the Phillips version for about $25 at Circuit City. Or go to http://www.amazon.com and type silver sensor in the Search box.

Here's a review of it.
http://reviews.cnet.com/a-v-antennas/silver-sensor-digital-hdtv/4505-6509_7-30471331.html

> Anybody else having dropouts with the US Open today?
> I tried both OTA and the Dish local with the same results.

I assume you are watching KGW? How frequent are your dropouts?

I ran a ten minute test on KGW digital beginning at Sat Jun 16 12:35:21 pdt 2007

signal strength = 100%
signal quality = 95%
Dropped pkts (Continuity Counter Errors) = 0

I haven't actually decoded the mpeg (the Dropped pkts count
doesn't catch all problems).

The dropouts might be upstream from KGW's transmitter.
Do you also get them on analog?

I'm on NE 9th Avenue just north of Broadway and I get 21 HD channels with a Silver Sensor indoor antenna. You can the the Phillips version for about $25 at Circuit City. Or go to http://www.amazon.com and type silver sensor in the Search box.

Here's a review of it.
http://reviews.cnet.com/a-v-antennas/silver-sensor-digital-hdtv/4505-6509_7-30471331.html

Hey, many thanks frederic... you are right here in the hood also. Before I got your msg, I went to Circuit City Janszen Beach and they were out of stock, then came back and checked online and all the CC's in Portland were out of stock. Went down to Fry's and got spooked because there were 8 boxes of Phillips Silver Sensors that had all been returned. Maybe they don't work? Went to Magnolia Hi Fi in the new Best Buy and they recommended a Terk TV5. Came home and tried to auto program my digital stations and could only get chn 22 and it's subs. Now that I've read your msg I will return this and get the Silver Sensor. So, all 21 of your HD stations came in with auto program? I don't see a way to manually input these digital stations on my Sony Bravia.

Thanks,
Kirby

I'm on NE 9th Avenue just north of Broadway and I get 21 HD channels with a Silver Sensor indoor antenna.
http://reviews.cnet.com/a-v-antennas/silver-sensor-digital-hdtv/4505-6509_7-30471331.html


For the record, would you mind listing the 21 HD channels you receive over the air? I don't think I get that many in my HD subscription from Comcast. Maybe it's time to ditch Comcast and dust off my Silver Sensor.

No KyleXY fans here?
KATU fell apart tonight, several seconds of green screen followed by horrible audio buzzing and going in and out of HD as they were apparently trying to fix it.
Reminds me of the old days. :D
I think it was the network and not KATU. I just watched it again and when it switched to 4:3 the logo in the lower right hand corner was just the ABC SD logo. When it switched back to HD the logo was the ABC HD logo.

> Anybody else having dropouts with the US Open today?
> I tried both OTA and the Dish local with the same results.

I assume you are watching KGW? How frequent are your dropouts?

I ran a ten minute test on KGW digital beginning at Sat Jun 16 12:35:21 pdt 2007

signal strength = 100%
signal quality = 95%
Dropped pkts (Continuity Counter Errors) = 0

I haven't actually decoded the mpeg (the Dropped pkts count
doesn't catch all problems).

The dropouts might be upstream from KGW's transmitter.
Do you also get them on analog?

Thank goodness the dropouts stopped after awhile. The interesting thing is I always have 100% signal strength from KGW.

Yeah, I noticed that too but on my DVR via Comcast. I was going to post something on the C* thread but decided beating up on KATU was fruitless since they seemed to be on top of it.

Not sure yet if I'm an XY fan, this was the first one I tuned in on. From the ending it looks like I could become an XX fan, though. ;)

I also noticed the sidebars on KATU DT (now tabbed "HD2"). Now I haven't been watching KATU much since LOST ended but that bug with the time/temp is going to be a problem if it stays up during HD material. Can't they make it more transparent?
You found out more about Kyle in that one episode that I found out all last season. :)
and yes, the ending was "interesting"...

I think it was the network and not KATU. I just watched it again and when it switched to 4:3 the logo in the lower right hand corner was just the ABC SD logo. When it switched back to HD the logo was the ABC HD logo.
If that were the case then there would have been some mention of it in the KyleXY programming thread.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10803072#post10803072

For the record, would you mind listing the 21 HD channels you receive over the air? I don't think I get that many in my HD subscription from Comcast. Maybe it's time to ditch Comcast and dust off my Silver Sensor.
Most of them are sub-channels and religious channels. No need to ditch cable. Your TV should have multiple inputs. I have a DirecTV DVR going in by component cables and the Silver Sensor going into the DVR box and the TV with a splitter. This way I can record two shows on the DVR and watch another one on the TV.
02-1 KATU-DT
06-1 KOIN-DT
06-2 KOIN-DT
08-1 KGW-DT
08-2 WEATHER
10-1 KOPB-DT
10-2 CREATE
10-3 OC
12-1 KPTV-DT
22-1 ION
22-2 QUBO
22-3 IONLIFE
22-4 WORSHIP
24-1 KNMT-D1
24-2 KNMT-D2
24-3 KNMT-D3
24-4 KNMT-D4
24-5 KNMT-D5
32-1 KRCW-D1
32-2 KRCW-D2
49-1 KPDX-DT

Hey, many thanks frederic... you are right here in the hood also. Before I got your msg, I went to Circuit City Janszen Beach and they were out of stock, then came back and checked online and all the CC's in Portland were out of stock. Went down to Fry's and got spooked because there were 8 boxes of Phillips Silver Sensors that had all been returned. Maybe they don't work? Went to Magnolia Hi Fi in the new Best Buy and they recommended a Terk TV5. Came home and tried to auto program my digital stations and could only get chn 22 and it's subs. Now that I've read your msg I will return this and get the Silver Sensor. So, all 21 of your HD stations came in with auto program? I don't see a way to manually input these digital stations on my Sony Bravia.
Thanks,
Kirby

Mine all came in with the auto-program on my 37" Syntax Olevia LT37HVS. I did have to move the antenna around to find the best spot for reception. It's on a shelf about 6' off the floor. It's better than the Terk for UHF. 22 is VHF channel 4 while all the rest are UHF.

Most of them are sub-channels and religious channels. No need to ditch cable. Your TV should have multiple inputs. I have a DirecTV DVR going in by component cables and the Silver Sensor going into the DVR box and the TV with a splitter. This way I can record two shows on the DVR and watch another one on the TV.
02-1 KATU-DT
06-1 KOIN-DT
06-2 KOIN-DT
08-1 KGW-DT
08-2 WEATHER
10-1 KOPB-DT
10-2 CREATE
10-3 OC
12-1 KPTV-DT
22-1 ION
22-2 QUBO
22-3 IONLIFE
22-4 WORSHIP
24-1 KNMT-D1
24-2 KNMT-D2
24-3 KNMT-D3
24-4 KNMT-D4
24-5 KNMT-D5
32-1 KRCW-D1
32-2 KRCW-D2
49-1 KPDX-DT

Thank you, that's what I thought. I think we have a need to clarify your original claim of receiving 21 HD channels OTA. These are all digital channels, to be sure, but they are all not broadcasting HD. Only one third of them will give you HD. :) Guess I'll stick with Comcast a while longer.

Mine all came in with the auto-program on my 37" Syntax Olevia LT37HVS. I did have to move the antenna around to find the best spot for reception. It's on a shelf about 6' off the floor. It's better than the Terk for UHF. 22 is VHF channel 4 while all the rest are UHF.

hmmm, so that means that not one UHF channel auto-tuned for me. I wonder why?

The location is on the second floor of a house and I can actually see the antennae on the Skyline hill.

hmmm, so that means that not one UHF channel auto-tuned for me. I wonder why?

The location is on the second floor of a house and I can actually see the antennae on the Skyline hill.
Not meant to be insulting, but since your TV didn't pick up any UHF channels, are you sure the antenna is connected to the proper input and that you had the TV scan for ATSC/digital stations?

quick example, my TV has two coax inputs, the TV doesn't care which one I use, but I have to set it for the one I am connected to.

Not meant to be insulting, but since your TV didn't pick up any UHF channels, are you sure the antenna is connected to the proper input and that you had the TV scan for ATSC/digital stations?

quick example, my TV has two coax inputs, the TV doesn't care which one I use, but I have to set it for the one I am connected to.

Wow! thanks Earle :) ... I had the input correct but you gave me an idea and after checking the manual I saw that I had to switch my on/off "cable" setting to off in order to tune in the OTA digital stations on my Bravia. I am a complete newbie at OTA and antennae so really appreciate the help you and Frederic have given me.

FWIW the TERK TV5 is doing a fine job at bringing in all the digital channels. I may also try the Silver Sensor and keep which one I like best but I'm impressed with this picture quality.

Regards,
Kirby

Welcome to the world of free HD. :)

FWIW the TERK TV5 is doing a fine job at bringing in all the digital channels. I may also try the Silver Sensor and keep which one I like best but I'm impressed with this picture quality.
Regards,
Kirby
You might as well just keep the Terk. Digital TV has an all or nothing reception. Unlike Analog TV where you can get a poor reception that can be improved, Digital TV has an all or nothing reception. You either get the channel or you get nothing. If you can check the signal strength with your Sony and are 70+ on the signals you should be good.

Unlike Analog TV where you can get a poor reception that can be improved, Digital TV has an all or nothing reception. You either get the channel or you get nothing.
I wouldn't say it's simply all or nothing. That implies that if you're receiving something now you'll always receive it perfectly. Weak digital reception can have annoying dropouts and can be affected by weather conditions and even the leaves on the trees. That's why most receivers have a 1-100 quality meter to judge how well you're receiving something. If digital were all or nothing, they'd just have a light.

What a nice surprise and a big improvement. Hopefully this will put more pressure on the other locals to up their game too.
If you happen to stop by, Thanks Ed, looking good!!!

EarlThanks Folks - sorry, I hadn't stopped by here in a while.

KPTV news is not in HD, but simply 16:9 on KPTV-DT. I'm glad to hear you generally like the picture quality. Since we already had a digital plant here, we tried to put a 16:9 system together that would process the picture minimally on the way to the final output. So, what you see is SD studio and field cams that are shooting in 16:9 and coming through the plant un-fiddled with (for the DTV side, anyway) all the way to the HD upconverter in the air chain. When you see the material with the Fox 12 side bars, that's archive or out-of-house stuff that we didn't shoot that has had to go through one aspect ratio convertor or aspect ratio editing process before air - those may have a little more noise on them, depending on what the original source material was.

Our biggest challenge, honestly, has been nailing the timing of the switches back and forth in to and out of commercial pods - we have to switch back to 4:3 for 99.9% of our ads right now, so we occasionally see that on the air. the routing switcher is being finicky about when it sends its switch command and the command drifts in time a bit from one break to the next - we're having to develop work-arounds to try to hit that moving target.

But, as always, thanks for your patience and your good words. Glad you like the changes.

Ed

I was wondering if there's a significant difference in reception strength between a powered indoor antenna and an unpowered UHF only antenna like a Channel Master 4221 which is a 4 bowtie dipole UHF antenna. I live in Salem, I use a powered UHF/VHF antenna and get most of the Portland digital channels, but the go in and out. Will something like the Channel Master 4221 be a significant improvement in reception? What if I put it in my attic rather than on the roof, will it still work well?

Hi all,
One thing I noticed when KPTV first went 16x9 on the morning news was that the ticker was across the whole (wide) screen. Now, they've shrunk it so it fits completely in a 4x3 format. I'm guessing they didn't like the ticker so wide because the Lexus logo wouldn't show up on a 4x3 screen. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the ticker, but it did look pretty nice scrolling across the whole screen.

> I was wondering if there's a significant difference in reception
> strength between a powered indoor antenna and an unpowered UHF only
> antenna like a Channel Master 4221 which is a 4 bowtie dipole UHF antenna.

The biggest reception improvement I've made was switching from
indoor antennas to an "outdoor" antenna. (PR-8800 in the attic)
Night and day improvement.

"Powered" just means it has an amp. You can add a preamp or distribution
amp to an "outdoor" antenna if needed.

The "outdoor" antenna will be more directional than an indoor antenna,
which means it will pick up less multipath and interference. An amp
can help signal strength, but can do nothing to help multipath and
interference.

The CM 4221 has a good reputation. If you don't need the horizontal
beamwidth to pick up transmitters in different directions, one of
the 8-bays (CM4228, PR-8800, DB-8) would be even better.

> What if I put it in my attic rather than on the roof, will it still work well?

There will be some attenuation of the signal from the building materials,
how much depends on what your house is made of. Brick/stone/concrete
walls or a slate/tile roof might be trouble. As are metal stucco lathe
foil-backed insulation, and aluminum siding. Dry wood is nearly transparent.

On the other hand, the attic protects the antenna from wind, corrosion,
baseballs, critters, etc. If you can get good reception from an attic
antenna, it is more likely to stay good.

This was originally posted in the Portland, OR - Comcast thread, but may not be specific to Comcast…

I've got an odd issue with my TiVo Series 3, and I've seen it since the first day I plugged it in (which was last Thursday)… it has frozen on me several times - hard frozen, with no response to remote control or the buttons on the box - even the clock froze up. The first couple times I was watching live and didn't have a chance to connect the dots; but the next two times I was watching a recorded program, and it occured in the same spot of that recording both times…

The recording was of the 11 o'clock news on KATU-HD (via Comcast from unencrypted QAM; still don't have the cablecards… why I can't just pick them up? *shrug*), and both times it occured during the weather, with the "Right Now" temperature map on the screen. It seems that, right as they're about to switch to the next map, it freezes hard and a power cycle is required; however, I can FF past it successfully.

Just now I reproduced this with a live broadcast of the 6:30 news… same map, same issue. Clearly it's the process of decoding the stream - not just recording it - that causes this to happen, but that's the most peculiar happenstance; what about the bitstream could cause the TiVo to hard lock like that?

What's also peculiar is that no one else seems to be reporting this; but I wonder if maybe this is a new issue? Not in the TiVo software necessarily, as I reproduced it both with the original shipping software (8.0.x?) as well as the latest update (8.3.1); but maybe in the broadcast from KATU, since they added the blue sidebar to their 4:3 programming? Or something… I haven't noticed this in any other programing - including other KATU-HD programming, though I haven't watched much more than Kyle XY - just the news.

If anyone has a TiVo Series 3 and hasn't tuned into KATU-HD for the news in awhile, mind checking it out? I'm going to record the 11 o'clock news again tonight and watch it at a later date… maybe TiVo can somehow retrieve the content and debug it from their end (shyeah… at 768kbps? That'd take the better part of a day).

Yep, same lockups with KATU-DT and my TiVo Series 3. I'm receiving KATU-DT OTA so it's not a Comcast issue. I emailed KATU engineering three weeks ago and didn't get a response. I contacted TiVo also. They have it as an open issue with their software, but have told me that they won't work on a fix for it until their next software release.

I was able to determine that it was the Digital Closed Captions during their local news broadcasts that was causing the lockups. Since my wife is partially deaf we leave CC on. When I had the Digital Captions "DTCC1" turned on on the S3, I had the freezes usually during the weather forecast section of any KATU-DT news broadcast. Now I have just the Standard Captions "CC1" and no more lock ups. The Digital CC text during the weather segment is very garbled and is somehow causing the lockups.

Hope that helps. I was very frustrated with the lockups also.

Hey, so far as the Cablecards go I had mine installed last week, it took the guy over an hour. One important thing to note, there's an error that will pop up after he calls his people and they do whatever it is they do on their end to talk to the cards....that error is normal when using Motorola cable cards. While he was on the phone back and forth with his HQ, I was combing through the support forums and found that the error code that he was hung up on was to be expected when dealing with Moto cards. OH, and the picture with the cablecards (at least viewed on my Samsung T5054 plasma) is far superior using Tivo than the picture from the Motorola Comcast HD DVR.

Hey GT1Boy,

Thanks for the heads-up. I tried disabling digital CC's, and that did the trick; fortunately the captions still worked, and I can see precisely where in the recording it freezes up. As it's drawing the live captions, it looks like after one of the lines, it fails to send a carriage return (for wont of a more common term… "Enter" key?), causing it to backtrack and redraw along the same line. With DTCC1 enabled, it freezes without fail; but with just analog CC1, it's fine.

I've also seen it occur now on other programming; I'd left it tuned to 2-1 all day Sunday, and it froze at some point during Desperate Housewives, in what looks like the beginning of a commercial. It also froze at 6:05 this morning, but I didn't bother to turn the TV on to see on what it froze.

But that's some good info; thanks for that. It also explains why not a lot of people are seeing it; I don't imagine most well-hearing people use CC, but I find them invaluable for understanding what's being said.

Also, thanks for the heads-up on the cablecards, Flyfishingdad. My install's scheduled for this Saturday; I'll keep that in mind.

Well opb has done it again now they have a .4 channel now the channels are like this
.1 PBS HD
.2 OPB SD
.3 CREATE
.4 OREGON CHANNEL (may change format soon)

I went out and bought an antenna from Radio shack, a VHF/UHF combo so I will be able to get the HD channels that switch back to VHF in a couple years, and so I can get ION's digital channels which are all VHF, despite having a channel number of 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 (I really like that they have a kids channel on 22.2)

I live in West Salem, antenna web shows me as 49 miles from most of the transmitters, most of which are located at 5 and 6 degrees. I'm really impressed at how well things come in. I'm using no amplifier and they all come in between 75-85 signal strength. I think I'll put in an amp and make sure they are all up to 100%, it also might help out with a couple channels that are barely coming in because they are located around 65 degrees.

Set up my Tivo to record all my HD shows of air now, rather than off cable and will be bumping Comcast down to basic basic cable and sending my cablecards back. Were it not for the fact that you get a $10 discount on cable internet if you also have cable T.V. I probably would boot Comcast to the curb altogether. Being as basic cable only costs around $10.40, we are getting basic for only a net increase of forty cents to our bill over what our bill would be without keeping basic. NOW, when I can get DSL again (for some reason though I was available a couple years ago to my house, it's no longer available now) I will indeed boot Comcast and their endless price increases completely. T.V. shouldn't cost $60 a month for mostly commercials if you want to get SC-fi channel, TBS, and other non-basic channels that are still loaded up with 20 minutes of commercials per hour, and hours of paid advertisements in the wee hours of the night/morning.

I wish more people would join in, and then maybe cable and satellite would wise up. (and why is it that satellite claims they are cheaper, but when you add in all the fees and extra boxes for extra T.V.s it often costs MORE than cable with the same channels.)

Oh, and I did a swap back and forth between HD on cable and HD on air, my OTA HD picture, even at only 80% strength, looks better than Comcast's HD. Ha!

Well opb has done it again now they have a .4 channel now the channels are like this
.1 PBS HD
.2 OPB SD
.3 CREATE
.4 OREGON CHANNEL (may change format soon)


Actually, they have had the Oregon channel for a while. I just did a re-scan for new channels using my Directv HR20, I get...
10 OPB SD
10.1 OPB HD
10.2 Create
10.3 Oregon Channel

Na, he's right. I just looked at what I'm getting. 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4

10.2 has the same programing as regular channel 10

This is brand new, I don't think it was even there on Sunday when I put my new antenna up and set up the OTA programs again.

Here's the OTA version:

KOPB-HD:551028615:8VSB:49:52:3
KOPB-SD:551028615:8VSB:65:68:4
Create:551028615:8VSB:81:84:5
OC:551028615:8VSB:97:100:6

And of course the NTSC channel.

When did they add this additional subchannel?

I guess we can expect the picture to be EVEN SOFTER,
with EVEN MORE ARTIFACTS. :-( :-( :-(

I think someone at KOPB has been watching too much
Doctor Who. They think a digital transmission is
a TARDIS.

Something weird, I'm watching 10.2 and there's alternate audio for seeing impaired in which they describe the action. The alternate audio for the seeing impaired is also on regular 10. I didn't set anything to play alternate audio, at least I didn't think I did. Gonna have to figure out what settings I need to change to get rid of that.

I like that OPB is doing this. The HD channel still looks very very good. I'm comparing it to OPB HD on Comcast right now and I can see no difference. Properly done I think multi-casting can be a huge benefit to all those who are sick of cable, more options over the air. Now on ION which has four digital channels, yeah the quality really seems to suffer, but compare ION to PBS, create does look kind of bad, but Create doesn't look that great on Comcast either, and the Oregon channel, well what do you expect from the cheap cameras they use to film state government hearings. But this new digital version of 10 looks awesome, especially when compared to analog 10 and looks better than Comcast 10 as well, but then Salem's Comcast channels aren't all digital yet, and standard PBS is one of the many that aren't yet digital on Comcast in Salem.

KOPB-SD used to be 7970 kb/s 704x480, audio 384 kb/s
Now reduced to 1496 kb/s 528x480, audio 192 kb/s

Pillerboxed on a 4:3 screen. Sheesh!

> create does look kind of bad, but Create doesn't look that great on
> Comcast either

Create would look fine if it had enough bandwidth.

Do you think that Comcast has some magic method to add detail to a
picture after OPB has thrown it away?

KOPB needs 3 digital channels to hold all the subchannels.

1 - HD
2 - SD & Create
3 - OC & spare (I'm sure they could find something to put there)

> But this new digital version of 10 looks awesome, especially when
> compared to analog 10

Analog 10 is fine.

analog 10 OTA doesn't come in well here in Salem for me which is why the digital channel looks so much better to me.

Another nice thing about the new channel is that the DirecTv HR10-250 receiver I use does not even have a NTSC tuner, just the digital one, so I was unable to even view the OPB regular programming.

No one is saying that having the material available on digital is bad.
On the contrary, it is good.

The problem is that a channel only has enough bits to hold one HD program
or two SD programs. Splitting a single channel into more subchannels
results in unaceptable quality. Digital should provide higher quality
than analog, not lower.

If KOPB wants to broadcast so many programs, they need to get more
than one channel.

Yes, just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. I've talked to some folks at KOPB (probably not the right ones) to express how many of us in the HD community feel about all their subchannels. But they don't get it.

Well, in a couple years OPB will have two channels to work with right?

> Well, in a couple years OPB will have two channels to work with right?

Unless something has changed recently, the plan is that channel 10 switches
from analog to digital and they give 27 back to the FCC. So then 27 sits
idle, along with the VHF-LO channels.

If the FCC will not allow OPB to have more than one channel after the analog
shutdown, perhaps OPB should fork. One station for PBS, one for APT, one for
BBC.

I'm sorry OPB lovers but I quit watching their pitiful excuse for digital programming some time ago. I've only got so much time in a day to watch TV and there are way too many other options that provide quality programming AND high quality video to waste it on less than sub-par broadcasts. The last couple Soundstage presentations I watched were so crappy I just gave up. I certainly won't be sending them any money now either. Shame....


ron

I'm sorry OPB lovers but I quit watching their pitiful excuse for digital programming some time ago. I've only got so much time in a day to watch TV and there are way too many other options that provide quality programming AND high quality video to waste it on less than sub-par broadcasts. The last couple Soundstage presentations I watched were so crappy I just gave up. I certainly won't be sending them any money now either. Shame....

ron

I'm with you on this. I recall complaining to them about the pitiful excuse of a channel "create" which was mostly a repackaging (in different time slots) of their existing analog/digital programs in 4x3. I felt for the poor OPB rep trying very hard to justify the need for the channel, in light of the repeat programming. I guess "we must do subchannels too since others are doing it" would've sufficed for me ! What a waste . :(

HZ

I'd like to see Create go bye bye and see an all PBS Kids channel.

I'm sorry OPB lovers but I quit watching their pitiful excuse for digital programming some time ago. I've only got so much time in a day to watch TV and there are way too many other options that provide quality programming AND high quality video to waste it on less than sub-par broadcasts. The last couple Soundstage presentations I watched were so crappy I just gave up. I certainly won't be sending them any money now either. Shame....


ron
I'm with you on this. it's getting so bad that picture keep breaking up even with low movement scenes.

I tried the capital 4th firework and bitrate was about 8mbps. Why would they bother with HD I'll never know.

This may be overpicky, but KOPB is not outputing its SD stations in an accepted ATSC resolution. The headers from 10-2 and 10-3 say the video is 528x480. I thought SD had to be at least 640x480 to be proper ATSC. I would be surprised if some receivers aren't doing funny things with that resolution. It sounds like some desperate measures are being taken to cram HD plus two SD's into one channel.

I also found out from the PDX Radio Message Board (http://feedback.pdxradio.com/messages/5/277458.html?1184906360) that KOPB-DT is including their "Golden Hours" radio service in 192 Kbps DD2.0 on the SAP audio channel of 10-2. It sounds pretty good for what it is. I don't know how you would select this on a commercial ATSC receiver but it's PID 69 for the geeks out there. In fact this audio is also available on the SAP channel on their analog channel and in very mediocre quality on KOPB HD3 if you're one of the few people who have HD Radios.

While I don't like the idea of SD channels ruining the HD, I kind of like the idea of extra audio channels. 192 Kbps isn't much bandwidth at all.

Funny, I am listening to the Golden Hours radio right now, it's Jimmy Stewart and his radio version of MADE TO ORDER. Odd thing is, the SAP is on Channel 10-2 and for some reason my Tivo Series 3 seems to think it is the PRIMARY audio, so if I want to hear what I'm seeing I have to switch from the English-Dolby Digital track to the -Dolby Digital track. Odd.

Frankly I think OPB should just ditch "The Oregon Channel" When it hasn't been footage of Oregon House and Senate sessions it's been footage of Tom McCalls funeral and other old state events. It's a waste of bandwidth.

An ex-Oregonian here and I just happened to drop into this thread. We have the same problem down here. KUED ( U of Utah) transmits two subchannels in addition to their main. It's very difficult to tell the difference between widescreen SD and HD except with the very best program sources. If there is any movement the picture goes to hell with a snowstorm of macroblocking. I sent a letter to the station manager expressing similar comments to those here: No more money until they get their HD act together.

Sad that many PBS stations are dropping HD because it costs too much yet many stations who can afford it are ruining it.

Please excuse my ignorance as I am a OTA newbie and am relatively new to this site. I have tried to search through this thread looking for talking about reception in Canby. The area typically doesn't get good OTA reception. I am curious if anyone else out there gets reception and what antenna they are using.
Thanks

Have you checked out antennaweb.org so that you can determine what antenna you should use and what direction you should aim it?

I live at Aurora and get great OTA HD reception. I am using a 4228 antenna on the roof, but a regular antenna I used to have worked good also. You should get very good reception at Canby.

Jay

Was watching Mariner's Baseball today on 32.1 and I just can't help but wonder why CW doesn't have the game in HD?

Also, when is CW going to quit broadcasting shows, such as Smallville and Stargate SG9, with both letter box and pillar box? Kind of annoying. It's as if HD is still some little novelty that only a tiny handful of people even watch, almost no one will be watching these shows on HD channels surrounded by little black bars, so who cares if we broadcast it right.

Was watching Mariner's Baseball today on 32.1 and I just can't help but wonder why CW doesn't have the game in HD?
Probably because it's not offered to KRCW in HD. The CW network has nothing to do with baseball games.

Also, when is CW going to quit broadcasting shows, such as Smallville and Stargate SG9, with both letter box and pillar box? Kind of annoying.
Because they're not offered to KRCW in any other format. Even if they were offered in HD, KRCW doesn't have the equipment to air them. The CW network has nothing to do with syndicated shows. Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune have been available in HD for some time now yet KATU hasn't been interested in them.

It's as if HD is still some little novelty that only a tiny handful of people even watch, almost no one will be watching these shows on HD channels surrounded by little black bars, so who cares if we broadcast it right.
That's correct. HD is only seen by a tiny handful of people at this point. Until that changes, expect more of this.

I think the handful has grown from to tiny to very small at this point.

We've probably gone from a few hundred to a few thousand. Still not much in a market with 400,000 to 500,000 TV sets.

We've probably gone from a few hundred to a few thousand. Still not much in a market with 400,000 to 500,000 TV sets.
I don't have any hard data, so maybe I'm just being argumentative, ...

But I think the actual number by now is much higher than "a few thousand". My rationale is that many, many, many TVs have been sold in recent years with built-in ATSC/QAM tuners. People just have to be at least trying to view HD with those TVs, no?

Well here are some stats for you:

29 percent of cable TV subscribers own a HDTV television set. 70 percent of those planning to buy an HDTV set in the next 12 months know that they need to buy an HDTV programming package

Because they're not offered to KRCW in any other format. Even if they were offered in HD, KRCW doesn't have the equipment to air them. The CW network has nothing to do with syndicated shows. Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune have been available in HD for some time now yet KATU hasn't been interested in them.


That's correct. HD is only seen by a tiny handful of people at this point. Until that changes, expect more of this.

If KRCW doesn't have the equipment to air HD, how is it that when Smallville is run during it's regular slot it IS in HD, on KRCW. Why is it that although they are letter boxed and pillar boxed, when KRCW runs reruns of Smallville and other shows on weekends the signal is still being sent out in HD? It's not like they send out a 480i signal on their HD channel, except during prime time when they are getting the prime time feed from CW.

And so far as HD only being seen by a tiny handful, I also find that hard to believe. Look at even your local Wal-Mart, let alone electronics stores, and any TV over 32 inches is HD, and there are even a lot of smaller sets that are HD. HD sets are flying off the shelves. At Costco almost every set the sell is HD, they have only a few small sets. Heck even my parents have an HD set now which is really amazing.

If KRCW doesn't have the equipment to air HD, how is it that when Smallville is run during it's regular slot it IS in HD, on KRCW.
Because KRCW is broadcasting the HD feed live straight from the network. When you see Smallville episodes from years ago, you're seeing syndicated episodes of the show. Warner distributes these episodes in SD and KRCW tapes them off of a feed with old SD equipment.

The infrastructure for syndicating HD programs isn't mainstream yet. KATU could broadcast highly popular Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy in HD but obviously KATU doesn't think it's worth it yet.

Why is it that although they are letter boxed and pillar boxed, when KRCW runs reruns of Smallville and other shows on weekends the signal is still being sent out in HD?
Because reprogramming their whole transmission chain over to SD is much more difficult than simply upconverting SD material to HD and it has no benefit to them at all. I don't think ATSC even officially supports changing broadcast resolutions mid-stream.

And so far as HD only being seen by a tiny handful, I also find that hard to believe. Look at even your local Wal-Mart, let alone electronics stores, and any TV over 32 inches is HD, and there are even a lot of smaller sets that are HD. HD sets are flying off the shelves.
Yes they are flying off the shelves... one at a time. Maybe in ten years there might be a hundred thousand of them in the Portland area and then you can complain.

How many people do you know have HDTVs? I work in a high tech company and there is exactly one other guy in my department who has one. Most people don't even believe our local stations are broadcasting in HD on UHF channels although over the years I've convinced a few of them with screen shots.

This summer I've stayed in six hotels that had HDTVs. Only two of them were feeding them with actual HD. The rest were just stretching the regular fuzzy analog channels.

I personally know quite a few people with HD TVs and HDTVs are selling by the millions each year. Number of housholds with HD TVs are predicted to 35-40% by the end of the year.

I predict them to be 10% by the end of the year. That would mean a third person in my department buys an HDTV. That's unlikely. Everyone is happy with what they're watching, happy with their TiVos and their VCRs.

The most common question I get: "If I get an HDTV and I want to tape a game to give to someone else with an HDTV, how would I do that?" I have to tell them that D-VHS recorders are on their way out so it's not that easy.

I personally know quite a few people with HD TVs and HDTVs are selling by the millions each year.
But with about 500 million NTSC sets out there, it will take a long time to replace even a quarter of them. I read that the person most likely to buy a new HDTV is someone who already has one and wants to upgrade.

Like scowl has said over and over, it's not the number of HDTV's that are in use that's the problem, it's the number of HDTV's that don't have any sort of HD signal coming in to them. Last summer I had a big layover in San Francisco, so my wife took me downtown to show me where she works when she's down there, as well as to pass the time. Went in to an upscale bar/restaurant and saw all of the HDTV's in the room. Everything was stretched SD, and the golf tournaments that were on were also stretched SD (when I know HD broadcasts were available).

People expect everything to be in HD once they buy the tv. Yes EVERYTHING!

I know of a few friends who have HD TVs, and I have friends who are looking to replace their old TV with a new HD TV sometime this year, although at least a couple of them are just pipe dreaming, as there is no way their wives will let them get a new TV until their current TV dies.

But with about 500 million NTSC sets out there, it will take a long time to replace even a quarter of them. I read that the person most likely to buy a new HDTV is someone who already has one and wants to upgrade.

Keep in mind a lot of those NTSC sets are small second and third TVs in someones garage, bedroom ect.

If you want to buy a new "primary" TV for your family room and want something bigger than 32" you almost have to go HD these days, the selection for non-HD TV's over 32" is almost non-existent.

If you want to buy a new "primary" TV for your family room and want something bigger than 32" you almost have to go HD these days, the selection for non-HD TV's over 32" is almost non-existent.
But, man, the 32" non-HD TV's are cheap! How about a brand new Sylvania CRT SDTV for $300? A 32" LCD HDTV will cost you at least twice that, whatever LCD and HDTV stand for. Take a look at NTSC televisions today. Digital processing has finally made the pictures really look good. If you bought an NTSC set in the past five years and you got cable, you won't be missing anything.

Yes, people plug their new HDTVs into cable and the HDTV stretches the cable channels so they're all HD. What's the pillar boxing you're talking about, Flyfishingdad? Gosh, my HDTV doesn't have any black boxes on any channels! Are you sure you've set yours up right? :)

It took twenty years for a majority of TV viewers to own color televisions. I think we have another ten years to go for HD. Stations are in no rush to get your afternoon syndicated programs in HD.

Nah, I don't think things will take that long anymore. We are making huge leaps with technologies and people are jumping on board earlier and earlier with each new thing.

The difference between color and black and white was obvious to everyone yet it took twenty years for most people to switch.

Most people can't even tell the difference between HD and widescreen SD or even NTSC stretched across a 16:9 screen! Why should they even think about buying an HDTV if their NTSC set works perfectly?

And how do I give someone an HDTV tape of that football game?

The price difference between color and B&W TV's was striking, and people just didn't watch that much TV anyway, there were only 4 or 5 channels for most folks, and many had a hard time getting those in clearly. Who cares if snow is in color or black and white, it's still dang hard to see the picture.

And who watches a game on video tape? It's like reading yesterdays news on toilet paper.

Yes, a color TV cost about three times as much as a black and white TV in the early 70's. But the $1,500-$2,000 you spent on that nice HDTV in 2007 would have bought you a very nice color television set in the early 70's. One with a wood veneer console that looked like real furniture. We bought one for $400 and we got four channels perfectly by putting up a good antenna before cable finally got to our area in 1978. Of course the color wasn't very good but that didn't stop all of my dad's friends coming over to "see the game" in color.

We didn't watch much TV back then? Hell, that's all we kids did. We lived in the middle of nowhere and had nothing to do until we could drive. We didn't have computers or the Internet, and the Atari was boring after a while. That TV was on 16 hours a day.

I'll tell you who watches games on videotape -- insane football nuts like the ones I work with. They watch every OSU and U of O football game at least three times and spend the season arguing over every game. If you watch much football, you've probably noticed that often there is more than one game being broadcast at one time. Sometimes there are as many as five. That's when insane football nuts come to work with games on videotapes to exchange.

You'd think these guys would have HDTV's, right? Wrong. There have been virtually no regular season Pac-10 football games in HD so they're missing absolutely nothing by watching their teams on their NTSC sets. Yes, maybe in a few years these games will be in HD. They'll wait.

We didn't watch much TV back then? Hell, that's all we kids did. We lived in the middle of nowhere and had nothing to do until we could drive. We didn't have computers or the Internet, and the Atari was boring after a while. That TV was on 16 hours a day.
Amen to that. And when we kids had finally browbeaten our parents into shelling out for a color set, we watched everything in color we could, even if it was mostly just colored snow that was all we could pick up from the towers that weren't close enough.

I think it's hard for those of us who "get HD" to really understand what other people are thinking. I've got a brother-in-law who has a fabulous home theater setup in his family room but who buys full-screen DVDs and stretches them because he doesn't want the bars on the top and bottom of the screen that some widescreen movies cause. Losing those bars is more important to him than the fidelity of the picture or loss of data.

Wow, when I was a kid we played outside all the time. We'd dig "foxholes" in a field and play war, go fishing, ride our bikes all over, hide and seek that covered a huge area, often out till after dark. My family had a small black and white until the late 70's then we got a small color set. It wasn't until I was an adult and my wife and I bought our first "brand new" TV that I finally had a 25" set.


I've been watching movies in full aspect when ever possible even when all I had was a 32" TV. I'd rather see the whole picture, I can't imagine having a good home theater system and still watching movies in 4:3, that's cutting out 25% of the picture, more on wider movies.

Wow, when I was a kid we played outside all the time. We'd dig "foxholes" in a field and play war, go fishing, ride our bikes all over, hide and seek that covered a huge area, often out till after dark.
Did it ever rain in your childhood? That's when my friends came over to my house to watch TV in color, making me the coolest person to know. My dad sat in front of the TV for five hours an evening. My mom watched TV all day. I laugh at the thought that people watch more television these days, especially since almost everyone has video games and computers.

I mostly understand why people aren't interested in HD, especially people who've bought NTSC sets in the past few years. Going HD gets them nothing with regular cable and broadcast television. These sets have so much digital processing in them, it's just incredible how much they've cleaned up the analog picture. They look especially good with an S-Video or component connection to a digital cable box. At that point they're effectively watching digital televison.

Did it rain in my childhood? I've lived my entire life in the Oregon. When we couldn't go outside (and often we would play even in the rain, especially in the Summer) we'd do stuff inside. Building models was big time, playing with Star Wars stuff, and yes, once Pong and Atari came along, video games too. I also read a lot of books when I was a kid, I read far more, and faster, than I do now as an adult. Don't get me wrong, I loved Saturday morning cartoons, everyone waited eagerly to see what the years new cartoons would be. I had a friend who's dad was an electronics nut, had a huge Ham radio set up, they had TWO color TVs, and even VCR's. Still we didn't watch that much TV. I was also skinny as a rail when I was a kid, although my friend with all the TV stuff wasn't so thin nor was his sister or his parents.

HD TV is good for regular TV, I was watching the HD channels on my 32" JVC with Comcast's HD DVR for two years before I bought my plasma. The shows were letter boxed, but the picture was so much better, and being as I always got the wide screen DVD's letterboxed TV didn't bother me.

Many of the new 4:3 SD sets will crop the sides off 16:9 shows so they'll fill up the screen. Since they're processing the image digitally anyway, this is easy to do. This is great because 90% of all HD TV shows and nearly 100% of all sports are shot 4:3 safe. Thus we folks with HD get to see an extra 10 rows in the stands behind the basket in basketball games and a bunch of photographers behind the goal posts in football games.

It just shows once again that the people without HD are missing absolutely nothing. As long as the non-HD people know they aren't missing anything, people won't be rushing out to buy HDTVs. I've had this conversation with dozens of coworkers. I'm too honest to be a salesman.

Hello all,

Just finished building my first attempt at an HTPC with the new MythDora. Woo-hoo, I hope I can get it all working!

Anyway, I purchased the Philips Silver Sensor indoor antenna because I think it should be enough for my location. However, I'm not sure if it will work in my basement where my tuners are. Just wanted to ask people in SE PDX where they have had to locate their indoor antennas to get a good signal. Am I going to have to hang it from the ceiling tilted in the perfect direction, or have folks in close in PDX been having it pretty easy getting all the locals.

I have a three story appartment building as a northern neighboor that I know is not going to help me out.

Thanks for any help here!

BTW, I'm talking ATSC signals.

Hello all,

Just finished building my first attempt at an HTPC with the new MythDora. Woo-hoo, I hope I can get it all working!

Anyway, I purchased the Philips Silver Sensor indoor antenna because I think it should be enough for my location. However, I'm not sure if it will work in my basement where my tuners are. Just wanted to ask people in SE PDX where they have had to locate their indoor antennas to get a good signal. Am I going to have to hang it from the ceiling tilted in the perfect direction, or have folks in close in PDX been having it pretty easy getting all the locals.

I have a three story appartment building as a northern neighboor that I know is not going to help me out.

Thanks for any help here!

(Ok, I forgot to quote and it came up on the next page)

I was asking about digital signals in the post above as I did not specify.

Thanks

(Ok, I forgot to quote and it came up on the next page)

I was asking about digital signals in the post above as I did not specify.

ThanksYou shouldn't have any trouble, though every location is a bit different. It really depends on what is between you and the towers, and how close in you are.

I'm near 52nd and Powell and found it easy to get my Silver Sensor aligned to pick up all 9 digital channels. The neighbor's giant maple tree gives me a little trouble in the spring and fall when the leaves are wet, but not enough so that I've bothered with replacing the coax on my roof antenna and switching over to it.

I get all 22 channels with a 6"uhf stub on my LG DVD Recorder VCR. I am 1/2 mi. from the towers and can see them out the window....

Just a note for y'all.

KPDX and KPDX-DT will both be off the air overnight tonight (8/2/07-8/3/07) starting at about midnight for a period of four to six hours. Tower workers are going to replace a cracked transmission line elbow at the 975 foot level. Comcast viewers will continue to receive the signal as will viewers outside the Portland metro area who receive the signal from a translator or a cable company that receives the signal from a translator. KPDX will be missing from Dish and DirecTV, however, since those services pick up the signals over the air in Portland.

Thanks for your paitence.

Ed

Thanks for the warning Ed. We really appreciate your presence here in the forums. :)

(Let's see if anyone posts that they are having problems with KPDX reception tonight without first reading your post. ;) )

Hey I was trying to watch a rerun of King of the Hill on KPDX but I'm not getting anything...

...oh wait, it's not midnight yet. Be back in an hour... :)

Argh, you beat me to my smart remarks....I was waiting till midnight to post! No fair.

> Hey I was trying to watch a rerun of King of the Hill on KPDX but I'm not getting anything...
>
> ...oh wait, it's not midnight yet. Be back in an hour... :)

I've been sitting here wondering how a cracked transmission line elbow
would mess up the vertical sync? Brought back memories of the days when
TVs had vertical hold and horizontal hold knobs as front panel controls.

I'll add my thanks for the advanced warning, and for having the job
done when it would impact the fewest viewers. Or is it that the tower
guys didn't feel like climbing up there in the heat of the afternoon? :-)

Argh, you beat me to my smart remarks....I was waiting till midnight to post! No fair.
What's really stupid is that KPDX doesn't even air King of the Hill rerurns!

It looks like they just pulled the plug on Bernie Mac!

Greetings,

antennaweb says I should get a medium directional uhf/vhf combo for my roof. My question: where is a good place to go locally in PDX? I bet radioshack has them. Is there anywhere else that I should visit?

Thanks a bunch!

> antennaweb says I should get a medium directional uhf/vhf combo for my roof.

Word is that seperate VHF and UHF antennas work better than combos.
Do youself a favor and get highly directional antennas, you will get
less multipath, less interference and a stronger signal.

Decide if you want low VHF (2-6) or not. The current plan is that we will
not have any local VHF-LO stations after 2009-02-17, only VHF-HI (7-13) and
UHF (14-51). I'm getting acceptable VHF-LO reception using the YA-1713
VHF-HI antenna, in fact channel 4 is my strongest digital station dispite
being only 16 KW.

Also decide if you want to have your antennas in the attic or above the roof.
You will probably get a better signal above the roof, but then you have to
deal with wind, rain, baseballs, critters, etc.

Consider PR-8800, CM 4228, DB-8, XG-91 for UHF; YA-1713 or Y10-7-13 for
VHF-HI.

> My question: where is a good place to go locally in PDX? I bet radioshack has
> them. Is there anywhere else that I should visit?

The radioshack antennas have a reputation for low quality, and for falling
apart quickly.

Lowe's has weatherproof RG6 quad shield coax, and some mounting hardware.
Their antenna selection is poor (low end combos). Home Depot might have
something but I wouldn't count on it, I couldn't even find RG6-QS there.
Fry's has a few antennas, but their reputation isn't good either.

To get decent antennas you will probably have to mail order.

http://www.solidsignal.com
http://www.starkelectronic.com
http://www.summitsource.com
http://www.warrenelectronics.com

Is anyone else getting audio clicks/pops on KOPB and/or KATU?
The picture is fine, no dropped packets, no complaints from
the mpeg decoder.

It is happening now (Sat 2007-08-11 1pm) on the KOPB Create subchannel,
the HD, SD, and OC subchannels are okay. KATU is okay at the moment,
the clicks appeared on Masters of Science Fiction - A Clean Escape
on the 4th.

Everything points at this being a problem at the stations, but it seems
odd for two unrelated stations to have the same problem?

I live in Salem, 50 miles from most of the Portland stations towers. I use a combo antenna I bought from radio shack, it was Model VU-90 XR and cost $60.

I get
ABC HD (2.1)

CBS HD (6.1), CBS Digital SD (6.2)

NBC HD (8.1) and Weather Plus (8.2)

OPB HD (10.1) OPB digital (10.2) OPB create (10.3) and OPB Oregon Channel(10.4)

Fox HD (12.1)

Ion (22.1) Qubo, a kids channel (22.2) Ion Life health and fitness (22.3) Ion Worship (22.4)

TBN (24.1) The Church Channel (24.2) JCTV Christian Music videos/action sports (24.3) TBN Enlace Spanish programming (24.4) Smile of a Child childrens programming (24.5)

CW HD (32.1) The Tube Music Network (32.2)

My Network TV HD (this channel isn't available in HD on Comcast here in Salem) (49.1)

These channels all come in at between 70 and 80 percent strength, I'm not using a line amplifier, and have 50 feet of RG6 cable between my rooftop antenna and Tivo Series 3. I rarely have any signal glitches. My antenna is fixed I do not use a rotator. I have heard that multi-path is a non-issue with digital reception. I do not get quality reception on any analog channels however. But I don't watch analog anyway, no need to when almost every channel is available in digital, and those few small independent channels that aren't currently digital will soon be going digital. It won't be long until analog channels go away altogether. I purchased a combo antenna because some channels are VHF even though they are digital, such as Ion which though it is channel 22.1,22.2,22.3, and 22.4 they are on VHF frequency channel 4. It is my understanding that a couple channels that are currently using UHF channels for digital will be switching to their VHF channels after the total digital switch in a couple years, thus the need for a combo antenna.

Is anyone else getting audio clicks/pops on KOPB and/or KATU?
The picture is fine, no dropped packets, no complaints from
the mpeg decoder.

It is happening now (Sat 2007-08-11 1pm) on the KOPB Create subchannel,
the HD, SD, and OC subchannels are okay. KATU is okay at the moment,
the clicks appeared on Masters of Science Fiction - A Clean Escape
on the 4th.

Everything points at this being a problem at the stations, but it seems
odd for two unrelated stations to have the same problem?

The other day I was hearing audio clicks on ABC HD (2.1) I have basic cable still and my Tivo S3 gets the Cable free and clear HD channels, so I switched over to ABC HD on cable, the clicks were there too.

Checking OPB Create OTA, yes I hear the clicks. But just switched to OBP create on Comcast, clicks are there too. No worry, it's source.

I watch my OTA channels almost exclusively though, as the picture seems better in HD than Comcast's HD channels. I only use Comcast for Discovery on 7, and Halmark on 18 plus C-span sometimes.

> I have heard that multi-path is a non-issue with digital reception.

The newer demodulators do a fairly good job at handling static
multipath from mountains, buildings, water towers, etc. They
still do not handle dynamic multipath from trucks, buses
(Hi Scott!), airplanes, etc. well.

> It is my understanding that a couple channels that are currently
> using UHF channels for digital will be switching to their VHF channels
> after the total digital switch in a couple years,

See posting #1 in this thread. (It gets updated occasionally.)
Channel 4 moves to 22, and 8, 10, and 12 become digital. So
after the analog shutoff in 2009 we will need VHF-HI and UHF.
We will not need an antenna for VHF-LO after 2009 unless something
changes.

> thus the need for a combo antenna.

You can use a combo, or you can use a UHF antenna plus a VHF-HI
antenna. Everything I've read says that separate antennas
perform better than a combo.

> The other day I was hearing audio clicks on ABC HD (2.1)

> Checking OPB Create OTA, yes I hear the clicks. But just switched
> to OBP create on Comcast, clicks are there too. No worry, it's source.

Thanks for the confirmation.

> antennaweb says I should get a medium directional uhf/vhf combo for my roof.

Word is that seperate VHF and UHF antennas work better than combos.
Do youself a favor and get highly directional antennas, you will get
less multipath, less interference and a stronger signal.

Decide if you want low VHF (2-6) or not. The current plan is that we will
not have any local VHF-LO stations after 2009-02-17, only VHF-HI (7-13) and
UHF (14-51). I'm getting acceptable VHF-LO reception using the YA-1713
VHF-HI antenna, in fact channel 4 is my strongest digital station dispite
being only 16 KW.

Also decide if you want to have your antennas in the attic or above the roof.
You will probably get a better signal above the roof, but then you have to
deal with wind, rain, baseballs, critters, etc.

Consider PR-8800, CM 4228, DB-8, XG-91 for UHF; YA-1713 or Y10-7-13 for
VHF-HI.

> My question: where is a good place to go locally in PDX? I bet radioshack has
> them. Is there anywhere else that I should visit?

The radioshack antennas have a reputation for low quality, and for falling
apart quickly.

Lowe's has weatherproof RG6 quad shield coax, and some mounting hardware.
Their antenna selection is poor (low end combos). Home Depot might have
something but I wouldn't count on it, I couldn't even find RG6-QS there.
Fry's has a few antennas, but their reputation isn't good either.

To get decent antennas you will probably have to mail order.

http://www.solidsignal.com
http://www.starkelectronic.com
http://www.summitsource.com
http://www.warrenelectronics.com

Fry's in Wilsonville has some antennas. I got mine there and have been happy with it.

Jay

As reported on the "Oregon Media Insiders" website, Ed Williams, Director of Engineering
Meredith Broadcasting - Portland, Fox 12 Oregon / PDX 49 is leaving to pursue other endevours.

Lots of nice words and well wishes on that website. One need not look hard to see his contributions around here.

Good luck Ed !!!!

Yes, best of luck and much success in your pursuits. We'll miss your informative input.

Best of luck Ed, you and the information you provided will be missed. Thank you again for your efforts in giving us the best product you could, it was greatly appreciated.

Earl

Hi all,
I live not more than 1-2 miles from the transmitters however I'm on the backside of a hill with homes that start about where our roof is. Is it impossible to get a signal even being so close to the towers? I have tried a few of the popular directional and omni indoor antennas placed in the upper most corner facing the towers but I get practically nothing. A rooftop antenna would still be below other homes in the direction of the towers. We do have some skinny but tall trees that are higher than our roof but have no idea how to get an antenna up there since I don't think it would support a ladder leaned up aginst it, plus they still are below the other homes.
Are there any companies that could do this or would at least check signals with outdoor setups?

Thanks
Mike Portland, OR

That's probably the most difficult reception situation to be in. Since the towers are designed to throw the signal down some distance away from the hills, most of the signal is probably far above your house.

Here's one desperate thing you can try with a directional antenna. Can you see any hills or tall buildings away from the towers? One person I know in NW is getting reliable reception with a rooftop Yagi pointed at downtown about 90 degrees away from the towers. Apparently the signals are going over her house and bouncing off the buildings back at her. Amazingly she is getting very realiable reception since she has a wonderful clear view of downtown.

That's probably the most difficult reception situation to be in. Since the towers are designed to throw the signal down some distance away from the hills, most of the signal is probably far above your house.
Agreed. I live about 5 miles away, in the west hills, and my only solution was to obtain a directional outdoor antenna that did a fair job in dealing with multipath issues (my home is completely surrounded by trees). That, combined with a good tuner has done a merely okay job. I contacted pro who was recommended to me for his expertise in dealing with difficult HD OTA installations. He told me that based on my proximity to the antennas, treed surroundings, and sharp decline from the antenna locations, what I was getting was about as good as I was going to get. I'd say your situation is a mite worse than my own.... :(

Well thats what I was thinking but thought I'd ask the question anyway. We don't really have anything around to reflect signals but I'll take the directional antenna and go around with my laptop (with usb HDTV tuner) and see if I can get any reflections.

Thanks for the info!

Mike

Any ideas as to why the Seahawks Game isn't being shown in HD on Fox 12?

Because it's not being broadcast by an HD network.

It was broadcast by the Seahawks network and not FOX.

These "team" networks are usually thrown together at the beginning of the season using the cheapest equipment they can rent. You could tell in this game they were using outdated composite equipment. Games like this are kind of hard to watch for me.

Yeah, the picture was awful, far worse even than the normal non-HD programming you see on TV. If I ran the NFL I would ensure a little better quality control from all broadcasters.