The 720P feed on KET is much better. WCET-DT looks compressed to me and its has the focus/blur effect like WKRC-DT has during live sporting events.

I am also annoyed that WCET-DT is always running 5.1 DD audio even during shows that are not in 5.1 which misses the center channel. KET switches to 5.1 audio only when its broadcast. WLWT-DT also has this problem.

I agree with robert 100% concerning KET4/CET-HD comparison, I'm seeing the same thing, including the focus/blur thing on WCET-DT ....

From what I can tell, Compression artifacts aren't really a problem at all from the 720p PBS HD/widescreen SD upconverts on KET4, and they're running 2SD+1HD service when in HD mode. We know WCET-DT runs 1 SD multicast service, but, I think they are also using a signifcant chunk of their bandwidth for a datacast service ... KET does some datacasting as well, but I think it pretty much only uses available oppurtunistic bandwidth .... HD from WPTD-DT/WPTO-DT(both at 1080i + 2 SD services) really doesn't look much different from WCET-DT to me - It is perhaps a bit worse compression artifact wise I think, but I don't see the "focus/blur" thing happening on those ....

I used to think the HD on KET4 was quite a bit on the "soft" side, but that has apparently improved, as I think it really looks great now -- as does, for that matter their SD services(depending on content/source/etc). Maybe it's just me, but it has also allways seemed to me that the HD on KET4 also has more vibrant, "lifelike" colors than the case with PBS HD I've seen elsewhere.

I wish folks outside of this area could have a chance to see what KET is doing with digital TV/HD, I think they are doing a fantastic job .... That being said, I do wish KET could expand the times they offer HD/PBS Widescreen programming, for that matter I'd love to see some of the KET produced programming that airs on KET1 in HD someday .... And, I also appreciate the 24/7(well, 24/7 except for the wee hours of morning some nights) PBS HD from WCET-DT - Since I'm using OTA exclusively for HD, there isn't anywhere else I can get that, currently.

Also, I generally prefer 1080i, and HD at the resolution sent by the network -- such as 1080i from CBS HD with all the bandwidth it needs(especially for programming such as NFL HD football), perhaps especially since all my displays are 1080i native! But, in this case -- I don't "mind" the 720p for PBS HD at all, and come to think of it, I can't complain about FOX HD for "NASCAR" or ABC HD for MNF/etc.etc. ..... It looks awfully good to me, I just don't quite get the same "looking out a window" feel to is that I get with say, HD football on CBS, or the 2002 HD Olympics from NBC/HD net, I assume mostly because of the higher resolution of 1080i, I can see(think I can, anyway) noticably(but not by a lot) more "fine details" ...

But, I don't know, at least in this case -- I definitely prefer the 720P HD from KET4 due to the decreased MPEG2 compression artifacts, and given the circumstances with Multicasting/etc in this case, and for some reason-- it doesn't bother me at all that it's not the 1080i PBS is sending ..... Even though -- In Late 2002, the first few months WCET-DT was on the air and weren't multicasting, and were sending only PBS HD at 1080i, it really did look fantastic ... Problem is, it hasn't been that way since then ....

Just My .02 cents, anyway ... probably more than anyone wanted to know ....

I seem to remember reading on this thread something that said that cable cos will be prevented from converting the digital signal provided by local stations down to an analog cable signal. Is there an article that supports this or am I just remembering wrong?

terry,

That's the current Law [update - looks like I misunderstood it a bit -- that's the current law as it applies after analog shut off - looks like, from what I can find on it, it's a little different presently -- more info in my next post] --

it very well might change, however -- Ironically concerning WKRC, and also ironically concerning the additional "non-efficent" bandwidth required for the analog channels on cable -- right now, it's the cable "lobbies" wanting it to change so they can downrez to analog at the headend, and the broadcaster lobby which doesn't want it to be allowed ... That's not saying that's the posistion of every broadcaster or every cableco ...

I'm not privy to the agreements between the cableco's and WKRC(or WKRC and CW), but otherwise I don't think there is anything that says WKRC can't send the cableco a analog feed of the CW from the studios, or for that matter ,a seperate HD feed as well ...

I can't seem to find documentation regarding that law, do you have a link?

EDIT:
I only ask because I plan to post about this topic on a different forum and wish to have an article to back up this claim.

Are the broadcasters worried that the cable companies won't put the HD channel up, and instead just downrez all their HD signals to HD lite or SD?

I can't seem to find documentation regarding that law, do you have a link?

EDIT:
I only ask because I plan to post about this topic on a different forum and wish to have an article to back up this claim.

I believe the current rules(which are a bit difficult to "deceipher") on this are mostly described in A FCC report and order from January 2001 concerning Cable carriage of digital broadcast signals, available here:

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/Orders/2001/fcc01022.pdf

The way I understand it+the way it's written -- Right now, it looks like Cableco's ARE allowed to convert broadcaster's digital signals to analog(even HD), but *only* if the broadcaster asks for it(it actually says "demand" it) --- HOWEVER, it also says this is a temporary situation, for only the "early" stages of the transistion, and they were going to revisit it after 2003(which they haven't, yet I don't believe ) ..... specifically It says, "after the transistion moves forward, broadcast television broadcast stations will be required to deliver their signals in digital format and cable operators will be required to carry them in digital format, as discussed above." ...... If nothing else, that would at least seem to mean analog shut off, if not earlier, wouldn't you think? ....

The full text of Paragraph 74 of the report and order follow(you'll probably want to download the whole thing and check it out - Note their reference to section 614/615 refers to section(mandatory carriage of commercial televisionstations) and section 615 (mandatory carriage of noncommercial educational television stations) of Communications act of 1934 :

quote :

74. We also find that for purposes of supporting the ultimate conversion to digital signals and facilitating the return of the analog spectrum, a television station may demand that one of its HDTV or SDTV television signals be carried on the cable system for delivery to subscribers in an analog format. We do not believe the conversion of a digital signal to an analog format under these specific and temporary circumstances is precluded by the nondegradation requirement in sections 614(b)(4)(A) and 615(g)(2). Many cable subscribers do not yet have television sets capable ofreceiving or displaying digital signals in their fully advanced format. Thus, if we were to mandate digital-to-digital transmission at this stage of the transition period, cable subscribers would be unable to properly receive the signals. Obviously this was not the intended goal of the nondegradation requirement in sections 614(b)(4)(A) and 615(g)(2). Allowing digital-to-analog conversion for a limited time during a critical stage of the transition period will further the digital transition because a television station would be more willing to return its analog spectrum to the government, and convert to digital service, knowing that cable subscribers without digital equipment may still be able to view the relevant programming. We recognize, that permitting digital-to-analog conversion will not provide an impetus for cable subscribers to purchase digital television sets, but will allow new digital stations and stations that return their analog spectrum to continue to reach cable subscribers who have only analog receivers while commencing over-the-air service to attract and reach non-cable viewers who purchase digital television sets. With these points in mind, we will allow a television station to provide one of its digital signals to cable systems in an analog format only during the early stages of the transition period. We will revisit this policy after 2003 to ensure that this policy is fostering the conversion to digital television service and to determine when equipment is available so that broadcast signals can be delivered and carried in digital format.217[footnote reference] As the transition moves forward, television broadcast stations will be required to deliver their signals in digital format and cable operators will be required to carry them in digital format, as discussed above.

:end quote

They sure know how to write long paragraphs, LOL ...

Here are a few articles concerning the "analog downconversion" issue -- Do a Google search for "Cable+carriage+analog+downconversion" or something similar and you'll find all sorts of stuff :

http://www.freepress.net/news/4959

http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleid=CA412781

http://broadcastengineering.com/newsletters/rfupdate/20041105/FCC-NAB-MSTV/index.html

http://policycouncil.nationaljournal.com/EN/Forums/National+Association+of+Broadcasters/99038760-eb08-42af-b7b5-751bfbb2791c.htm

Just guessing, but I'd say it's most likely because "they" (FCC, etc. who mandate that broadcasters must go to digital by a certain date) want to make sure that cable isn't a "way around" this. If they're trying to change all tv reception to digital standards, allowing cable to continue to use "old" analog standards seems counterintuitive. I probably didn't expain that all that well but hopefully it makes sense.

Are the broadcasters worried that the cable companies won't put the HD channel up, and instead just downrez all their HD signals to HD lite or SD?

That's part of it, but who knows *what* they are thinking about, really .... Wouldn't be surprised if some of it has to do with their interests in "multicast must carry" ..... And again, keep in mind, this is such groups as the NAB we are talking about, not necessarily any given station or company that owns broadcast stations .... The personal opinions as posted from Many of the folks in the broadcast business who post on AVSforum seem to be they agree with analog downconversion at the headend ...

Another thing to consider is -- after analog shut off, if the cablecos are allowed to downrez to analog at the headend, they'll be the *only* (well besides analog LP's that may still be on the air) provider of NTSC analog service which will work with your old analog only TV ..... which might get them more subscribers from folks who are still analog OTA only ....

Personally --- I'm guessing it will probably happen+they'll change the rules to allow it, as there are just too many analog cable subscribers the cableco would need to provide with converters for digital cable before analog shut off, but who knows .....

.... I'd say it's most likely because "they" (FCC, etc. who mandate that broadcasters must go to digital by a certain date) want to make sure that cable isn't a "way around" this.

I think you said that very well, and I do think that is a very important thing to consider here ..... and, as I mentioned earlier -- I could imagine a cable ad after analog shut off -- "Tired of watching snow? Cable still works with your TV*, no additional hardware required!"

* - fine print - excluding some older sets which may not be analog cable-ready"

Also --- It's the broadcasters and OTA digital viewers who have been "footing the bill" for the DTV transision, I don't see why cable shouldn't be "required" to do their part as well ..... For instance ... Why weren't digital cable STB's required to have ATSC tuners in them? THAT surely would have quickly accelerated the transistion, and who knows, some folks may have even USED them for OTA for digitial HD stations available OTA that aren't available via cable/etc ......

That being said .... again, I personally think it is probably likely the reality of all the analog cable viewers out there will be what "wins" this battle, thus I expect it's very possible(maybe even likely) they'll end up allowing downrezzing to analog at the cable head end after the analogs shut off ...

BTW .... I don't think it is so much what the FCC wants -- For the most part, FCC is really mostly there to do what congress/legislation mandates and directs them to do.

Nitewatchman,
Thanks for your help. With those key words I found some better articles that talk about the recent bill activity:

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6295306.html

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6327947.html

Terry ---

Thanks for posting those links ... I hadn't seen the second one, from yesterday concerning FCC chairman's remarks at NAB convention .... ... I thought I had a pretty good "feel" for ex-FCC chariman Powell's views on such matters, but that's one of the few articles I've seen so far that allows for a little "insight" about Martin .....

Looks like he is saying cable should be requried to carry the stations in digital(HD/etc) without degrading the signal for digital cable viewers, AND they should also be allowed to send a "2nd" analog version via downrezzing it to analog at the headend rather than provide digital STB's to analog cable customers, if that's what they want to do .....

Since he is "for" multicast must carry as well -- I suppose in cases when the cableco were to downrez to analog rather than provide all the analog cable subscribers with analog only sets with Digital STB's --- one might assume he means all the station's(stations which are carried on the system) multicast services should be carried on analog as well, for analog cable viewers ... IF so, Man, that could *really* eat up a lot of bandwidth, since each Multicast SD digital service will take up 6MHZ when converted to analog ....

edit/update: If they were to ever be a majority of the commisson for Multicast must carry - I wonder how that would work for stations choice of retransmission consent vs. Must carry? For instance, wonder if they would be able to choose, say Retransmission consent(and demand $) for their primary(HD) service, and Must-carry for the SD multicast services, or would it have to be one or the other?

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

Question - Do any of the local cable providers carry any of the digital stations Multicast SD services on analog cable ? Such as , "9 Weather Tracker" from WCPO, "Weather Plus" from WLWT, "The Tube" from WXIX, or any of the local PBS stations SD multicast channels?

Yeah, pretty much every one of them on TWC. Weather Tracker (22), Weather Plus (906), The Tube (920) , PBS (948-WCET HDTV,949-WCET Create,950-WCET Kids,954-KET1,955-KET2,956-KET3,957-KET4,958-KET5,959-KET6)

Oops, didn't read. Just WCPO-DT2 on channel 22 the Weather Tracker.

Terry,

[updated]

Thanks, that's what I thought .... I also thought WCPO-DT's 9-2 weather was there, as I believe I recall seeing it at a friends house in Cincinnati several years ago with basic cable via his analog "cable-ready" TV's internal NTSC tuner ... He only had it because (at least at the time) they made him pay for basic cable in order to also get roadrunner ....

Something I meant to comment on earlier, but got off track as we've been talking about so many different things recently :

Concerning the recent news about WKRC-DT and CW on 12.2, AND the 10pm Local 12 newscast on WSTR deal ... I was thinking there may be some positive benefits that come from it .. For instance, Hopefully with all of this going on, it will be considered to be a good time for some equipment upgrades for the digital station, as well as for the Studio+news operatation .... Although I've yet to actually see it(and seeing is believing, I'd certianly like to see it) I keep hearing how along with using Stat Mux, newer, more efficent MPEG2 HD encoders can do wonders with HD+Multicasting(even 1080i HD) ....

Just some crazy thoughts as, I really wouldn't want to place any bets on anything that *might* happen in the future ... and Not that it really matters much to me, as I'll have WBDT-DT Dayton for CW(I assume CW HD as they have WB HD currently) -- But, I also wonder if it *might* be at all remotely possible for CW HD programming to "show up" on either WKRC-DT or WSTR-DT during "non-prime time" hours ... Perhaps unlikely, but it's not as if we haven't seen similiar things happen in the past, and not all that long ago, really ... Such as -- WBQC and WLWT taking some of the NBC programming WLWT didn't air/etc/etc ..... onsidering this current "deal" it's probably also a good to remember what happened with WB+UPN switching affiliations on WBQC/WSTR at the same time Sinclair bought WSTR ... Again, just some thoughts, and just thinking out loud ... It might be difficult schedule wise for WKRC-DT to run CW HD programming, then again, I'd think it would sure be better than informericals they run at times(weekend afternoons when there aren't sports/etc) ....

BTW, WWHO Columbus has dual UPN/WB affiliation -- Prior to recently when LIN purchased the station from Viacom, I believe because they had some technical issues concerning controlling the station from Indy (as they do WDTN-DT Dayton)+providing both WB+UPN HD : WWHO-DT was actually running BOTH UPN HD and WB HD(usually Time shifted, but we for instance got The Sunday WB HD "Easy views" from them .... And no, no subchannels or multicasting, unless that's changed recently ...

BTW, WWHO Columbus has dual UPN/WB affiliation -- Prior to recently when LIN purchased the station from Viacom, I believe because they had some technical issues concerning controlling the station from Indy (as they do WDTN-DT Dayton)+providing both WB+UPN HD : WWHO-DT was actually running BOTH UPN HD and WB HD(usually Time shifted, but we for instance got The Sunday WB HD "Easy views" from them .... And no, no subchannels or multicasting, unless that's changed recently ...

Could you elaborate (or re-explain) this part? I read it three times and am not sure what you're saying... Not trying to be a smart ass... Sorry.



As for your comments above that paragraph, I was thinking much of the same things. I was also thinking that if CW would end up doing much better than My Network, that it might be a possibility that we'd see another affiliate switch thing go on and have WSTR *then* become the CW affilliate. Complete hypothetical guessing and speculation here of course.

Could you elaborate (or re-explain) this part? I read it three times and am not sure what you're saying... Not trying to be a smart ass... Sorry.


Which part ;) No need to apologize ..... Sorry, I probably tried to pack a little too much into too little space there, and I didn't word it very well either .... Ok here goes, hopefully the below will make more sense :

LIN(a company which owns stations in this area such as WDTN/WWHO/WISH) "remotely" controls several of the stations it owns in this part of the country from a control room facility located at a station(WISH-TV) they own In Indianapolis, IN -- ..... Basically meaning, among other things, A master control operator in Indy sits in front of a HD plasma screen and a control panel and montitors the feed for LIN owned stations such as WDTN-DT Dayton), and performs such tasks as "switching" to and from HD feed(or programs it to happen automatically) so, for example you get to see NBC HD when you watch WDTN-DT Dayton ...

At one time when they were having some problems with the NBC HD feed during Weekend NASCAR races, WDTN's Chief engineer was kind enough to provide me the phone #'s for the tech on duty at WDTN(he also asked me not to pass those #'s along to anyone else which I didn't -- as they need to be working not answering phones ;), and the number to the control room operator for WDTN in Indy, and he asked if I'd call them and report any problems I might notice. On the rare occasions when I did call them In Dayton, The engineer on duty in Dayton then would call Indy and report the problem and ask them to fix it(which they quickly did) ....

Last year, LIN bought WWHO from Viacom, which previously owned the station and, when Viacom owned it, they ran UPN HD in "prime time"(the same time we see it on WBQC for instance), but, as a station with dual affiliation(both UPN and WB) they "time-shifted"(recorded) WB HD and aired it at different times than it runs via the Network feed(such as in prime time).

Basically, After LIN bought the station, the way they are "doing things" involving controlling the station from Indy, my understanding is they did not/do not yet have the equipment in place to either/Or : #1). do the recording and "time shifting" of the WB HD programming on the station, #2). AFAIK, they may not have the equipment in place to receive+distribute the WB HD feed either either -- so, they are only currently providing the UPN programming in HD, as has been the case since LIN took over operation of the station .... And given the annoucement in January of the end of the UPN and the WB in September 2006, my guess it it probably didn't make sense for them to purchase the equipment/etc. to allow them to air both WB+UPN HD as was the case when viacom owned the station ....

Note that I didn't mention any of that because it is relevant in any shape or form to the "cincinnati" situation -- Only as a bit of "trivia", and to also note that in a market similiar in size of Cincinnati, a single, full power station was not only both the UPN+WB affiliate --- but also - at least for quite some time, provided the HD programming of BOTH networks without any multicasting whatsoever .... By the way, It was announced April 16 that WWHO will be a CW affiliate beginning next fall .... I don't think Columbus has a "MyNetworkTV" affiliate agreement, yet ....

Also note that WWHO is located about 20 miles or so South of Columbus, and is located a bit closer to us than the other Columbus stations. It's 65 miles from my location, for instance, and I'd probably have a better shot of seeing it more often than I do if I didn't have a serious terrain issue in their direction ... At least I did get to see "Enterprise" in HD a couple of times .... And, it was also the first station in this area to have WB HD (WBDT-DT and WSTR-DT did not have the equipment/start doing WB HD until Fall 2004 ...)

You can find more info concerning WWHO's situation concerning WB HD posted at following URL in WWHO's section on a Columbus HD forum :

http://www.hdcolumbus.net/vb-hdtv/showthread.php?t=38&page=3

can't seem to find documentation regarding that law, do you have a link?


Felt I should follow up with a little more info on this, as believe it or not, I don't think I really answered your question very well in previous posts .... So, in addition to the info from the FCC report and order/etc, follows are some more resources for you :

Follows is a thread from a couple months back with an in-depth discussion of the law, and analog down-rez at cable headend :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7273754&&#post7273754

Just to make sure there was "really" nothing in there changing/adding to the current law/rules+regs, I also managed to dig up this page : http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/dtv/index.html , and download the full text of "Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (S. 1932), with Title III. Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005, full transcript, signed into law by President George W. Bush on February 8, 2006" - this is the law which among other things shuts down analog on Feb 17, 2009, and is currently available for download here :

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/dtv/S1932.pdf

I read through everything in Title III (the DTV part of it), and as has been reported, I couldn't find anything about analog downrezzing, or for that matter anything regarding cable carriage of broadcast signals(digital or otherwise, now, or after analog shut off) at all, for that matter .....

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

Now -- also note That info from the report and order I posted yesterday is Not allways necessarily the "written in stone" law on this --- the way I look at it, that is more the FCC's interpetation, and/or description of "the law" on this, although they often do make specific rule changes in documents such as report+orders which amend or add to Code of federal regulations(CFR) as well.

FCC also has a "factsheet" summary of that report and order, "CABLE CARRIAGE OF DIGITAL TV SIGNALS SUMMARY OF FCC RULES ADOPTED JANUARY 18, 2001" available here :

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/News_Releases/2001/must_carry_factsheet.html

Applicable to what you are interested in, See the "material degradation" section of the fact-sheet, where it says :

:quote

The Report and Order finds that a cable operator may not carry a digital television signal in a lesser format or lower resolution than that afforded to a non-broadcast digital programmer carried on the cable system. However, a digital-only television station may demand that a cable operator carry its digital signal in an analog format without the prohibition against material degradation being violated. If a television station chooses to be carried in this manner, it is treated in the same manner as an analog signal.

:end quote

That's about as clear as mud, isn't it .... LOL ...

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

Now -- Of perhaps most relevance to your question as this would be "the law" -- I searched the Code of Federal regulations, FCC rules and perhaps I missed something+didn't find all the relevant "sections" or entrys that relate to this -- For example, I tried to find anything that would specifically spell out any specifics in the "law"(FCC rules in CFR) concerning analog downrezzing of digital broadcast signals and couldn't find it .... However -- I believe the law that is relevant here is in portions of part 76 "Multichannel Video and cable Service", Section 76.62 - "manner of carriage", Which are available here :

http://www.hallikainen.com/FccRules/2006/76/62/

Relevant Portion of Section 76.62 follow :

(b) Each such television broadcast signal carried shall be carried without
material degradation, and, for analog signals, in compliance with technical
standards set forth in subpart K of this part.


Update: Note: Part 76 Subpart K (and the other, current part 76 rules) can be found here :

http://www.hallikainen.com/FccRules/2006/76/

Main Index of all current FCC rules can be found here :

http://www.hallikainen.com/FccRules/2006/

Most recent rule changes can be found here :

http://www.hallikainen.com/FccRules/2006/RuleChanges.html

The main page from this provider of FCC rules can be found here :

http://www.hallikainen.com/FccRules/

I've got some questions I hope someone can help me with. I live in Liberty Twnshp area. For past 12 years, we have been in a tiny island under contract with Adelphia cable surrounded by TWC customers.(why this is, when the nearest home office is in E.B.F. Batavia- no offense meant- is a total mystery) I am on back-order for a new HDTV and while waiting, am trying to get my"ducks in a row". Currently have 'expanded' basic cable; non digital. I've done a search in this thread and only found generic(albeit, negative, comments re Adelphia HD content). I realize that TWC has taken over Adelphia, but this isn't "official" until July. I'm wondering what to expect(hopefully within the next week) when I receive my new TV and upgrade to Adelphia's HD package. What type of connectivity/reception issues should I be aware of? What kind of directives and/or suggestions can I give to the installer to best prep me for TWC switch-over? Lastly, I plan to augment with OTA. Prolly a chimney mount Televis DAT-75 pointed at Cinci(due to WAF). Any suggestions in this regard would be much appreciated and, and cost-cutting, as well. Thanks in advance

HDTV101,

Just a thought, You might end up aiming that DAT-75 at Dayton, Instead .... As, I don't know about adelphia, but you should be able to get the Cincinnati area digital/HD stations via TW Cable(except for WSTR-DT, unless something has changed recently) ...

Also, although you might "get lucky" -- DAT-75 is a UHF Only antenna, WCPO-DT(ABC HD Cincinnati) Transmits on VHF 10, WKRC-DT(CBS HD, currently on UHF 31) has chosen to move to VHF 12 after analog shut off ... All the Dayton digital/HD stations are UHF, and at this point it looks like it will remain that way after analog shut off(feb 17,2009 as it stands now) as well ...

While the DAT-75 ( http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/DAT75.html ) would certianly be an excellent choice of antenna for you for Dayton UHF digitals -and as I said earlier - you can't really have "too much antenna", OTOH(and although it's awfully hard to say, and it doesn't hurt to have extra "insurance"), you probably won't absolutely *need* that much UHF performance, for either the Dayton or Cincinnati UHF digital stations ... It is an excellent antenna for "fringe" area reception or for Dx'ing .... Unless you have serious terrain issues, you should be in a relatively strong signal area for Both the Cincinnati/Dayton stations ... For Dayton UHF's, an antenna such as RS U75R, or CM4221 might also be sufficent .... CM4228 8-Bay bowtie is the only UHF only antenna I know of that offers quite a bit of gain(but not necessarily excellent directivity, as it's not designed for use on VHF) on Hi-VHF channels 7~13 ....

For Cincinnati VHF+UHF, a small VHF/UHF combo such as RS-VU90, CM3016 or Winegard PR-7010/PR7014 would likely be fine choices, or seperate VHF/UHF antennas combined with a VHF/UHF joiner ... winegard does make a couple of very nice, relatively small VHF-HI band antennas(for channel 7-13 only), Although at this point there is of course no certian guarentee we won't someday have a lo-VHF(channel 2-6) digital station in the area, in which case(or for good analog lo-VHF or FM reception) you'd want an antenna that provides good lo-VHF reception as well ....

Concerning the "cost-cutting", besides OTA only, or OTA+ some of the lower cost SD satellite packages w/o locals --- If your HD set has a internal QAM tuner(for "digital" cable) in it, you should(that's might a big *should* when it comes to everything *working just right*) be able to receive the Local digital/HD stations the cable company carries with subscription to their most "basic" level of service (lifeline tier/etc), even if it's only a "analog cable" subscription .... I know that's the case with TW Cincinnati, I'm not sure about adelphia ... see previous reports from folks with QAM tuners in their sets(or with their PC tuner cards) on this thread - you'll probably be able to find some of posts/reports fairly easily searching for "Qam" using the "search this thread" function ....

Hope some of this is of some use, let us know how it goes!

I believe the current rules(which are a bit difficult to "deceipher") on this are mostly described in A FCC report and order from January 2001 concerning Cable carriage of digital broadcast signals ....


I hate to prolong this "analog downrez" thing anymore as I'm sure we're all sick of it by now ... But, since this subject is *very confusing*(for me anyway) and, there seems(to me anyway) to be quite a bit of "grey area" involved .... in addition to my above responses to terryfoster+MlbUc on this matter I wanted to add a few final comments per my "understanding"(or misunderstanding) of the situation, as well as a few questions for anyone who can perhaps provide any additional "clarity" concerning the situation :

Up until I tried to search for the "definitive" carved in stone rules(law) which spelled out the details concerning the cableco's obligations, and choices concerning "analog downrezzing" and providing digital broadcast signals to analog cable viewers(most relevant post-transistion, I'd think), in order to respond to Terry's questions about it -- EVERYTHING I have read from reliable sources, and have heard from folks "in the business" has said the current "law"(or the widely accepted "interpetation" of it) was as I posted originally :

That cableco's can't decide on their own to downrez digital broacast signals to analog at the headend NOW, and unless something changes, won't be able to do so after analog shut off, either .... And, in either case(now or after analog shut off) - unless the station does it for them - in addition to a seperate feed for analog to the cableco, instead, that might also involve the digital signal, but with the station providing the equipment for downconversion at the cableco head end .... And the funny part is, I *still* can't find much of anything that would seem to prove otherwise, although I'm a little less certian of it being the "de-facto" case now ....

And, the info from the FCC's report and order from Jan 2001 I posted earlier would seem to me to indicate it's not the cableco's "choice"(i.e. they aren't allowed to decide to downrez to analog at the headend) it's the stations choice, not the cableco ...

Also -- everything I've read seemed to indicate that many parties involved are "concerned" about what happens with this after analog shut off, as obviously, the analog stations which are currently carried on analog cable will be gone ...

I'm also puzzled by the following two points taken "together" :

#1). The comments in the Report and order from 2001 (as referenced in more detail in an earlier post) - specifically, in paragraph #74, where it says :

quote :

"...... We will revisit this policy after 2003 to ensure that this policy is fostering the conversion to digital television service and to determine when equipment is available so that broadcast signals can be delivered and carried in digital format.217[footnote reference] As the transition moves forward, television broadcast stations will be required to deliver their signals in digital format and cable operators will be required to carry them in digital format, as discussed above."

:end quote

Ok -- so while that perhaps doesn't necesssarily specifically say analog downrezzing at the cableco wouldn't be allowed after analog shut off, only that cableco's will be required to carry the digital signals .... nevertheless, am I missing something, but doesn't it seem like they are saying they were planning to "revisit" their decision to allow cableco's to "downrez" a broadcaster's digital signal to analog, but ONLY if the broadcaster requests it?

#2). Some of FCC Chariman Martin Comments as reported in the article (here :http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6327947.html ) terry posted a link to, from NAB convention earlier this week ... specifically, where it was reported that he said :

Martin said, "I think viewable is the key term. I think Congress passed a law and said cable operators have to make sure the broadcast signals they are carrying are viewable by everyone they are serving."

"The FCC, he added, might not need to conduct a rulemaking. "I think what we will say is that it has to be viewable, because that’s what I think the statutes say," Martin said. "

This is indeed puzzling to me, including the(seemingly) full context of his comments as quoted in article, not just the above. Especially as again, everything I've read(Including #1. the "law" as written in stone in CFR title 47, Part 76, section 76.62 (b) regarding the "manner of carriage" concerning cableco's not being allowed to "degrade" the broadcaster's signal, and, #2. the info in the Jan 2001 FCC Report and order concerning Cable carriage of digital signals -- which seem to sway it is not the cableco which has a choice whether or not to send an analog version of a digital broadcast signal, it's the broadcaster that has that choice ... Doesn't it seem like some of chariman Martin's comments in the article may be somewhat contridictory to this, or am I missing something (such as another law or more recent FCC rulemaking procedure that I couldn't dig up ??? ) ......

I understand when he mentions "viewable", he's talking about his interpetation of section 614(b)(7) of Communications act(also "the law"), where it says broadcast signals carried on the cable system "shall be provided to every subscriber of a cable system. Such signals shall be viewable via cable on all television receivers of a subscriber that are connected to a cable system by a cable operator or for which a cable operator provides a connection."

And, he goes on to say that signal "degradation" issue needed examining, but at the same time, he also is reported to have said :

"It's not degrading a signal to make sure that someone can watch it who otherwise wouldn't be able to watch it. That's satisfying the viewable point," .... "I am not sure the same thing would apply if you have a big high-definition set and [cable is] giving you a signal that you are not capable of watching on a high-definition set."

It seems to me he may be saying concerning the "viewable thing" --- that he thinks cable may be allowed to downrez to analog at the headend, as the cableco's decision, not requiring the station's OK, or I take it, any FCC rulemaking? .... Unless I'm misinterpeting something, or reading too much into that(or again missing something else in FCC rules or a later report and order), wouldn't that be the opposite from what FCC said in the 2001 cable carriage report and order -- that it was the "station's choice", if the "demanded" it ? ......

So finally --- and in any case --- Is it just me, or doesn't it seem like the commission(or congress/etc) needs to provide a little more clarification on this issue ? Mainly -- will Cableco's, per their own choice instead of broadcasters .... be allowed to downrez to analog at the headend, or will they only be allowed to do it in the subscribers home, via a STB ?

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

Again, sorry for continuing this, as I'm sure most everyone(including me, LOL) is sick of hearing about it .... But, If anyone has anything to add that might provide more "clarity" on this issue of analog downrezzing than I can seem to find, I would certianly appreciate it .... Thanks ....

Jeff- Thanks for the suggestions. My thoughts on the use of OTA aren't so much for added channels; ie, Dayton. It's more for when cable goes out or the wife goes on a Home and Garden Channel marathon. I can still at least watch a ballgame. I'm waiting on a JVC 40fh96, so I'll have QAM/ATSC tuner/split picture. The CM3016 you mentioned looks interesting with the added benifit of FM reception. I'll keep you posted

HDTV101,

No problem -- FYI Lowe's has CM3016 right now for a very good price -- Just under $35 or so according to their website .. You should tell "the boss<g>" it's generally "smaller" than the DAT-75 (which it is, but you need the "long" elements on it for VHF) .... Just don't let her see the CM3010 "steathtenna" at lowe's, as it's UHF section is extremely poor performance ----it's UHF section is just a 1/2 wave dipole cut for one of the lower UHF channels .. In other words, UHF "rabbit ears", not even as good as the UHF "loop" antennas they used to attach to small TV's .. ... CM3010 is a antenna that is designed to look "pretty" not to actually work well, although, it's VHF "coathanger" performance is often "good enough" for medium~strong VHF signal areas ...

If you ever change your mind about Dayton reception, you could also pick up the CM9521A rotor+rotor cable for Dayton. As there are several good reasons to utilize Dayton OTA -- such as occasionally different HD NFL games, HD from the nets when a Cincy station preempts network programming or is having "technical issues", HD from the Dayton CW Network affiliate beginning next fall/etc/etc ...

Lowe's also has the CM9521A and necessary control cable for it as well --- this rotor even has a remote control with it so you don't have to get out of your chair to rotate the antenna. CM3016+the rotor would probably still be under the cost of a DAT75, and give you good VHF(and FM as you mention) reception to boot ... but no, while the CM3016 is a well designed antenna, it doesn't offer the UHF performance of the DAT75 .... Which you really probably won't need, although you can't probably necessarily count on being able to pick up all the Dayton Digital stations with CM3016, I'd suspect chances are very good(Unless you have a big hill near you to the North) you'd still be able to pull in many, and probably MOST of them with the CM3016 mounted on the roof+properly aimed ...

Just some thoughts you might want to keep in mind, FWIW --- If you do happen to change your mind and are interested in adding the rotor, I'd first try aming the antenna towards both Cincinnati+Dayton "manually" to see what you get before deciding if you want to spend the $ for the rotor ....

Now since I have my tower and Antenna where I can adjust by raising or Lowering the heigth I want to mount another Antenna how far or close can I mount the Antenna under the Top Antenna without interfering with the top one. The lower antenna will be pointed in another Direction. Then I might go ahead and buy a High band VHF and mount below the top one to help on WCPO. Then another in a Different Direction. I can rotate them easy whenever I decide to turn them to other Cities Signals. I just need to buy a Combiner to hook em togther. What do you all suggest on the Footage drop. Between the Antennas. Of Course I might drop the top one to be the lower one and go with the best channel master or the Antenna Craft D-9000 to be the New top one to avoid buying a High Band VHF Single Antenna

I'm in Liberty twp and get great reception with an attic antenna from bother cincy and dayton. I actually have a uhf/vhf combo pointed at cincy and a uhf only pointed at dayton. The headings are almost 180 degrees apart which probably helps the reception. you should do pretty well with a rooftop mount unless you are down in a valley.







I've got some questions I hope someone can help me with. I live in Liberty Twnshp area. For past 12 years, we have been in a tiny island under contract with Adelphia cable surrounded by TWC customers.(why this is, when the nearest home office is in E.B.F. Batavia- no offense meant- is a total mystery) I am on back-order for a new HDTV and while waiting, am trying to get my"ducks in a row". Currently have 'expanded' basic cable; non digital. I've done a search in this thread and only found generic(albeit, negative, comments re Adelphia HD content). I realize that TWC has taken over Adelphia, but this isn't "official" until July. I'm wondering what to expect(hopefully within the next week) when I receive my new TV and upgrade to Adelphia's HD package. What type of connectivity/reception issues should I be aware of? What kind of directives and/or suggestions can I give to the installer to best prep me for TWC switch-over? Lastly, I plan to augment with OTA. Prolly a chimney mount Televis DAT-75 pointed at Cinci(due to WAF). Any suggestions in this regard would be much appreciated and, and cost-cutting, as well. Thanks in advance

how far or close can I mount the Antenna under the Top Antenna without interfering with the top one.


I'd keep them at least 5 feet apart, and that's a compromise where low-VHF is concerned ... practically speaking 5~6 feet or so is probably about as far as you're going to be able to put them apart and still have enough mast space above the top of the tower for 2(such as seperate VHF and UHF antennas) antennas ....


I just need to buy a Combiner to hook em togther.

I must admit, I don't quite understand what all you're trying to do, and why you're doing some of what you mentioned you were going to try .... nevertheless, What sort of combiner(s) were you planning to use to allow you to do all that you mentioned in your post ?

If I were you, and assuming you want good reception of all VHF channels 2-13(including for WDKY-DT 4, Fox Lexington), as well as UHF I'd go with one of the following(probably #1) :

Choice #1 : Seperate VHF/UHF antennas. Meaning One VHF broadband(channel 2-13) antenna, and One UHF antenna. Aim them in the same direction, and use a rotor to aim them anywhere you want. I'd go with the best "fringe" antennas you can find, as we've discussed earlier in this thread for your application .... If it were me in your "fringe location" I would combine these together onto same feedline using a hi-gain, low noise preamp mast mounted preamp with seperate VHF+UHF antenna inputs, such as CM7777.

Choice #2: One "fringe area", Large VHF/UHF combo antenna, which should offer better performance than your current antenna -- From the pic you posted earlier in thread, it looks like a medium size VHF/UHF combo such as RS VU-120 ---- Such as CM3671, Winegard HD8200p, The largest Wade(delhi-jerrold - I think they may be calling them Wade in the U.S. now)VHF/UHF combo, or *maybe* antennacraft D-9000, although personally I'd probably choose the CM3671 out of those .... I'd also use a quality Mast mount, hi-gain/low-noise preamp with this choice as well, which should also offer an improvement over your current amp(which I believe you had said was a radio shack model). I believe You could also use a CM7777 for this application as well, as I believe its antenna inputs can be configured for either 2 inputs - one for a VHF antenna and one for a UHF antenna, or 1 input -- 1 for a VHF/UHF combo antenna ....

Choice #1 would probably be a tad bit better performance wise(if you choose the highest gain, "best" VHF and UHF antennas fringe area antennas out there - such as Wade(delhi-jerrold) VIP-307SR for VHF, CM4228/Antennas DirectXG91, Televes DAT-75, Winegard PR9032/etc/etc for UHF ......

I think Either choice #1 or #2(up as high as you can "Reasonably" get them), would be a good choice for fringe area reception. I probably would not extend the mast much more than about 5~7 feet above the top of the tower --- and, If I were putting a large VHF/UHF combo up there+using a lightweight consumer grade rotor with it, I probably wouldn't put it any higher than about 3 feet(If that much) above the top of the tower .. .....

If you are using a lightweight "consumer grade" rotor, with either option #1 or 2, hopefully you either have a rotor shelf, or can add a rotor plate(and install the rotor you have using that), so you can intall the rotor "inside" the tower. With a light rotor of the sort sold to consumers these days to turn their TV antennas, I'd probably also think about using a thrust bearing(reduces much of the stress from windloading on the rotor), as you're going to have quite a bit of aluminum in the air for the wind to "catch" .... Here are a couple of excellent posts in antenna thread concerning thrust bearings :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6766131&&#post6766131

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6558525&highlight=Thrust#post6558525

Hope some of this helps, let us know how it goes ....

I get 4 out of Lexington Pretty good better than all of my Cincy Channels as far as Cincy goes from best to worse for the big 4 ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX will be in this order 12/5/19/9. 9/10 Analog 9 is pretty well great as you said before because the 110 ft. difference in the height of the analog and digital antennas. 64 and 48 it has to be raining or early or late in the night to ever pull them in. You might only get them less than 5% of the time, IF I were 30 Miles closer for those 2 it will probably come in better. When I get some mad money saved up the Channel master 3671 will bw atop my pole above my tower.

9/10 Analog 9 is pretty well great as you said before because the 110 ft. difference in the height of the analog and digital antennas.


Just to clarify, I mentioned the difference in their transmitting antenna height *Could* be a factor involved at your distance(and I'd guess it very probably might be at your distance) ... However, If it is a issue, I doubt it's the *only* issue involved ..... I would guess Other factors(power perhaps to a certian extent, and even perhaps a little extra noise(which is likely variable depending upon atmospheric conditions) from co-channel interference, such as WBNS 10 Columbus/etc) are just as likely to be involved as well ....

The main problem your dealing with is, Unless you are 10 Miles or more NorthWest of Tollesboro, I believe you are just a bit outside of their(and all Cincinnati stations for that matter) predicted coverage area to begin with, Including the analog station on 9 -- The reception you are getting does show it is often possible(but not "guarenteed") to receive stations from beyond their coverage area ...


IF I were 30 Miles closer for those 2 it will probably come in better..

Very likely. Probably even 5~10 miles or so closer, or if your house were sitting on, say a 100Foot or higher hill it might do wonders .... I checked out my topo software, and at least it looks like concerning Tollesboro area, except for a few "hollers" with elevations below 700 Feet, it seems "farily" flat, with elevations mostly ranging around 800~850 Feet ....

Distance wise, I show "Tollesboro" (specifically from intersection of KY RT 10 and KY 57 on my route) as 63~67 Miles("crow fly" or "straight line" Miles - which is what the signals use) from the Cincinnati TV transmitting Towers, WSTR being farthest at 67 miles .... www.antennaweb.org should hopefully give you more precise distance from your exact location(except for WPTO-DT - the antennaweb info is wrong for them, but you can use the info for WXIX-DT, as WPTO-DT transmits from WXIX's tower)

Unless you were on a high hill(and there doesn't appear to be any of those in the "immediate" Tollesboro vicinity)That's certianly very much on the outer edges of these stations "fringe" area, it's actually probably a bit beyond it ... That being said, sometimes VHF(especially LO-VHF the farther out you are) can work a bit better in such locations "beyond or at the outer edges the fringe area" than is the case with UHF ...

I show Lexington stations as 56~62 Miles away from that location in Tollesboro, with WDKY(Fox 56 analog 4 digital)/WKLE the farthest at around 62 miles ... Depending upon your "exact" location, you may do better with the Lexington stations than Cincinnati, especially after analog shut off and when digital stations "maximize" their signals .....

The good news is(sort of), You're much closer, and should more easily receive excellent reception from KET station WKMR-DT Morehead(28 Miles from Tollesboro), WUPX-DT (formerly Pax now "I" network), at 45 miles with a VERY tall stick(tower), and Portsmouth, Ohio stations WHCP(WB) and WPBO(Full service, full power sateliltte station for WOSU, PBS Columbus) .... The other good news is, I don't think you have to worry about any sort of "signal overload" issues, or having "too much antenna" .....

The bad news is, the situation distance wise with Huntington/Charleston, WV stations is generally worse than either Cincinnati or Lexington, although a couple of them(such as WKAS/KET Ashland) are a little closer, or about the same (WTSF) the rest are 70 miles or further ... I'd bet you pick up WSAZ 3 analog however, and maybe analogs 8,11,13 Huntington/Charleston .... Those would probably be good stations to look at+compare your new antenna with your old one with, to get an idea of how much "improvement" you are getting out of it ....

In situations such as yours, I can't stress enough how important it is to do *everything* right when it comes to your antenna system .... That includes antenna choice and placement(higher would very likely most defintely be better), Preamp choice(you want a quality Low-noise, high gain mast mount preamp)/ minimizing as much as possible any signal loss between your antenna and receiver ....

Anyway, I hope you are able to see quite a bit of improvement when you get your "new" antenna system setup, let us know how it goes ....

Here is what all I can pick up Lexington 18,27,36,56 Digital 85-90 sometimes stronger due to rotation/Analog 18,27,36 (56 Weak) Cincinnati 5,9,12,19 Digital 5 Digital Fluxuates sometimes but signal about halfway or less. 9/10 when I get a Signal on Digital it is usually better than 5's Signal is halfway or a tad better. But 9 is more difficult to pull in 5 I can pull it in all of the time. 12 is usually 85-90 signal all of the time. 19 is usually 50-60 percent No digital 64/48 unless it is perfect weatherwise or something I have only gotten digital 64 in once and 48 in a few times maybe because of their power.Analog 5 sparkly analog 9 pretty good analog 12 almost as great as 9 Analog 19 so so(Guessing since analog does not have signal strength on analog I am guessing 50% .Analog 64 is about 25-30% Estimated signal. The 25/38 signal none. 38 Morehead and 67 just about anywhere I rotate. Analog 38 so so Analog 67 almost as great as Digital 67. Digital 3 and 13 Great.Digital 8 and 11 None No signal Unless amplified by weather happenings. Because they are too far east. 42 Analog ok 42 Digital great. 30 Analog 25-30% or less. Digital 30 I do not think they have a digital 30 or at least I have not found their signal. 25 Digital Ashland ? Once Columbus Digital 4 every now and then that is it on Columbus stations. Except on 53 I got it once or twice. 28 once. Dayton Digital 2 and 7 Sometimes 22 Rare. 45 once. 7 usually a couple times more than 2. Currently I am 37/40 ft up. I can probably go up another 10 ft that will be it. In Tollesboro I am close to 10 and 57 North. 500-700 ft to the NNW of that Corner. maybe in a few years we will be about 3 to 4 Miles NNW /NW from our current Location you will have to find Cottageville on a map if it shows it? Maybe a 1/2 mile to the east of it. (Big cabin Creek/ Tully Road we will be about 1,500-1,800 ft up the Holler. it will be alot more difficult to pick up a Signal? Or maybe ..........maybe better who knows until then???? Windows live local will give tou a good look on the left side of the road up the holler.

you will have to find Cottageville on a map if it shows it?


yes it does ....



it will be alot more difficult to pick up a Signal?.

Probably so unless you can get the antenna up on a hill .... Attached is a topo map of that area, each contour line is 50 feet, Where they have Cottageville labeled is at about 570 Feet above sea level , many of the surrounding "hills" are 800~900 feet or so ....

Update : If the graphic doesn't look very clear, resize the window(make it larger) and it should become much clearer) ....

I've been recieving WCPO-DT without issue for over a year with a dish-mounted OTA antenna... but this afternoon, for some reason, it stopped coming in. The signal strength, as seen by the DirecTV reciever is less than 15% or so.

Any idea what might have happened? I didn't change anything, and there aren't any new buildings near me... I was disappointed to see that noone else had posted about technical difficulties at the station...

Spikor,

One more thing -- I notice you keep listing the stations analog channel numbers, even for their digital stations ... I expect you know this, but just in case you don't ..... Keep in mind, the digital stations transmit on different channels entirely, and are remapped to virtual channels so they show up "next" to the analog station ... For instance, WKRC-DT Cincinnati currently Transmits on UHF channel 31, WKRC analog transmits on VHF channel 12, WSAZ-DT Huntington/Charleston transmits on UHF 23, WSAZ analog transmits on VHF channel 3/etc/etc/etc .... FCC TV query, The "frequency assignment" column at antennaweb, and for the Cincinanti stations only, the first post of this thread list the actual channels the digital stations transmit on ..

Mailinator,

Haven't noticed any problems with WCPO-DT here, but that's no guarentee there hasn't been any when I wasn't watching/monitioring - last I checked during the HD NBA game this afternoon, they were fine as allways. Could be a number of things. For instance, it could be electrical interference from a "new" appliance, or something a neighbor is using(something along those lines is my best guess). Check for interference(lots of "static") on analog channel 9, this indicates electrical interference .... see the interference section at http://www.kyes.com/antenna/antennadex.html for more info ....

Also, Depending upon your location, could be co-channel interference from Columbus WBNS 10(although that would be "variable" unless you are in say, Wilmington), most likely if you are NE of Cincinnati and are using one of those dish clip on antennas, or bi-directional VHF antennas such as the Winegard Sensar or Channel master CM3010 "stealthtenna" ....

I know we've discussed this topic before but I don't think we got very specific from this angle... I will be moving into a condo soon and would like to finally be able to put up my RS VU-190 XR antenna. I know that home owners associations can't keep you from putting up an antenna, but what would the rules be for a condo? I'd love to put a tripod mount on the roof...

I know this topic came up in the Dayton thread, but I am interested in hearing any cable card experiences in the Cinci market for TWC. I have heard they run $3 a piece, but I haven't seen anything on TWC's site to that fact. How has installation been? Any feedback is appreciated.

I ask because i'm looking forward and planning ahead for the TiVo Series 3 with cable card support and will be in the need for two cable cards.

So I'm watching TV last night on WXIX. I look at my AV receiver and notice that it is not in DD5.1. After playing around with the setting, no change. I check all the channels in the HD tier and HBO HD. All of them are coming through in Dolby Prologic II.

I check my DVD player and my xbox 360 and both default to DD5.1 when available. I've verified all setting are correct on my AV receiver.

Am I imaging that WXIX and the many other HD stations are in DD5.1 for a lot of programming on Time Warner in Cincy? I don't think I am.

Is there a chance that TWC has turned off all DD5.1 signals or could my receiver be screwed up.

If anyone out there using TWC and has a home theater could you tune to some different HD channels and see if you can get some DD5.1 and post back.

I'm baffled on my end and really want to make sure there isn't something wrong with my AV receiver. It doesn't seem likely since all my settings are correct and my other components work fine running 5.1.

Thanks,
Mike

I have a SA8300HD with TWC and 5.1 is working just fine for me. Are you getting PCM stereo? Do you have a SA8300HD, if not please tell us what box you have? If you DO have a SA8300HD, then go into the more settings menu and choose HDMI or PCM(or whatever the non Dolby Digital option is) for your audio out option then switch it back to Dolby Digital and you should be back in business.

I have a SA8300HD with TWC and 5.1 is working just fine for me. Are you getting PCM stereo? Do you have a SA8300HD, if not please tell us what box you have? If you DO have a SA8300HD, then go into the more settings menu and choose HDMI or PCM(or whatever the non Dolby Digital option is) for your audio out option then switch it back to Dolby Digital and you should be back in business.

I am using the SA8300HD. I thought about this after posting this morning. I wonder if somehow my box got reset. I know it was working fine at one point. I don't know if this started a while back or just a day or two ago. Hopefully that is all it is.

I have noticed on my SA8300HD that occassionally it like to default to the preview channel when I start it up rather than the last channel on. So maybe there is a tendancy for it to reset unexpectedly for one reason or another.

I will check this when I get home. Thanks for the tip!

BTW, do you experience quite a few audio drop outs? If so, any idea if it is the box or the signal from TWC? I get them quite a bit. It isn't the end of the world, just annoying.

I know we've discussed this topic before but I don't think we got very specific from this angle... I will be moving into a condo soon and would like to finally be able to put up my RS VU-190 XR antenna. I know that home owners associations can't keep you from putting up an antenna, but what would the rules be for a condo? I'd love to put a tripod mount on the roof...

Probably mostly depends upon whether the roof is under your exclusive control(such as with a single unit), or is considered a common area(such as with a multiple dwelling unitl), and also whether you will be "owning" the condo or leasing/renting it .. If the latter, for instance, they would be allowed to "not let you" drill holes in the roof/exterior walls/etc (that's not saying they might not allow you to do so, just that they are allowed to place restrictions on drilling holes in exterior walls/etc If they wish) .....

For more detailed info See here:

http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html

Here is one, perhaps relevant portion from the OTARD factsheet that may be of interest in your circumstance (note there are no "size limiations" allowed on OTA TV antennas, just dishes) :

"The rule applies to individuals who place antennas that meet size limitations on property that they own or rent and that is within their exclusive use or control, including condominium owners and cooperative owners, and tenants who have an area where they have exclusive use, such as a balcony or patio, in which to install the antenna. The rule applies to townhomes and manufactured homes, as well as to single family homes.

The rule allows local governments, community associations and landlords to enforce restrictions that do not impair the installation, maintenance or use of the types of antennas described above, as well as restrictions needed for safety or historic preservation. Under some circumstances where a central or common antenna is available, a community association or landlord may restrict the installation of individual antennas. The rule does not apply to common areas that are owned by a landlord, a community association, or jointly by condominium or cooperative owners where the antenna user does not have an exclusive use area. Such common areas may include the roof or exterior wall of a multiple dwelling unit. Therefore, restrictions on antennas installed in or on such common areas are enforceable."

Another portion of the factsheet that might be of specific interest to you :

Q: If I live in a condominium or an apartment building, does this rule apply to me?

A: The rule applies to antenna users who live in a multiple dwelling unit building, such as a condominium or apartment building, if the antenna user has an exclusive use area in which to install the antenna. "Exclusive use" means an area of the property that only you, and persons you permit, may enter and use to the exclusion of other residents. For example, your condominium or apartment may include a balcony, terrace, deck or patio that only you can use, and the rule applies to these areas. The rule does not apply to common areas, such as the roof, the hallways, the walkways or the exterior walls of a condominium or apartment building. Restrictions on antennas installed in these common areas are not covered by the Commission's rule. For example, the rule would not apply to restrictions that prevent drilling through the exterior wall of a condominium or rental unit and thus restrictions may prohibit installation that requires such drilling.

Q: Are there restrictions that may be placed on residents of rental property?

A: Yes. A restriction necessary to prevent damage to leased property may be reasonable. For example, tenants could be prohibited from drilling holes through exterior walls or through the roof. However, a restriction designed to prevent ordinary wear and tear (e.g., marks, scratches, and minor damage to carpets, walls and draperies) would likely not be reasonable provided the antenna is installed wholly within the antenna user's own exclusive use area. In addition, rental property is subject to the same protection and exceptions to the rule as owned property. Thus, a landlord may impose other types of restrictions that do not impair installation, maintenance or use under the rule. The landlord may also impose restrictions necessary for safety or historic preservation."

There are more Q&A's and other info in the fact sheet regarding to condos+allowable+non-allowable restrictions as well ....

I am using the SA8300HD. I thought about this after posting this morning. I wonder if somehow my box got reset. I know it was working fine at one point. I don't know if this started a while back or just a day or two ago. Hopefully that is all it is.

I have noticed on my SA8300HD that occassionally it like to default to the preview channel when I start it up rather than the last channel on. So maybe there is a tendancy for it to reset unexpectedly for one reason or another.

I will check this when I get home. Thanks for the tip!

BTW, do you experience quite a few audio drop outs? If so, any idea if it is the box or the signal from TWC? I get them quite a bit. It isn't the end of the world, just annoying.


I have the 8300HD also and it constantly resets itself. The audio goes to PCM anytime the box gives you a warning (for instance, "24" is about to start recording in 1 minute). I check the display on my receiver routinely now to make sure we're getting the DD5.1.

Also, I find the box freezes up if I change channels too quickly. This leads to a reboot, which seems to happen at least daily.

I used to have an HDTivo and I think I like the TWC box better, but it's certainly less stable.

Wonder why WXIX can't find a way to air rescheduled Monday NASCAR HD races, at least on their digital station?

I also wonder how many "judge alex" viewers with HD/digital capability couldn't tune to WXIX's analog signal ?

Anyway, NASCAR HD looks good from FOX HD on WRGT-DT Dayton, Currently (they have it up on the analog station as well) ...

Oh, well. I guess this sort of thing is actually a good thing, as it's another good reason(in our area at least) for folks to use OTA .....

I guess they don't think there are enough NASCAR viewers with HDTV capability. I'm not happy with WXIX-DT/Raycom and why the station doesn't seem to be on top of things with the Fox HD Network. I wish they would become a Fox O&O but I doubt that would happen in this market.


-------------
As of 2PM WDKY-DT is showing the make up race. I'm unable to get a good lock on it due to trees in the way but it's on

I read through that FCC link, thanks. I will be buying, but the roof is the association's responsibility. So, it looks as though I could put something up on the back deck, although that is not a great place to put an antenna. It's not clear to me whether I could put a tower up or something, especially after reading this:

-------
Q: Does the rule apply to condominiums or apartment buildings if the antenna is installed so that it hangs over or protrudes beyond the balcony railing or patio wall?

A: No. The rule does not prohibit restrictions on antennas installed beyond the balcony or patio of a condominium or apartment unit if such installation is in, on, or over a common area. An antenna that extends out beyond the balcony or patio is usually considered to be in a common area that is not within the scope of the rule. Therefore, the rule does not apply to a condominium or rental apartment unit unless the antenna is installed wholly within the exclusive use area, such as the balcony or patio.
--------

Doesn't exactly say anything about height... I may have to get a smaller antenna and live with that.

Couple questions related to getting HDTV in the Cincy area.

We currently have a house in Maineville city limits (in the Landen area), and are building a new house (staying in the Kings school district).

Anyway our new house is going to be finished around Sept-Oct timeframe. The builder (drees) only allows outside contractors to do work until after closing, and their media contractor doesn't do dish or antenna installations. So I have to have my dish and antenna needs done after closing.

So basically I am looking for recommendations on an installer who can do high quality work and install a DirecTV dish and OTA antenna on the roof. I am afraid of just calling DirecTV and having them send someone out to do it. The house is going to be 4600 square feet and "hopefully" our dream home, and I want a quality installer who will do this right for us. I want to put the antenna and dish on the roof since I am having the media guys install conduit from the second floor attic straight down to the distribution panel in the basement.

So any feedback on a Cincy area installer would be greatly appreciated.

Second, I am currently using an indoor amplified Radio Shack Antenna ( Model: 15-1892). It works ok. I can get channel 12's HD station rock solid. 19 HD stations come in pretty good. Channel 5's HD stuff is OK also. I cant get Channel 9 in HD since it is VHF.

Some of the Dayton stations come in ok. I have to rely on 22 for ABC since I can't get channel 9 locally.

I have a Panasonic 50 inch plasma connected to a HD DirecTV with TiVo. For shows not in HD, I just set up season passes to the SD local channel over DirecTV. For shows available in HD I setup a season pass for the Cincy or Dayton station).

It seems that when it is very cloudy or rainy the signal gets tough on all but Channel 12 and 19 in HD.

I was looking at the Radio Shack indoor dual bowtie UHF antenna ( Model: 15-624 ) since I have read it is the best indoor antenna to use.

Sadly it is out of stock and can't be ordered online.

So any recommendations for something similar or better I can use indoors until we get to the new house? I don't want to go the external antenna route since I would have to get approval from the Home Owners Association here, and we will be moving out in Sept-Oct to the new house anyway.

jimp2244,

It has been awhile since i've looked into the OTARD, but when I read it I thought I could install an antenna (or dish) on a very tall mast as long as the mast wasn't taller than the roofline or some number of feet taller than the roofline. In other words, as long as its "your area" you can build what you wish on it as long as it meets the roofline requirements.

jimp2244,

It has been awhile since i've looked into the OTARD, but when I read it I thought I could install an antenna (or dish) on a very tall mast as long as the mast wasn't taller than the roofline or some number of feet taller than the roofline. In other words, as long as its "your area" you can build what you wish on it as long as it meets the roofline requirements.


Any ideas on how to go about acquring/building a tower up from at deck?

Hillsoft - welcome!! First off, its impossible to live in the village of maineville and be in kings schools.. I suspect you live in Landen which is Deerfield Twp and your mailing address is maineville - that being said.. no HOA can prevent you from installing an antenna... you may need to apply, but they cant turn you down as long as its less than 12 feet in height from the roof peak. Where is your new subdivision? Since you are with Drees and staying in Kings, you are either in Stone Brook, Miami Bluffs, or 20 Mile Green - all have different ota issues that may determine how good ota reception will be.

As far as a good installer, I cant answer that.. most here have done it themselves.. Although I have heard good things about TNT Pictures.. but at the end of the day, we can help you choose the right stuff - you just need to find someone to do the labor.. and if you are handy - you can do it yourself :) - either way an outside antenna is a must if you want reliable ota!! I use 2 myself - a channel master uhf only for dayton and a sensar for cincinnati.

My recomendation is to make sure you run at least 5 rg6 quad shield cables from the dish / ota location to your media room.. with the new ka/ku at9 dish there is no more diplexing - ota must be on its own cable run - I would also run at least 2 if not 3 cables to each room from the distribution center (ota and tivo) - all alot eaiser to do while the house is under construction. You may also want to fortify the area where the dish will be mounted as the at9 is a big sucker and heavy on the wind load!

good luck!! and ask questions.. we are here to help

jim


Couple questions related to getting HDTV in the Cincy area.

We currently have a house in Maineville city limits (in the Landen area), and are building a new house (staying in the Kings school district).

Anyway our new house is going to be finished around Sept-Oct timeframe. The builder (drees) only allows outside contractors to do work until after closing, and their media contractor doesn't do dish or antenna installations. So I have to have my dish and antenna needs done after closing.

So basically I am looking for recommendations on an installer who can do high quality work and install a DirecTV dish and OTA antenna on the roof. I am afraid of just calling DirecTV and having them send someone out to do it. The house is going to be 4600 square feet and "hopefully" our dream home, and I want a quality installer who will do this right for us. I want to put the antenna and dish on the roof since I am having the media guys install conduit from the second floor attic straight down to the distribution panel in the basement.

So any feedback on a Cincy area installer would be greatly appreciated.

Second, I am currently using an indoor amplified Radio Shack Antenna ( Model: 15-1892). It works ok. I can get channel 12's HD station rock solid. 19 HD stations come in pretty good. Channel 5's HD stuff is OK also. I cant get Channel 9 in HD since it is VHF.

Some of the Dayton stations come in ok. I have to rely on 22 for ABC since I can't get channel 9 locally.

I have a Panasonic 50 inch plasma connected to a HD DirecTV with TiVo. For shows not in HD, I just set up season passes to the SD local channel over DirecTV. For shows available in HD I setup a season pass for the Cincy or Dayton station).

It seems that when it is very cloudy or rainy the signal gets tough on all but Channel 12 and 19 in HD.

I was looking at the Radio Shack indoor dual bowtie UHF antenna ( Model: 15-624 ) since I have read it is the best indoor antenna to use.

Sadly it is out of stock and can't be ordered online.

So any recommendations for something similar or better I can use indoors until we get to the new house? I don't want to go the external antenna route since I would have to get approval from the Home Owners Association here, and we will be moving out in Sept-Oct to the new house anyway.

Hillsoft - welcome!!

Thanks!,


First off, its impossible to live in the village of maineville and be in kings schools.. I suspect you live in Landen which is Deerfield Twp and your mailing address is maineville


You are correct, we are in Landen and the mailing address is Maineville.


- that being said.. no HOA can prevent you from installing an antenna... you may need to apply, but they cant turn you down as long as its less than 12 feet in height from the roof peak.


Correct. I went through the HOA stuff when I put my dish in myself years ago. They tried to prevent me from doing it. I copied their lawyer the FCC regulations and they eventually just said "ok your dish is ok, but we are not changing our rules". Years later they changed the rules to allow satellite dishes as long as they are as inconspicuous as possible.

My point about not wanting to deal with them for an OTA antenna in my current house, is we are only going to be here till September or so, so I don't want to go through the trouble of getting the HOA paperwork approval, buying and installing an OTA antenna and then moving to a new house. Plus my current house doesn't have a third RG6 for the antenna. I would either have to go the diplexor route or run a cable through a wall to the inside.


Where is your new subdivision? Since you are with Drees and staying in Kings, you are either in Stone Brook, Miami Bluffs, or 20 Mile Green - all have different ota issues that may determine how good ota reception will be.


We are building in Stone Brook.


As far as a good installer, I cant answer that.. most here have done it themselves.. Although I have heard good things about TNT Pictures.. but at the end of the day, we can help you choose the right stuff - you just need to find someone to do the labor.. and if you are handy - you can do it yourself :) - either way an outside antenna is a must if you want reliable ota!! I use 2 myself - a channel master uhf only for dayton and a sensar for cincinnati.


The labor is my concern. I am not a big fan of heights, and getting up on the second story is not "high" on my list. I also don't want to spend a ton of money on a new house, and not have the antenna and dish installed right and of the highest quality since it is a brand new house.


My recomendation is to make sure you run at least 5 rg6 quad shield cables from the dish / ota location to your media room.. with the new ka/ku at9 dish there is no more diplexing - ota must be on its own cable run - I would also run at least 2 if not 3 cables to each room from the distribution center (ota and tivo) - all alot eaiser to do while the house is under construction. You may also want to fortify the area where the dish will be mounted as the at9 is a big sucker and heavy on the wind load!

good luck!! and ask questions.. we are here to help

jim

I started a thread on here awhile back with my plans.

Basically I am going to go with the at9 dish. I am going to run 4 RG6 quad shield solid copper from the dish down the attic conduit to the basement where the connection panel is for video, lan, and phone. I am also going to run 1 RG6 from the OTA antenna down the conduit.

I plan on running 3 RG6 and 3 Cat6 wires to each room. In some cases some rooms may get multiple runs on different walls to cover multiple TV placement.

The great room will have two RG6 used for a HD directv unit with TiVo (dual tuner), and the third RG6 will be for the OTA signal for the HD OTA with the TiVo.

A media room will have a 92" screen and an epson projector. I will probably get a HD TiVo for that room also. So it will use all three RG6 also.

I have two other rooms that will have have DirecTV receivers with TiVo (non-HD) that will use two of the RG6 for that.

The unfinished area of the basement is where the connection panel will be. I will have a multiswitch there for giving me all the outputs needed for all the DirecTV receivers.

I plan on having a DVD player, either a directv receiver (or with TiVo), and front door security camera signal fed into a four channel modulator in the basement. I want to put a low pass filter on the OTA antenna to eliminate interference with the modulator.

So basically any room without a directv receiver can watch OTA broadcasts, or tune to the modulated channels to watch a DVD, the front door camera, or the extra directv receiver. These will be shared devices.

Seems like most of the modulators support remote IR control, so I should be able to control the shared DVD, directv receiver in any room.

All the main rooms (great room, media room, 2 bed rooms) have their own DirecTV with TiVo units and DVD players, so the modulated stuff isn't too important, but other rooms will still be able to still watch something, and I wont have to put directv receivers in all those rooms. (We will do 95% of our viewing in the rooms already covered with their own equipment).

I have rambled on too much here. :)

Would love any comments though on any of this stuff. Particularly antenna options and the like.

Any ideas on how to go about acquring/building a tower up from at deck?

Other than having the tower go "through" the deck -- Not really that I can think of presently, as freestanding(guyed towers for that matter as well) towers really need to be in the ground and with the base encased in a good amount of concrete if you don't want it "moving around" .. It's even possible A 10ft section of mast stuck a few feet down in the ground and attached to your deck railing might be a better(and much "easier") option than any indoor antenna, however, and also perhaps give you an idea of how "receptive" the condo folks or neighbors will actually be to such a solution(not that it's really any of their business, but ... ) In any case, whatever you do, don't forget proper grounding to NEC .... Not because of any HOA, but because it is a good idea for your equipment .....

You might want to look at the products/links at the following websites, in case they can give you any good ideas :

http://www.floatograph.com/tripod/LWseries/

http://www.floatograph.com/fmseries/intro.htm

I don't know -- If I were you, I might try talking to them, tell them what you want to do and why, and try to see if I could work out a "compromise" with the condo folks. Just because OTARD doesn't cover you for a roof install, or a mast side mounted to your house, or an "eave mount', (I wouldn't recommend the latter for an antenna the size of a VU-190 however -- You'll need a very sturdy mount for that where windloading considerations are involved), doesn't necessarily mean the condo folks won't allow it ..... I'm not saying they will, but you never know if you don't ask ....

If that doesn't work, then perhaps it will be time to "reengineer" your deck and put in a tower in your "exclusive use" area .... If you do this though, I would make *sure* (to the point of contacting FCC if necessary) the condo folks can't come up with some allowable restriction that would cause you to have to take it down, as it will probably require quite a bit more $ and effort on your part to implement such a solution vs. a roof mount .....

Here's a little info on towers for residential TV antennas and their installation - note - Steel towers(even galvanized ones) while less expensive, do require maintience - such as surface removal/painting every 10 years or so, whearas the more expensive aluminum towers do not require such regular maintenance) :

http://www.tvantenna.com/products/tvreception/mounting/towers.html

http://www.tvantenna.com/products/tvreception/mounting/towers/taco/dmx/dmxfeatures.html

http://www.rohntower.net/29_tower_package.htm

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Note: I know some folks are probably reading this and thinking "these guys are nuts", however -- I don't think it's asking too much to expect to be able to use a outdoor antenna(at least a few feet "above the roofline") for good OTA reception -- whether it be via a "condo associations" Master Antenna system(yes, these do exist today just as they did before cable+satellite), or an antenna installed by the owner .... And I think that is "pretty much" the point of the OTARD rules, although they unfortunetly allways don't "work" for everyone (such as an apartment dweller) .....

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

Some OTARD thoughts follow :

IMO, If you have 1.)contacted the HOA/etc. and have informed them "properly" you are going to be installing a dish/antenna and that you will comply with the "law" on the matter, and if necessary, have informed them that you are aware of the FCC OTARD rules(federal law) which prohibit many restrictions on dish, or OTA antenna installations --- and then #2). You then run into a problem with HOA's or organizations trying to impose restrictions which aren't allowed by law, I think you can do one (or both) of the following :

#1). Contact FCC, and in as much detail as possible, explain the problem. They may be able to help, including potientally providing you with some guidance concerning #2, below.

#2) Put the antenna up as best you can per the info available on the OTARD rules from FCC site(the report and order's and such are available as well as the fact sheet) such that allowable restrictions per the rules wouldn't allow them to make you take it down later, and then don't worry about it. The burden is on the organization trying to enforce the restriction or guidelines to prove(to the FCC if necessary) their restrictions are legal and allowable, NOT you ....


I copied their lawyer the FCC regulations and they eventually just said "ok your dish is ok, but we are not changing our rules".


First, as Jim said, welcome to AVSforum .... secondly concerning the above ---- LOL .....


Years later they changed the rules to allow satellite dishes as long as they are as inconspicuous as possible.


I realize in your case it's pretty much a "moot point" for you since you'll be moving ... but in case this is of any interest to you otherwise+for others :

I do not believe That would be a legal, allowable restriction if it is based solely on how "inconspicuous" a satellite dishes or a OTA antenna might be .... Their restrictions cannot impair the use (such as ability to receive acceptable reception) of the dish or antenna, even if it means a 40Ft tower(as long as the antenna doesn't go higher than 12 feet above roofline) and 17 foot long OTA antenna for TV installed in the front yard is necessary .... Restrictions ARE allowed if they apply to valid safety concerns, and in some cases for sites of historic(or prehistoric, LOL) interest.

Granted, I expect hardly anyone is probably going to want to put a tower in their front yard(well, perhaps unless the HOA Pi**es them off enough <g>), and it would probably generally be rare that the same tower/antenna at side, or rear of house wouldn't provide acceptable reception .... Not impossible however, given that it is possible such issues involving signal blockage or multipath impairments could in some cases mean an antenna on a tower in front of the house may be necessary for best reception of local TV signals ....

And, while it is true a HOA "guideline" for antenna placement to have the antenna at side or rear of house rather than the front of house *may* be allowable in some cases ... The burden of proof(in this case, proof that good reception is just as possible with antenna at rear of house as it is from the front of house) is solely on the organization trying to prove the restriction is allowable, and the worst case for the homeowner would be he might be required to move the antenna if such a restriction is found to be allowed by law ....

A few more Q&A entries From the FCC OTARD factsheet which relate to my above comments (again, available here : http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html ) :

Q: What types of restrictions are prohibited?

A: The rule prohibits restrictions that impair a person's ability to install, maintain, or use an antenna covered by the rule. The rule applies to state or local laws or regulations, including zoning, land-use or building regulations, private covenants, homeowners' association rules, condominium or cooperative association restrictions, lease restrictions, or similar restrictions on property within the exclusive use or control of the antenna user where the user has an ownership or leasehold interest in the property. A restriction impairs if it: (1) unreasonably delays or prevents use of; (2) unreasonably increases the cost of; or (3) precludes a person from receiving or transmitting an acceptable quality signal from an antenna covered under the rule. The rule does not prohibit legitimate safety restrictions or restrictions designed to preserve designated or eligible historic or prehistoric properties, provided the restriction is no more burdensome than necessary to accomplish the safety or preservation purpose.

Q: What types of restrictions unreasonably delay or prevent viewers from using an antenna? Can an antenna user be required to obtain prior approval before installing his antenna?

A: A local restriction that prohibits all antennas would prevent viewers from receiving signals, and is prohibited by the Commission's rule. Procedural requirements can also unreasonably delay installation, maintenance or use of an antenna covered by this rule. For example, local regulations that require a person to obtain a permit or approval prior to installation create unreasonable delay and are generally prohibited. Permits or prior approval necessary to serve a legitimate safety or historic preservation purpose may be permissible. Although a simple notification process might be permissible, such a process cannot be used as a prior approval requirement and may not delay or increase the cost of installation. The burden is on the association to show that a notification process does not violate our rule.

Q: Who is responsible for showing that a restriction is enforceable?

A: When a conflict arises about whether a restriction is valid, the local government, community association, property owner, or management entity that is trying to enforce the restriction has the burden of proving that the restriction is valid. This means that no matter who questions the validity of the restriction, the burden will always be on the entity seeking to enforce the restriction to prove that the restriction is permitted under the rule or that it qualifies for a waiver.

Q: Can I be fined and required to remove my antenna immediately if the Commission determines that a restriction is valid?

A: If the Commission determines that the restriction is valid, you will have a minimum of 21 days to comply with this ruling. If you remove your antenna during this period, in most cases you cannot be fined. However, this 21-day grace period does not apply if the FCC rule does not apply to your installation (for example, if the antenna is installed on a condominium general common element or hanging outside beyond an apartment balcony. If the FCC rule does not apply at all in your case, the 21-day grace period does not apply.

Q: Who do I call if my town, community association or landlord is enforcing an invalid restriction?

A: Call the Federal Communications Commission at (888) CALLFCC (888-225-5322), which is a toll-free number, or 202-418-7096, which is not toll-free. Some assistance may also be available from the direct broadcast satellite company, broadband radio service provider, television broadcast station, or fixed wireless company whose service is desired.

I am also going to run 1 RG6 from the OTA antenna down the conduit.



I don't have much to add to Jim's excellent posts. But a few thoughts, just in case they are of some help ...

Don't forget the rotor control cable for the OTA antenna ! What cable you need depends upon the rotor you use ... I think the current consumer model rotors use a 3 wire control cable -- but, for instance one of my rotors here uses 6 control wires, and another one uses 9 control wires.

Or, perhaps a 2nd Coax run for a seperate Dayton antenna(you can use a A/B switch before receiver to switch between antennas) ... My experience is, you can *never* run enough coax .... If you think you're only going to need 4 while your building the house, better run at least 1 or 2 more, you *never know* what you might end up needing 5~10 years from now .... Also, if you're running the OTA feed to that many rooms and different devices, chances are probably good you'll want to use some sort of preamp/amp somewhere "along the line" ... Talk to your OTA antenna installer(when you find one) and tell him what you want to do, and see what he thinks ...

As for your current situation and "temporary" indoor antenna use ... The RS DBT would certianly be a good choice(if you can find one), except it's a UHF only antenna ... You'd probably want to combine it(with a VHF/UHF joiner such as CM #0549) with VHF "rabbit ears", as WCPO(ABC Cincinnati) transmits on VHF (the other 14 Cincinnati/Dayton area digital/HD stations transmit on UHF, currently) .....

The "Silver Sensor"(a log periodic UHF only antenna) would be another good choice. TerkHDTVi from what I can tell has a UHF section that is identical(or virtually so) to the Silver sensor, but it also adds VHF "rabbit ears" right out of the box. The Silver sensor and RS DBT are the best UHF indoor antennas out there ... There is no better "indoor type" VHF antenna than good ol' Rabbit ears .... AntennasdirectDB2 (of the same design as RS DBT, it's a 2 bay bowtie just like the RS DBT) might be a good option as well for indoor UHF antenna, although it doesn't come with a stand, as it's an "outdoor" antenna as well ...

For potentially better performance, You could also of course install other, larger "outdoor" type antenna indoors -- such as in the attic .... The "biggest antenna that will fit" might generally be a good rule to go by here ... If you're going to aim it at Cincinnati, you'd want a VHF/UHF antenna, such as the CM3016(a small outdoor VHF/UHF combo) we were talking about earlier ......

But, perhaps instead of spending more $ on a temporary antenna solution --- Best I could probably suggest is to get some extra coax+ move the antenna around to see if you can find a "sweet spot" for reception .... I think this is often overlooked, but is probably the *most* important+useful thing to try, no matter what antenna you are using, and it is even often important for an outdoor install. A antenna placement near a window facing the towers is often(but not allways, as certian types of insulated glass can be multipath issues) the best spot from indoors.

A Knowedbable pro-antenna installer with the "right equipement"(some of which is very expensive for DTV) will usually do a site test+use equipment(a signal meter will often suffice for analog signals, but a spectrum analyzer is a good idea for digital signals) to "find" a good spot to install the antenna on your roof .... signal conditions can (and do) vary greatly at any given location feet, or even inches away (especially on the shorter UHF wavelengths) ...... And it is usually a given that on top, or near the TV is usually NOT a good place for an antenna ..... YMMV ....

Concerning knowledgeable, pro-OTA antenna installers in the area -- One note of "caution" -- It seems many of the Sat dish installers aren't really very knowledgeable about OTA .... As Jim said, a few folks have had some good things to say about TNT pictures(although, then again, the last report we had indicated one of their installers didn't yet seem to realize you can't diplex with the new AT9 dish - this is because the Ka/Ku band frequencies used by the new setup for HD locals are downconverted to the same frequencies OTA uses) , and in the past, some folks have had some good things to say about a outfit out of milford ... don't recall the name of the place, but unfortunetly, if I recall correctly I believe they may have went out of business a few years ago.

Couple of other thoughts (which may or may not be "fruitful and multiply <g> - just thoughts) :

I have purchased equipment from this place (www.daytonwintronic.com) in the past, and they've told me they sell a lot of equipment to OTA installers in the area .... they seemed like fine folks, and perhaps if you call them they could refer you to someone.

Also, I don't know if they service this area or not(I don't think they do, but again I'm not sure) but, if they don't perhaps if you drop these folks a note ( http://www.tvantenna.com ), hopefully they could either help you out or refer you to someone.

In any case, let us know how it turns out, as I'm sure there are quite a few folks who are looking for a knowledable pro-OTA installer whom will do a better job than diplex with the new at9 dish, or stick a dish clip on antenna, a sensar, a stealthtenna or "squareshooter" on top of a dish mount ..... ;)

We are building in Stone Brook.


Stone Brook sits lower than most of the surrounding area.. you will need to get the antenna up as much as possible.. If you are interested in Cincinnati only, a nice combo from Channel Master would work well..

http://www.channelmaster.com/pages/TVS/CrossfireAnts.htm - look at the 3677

Since WCPO broadcasts on RF 10 and WKRC has applied to go back to RF 12 after the analog shut off - you will need VHF as well as UHF - However, the antenna I use for dayton http://www.channelmaster.com/pages/TVS/UHFAnts.htm - the 4221/3021 has very good VHF capabilites and I can pick up WCPO with no problems.


The labor is my concern. I am not a big fan of heights, and getting up on the second story is not "high" on my list. I also don't want to spend a ton of money on a new house, and not have the antenna and dish installed right and of the highest quality since it is a brand new house.


LOL - I hear that!! I think as long as you can get the cable run properly - then any labor can do..


I started a thread on here awhile back with my plans.

Basically I am going to go with the at9 dish. I am going to run 4 RG6 quad shield solid copper from the dish down the attic conduit to the basement where the connection panel is for video, lan, and phone. I am also going to run 1 RG6 from the OTA antenna down the conduit.....

Wow - you got it covered!! :)

But like Jeff said - dont forget the rotor wire if you want to pick up dayton - which is highly recomended..

You may also want to look at adding an amp if the cable run for ota gets to long or you want to split it multiple ways - just remember with the at9 dish, you can no longer combined directv signal and ota on the same cable .. ask rlp :) we found that out even though at the time spaceway 2 was not lit yet :)


Would love any comments though on any of this stuff. Particularly antenna options and the like.

Sounds like you will have a fantastic setup when done.. look at the antennas I have pointed out.. I have the 4221 uhf only and it works great with upper vhf (WCPO and soon to be WKRC) - plus all the dayton stuff is UHF and should stay that way - also, for your current setup at the old house.. try the channel master 4221 - I can put it in my basement and get drop out free hd from cincinnati - I can also place it on the ground outside and point it right at my neighbors house and all is well!!

good luck and keep the questions coming!
jim

Thanks guys for all the feedback so far. I have more questions and want to address some of the previous comments, but I will do that a bit later tonight when I have more time to type up something.

One quick question, is there a website that allows you to put in an address and find the topography (or whatever the term is to see elevation and such)?

One quick question, is there a website that allows you to put in an address and find the topography (or whatever the term is to see elevation and such)?

http://www.topozone.com/

hillsoft - I have access to the warren county topo data - pm me your street and I can get it for you

jim

I know this topic came up in the Dayton thread, but I am interested in hearing any cable card experiences in the Cinci market for TWC. I have heard they run $3 a piece, but I haven't seen anything on TWC's site to that fact. How has installation been? Any feedback is appreciated.

I ask because i'm looking forward and planning ahead for the TiVo Series 3 with cable card support and will be in the need for two cable cards.

I've been using a TWC CC for about 4 months with a Toshiba 56MX196. Had some problems when they came out the first time to install it. Had to get a firmware update from Toshiba, then had TWC come out for another install, and it's been working fine ever since. I have had to rescan the channels once or twice, which requires a power cycle on my tv.

The install guy told me that they have "tons" of problems with their current CC installs and that they were hoping the type II cards would work better when they come out. That sounded like marketing spin to me, since the type II's will allow them to get more revenue from PPV and on demand.

TWC definitely makes it hard to get a CC. They don't have any reference to them on their website. One of the CSR's even tried to tell me they no longer offer them. They won't let you do a self-install either. It must be installed by their tech.

(I believe i'm getting billed $2.75 a month.)

I have a SA8300HD with TWC and 5.1 is working just fine for me. Are you getting PCM stereo? Do you have a SA8300HD, if not please tell us what box you have? If you DO have a SA8300HD, then go into the more settings menu and choose HDMI or PCM(or whatever the non Dolby Digital option is) for your audio out option then switch it back to Dolby Digital and you should be back in business.

This did happen to me as well during 24 last night. To "fix" it all I do is go under the more settings and change it to either HDMI or 2 channel and then change it back to DD5.1 and it starts working again. However after I did this I noticed quite a few audiio dropouts but only during commercials. Weird! :confused:

Local HD coming via DirecTV

http://phoenix.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=127160&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=850780&highlight=

This did happen to me as well during 24 last night. To "fix" it all I do is go under the more settings and change it to either HDMI or 2 channel and then change it back to DD5.1 and it starts working again. However after I did this I noticed quite a few audiio dropouts but only during commercials. Weird! :confused:

This is a pretty standard bug in the SA8300HD firmware. This is the work around until they release a new version of the firmware. I haven't been hearing many good things about the new versions, but I have also heard about those same users being rolled back, so they're working on it.

Jeff,

The main problem I have putting a rotor up on the roof is I don't want to have to turn the antenna manually. With the TiVo recording what I want for me, it seems like it would be pretty difficult to automate the antenna being turned when the TiVo wants to record a channel that might require the rotor adjusting the antenna.

Ideally I would be happy with one antenna tuned in to either the Cincinnati locals (preferred) or the Dayton ones. If I can get HD locals for ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX/WB/UPN (CW) I will be happy.

I was assuming I would put a preamp up at the antenna. I then wanted to put a low pass filter on it to knock out the interference on the higher unused channels so I can use a 4 channel modulator to mix in up to four other video devices onto the OTA signal.

Would the preamp at the antenna be enough going into the low pass filter and then into the modulator and out to all the rooms? Our would I need some type of amplification on the signal out of the modulator also to send to all the rooms?

I may look at getting a silver sensor to try indoors for now. I am going to try moving my current antenna around, but I don't have a lot of space to move it. The plasma screen is on a stand in the corner of the room. There is a shelf on the left corner wall, and a bare wall on the right corner wall. Currently the antenna is on a small stand against the right corner wall.

Problem is I don't have a lot of places to move it to without having ugly RG6 visible. The wife won't go for that.

I am going to avoid using any DirecTV installer for this house. I may try TNT Pictures for the dish and OTA antenna on the roof, but I am pretty scared of some of these DirecTV installers doing a crap job on the new house.

Thanks for those suggestions on companies to contact about finding a quality installer, I will look into that as we get our house closer to being finished.

Jim,

I do like that Channel Master CM 3677. It looks pretty nice. That looks like a good choice for the roof of the new house to be able to get all the Cincinnati locals on UHF and VHF (which should take care of the future when stations jump to VHF).

I will definitely be avoiding diplexors. I want to run 4 lines of RG6 for the latest HD capable DirecTV dish, and also one RG6 for the OTA antenna.

As I mentioned to Jeff, I was thinking about putting a preamp on the antenna on the roof, and then running that threw a low pass filter and into a channel modulator. I am still unsure if the output of that modulator and if it will be enough to send that to all the rooms in the house from the distribution panel.

Thanks again to everyone for all the comments.

Mike

Note: I updated/corrected some areas(twice!) and hopefully improved some of the below(I was in a bit of a hurry when I originally posted my response, hopefully this is a little better)

Ideally I would be happy with one antenna tuned in to either the Cincinnati locals (preferred) or the Dayton ones. If I can get HD locals for ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX/WB/UPN (CW) I will be happy.


I guess what I was trying to say was, it is probably a good idea to keep all your options as "open" as possible(especially when you are running coax/etc before you hang drywall/etc) , even if you don't choose to use them all .... As, you might change your mind in the future ....

Why might you "need", or want both a Cincy+Dayton OTA "option" available? Well, here's just a few reasons :

For one thing it appears there isn't going to BE a CW HD affiliate in Cincinnati. The CW affiliate in Cincinnati is going to be SD digital subchannel on WKRCDT, , Not HD. They will still have CBS HD as they do currently, although it will probably look better on WHIO-DT, Dayton as long as they don't start multicasting or datacasting as well.

WBDT-DT Dayton(WB HD currently, I assume they'll have CW HD as well) is going to be the Dayton CW affiliate beginning in September. The current WB HD affiliate in Cincinnati (WSTR-DT) has signed up with another new network called "MyNetworkTV", which is apparently going to mostly consist of something along the lines of Spanish soap operas(they are calling them "novellas") and reality shows. There is (currently) No digital/HD UPN affiliate in either Cincinnati or Dayton. The Cincinnati UPN affiliate is currently analog only(WBQC-CA 38), Dayton UPN is cable only on TW.

For another, there are times when Dayton has Network HD programming when the Cincinnati affiliate doesn't, or vice versa. As one example, see my earlier comment concerning the resceduled NASCAR HD(FOX HD) race on Monday for instance. WRGT-DT Dayton had it(In HD), WXIX-DT Cincy didn't.

Or, their can be "technical difficulties" one station may be having that is not the case in the other market ....

These are just a couple of examples why it can be beneficial for you to receive BOTH Dayton+Cincinnati OTA digital/HD stations ...

With a rotor, what you would probably do is usually have the antenna aimed towards either Dayton or Cincinnati(per your preference), and only rarely "move it", when necessary. With seperate Dayton/Cincinnati antennas(with seperate feedlines), you'd probably not use a A/B switch before the Tivo, or perhaps some TV's/Receivers as well would just get the feed from one antenna(allways Cincy or allways Dayton.) For instance, I have the feed from My Dayton antenna going into 4 rooms to feed various "devices", the feed from Cincinnati antenna setup(which also has a rotor I sometimes use for "other" stations as well) only goes into two of those rooms, with A/B switch only available to switch between them on a few "devices".

But, If you are going to limit yourself to either Cincinnati or Dayton OTA, if you're going to be getting the few(NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox) of the (currently) 8 Cincinnati HD stations via D* when they begin offering HD locals : then maybe you might want to think about using a single antenna/w/o rotor for Dayton, and the dish for the Cincinnati HD locals(I assume you're in Cincinnati DMA, and those would be the only ones you'd be able to get via the dish).

I have a number of neighbors who do this very thing(but with the analogs+SD locals via sat, as they haven't "upgraded" to digital OTA/HD as of yet). Some of them do it mostly because are interested in Dayton Local News as they work in Dayton, but the Dayton stations aren't availabe via the sat to them as they are in Cincy DMA.(even though we are only 12 miles from the Dayton TV towers! LOL).... And, Of course, you could allways reorient the antenna towards either Dayton or Cincinnati "manually" if/when necessary ...

Also You don't mention PBS, there are 3 PBS HD stations In Cincinnati(all transmit from towers within a few miles of each other), and one in Dayton. They all run different schedules, and different SD multicast services as well. There is also WKOI-DT, TBN digital(no HD yet - 5 SD multicast services), it transmits from between Oxford+Middletown.


I was assuming I would put a preamp up at the antenna. I then wanted to put a low pass filter on it to knock out the interference on the higher unused channels so I can use a 4 channel modulator to mix in up to four other video devices onto the OTA signal.


[Updated - oops!] - OK, I did a little searching and found something along the lines of what you are probably talking about concerning the low pass filter, such as : http://www.soontai.com/LPF2.html ).

Be sure to make sure you are filtering the "right" frequencies. For instance, UHF cable channel #'s use different frequencies than OTA. Here is a handy TV channel/frequency chart ( http://www.csgnetwork.com/tvfreqtable.html )

And, be sure the filter doesn't filter out any of the channels you want to use with OTA, including after stations move around on the dial after analog shut off. For instance, various channels between VHF 10 and UHF 58 are currently used by Dayton+Cincinnati digital stations, various channels between VHF 2 and UHF 64 are used for Dayton+Cincinnati analog stations. After analog shut off, various channels between VHF 10 and UHF 51 will be used by Cincinnati/Dayton digital stations - note, as it stands right now, there won't be any Cincy/Dayton stations transmitting on anything lower than VHF 10 after analog shut off, but that might change ...... In the U.S., Channel 2-51 are to be used for DTV after analog shut off ..... Ch 52-69 are being refarmed for other uses .... So, *If* you can find a filter that passes everything below about channel 66, and use your Modulator on channel 66~69, that would seem to me to be a good choice since there are, and will be no local stations there.

While I do understand what it is you want to do(and it certianly should be possible, it just may not be as *easy* to do properly as you may be thinking), and I am certianly not very familiar with the equipment which may be available to consumers concerning your intended use for the "modulator"(which I assume will only be used to send NTSC analog signals) ....... From what little I do know, unless you are going to be using "professional grade equipment" intended for use in Cable head ends or with "Master antenna systems"(which is generally expensive and not available to consumers), you may run into more "issues" with this than you may be thinking is likely .....

I'd probably be concerned that :

#1). The modulator might negatively effect your OTA reception. Such as causing too much insertion loss for the OTA signals(on all channels) that will be "passing through it" - I assume the OTA signals from the antenna would all be "passing through it? - and/or - what do you use to properly combine the "feed" from the antenna with the "feed" from the modulator? You would also want minimal insertion loss for the filter, especially if you put it before the preamp.

#2). The possibility a overly strong signal elsewhere --- such as from TV or FM station transmitting on another frequency and "amplfied" via the preamp(which also may be "overloaded" to some extent and produce intermod effects on channels you might not expect --- could "overload" the tuner in the TV(or STB) and create interference(via intermodulation distortion/etc) on one or more of the channels you are using with your modulator. This is an example of why you have to be careful, especially when using preamps ...

#3). You also want to make sure you do things "properly" so you don't end up broadcasting a low-power, "pirate TV" station to your neigborhood ...

If you choose the channels you are going to use with the modulator "wisely"(channels where no local stations are broadcasting), really, interference from "on-channel" signals received via the antenna really shouldn't be much of a problem, even without any filtering * -- at least *currently* and probably something like 95~99% of the time ... Where the other 1~4%(or more perhaps - especially in spring/Summer/fall months) of the time is concerned -- It's not all that uncommon for certian atmospheric conditions to allow increased refraction of VHF/UHF signals such as they can "bend" around the normal limits of curvature of the earth ... When this enhanced signal propagation occurs, signals which are normally nearly "line of sight" only can travel beyond the usual limit imposed by curvature of earth -- 100's and sometimes 1'000's of miles, including on those very channels your modulator may be using, hence during those times you might see Interference showing up ....

* - However - it is of course very likely there will be OTHER signals in our area using what is now channel 52-69 after analog shut off, and there may even also be a possibility unlicensed wireless devices may be allowed to share(use channels that are not occupied by TV stations in any given market) spectrum on Channel 2-51(which personally, if it is allowed, I think it will end up being a mess ....)

It certianly seems like there ought to be a good way for you to do what you want without "breaking the bank", and it seems to me an almost ideal, and hopefully inexpensive solution would involve 1). Choose channels for your modulator that no local stations are using(again, you may need to change these in the future if/when stations move around on the dial), #2). use A modulator which "passes" the OTA signal from antenna through it, but also has filter to "block" the OTA signals on the channels where you are using the modulator ..... If it could be done on a range of channels right "next to each other"(channel 66~69 is the only range of 4 channels that are "Free" in Cincinnati/Dayton currently), I'd think the channel filtering may be able to be done in such a way to not be too expensive, and if you choose channels that are not in use by local broadcasters, it's not like you'd probably have to do a 60db+notch --- even though, what might be even better(and especially if you do choose channels in use by local broadcasters) would be to have the channel filter(s)/"Low pass filter" in line between the antenna and the preamp, instead of AFTER the preamp ...

For better advice, you're really probably going to have to find, and talk to a pro installer(that knows what they are doing with OTA, including digital OTA) who has experience with these sorts of installs. You could try sending a PM to AVSforum member AntALTMike(or search for some of his posts), a professional installer in the Washington D.C. area, -- among other things, he does MATV installs in large apartment buildings/etc, and would be familar with the sort of equipment you would probably be needing ....

Oh, By the way ... Another thing you might want to keep in mind ... If you're going to have the OTA antenna hooked up to TV's/etc. which do not have a ATSC tuner in them, you're probably going to want good reception of all VHF/UHF TV channels(2-69), including for either analog Low-VHF 2, or 5 Cincinnati until analog shut off time --- so a VHF/UHF Combo antenna would likely certianly be a good idea ...


Would the preamp at the antenna be enough going into the low pass filter and then into the modulator and out to all the rooms? Our would I need some type of amplification on the signal out of the modulator also to send to all the rooms?


Other than the potential of it getting a bit "overloaded" from strong signals(which could be the case with any amp, even a distribution amp), The mast mount preamp should be fine(and a good idea if you are concerned about signal loss via a long coax run - say between the antenna and the attic) - but keep in mind, the preamp is powered via low voltage current supplied via the coax by a power supply mounted somewhere indoors(so it can be plugged into a A/C outlet), you can't have anything in the line between the power supply+the preamp which would block that power, otherwise the preamp won't "work", and in fact having to pass through unpowered circuitry in the preamp would atteunate signals GREATLY, much more so than if a preamp was not used at all. Also, as mentioned earlier it's often a good idea to put any notch filters/channel traps before the preamp ....

Assuming you should be dealing with relatively strong signal levels from the Dayton/Cincinnati stations to begin with(that's assuming a lot - such as assuming you won't have any significant terrain blockage issues), a distribition amp(such as in the attic, and with several output ports instead of splitters for the feeds to different rooms) might be a better choice in your circumstance to deal with the signal loss from the splitting than would be the case with mast-mount preamp. It's difficult to say, however .....

Concerning an amp for the "modulator" -- I suppose it depends upon the output of the modulator+how many times the signal would be split. If it isn't "enough", and if you aren't using a mast mount preamp for OTA it might even be a good idea to use the same distribution amp for both your OTA+Modulator, after the modulator if(hopefully) there is very little to cause much loss between the antenna+the amp ...

note: it is usually *not* a good idea to use multiple/"cascaded" amps - as you'll probably be just amplifing more "noise" than signal - although, it does work in some circumstances when you are working with an extremely long cable run, and are adding a little amplification in "places" along the line -- the problem with this still is however - with OTA signals especially, you're likely to have quite a bit of difference between the strongest signals(which can overload the amp and cause more "noise"/etc on certian channels, as well as reduce the amplification the amp can provide), and the weakest ones. (which can be hard for your "tuner" to be selective enough to pull out of the "muck", especially if for example a weak signal is on a channel right next to a very strong signal)


I may look at getting a silver sensor to try indoors for now. I am going to try moving my current antenna around, but I don't have a lot of space to move it. The plasma screen is on a stand in the corner of the room. There is a shelf on the left corner wall, and a bare wall on the right corner wall. Currently the antenna is on a small stand against the right corner wall.


You may need to move it outside of the room it's currently in. Such as into the attic, or in another room where there is a window facing the towers .... Hard to say, but chances are probably good getting a "better" antenna probably isn't going to help as much as finding a "good spot" to put it any antenna for good reception ...


Problem is I don't have a lot of places to move it to without having ugly RG6 visible. The wife won't go for that.


Well, I guess it all depends upon how important it is for the thing to actually work, and receive dropout free reception from all 8 Cincinnati HD Stations, or 6 Dayton digital/HD stations, or at least the ones you are most interested in watching ...(which may require an outdoor antenna setup for best results) ....

Just some thoughts FWIW ...

Thanks guys for all the feedback so far. I have more questions and want to address some of the previous comments, but I will do that a bit later tonight when I have more time to type up something.

One quick question, is there a website that allows you to put in an address and find the topography (or whatever the term is to see elevation and such)?


Hillsoft,

You're probably building right next to my friends house there... (cant remember street names, lol)
Either way, I built a house with Drees a few years back and let me tell you..., what they tell you the you can't do your own install is a bunch of $%$. Go to your Construction Manager and let them know what you want to run, they dont care as long as you going to run ONLY LOW voltage wires. (ie. CAT5, RG6... )
I ran my whole house of 7.1 surround / network / cable.

My new builder was better though, lol... I got 3/4" flex pipes going to every room, 7.1 in family room and 5.1 in MB. Not to mention I killed a CAT6, CAT5 spool and 3 RG6 spools now. :)

Few pointers for Drees: Make sure you get a check from them for your Radon mitigation system. (free $500, at least it was a few years back)

Gook luck.

Dimitriz,

How's the antenna doing? Hope you were able to get everything straightened out with it ...

and, don't be such a stranger! It's been a while ...

All,

In case anyone is interested .... It turns out Several Sinclair stations(elsewhere) did end up with CW affiliation ... Here's the press release(also includes a list of the MY TV sinclair affiliates, including WSTR) :

http://www.sbgi.net/press/release_200652_162.shtml

Dimitriz,

How's the antenna doing? Hope you were able to get everything straightened out with it ...

and, don't be such a stranger! It's been a while ...

All,

In case anyone is interested .... It turns out Several Sinclair stations(elsewhere) did end up with CW affiliation ... Here's the press release(also includes a list of the MY TV sinclair affiliates, including WSTR) :

http://www.sbgi.net/press/release_200652_162.shtml

I am here all the time.., just reading mainly. Working a LOT so not much time to dedicate to my 432875435 channels.
Got everything worked out, they approved it and haven't bothered me about it at all. Just had to rotate it a bit since trees got leaves now and my previous 90% droped to like 50%.. but it's up to 80%+ now :)
Still need to got some time in order to map my rotator properly.

Just a quick update since we've discussed this here in the past :

FCC has rescheduled the filing window for LPTV/Class A stations which wish to seek a 2nd, digital companion channel for remainder of transistion to June 19-30, 2006. The filing window was originally scheduled for May 1~May 12.

info here :

http://www.tvtechnology.com/dlrf/one.php?id=1255

Note: LP stations which are granted a 2nd, digital companion channel will have to return one of their channels at a later date. Who knows, but that date is probably unlikely to be feb 17, 2009, the current hard analog shut off date for full service stations.

TWC users - does anyone have trouble getting the HDTV stations WLWT, WeatherPlus, WXIX, The Tube, CET and KET stations (905, 906, 919, 920, 948, 949, 950, 954, 955, 956, 957, 958, 959). The past few weeks I have not been able to get these stations, but I get the rest of them?

TWC users - does anyone have trouble getting the HDTV stations WLWT, WeatherPlus, WXIX, The Tube, CET and KET stations (905, 906, 919, 920, 948, 949, 950, 954, 955, 956, 957, 958, 959). The past few weeks I have not been able to get these stations, but I get the rest of them?


Fine here on my Pace box. I did have issues a coupla years ago where certain stations were missing and when the tech came out the first thing he did was unplug my coax going from the wall to the in plug on my surge protector and hooked it straight to the converter box. Problem solved.

Bubster,

Thanks - I do not have it connected to a surge protector, but I tried unhooking and re-hooking and re-booting the box, but I still have the same problem.

Buckeyes Fan:

Sorry but everything is working fine for me on the TWC HD channels. I rarely if ever have issues.

Good luck getting your problem solved.

I watched Lost and Invasion on ABC (WCPO) last night and neither were in HD for their entire eposodes. At the beginning of each show it had the "broadcasted in HD" logo but again no HD? What the heck is going on? Is it because of the weather warning system? If so why hasn't WCPO updated this to work with HD? I am quite upset as I missed both those eposodes in HD and had about 15-20% of my viable area covered with weather warning, station logos, and the like. Not to mention the black side bars!

Any change WCPO will give me a HDDVD player and those two missed eposodes on HDDVD for this horrific tragedy of HD boadcasting? (note sarcasm). Nevertheless I was not happy last night.

nelmr - wcpo dropped out of hd to show the storm coverage.. nice of them wasnt it :)

make sure you call or email them.. i did!

jim

I noticed WCPO had weather bugs up just before 8pm, so I watched "Alias" and "Lost" in HD from WKEF-DT, ABC HD Dayton... Well, I would have watched it there anyway for the DD 5.1 audio ... ; )

BTW, I'd read recently(I don't know how accurate the source was in this case) that FCC has been enforcing rules on this lately ... In other words, fining stations which don't put up info such as severe weather info on their digital/HD services .... So you might want to send the commission a letter as well ... However, my guess is they probably get lots more "letters" from groups who want the stations to serve the public interest with such info as severe weather info, school closings, AND Keep in mind there is no requirement whatsoever that stations send ANY HD ....

As for purchasing the equipment to allow them keep HD up+insert the local graphics(weather bugs/etc) as well, My best guess would be, probably sometime after analog shut off .. who knows, though ....

How come all the stations don't drop out of HD for this? Seems WCPO is worse than the others, or perhaps I've just been watching WCPO on those days...

What is irriating is I don't have a choice to try to pull dayton channels with my loop/rabit ears antenna which does just fine for local cincy channels as I am within 9 miles or so of all the towers.

The other thing I don't understand is that doesn't channel 9 have their own dedicated weahter channel? Why can't they just have a little icon saying "tonado watch go to 9.2" or something like that for 9.1 and those interested in the warning can go to 9.2 and leave the rest of us to our shows to watch. I felt like I didn't get to enjoy my HD expeinece at all (in fact there was no HD last night :mad: )

Seems WCPO is worse than the others, or perhaps I've just been watching WCPO on those days...

Unless something has changed, as has been discussed here several times in the past, it probably has to do with the equipment they are using and how they have it set up for switching purposes. In short, (again if they are still doing it this way) when local graphics are inserted on the analog station(or they switch to a local commercial break) I believe the HD station is "automatidcally switched" to the same SD feed the analog station is using.


What is irriating is I don't have a choice to try to pull dayton channels with my loop/rabit ears antenna which does just fine for local cincy channels as I am within 9 miles or so of all the towers.


I certianly understand that it is irritating(It's pretty rare, but certianly is possible for both Cincy+Dayton affiliates to drop from HD at the same time for such reasons) ..... I'm just saying It's just a good thing that the option is available for many in Cincinnati to put up an outdoor antenna(or in some cases an indoor antenna if you get lucky), and receive Dayton as well, as you don't have to necessarily put up with *only* what you get via the Cincinnati stations, and how they "choose" to do things.

For that matter, (it's been a while since I've checked it though), everytime I've checked "GMA" and when WCPO has had a local "ticker up" they've dropped from HD to SD to insert that ticker, even when there is *no* sort of severe weather or "public emergency" going on ....


The other thing I don't understand is that doesn't channel 9 have their own dedicated weahter channel? Why can't they just have a little icon saying "tonado watch go to 9.2" or something like that for 9.1 and those interested in the warning can go to 9.2 and leave the rest of us to our shows to watch.


I don't know the details on what the "rules" are about that -- otherwise --- it seems like something like that could work, if they implemented the necessary equipment(and "procedures" for the MCO) to insert such a graphic "seperately" on the digital station(and HD, otherwise they'd still have to drop to SD) .... In fact, I've even seen that very thing occur once from WNW0-DT (NBC toledo) during severe weather, where during golf coverage from NBC, they put up a message on the "main" channel for viewers to tune to their weatherplus subchannel for severe weather info.

But, that is probably not as simple as they might seem they should be, as for one thing, it would make for "extra" duties for the MCO's .... Heck, from all appearances it seems they have a hard enough time just monitoring the digital station(s) to enough of a degree that the video+audio are "working", let alone PSIP ... Right now, they have to take care of both the analog+digital stations, at least after analog shut off the analog station will be gone (let's just hope they don't end up continuing to have to do a bunch of "seperate stuff" for a SD feed to the cableco's) ....


I felt like I didn't get to enjoy my HD expeinece at all (in fact there was no HD last night )


Hopefully someday doing HD "right" will actually become of some importance to the stations, whether their viewers are watching via OTA, Cable or Sat LiL ....

At this point however, it's easy to be skeptical that will ever happen, and it is unforutnate that it sometimes seems they'd rather just see HD(and sometimes, to me it even seems they'd like to see the same happen with their OTA signal) go the way of "AM Stereo", or perhaps they'd rather send 8 multicast SD channels OTA, and a seperate HD feed to the cableco ....

For that matter, (it's been a while since I've checked it though), everytime I've checked "GMA" and when WCPO has had a local "ticker up" they've dropped from HD to SD to insert that ticker, even when there is *no* sort of severe weather or "public emergency" going on ....






LOST wasn't in HD last night either due to the tornado watch being in effect. I thought when the new encoder was installed a few months ago, they would have the capability of inserting local graphics without having to drop back into SD. 5.1 audio is still missing as well even though they were testing it months ago.

Microbob,
Last I heard WCPO-DT was targeting 5.1 roll out sometime around now. I don't remember any discussion about graphic inserts on the new encoder. While the new encoder may support HD graphic inserts it could be possible that they may need additional equipment to connect to the encoder that they don't currently have.

Nightwatchman,
I'm glad you were able to switch to Dayton, but I don't watch live TV. One feature i'm hoping from the TiVo series 3 is some kind of "fall back" or "fail safe" system to possibly remedy this situation.

Since I will have the ability to record ABC from a total of 7 sources (WKEF-DT, WCPO-DT OTA & Cable, WKEF, WCPO OTA & digital and analog cable) I would like to set up one season pass that can choose from at least 3 sources if one is better than the other. Realistically, I would think the TiVo would be able to record from WKEF-DT first and if the signal was unreliable drop to WCPO-DT from cable. My dream would be for the TiVo to be able to tell if the 720p stream from WKEF-DT is pillar boxed or lacking sound then drop to WCPO-DT. Better yet it would be great for the TiVo to drop to ABC's SD feed if both the HD feed signals are unreliable. I like to dream :)

Nightwatchman,
I'm glad you were able to switch to Dayton, but I don't watch live TV.


I can record either Dayton or Cincinnati stations, I have to either guess, or at least check during beginning of recording to see whether or not either station is having "HD" or other problems .... It's generally less of a problem/requires less "guesswork" now than was the case several years ago ...

How come all the stations don't drop out of HD for this? Seems WCPO is worse than the others, or perhaps I've just been watching WCPO on those days...

WCPO is worse than other local stations because they do it in prime time on top rated programs. WKRC does it too but usually only during the commercial breaks (when they go to SD). I have also seen WRKC do it full time during Letterman's show (after 11:35 PM).

It seems that the local stations would have thought this through (weather warnings on HD feeds) and installed the needed equipment so that they could show them. I think it just shows that WCPO does not take HD programming seriously. I agree that we need to call them and let them know that we don't like it when they show a HD program in SD.

This afternoon I talked to Tom Talley, chief engineer at WCPO. He said after a full days work he has figured out a way to put the Weather warning map overlay onto their HD feed. That means that WCPO should never have to switch to SD on ABC's HD programs to give us weather warnings. Good news, indead!

He also mentioned that the station has received LOTS (hundreds) of complaints about Wednesday's programming not being shown in HD.

Thanks to Tom and WCPO on getting this problem resolved. Now we need to work on WKRC-DT.

This afternoon I talked to Tom Talley, chief engineer at WCPO. He said after a full days work he has figured out a way to put the Weather warning map overlay onto their HD feed. That means that WCPO should never have to switch to SD on ABC's HD programs to give us weather warnings. Good news, indead!

He also mentioned that the station has received LOTS (hundreds) of complaints about Wednesday's programming not being shown in HD.

Thanks to Tom and WCPO on getting this problem resolved. Now we need to work on WKRC-DT.

That's great news! Thanks for the update Bill!

I think the best news of this is that WCPO received HUNDREDS of complaints and is actually acting on it.

Maybe they can get 5.1 implemented soon as well. I'm glad that the graphics SD problem will be resolved. I was one of the hundreds upset that LOST was not in HD

Speaking of WCPO and weather, I noticed on their weather tracker service (9-2) that they now have the Fischer Homes sponsorship logo back up (when the Fischer "illegals" story broke they removed it). Someone needs to clue station management that they should get rid of it until they know more about the crackdown. According to two people I know (one works in law enforcement and the other works for Fischer) what has come out so far is just the tip of the iceberg. WCPO needs to divorce their station from the story as much as possible and they should remove Fischer Homes sponsorship from weather tracker so that people don't associate them with the story. Where is the "I" team when you need them?

i dont mean to change the subject.. but if anyone thinks this was an isolated incident - then they are in for a rude awakening... :)

jaggies are back on wcpo-dt :( :( :( wkef is jaggie free as always :) :) :)

This afternoon I talked to Tom Talley, chief engineer at WCPO. He said after a full days work he has figured out a way to put the Weather warning map overlay onto their HD feed. That means that WCPO should never have to switch to SD on ABC's HD programs to give us weather warnings. Good news, indead!
I hope Mr. Talley saved all the settings before he started messing around. The jaggies are back on WCPO, and what are the chances that their reoccurence is not related to his experimentation?

CincyKev

I guess the jaggies wasn't the fault of their encoder after all. Strange engineering setup they have at WCPO isn't it?

Well the "Jaggies" are back. We all knew the encoder wasn't the problem. It has to be the receiver for the HD satellite or something along those lines. I can't tell a difference in the picture quality of WCPO since the addition of the new encoder, but I haven't been watching that often. But now that WKEF-DT has added "The Tube", I guess there is no advantage to WKEF, other than not having 'Jaggies" and having DD 5.1. WCPO come on and get this fixed. Its ridiculous.

I just sent an email to Mr. Talley, the Chief engineer and to Mr. Martinelli, Director of Engineering at WCPO. I figured it would be best to send it to both of them.

Well the "Jaggies" are back. We all knew the encoder wasn't the problem. It has to be the receiver for the HD satellite or something along those lines. I can't tell a difference in the picture quality of WCPO since the addition of the new encoder, but I haven't been watching that often. But now that WKEF-DT has added "The Tube", I guess there is no advantage to WKEF, other than not having 'Jaggies" and having DD 5.1. WCPO come on and get this fixed. Its ridiculous.




It has to be another piece of equipment because I can see the jaggies on analog ch 9.

Yes, I can confirm that also, haven't watched analog in a while.

I didn't see anything different "jaggie" wise between ANALOG WCPO 9 and ANALOG WKEF 22 ABC Dayton tonight during the game.

I think It just so happens the downsampling to 1280x360("jaggies") occuring again during ABC HD from WCPO-DT looks very similar to the sort of "artifacts" one often gets from NTSC SD composite video -- such as interlace artifacts or artifacts due to upconversion to a display's native scan rate, or possibly it could have been related (possibly more "prevalent looking" tonight than one might normally be "used to") to "NTSC SD artifacts" which could have perhaps been more prevalent and more "visable" than usual on the SD tonight due to "SD related" production issues.

jaggies are back on wcpo-dt :( :( :( wkef is jaggie free as always :) :) :)

That's exactly what I saw from ABC HD and WCPO-DT/WKEF-DT tonight as well. "Jaggies" on WCPO-DT, no "jaggies" from WKEF-DT ....


It has to be the receiver for the HD satellite or something along those lines.


I can recall speculating, or "wondering" here (and in correspondance with Mr. Martenelli at WCPO) over a year ago : if it might be a possibility the downsampling of ABC HD to 1280x360 from WCPO-DT that is apparently occuring again, currently - could have involved some post-studio move changes perhaps involving new equipment, a different "configuration" of that equipment, or any changed "settings" involving whatever equipment(or settings) they were using to insert, or "key" the local ID bug, which they even inserted into HD prior to the studio move.

At that time, although I didn't have much to go on with this, it seemed to be as much a possibility as anything else. Here's some of what I was thinking about at that time that led me to the above "wondering" or speculation :

#1) I had heard some "rumours" through the "grapevine" well before the studio move that indicated in addition to equipment for DD 5.1, they *may* have had some plans on getting new equipment to allow them to do local HD graphics, which at the time I had heard *may* have been "sort of" tentatively planned" to be implemented(along with DD 5.1) after the studio move, which occured in Summer 2004. NOTE : Be sure take this for what it is, with a lot of emphasis on "rumour" and *may* ....

#2). I noticed the "jaggies"(downsampling to 1280x360) began occuring sometime just after their studio move when the ID logo itself changed, as well as its placement. Prior to the studio move, They put up a "WCPO-DT 10" bug in upper right hand corner about every 30 minutes(including during HD), Sometime after the studio move(and at the same time when the jaggies were first "noticed" in Summer 2004), the logo became an entirely different logo(much more "similar" to the logo on the analog station), also became larger+began being inserted in bottom center area of screen, instead of top right. I haven't watched WCPO-DT often enough lately to even "see it", but If I recall correctly the last time I checked, I believe it was at least being inserted at about the same time as the "pre-studio move" version, about every 30 minutes, such as about 15~17 minutes after the hour/etc ...

#3). I also know that most HD encoders(even "older ones") do have a simple capability to "insert" a graphic such as a ID logo, and I assumed(emphasis on *assumed*) that was how WCPO-DT was inserting their ID logo(including into HD) before the studio move, and I also speculated that perhaps something "changed" about that in some way after the studio move, perhaps related to #2 or #3 above ..... Along those lines, I even recall an "incident" discussed in programming area which occured once about 4 years or so ago when default logos from a manufactuer "showed up" one night on the NBC HD feed due to a new encoder install at NBC ... Saw the same thing from one of the PBS stations when they first came on the air digitally .... There were sample logos programmed into the encoder as it came from the manufacturer, and if that wasn't "turned off" you saw some sort of "Everetz" logo ...

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

Anyway, keep in mind this is all still just *speculation* or *wondering*, but, given the "timing" involved concerning the jaggies reappearing, along with the info Bill posted concerning WCPO's CE's recent "work" on finding a way to insert the weather bugs into HD -- Nevertheless, I do have to wonder if perhaps my earlier "speculation" on this may at least be a little more likely to be at least somewhat "releveant" in some way ...

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


But now that WKEF-DT has added "The Tube", I guess there is no advantage to WKEF, other than not having 'Jaggies" and having DD 5.1.


I haven't seen anything here yet that would seem to indicate to me "The Tube" on WKEF-DT is causing any problems.

At least from what I've seen so far, I believe ATTC got it right with their "tests" on this when they said 720p+1 SD multicast service can work just fine, and also when they recommended no multicasting for stations sending 1080i .... Perhaps encoders have gotten more efficent since those ATTC tests, (although I don't know how much more they can do with MPEG2 they weren't doing 4~6 years ago/etc) and perhaps it is the case multicasting can work well with 1080i now, but I've yet to see it for myself, and seeing is believing IMO ....

I can see a difference between WKEF-DT (No Jaggies) and WCPO-DT (Jaggies). I didn't check both WKEF-TV and WCPO-TV, just WCPO-TV and it did not look as bad as the digital channel. The jaggies are back, same situation as before.

I can see a difference between WKEF-DT (No Jaggies) and WCPO-DT (Jaggies)


So can I, as I said in my last post in response to Jim's comment ....

You guys were talking about the analog though, and it seemed as if you were trying to draw some sort of conclusion from what was going on with the analog station, and I addressed that first as I think you are barking up the wrong tree there ....

As for any more comments from me on this issue, don't worry, as I've said all I'm going to say about it in my last post ...

Update: LOL. ... Was getting ready to count sheep, and realized the source of the confusion! In my response to Jim's comment, I meant I was seeing the same exact thing during ABC HD tonight from WCPO-DT which Jim and everyone else reported .. Jaggies from WCPO-DT, No jaggies from WKEF-DT! I edited last post accordingly to be more clear ... Sorry, thought I was clear enough elsewhere in my post that I noticed the 1280x360 downsampling("jaggies") was back again, currently during ABC HD from WCPO-DT ....

I haven't had the opportunity to check lately, but WLWT-DT did the severe weather thing best when I posted previously during Olympic Coverage. They inserted a logo in the HD feed that read "Breaking News Now on Analog Channel 5." Not sure they've changed that policy but I think that is the ideal way to do it.

I have never seen WLWT-DT cut out of HD coverage. They put the tickers in during commercials if need be but they don't mess with the HD. Thanks to at least one station in Cincinnati for doing things right.

Edit (additional praise for WLWT): I have also noticed on a number of occasions that HD commercials come through on WLWT-DT. There aren't many HD commercials, but it seems as though they always "come through" on WLWT-DT, which seems to stay with a pure digital feed during commercial breaks (notice how much clearer WLWT-DT's SD content (commercials, newscast) is than WKRC's and WCPO. Example: Watch WKRC-DT during primetime HD programming. As soon as it cuts from the show (for commercial break), you'll hear a "snap" and see the picture flick from clear digital to what looks like a fuzzy analog upconvert. So instead of HD commericals, we get fuzzy analog ones.

I know that MOST commercials are not in HD, but there are many that I recognize as having seen them in HD before and when I see them on WLWT-DT they are always in HD versus on WKRC they are RARELY in HD (it seems they are not in HD on WKRC-DT unless they have decided to have some extra person in there to flip the switch for the particular commercials that are HD.)

Bottom line I guess (though I've said it a lot before) is, Good job WLWT.

Did anyone notice if the 'jaggies' were still present last night on WCPO-DT? I didn't see myself. I have my HD hooked up to a computer, so I could easily take some screengrabs to demonstrate this if needed - anyone have any good suggestions of material that would really highlight the problem?

they were there.. it is much harder to see them on studio produced shows.. but they were there none the less :( - take a look at the intro to desparate housewives and you will see the jaggies on the cgi opening.

jim

Ok guys, Mr. Talley has responded to my email sent over the weekend. He was very quick to respond and I hope this issue can be fixed. Here are the emails. Mine first, then his two responses.

Mr. Talley,

I wanted to make you aware that the picture quality of WCPO-DT has fallen in a
hole again. The "Jaggies" issue has come up again after a couple months of
excellent picture. A quick resolve of this issue will make a lot of people
happy. After reading the Cincinnati thread on AVSforum.com, I look forward to
seeing weather warnings on the HD feed and not be forced to watch a SD picture.

And the two responses:

I am a pretty faithful viewer of my HD channel, and I don't want to
sound argumentative, however I disagree. If you are having an issue with
"jaggies" on our HD channel I need a little more information to look
into this. Are you currently watching us on Time Warner or any other
cable company, or are you a "OFF AIR" antenna guy like me? Also which
program did you notice this "jaggies" problem occurring?

Sincerely,

Thomas W. Talley II.

I noticed on the AVS forum that everyone seems concerned about the
encoders programming. I can assure you and anyone else at the AVS forum
that the encoder has not been touched since we installed it the Thursday
and Friday before superbowl. The only thing we worked on Friday
5-12-2006 was the master control HD switcher. We made a slight tweek on
the key clip function for the weather map to clip correctly. The keyer
is not even online until the operator turns it on for the weather maps.
My point here is that the "AIR" path has not changed. The only
experimenting we did was offline with the key clip and our weather map.
We did air a crawl simulation briefly Friday saying we were testing the
weather crawl system after we corrected the key clip to verify it looked
good "ON AIR". One other change we made was the input audio port on the
switcher was programmed incorrectly for the Instant Replay playback unit
that plays the weather beeps. I changed it from input #110 to input
#111. With it being programmed as input #110 you would not hear the
weather beeps on HD. I hope this helps explain what we did in order to
air the weather maps in HD. Any other questions please feel free to
ask.


Thomas W. Talley II.

I also received 2 emails from Tom - one pretty much the same with the description of the "work done" as above, and another very nice one saying he wants to get to the bottom of this and the more information he has the easier this would be. I am trying to get some clips together here to show the problem. I am convinced there is a good commitment to solve it, he just has no idea as of now what might be wrong. I'm sure between all of us we can figure this out!

Yes, we know it can be fixed because it was fixed. The Director of Engineering, Joe Martinelli, wrote me an email a ways back confirming that settings were changed and this was before the new encoder was installed. So lets hope this is quickly fixed and DD 5.1 can be added also.

I'll post in a moment about the jaggies (I have some piccies to show), but regarding 5.1 Tom told me he is waiting on some equipment to enable the proper switching between 'real' 5.1 content (e.g. ABC HD) and 'fake' 5.1 content (e.g. daytime with stereo audio encoded in a 5.1 matrix). He hopes to get this 'soon' :)

Okay, I managed to get a perfect demonstration of the "jaggies" problem from some Desperate Housewives caps on my PC. The first image was taken from last night's show - take a look especially round the text, and you'll see the problem :

http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/1796/jagged3ip.th.jpg (http://img387.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jagged3ip.jpg)


The second one is taken from a few weeks back - see how smooth the edges are :

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/4705/nojagged6me.th.jpg (http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nojagged6me.jpg)

For best results, view the images 'full size' by clicking again on the new window that opens. If anyone is particularly interested, I have a 14Meg video clip of the 2 sequences merged together that shows it too (from which the shots were taken).

I'll send this to Tom and hopefully this will help...

I'll post in a moment about the jaggies (I have some piccies to show), but regarding 5.1 Tom told me he is waiting on some equipment to enable the proper switching between 'real' 5.1 content (e.g. ABC HD) and 'fake' 5.1 content (e.g. daytime with stereo audio encoded in a 5.1 matrix). He hopes to get this 'soon' :)



That's good to know because neither WCET or WLWT switch out of 5.1 during the daytime. It is very annoying to listen to no center channel during the non 5.1 content.

WLWT had it set correctly when they first added 5.1 audio but it has been continuous 5.1 for the last several months

Robert,

Not sure this is what he meant - I rather thought it was more about the switching aspect. The settings on the encoder for how to encode the stereo to 'fake' 5.1 is another matter. I'm also not sure what's 'right' here anyway, but personally I'm not so bothered about daytime. Are you thinking they should send e.g. Pro Logic decoded stereo in the 5.1 channels? I guess that's the problem now, that the receiver thinks it's 5.1 and so doesn't process the Pro Logic mix... Or then again I might not be making any sense at all!!

bluestraw.. .PERFECT!! that shows the problem to a tee!!! well done!!

Robert,

Not sure this is what he meant - I rather thought it was more about the switching aspect. The settings on the encoder for how to encode the stereo to 'fake' 5.1 is another matter. I'm also not sure what's 'right' here anyway, but personally I'm not so bothered about daytime. Are you thinking they should send e.g. Pro Logic decoded stereo in the 5.1 channels? I guess that's the problem now, that the receiver thinks it's 5.1 and so doesn't process the Pro Logic mix... Or then again I might not be making any sense at all!!



Both WXIX and WSTR only broadcast 5.1 audio during prime time. During local breaks, and local programming they automatically switch to regular 2.0 stereo. With WLWT and WCET, they are always broadcasting 5.1 audio even during non 5.1 stereo programs. The local news and commercials are always broadcasting in 5.1 audio. The automatic switching is not working at WCET&WLWT.

WCPO had to manually switch to 5.1 audio during ABC prime time. With the new equipment their master control operator will not have to flip the switch.

Sorry, I know I said I wasn't going to say anything else about this ...

But, just in case the below is of any use to Mr. Talley if he is monitoring this thread, and for you guys in contact with WCPO-DT engineering currently, in case you have more luck this time around than I and others had had in the past concerning getting "through" to them on this issue, I offer the below to help you "build" on the knowledge we have collected on this in the past .....

Of most importance here are Dr1394's findings, as shown farther below. We know WHAT is happening and have known this for quite some time(almost a year and a half, now). But, I do not think we know yet exactly WHAT is causing it, even though it was "fixed" for a time, between Dec 2005(or early jan 2006? don't recall, although I do know it was fixed at least several weeks before they installed their new MPEG2/HD encoder), and until the past few days, when the problem has has "reappeared" again during ABC HD from WCPO-DT ....

he wants to get to the bottom of this and the more information he has the easier this would be.

All sorts of info, reports and screenshots(including comparisons between WCPO-DT+WKEF-DT during ABC HD) concerning this "jaggies" issue can be found in posts between August 2004 and Jan 2006 by searching this thread for "jaggies" or 1280x360 ..... I would also note that much of this has been sent to WCPO engineering in the past.

Although the problem was first reported here in August 2004, Here I believe are the first screenshots posted of the problem. Direct comparisons between WCPO-DT and WKEF-DT from 11/1/04 in post 1308 ( http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4595107&&#post4595107), post 1309 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4595134&&#post4595134),and post 1311 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4595326&&#post4595326). Be sure to see the descriptions of the screenshots at the referenced posts - but for "full" clarification --- Note that off-air antenna, DTC-100(actually RCA's DM-1 module, and "internal" version of DTC-100 in a RCA F38310 HDTV), were used with the screenshots, and that the issue was(is again) present with the other 3 ATSC receivers I've used as well - Zenith HDV420, Hisense DB-2010, ATSC receiver internal to Sony KD34XBR960 HDTV. Note that I've been watching HD from WCPO-DT since Nov 2001, and this issue didn't appear until after their studio move in summer 2004. It did not occur when they were sending 720p from the old studio between spring 2003 and Summer 2004, and did not occur when they were upconverting to 1080i prior to Spring 2003 or so.

At the time, When I sent these screenshots and explained the issue we were seeing to an engineer at at WCPO-DT, he seemed to be thinking along the lines of it perhaps being a "chipset specific" issue(since they weren't "noticing it" when monitoring the signal, including from the engineer's home HD set/ATSC receiver), and at the time asked for reports of folks with different equipment/etc. So, I asked folks to send me their equipment lists(which they did - everyone on the list saw the "jaggies" of course), which I forwarded to this fellow ...

Several months later, forum members verifed that this was not a "decoder" or "chipset specific" issue, as we were lucky enough to have an MPEG2 "expert" analyze WCPO-DT's bitstream during a MNF HD game. He verifed that the problem wasn't a receiver/chipset problem, and that the problem was "in" the datastream itself, which is detailed, below - Note that I also sent WCPO enginnering the below info, as well as the URL's to the posts below. The response I received was "our encoder is sending 720p"(Which, as should be obvious from the below was of course already clear to me, and at that point, Summer 2005 I pretty much gave up on trying to send them anymore "useful" info, as it seemed obvious they weren't paying much attention to it ) ..... Other responses I received from WCPO engineer between Jan 05~July 05 seemed to indicate they felt upgrades to their GI MPEG2/HD encoder or a new encoder would, hopefully "fix" the problem ...

From Post #1906 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=4964887#post4964887) of this thread, posted on 1/10/05 by AVSforum Member Dr1394 (the attachement can be viewed from post #1906) as described :


Forum member hugenbdd sent me a WCPO-DT bitstream from Saturday's playoff
game. I've attached a close-up of the pixel structure. Note that vertical
pixels are almost always paired. Some piece of equipment in their signal
chain is down-sampling from 1280x720 to 1280x360.

Ron


In Post #1933 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4970341&&#post4970341), I posted the following remarks "in discussion" of Ron's findings :



If I understand correctly(which I may not be), I think Ron is saying what he saw seems to indicate, basically that their encoder is sending 720p(1280x720), but all the "unique" pixel data that should be there, isn't, due to the sampling of the signal(Which is maybe uncompressed HD-SDI at that point? Just a guess, don't know how it works at ABC affiliates) something is doing at 1280x360 ...

So, In essense, the 720p we're getting would seem to be "sort of" like a "line doubled" version of 1280x360, with some piece of equipement -- presumably in the chain(for ABC HD from them, I don't think it's happening that way for local or any SD programming that is being sent through their upconverter, but I'm not sure about that), I'd think perhaps something that's before the encoder that is doing the sampling at 1280x360 instead of 1280x720 for some odd reason ...

In other words, and, I don't know how correct this would be, but I suppose you could look at it as being a lot like 1280x720 from ABC which is effectively being downrezzed to 1280x360, and then "upconverted"(but not very well), in a sense to 720p ... In which case I'd think the data rates/rez the encoder is spitting out would need to be about the same as if it actually allways "stayed" 1280x720 throughout the chain, all the way to your display even though all the actual unique pixel data that should be, doesn't seem to actually be there ... 14mb/s seems about right for a 720p HD video stream, given what would be needed for the SD weather service, and Audio/PSIP and the like.


In Post #1936 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4970734&&#post4970734), Ron(dr1394) responsed to my above comments (The attachement as described can be viewed from post #1936) :



quote=nitewatchman :
If I understand correctly(which I may not be), I think Ron is saying
what he saw seems to indicate, basically that their encoder is sending
720p(1280x720), but every 2nd line is not containing(more or less) the
"unique" pixel data that should be there ...
:end quote
--------------------------------------------------

Yes, that's correct. The MPEG-2 video stream is still 1280x720, but the
effective resolution is 1280x360. Here's another example from hugenbdd's
1394 capture. The arrow points to an area that shows individual 1280x720
square pixels (due to over quantization, since that GI encoder is having a
difficult time at 14.5 Mbps).

I'm using a "reference" software decoder and Photoshop to create these pics.
This is what's in the bitstream, there's no receiver issue going on here.

BTW, the second sub-channel on WCPO-DT is pretty interesting. It is 528x480
resolution, which is the first time I've seen a non ATSC Table 3 resolution
in an OTA bitstream. It also doesn't have any I-frames, but instead uses
progressive intra block refresh in P-frames. The bitrate is 3 Mbps.

Thank you Jeff for posting this information. WCPO, lets get this fixed!

Thanks Jeff - I knew that there was a lot of posting on this before, but I had not seen the screenshots. FYI - My screengrabs were taken directly from the source, via a PC, so again there is no chipset to speak of!

No problem, hope some of it is of some use -- -- Bluestraw - a minor point - -- Something(Such as MPEG2 decompressor(chip) hardware in your PC - on your tuner card no doubt) has to be decoding the MPEG2 video otherwise all your screen would show would be 1's and 0's(such as with a HEX viewer) --

However, the bitstream Ron analyzed was just as it was sent by WCPO-DT(nothing was decoded or changed before it was sent to ron, it was just as WCPO-DT sent it), and was not decoded until Ron used a reference software decoder(no hardware) as he indicated ...

While I can understand why an engineer at a station may not put a lot of credibility in posts on a online forum, or reports on "jaggies" from "viewers" --- Trust me, Ron knows what he's doing. All anyone has to do who might question that would be to read some of his posts elsewhere on avsforum or on opendtv.

I, for one am very grateful to Ron for taking the time to look at WCPO-DT bitstream+post his findings here early last year, it's just unfortunate that it seems we have yet to be sucessful in getting get the "message" through to WCPO concerning the 1280x360 downsampling (i.e. "Jaggies") issue ......

Ron recently posted the following in another thread/forum area (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7454845#post7454845) :


I'm an MPEG-2 encoder and IEEE1394 engineer at LSI Logic. Along with my team-mates, I've designed and built the 1394 portion of the JVC D-VHS decks (40K, 5U and 100U), the HD encoder for EVD and the new SD encoder for the Motorola DCT-6412 Phase 3 cable STB.

So I'm very much an "insider". For example, I read the draft interim AACS license agreement (with analog sunset) in December, or about 2 months ahead of public release.


A few other recent examples of the excellent info dr1394 has contributed to AVSforum :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7663018#post7663018

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7585141#post7585141

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7454698&&#post7454698

here are some more images from wcpo - wkef to illustrate jaggies

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6145023&&#post6145023

Jeff,

Thanks for the additional info. I do indeed know the reputation of dr1934 and I'm sure he is correct! FYI I was using a similar 'software' decoder in my PC - the stream was loaded directly to some video analysis software. It is not the solution I use for playback (indeed not even the same PC), and does not even decode the MPEG2 'realtime', so indeed I can surely eliminate a chipset-specific issue. Of course I did not look at the data level like Ron did!

I am convinced that WCPO ARE taking this seriously. I cannot comment on what happened before since I wasn't really involved, but I am certainly prepared to help as much as I can to provide as much info as possible. I'm sure any ideas are most welcome. Their chief engineer tells me he has checked and re-checked the encoder programming, and that the previous issue was solved by adjusting an encoder setting. They are also getting help from Tandberg.

One thing that might be useful - can somebody please pinpoint exactly when this started happening again? Last week's Tuesday output was jaggie-free, then there was no HD on Wednesday, and I know that the jaggies were there on Sunday. Can someone help fill in the 'blanks' please?

I'm sure any ideas are most welcome. Their chief engineer tells me he has checked and re-checked the encoder programming, and that the previous issue was solved by adjusting an encoder setting.


Whether or not the exact "root cause" is different(which I personally suspect is probably unlikely, but who knows), the "previous issue" is producing exactly the same results as the "current issue" from what I can tell ....

Something in the signal chain for ABC HD is downsampling to 1280x360 ....Maybe even *before* the encoder. If it's the case a "change" in encoder settings apparently "fixed the jaggies" with the GI encoder previously, and we also know the problem didn't pop up again at first with the new encoder, and not until sometime in the past week -- I'm not so sure that necessarily rules out the possibility something else may be going on with this before the encoder.

Also note that as was the case when this was occuring between Summer 2004 and Late 2005(or early jan 2006), I could be wrong, but I do not believe the downsampling("jaggies") is occuring for anything else BESIDES with ABC HD feed - In other words, everything(SD of course) that also goes through their upconverter doesn't "seem" to be having the problem.

It was there all the time during ABC HD feed(including upconverted national HD commercials sent over ABC HD feed) between Summer 2004 and Late 2005(or so), I assume it's been there on ABC HD(all the time) since it began happening in the past several days or so as well, but I can't say for sure. it is generally, however probably most noticable during certian HD sports coverage (HD football/Basketball) and certian camera angles when there are shots of what should be "straight lines" ....

Because of the "similarity" between this issue and what looks like "normal" NTSC SD "artifacts"(such as interlace artifacts/etc -- as I mentioned in an earlier post), I can certianly understand why it may be difficult for some folks to "notice" the issue(especially perhaps engineers which are used to seeing such "artifacts" from their SD analog signals), and I think the best way for folks to "notice" the problem is probably to do an A/B comparision during ABC HD between WCPO-DT and another source of ABC HD where the issue is not occuring, such as WKEF-DT Dayton - as should be evident from Jim+I's screenshot comparisions between WKEF-DT+WCPO-DT during ABC HD when the problem was/is occuring from WCPO-DT. Not only will you see the "abscense of jaggies" from WKEF-DT, (depending upon display of course), you will likely notice increased "detail"/resolution as well, although the latter is not something that will just "jump off the screen" at you like the "jaggies" do ....

Also -- about the only other thing I can think of that was covered previously with this issue ---- I don't have time to dig up the thread, currently -- However, when we were discussing this issue about a year and a half ago, another thread was started on it in Hardware area, and a Engineer at another ABC affiliate suggested that, besides MPEG2 compressor(encoder) settings/etc, one possibility might be an issue occuring with the Sat receiver used at the affiliate for the ABC HD feed.


One thing that might be useful - can somebody please pinpoint exactly when this started happening again? Last week's Tuesday output was jaggie-free, then there was no HD on Wednesday, and I know that the jaggies were there on Sunday. Can someone help fill in the 'blanks' please?

Afraid I can't be of much help there ... But just to be "thoreau" here .... Before Sunday Night(I actually tuned into WCPO-DT Sunday night just to check and see if they had gotten DD 5.1 audio up yet) when I noticed the downsampling to 1280x360("jaggies") occuring again from WCPO-DT around 10pm during the HD NBA Game, I hadn't watched, or checked any HD from WCPO-DT back to sometime before last wednesday night. I didn't even check WCPO-DT last wed night, and tuned to WKEF-DT instead at 8pm as I pretty much figured it would be SD because of the weather warnings.

Ya, I noticed it over the weekend, I believe Sat. afternoon during NBA. I didn't watch Friday nite, so I cannot comment for that nite. I guess we watch tonight and see if its fixed.

Must be HD issues week.... WXIX had bad issues at 8pm (no picture except the "Fox19" logo on both WXIX and WXIX-DT) and still (as of 8:23pm) does not have an HD feed for Idol.

WXIX had bad issues at 8pm (no picture except the "Fox19" logo on both WXIX and WXIX-DT) and still (as of 8:23pm) does not have an HD feed for Idol.

I called the newsroom to see if I could find out what was going on. The person that answered the phone said that they lost their transmitter. I don't think so (I am watching their OTA digital channel and I never saw them go off the air) but clearly they are having some problem with their HD feed.

It appears they have dropped to SD.

Yes, I continue to watch their OTA digital channel... still no HD. Maybe they lost their receiver for the HD feed...

When it rains it pours I suppose .... And don't forget Murphy's law ...

WCPO-DT+WKEF-DT ABC HD

WCPO is probably(hopefully anyway) working on things ....

Anyway, at 9:25pm, HD is currently up on WCPO-DT for "Boston Legal", but Yes the "jaggies" are still there currently. Much of lthe time, It is a little more difficult to "spot it" with this programming than is the case with say, the Basketball game Sunday night.

No "jaggies on WKEF-DT", however, they are currently having another problem, as also is being discussed in Dayton thread. Looks as though their encoder is "dropping" much of the Chroma Information at times(perhaps especially during "bandwidth demanding" sections of content? ), as color is varying occasionally between Black and white, somewhat "normal" and "weird" color(or B&W) artifacts that appear as "polygon shapes across various portions of the screen .... Or/and, it's as if the Chroma information is lagging behind the frame where it is "supposed to be" by a fraction of a second, and is also causing what looks like some sort of "color ghosting" ..

WXIX-DT/WRGT-DT :

Just checked just before 9:30pm, and Fox HD is up on WRGT-DT, Dayton. As other posters have observed earlier, WXIX-DT has video up, but it's SD feed ....

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

Update: Oh, BTW --- Bluestraw -- I'm sending you a PM with add'l info on WCPO "jaggies", in case it's of any assistance in your "efforts".

Here are some more screen grabs. We've seen a lot of these, but I wanted to point out something. As I think most people have noticed, text and straight (diagonal) lines seem to show the jaggies the most. So, look at the screen grabs attached to this post. Notices the "see more" is from an Aquos HD commercial. The 2,000/0% text is from an SD Subaru commercial. Notice the jaggies exist in the SD video as well.

Now, look at the captures from Boston Legal. The yellow circles indicate areas where the jaggies are more likely to be noticed. The RED circle indicates the 9 WCPO logo that has been inserted. What I think is VERY interesting (and possibly might give a clue to what the problem is) is the fact that the logo inside this red circle is "jaggie free". In fact, it looks perfect.

Also, when they "throw the switch" to analog source (noticeable because you usually hear the "snap" and see the picture become blurry/washed out) the jaggies also do not appear to be there. WCPO doesn't switch to the analog source during every commercial like WKRC seems to do, so usually jaggies are present in commercials, but they do switch from time to time and the jaggies go away (but the picture is overall worse anyway).

IMAGES BELOW (I apologize for their size, but I think it's important to see them at full resolution)

WCPO-DT Aquos - notice the jaggies
http://65.185.12.23/caps/aquos.jpg


WLWT-DT Aquos - notice, no jaggies... perfect
http://65.185.12.23/caps/nbc-aquos.jpg


WCPO-DT Subaru SD commercial - notice jaggies
http://65.185.12.23/caps/textsubaru.jpg


WCPO-DT Boston Legal HD - notice jaggies, esp inside yellow circle
http://65.185.12.23/caps/table.jpg


WCPO-DT Logo inserted during Boston Legal HD - notice no jaggies on logo, but jaggies otherwise, especially noticeable in the yellow circles
http://65.185.12.23/caps/logo.jpg



WLWT-DT Scrubs HD with text overlay - notice the perfect smoothness, as HD should look
http://65.185.12.23/caps/nbc-scrubs.jpg




Hopefully, if Mr. Talley is having trouble seeing the jaggies on his TV, he should be able to see it here. Maybe he needs a new TV...

Nice screenshots jimp2244. Around folks shirt collars was the first place I happened to notice the jaggies tonight during HD "Boston Legal". Not there on WKEF-DT, as usual(although as noted above they are having "other problems" currently). Also Excellent observation concerning "no jaggies" around the ID bug ....

Notice the jaggies exist in the SD video as well.


Keep in mind, ABC upconverts "national" SD commercials airing on the network to 720p at the network level and sends them out over the ABC HD feed, so stations don't have to switch from ABC HD feed during primetime except to insert local commercials. I'm not sure, but I think they may also send (at least in prime time) SD ABC programming(when HD version isn't "available") over HD feed, and upconverted at network level as well.

I think it's probably up to the station to decide "where/when" they switch to the SD feed from ABC that also feeds the analog station, although it probably makes less and less sense for them to switch to SD during national commercial breaks these days as more and more commercials are beginning to be offered in HD.

So, the jaggies should-* be there during the SD upconverts on ABC HD feed, but I personally haven't seen them(well, other than "standard NTSC SD video artifacts" as mentioned earlier) from SD sources WCPO is handling, and that is being upconverted to 720p at WCPO ....

* - Update : OOPS! Of course, the "jaggies" shouldn't be there at all, I didn't quite come up with the right words for that, LOL .... probably should have said "the jaggies are there from WCPO-DT on the SD upconverts on ABC HD feed, just as they are there for HD programming .....



Also, when they "throw the switch" to analog source (noticeable because you usually hear the "snap" and see the picture become blurry/washed out) the jaggies also do not appear to be there. WCPO doesn't switch to the analog source during every commercial like WKRC seems to do, so usually jaggies are present in commercials, but they do switch from time to time and the jaggies go away (but the picture is overall worse anyway).


I think you just said the same thing I did above, but in a slightly different way .... :-)

So, it shouldn't be overlooked from jimp2244's post that Scrubs is now in HD.

If Mr. Talley has his avsforum settings set for 30 posts per page, I hope he manages to go back to page 179 and read the posts he may miss otherwise ;)

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

Update :

"My Network TV" to be All HD programming .... Since they do a good job with WB HD currently, one might assume(with the cautions that come with that word ass-u-me) that will be the case from WSTR-DT as well.

See here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=678002

By the way - In case anyone was wondering, the short, occasional audio dropouts during some WB HD programming via DD 5.1 are present on WBDT-DT WB HD Dayton as is the case with WSTR. I notice several every week from either station during HD "Everwood".

I received a response from Mr. Talley this morning. They took some steps early yesterday in hopes of resolving this issue. I let him know last night we did not have a change in PQ. Below is the reponse he provided and he mentioned that I should fill you guys in.

--------------
I did see the problem for myself last night during several scenes in Boston Legal. I am speaking with Tandberg today to see if they found anything. I'm on it, tell the guys on the forum to take a deep breath. It could be worse, I could be off the air. At least we are making pictures, just not as pretty as it should be. I don't need a new TV set and I don't need glasses. I can see it. Hang in there!!!

Thanks again for all your help,

Tom

Well thats excellent news! I can take it easy and just hope things get sorted out. Its nice to know that at least WKRC and WCPO engineers monitor the board, now we need to get WLWT and WXIX to participate more often.

Well thats excellent news! I can take it easy and just hope things get sorted out. Its nice to know that at least WKRC and WCPO engineers monitor the board, now we need to get WLWT and WXIX to participate more often.


Yes, it would nice to have engineers from WLWT WXIX to participate here when their time allows for it.

Yes, it would nice to have engineers from WLWT WXIX to participate here when their time allows for it.

If engineers from WCPO and WKRC happen to talk to engineers from WLWT and WXIX, maybe they can suggest monitoring our thread :)

An Engineer at WLWT sent me a AVSforum PM last year to let me know they had DD 5.1 up .... he had said he was surprised no one had mentioned it on the thread, as they'd had it up for several days before he sent the PM ....

I'd talked to weasel on the phone some time back, and he'd said he had told the other Cincy area broadcast engineers about this thread at one of their meetings ....

In the past, Engineers from KET, ThinkTV(WPTO/WPTD) and WCET have posted on this thread, I also know WDTN/WKEF/WRGT engineers used to monitor the Dayton thread.

In Cincinnati, that leaves WSTR, WXIX and WBQC/WOTH, (and WKOI "sort of" I suppose as it really serves both Cincy+Dayton markets) hopefully those guys are reading here from time to time as well ....

Well, about time for HD Alias, wonder if I'll be watching on WKEF-DT, WCPO-DT or analog ....

I noticed during Alias that WCPO-DT now has the Weather graphics working without dropping into SD. It looks like the jaggies are gone from the short time monitored it

Jaggies are still there on WCPO-DT....

Weather graphics on HD is nice though. Like the WCPO logo from one of my screen shots in a recent post, the weather graphics do not suffer from jaggies. It's only the ABC HD picture.

yep, I see them during LOST now. At least the show is in HD this week.

Notice WKRC-DT is currently off air(12:15am Thur), analog 12 still up.

Problems from the storms perhaps?

Well I can see all the transmission towers from my dorm and it seems all the lightning is hitting either WKRC tower or WCPO tower. Which one is further north? Thats the one I have seen hit several times.

Another thing, I am currently trying to watch Jimmy Kimmel, but the weather is acting up. I thought WCPO had two radars of their own. When they first installed Ultimate Doppler 9, they had a radar near downtown.

Of the two, WCPO stick is farthest North .... It's about 3,272.47 Feet NNE of WKRC's stick, using Coordinates listed on FCC site and NAD27 coordinate info with the software I'm using .... ;)

BTW, WKRC-DT fired back up at 12:25am ....

Update: Oh --- Lightning strikes on 1,000FT towers are of course "expected" ....

Although it has actually been quite rare from what I've "noticed"(especially the last couple of years) --- I'd venture to guess Power outages at the studio or transmitter site due to "storms" are probably the most frequent reason we sometimes see stations go off the air(or in "blank screen mode") during storms, and especially digital stations -- some stations have backup generators(umm, another PLUS for VHF if you get my meaning ;) , but, they're probably more likely to be used with analog station, currently .....

I thought WCPO had two radars of their own. When they first installed Ultimate Doppler 9, they had a radar near downtown.

Not to get off topic here, but I think the local news around here tries to "fake out" the viewers (or at least they are not as up front as they should be). After the first few weeks of "ultimate doppler 9," where you could see they had two sweeps going (one from near downtown and one from Batavia), it has been just the one new sweep from Batavia.

WLWT has the "Power of 5" network, but I really wonder if they really have a network of 5 radars. When they first got it they would go and pull live data and have a sweep out of Louisville for example. These days it seems like all they have is the Cincinnati-based sweep and the National Weather Service composites.

WKRC doesn't pretend to have more than one radar (from what I can tell), but they do say they have the "most precise" "precision doppler 12" radar. However, on multiple occasions I have seen them using what they call precision doppler 12 when it's obvious the sweep is coming from Wilmington (the national weather service radar site).

it was nice to see wcpo inserting local graphics into the HD channel - but that does not give them a pass on the jaggies.. but I believe they are finally taking the initiative to get it fixed.. here is my problem.. the graphics are still in the 4:3 safe zone.. get that stuff out to the 16:9 wings and make it smaller - HDTV can allow for some small but still readable text - kinda like weasel did with the local 12 bug during the ncaa hoops tournament a while back.. another suggestion.. only flash it up for the first minute or two after a commercial break

just my 2 cents..

jim

it was nice to see wcpo inserting local graphics into the HD channel - but that does not give them a pass on the jaggies.. but I believe they are finally taking the initiative to get it fixed.. here is my problem.. the graphics are still in the 4:3 safe zone.. get that stuff out to the 16:9 wings and make it smaller - HDTV can allow for some small but still readable text - kinda like weasel did with the local 12 bug during the ncaa hoops tournament a while back.. another suggestion.. only flash it up for the first minute or two after a commercial break

just my 2 cents..

jim


Yes, I agree 100%... I think the blue background on the crawler (scrolling info) is a big ugly though...

Yes, I agree 100%... I think the blue background on the crawler (scrolling info) is a big ugly though...
While we're giving feedback on the weather inserts... I wish they would move them to the bottom of the screen. Pretty much 99.99% of the TV that I watch has people's heads above their torsos. While watching "Lost" last night, there were several occasions where I couldn't see the face of the person that was speaking because of the weather graphics.

And... could they do something about the timing of all their graphics. On at least four occasions that I can remember during "Lost", they had the weather map graphic in the top, left center, the weather scroll in the top center, and some promo for a show, whose name I can't remember, in the lower right part of the screen. With all those graphics up at once, I'd guess that roughly 30% of the screen was obscured to some degree. Can't they time their graphics so that no more than one or two is up at any time?

I think there will be people who complain about the weather bugs and "break ins" for severe weather info from the studio and such no matter what ..... I'd rather not see *any* bugs of any sort during programming I want to watch, but we know that's really not going to happen except for some "rare" cases ....

So, although I'd most prefer seeing the "weather bugs" or "tickers" only during commercials, I'd rather see weather bugs and HD than weather bugs and SD .... What really "bugs" me though these days is when stations alter proper Aspect ratio when they "squeeze in" graphics at the bottom(without "squeezing in" the sides for proper AR) ... I've seen just about every station do that at one time or another, it's become common from WKEF/WRGT, Dayton .... I don't see how anyone could stand to watch that .....

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

Anyway, Does anyone know of any station, anywhere which has been able to insert SD graphics into HD(without dropping from HD), without problems such as perhaps, downsampling to 1280x360 occuring?

I also wonder what exactly the encoder settings were at WCPO-DT which "fixed" the jaggies between dec 05(or jan 06) and Last week?

Most HD encoders do have the capability to insert a simple graphic, and I don't know, but perhaps the encoder can be set up to key it in on a auto-timer as well --- such as an ID bug, like the "WCPO-DT 10" bug that used to appear in upper right hand corner(about 17 minutes after top and bottom of hour) before their studio move - "long ago", WKRC-DT used to insert a "WKRC-DT 31" bug occasionally as well, I also remember a rather large "WLWT-DT 35" bug occasionally inserted during 2002 Winter HD Olympics from NBC/HDnet ....

WHIO-DT Dayton does(including last night) insert local weather warnings into HD, but I think it is "HD graphics", and the placement includes area outside of 4x3 area ... I first saw them do this years ago, apparently while "testing" during daytime hours. Recently, they seem to be doing it more, perhaps regularly ....

WSTR-DT once or twice did insert local HD graphics(promo for WB64 News at 10) into WB HD, I think I've seen a EAS(severe weather info) "Ticker" on WCET-DT a couple of times as well(went across entire 16x9 on 48.1 during PBS HD) ....

I've been watching HD from Cincinnati+Dayton stations for over 4 1/2 years now, and so far, I believe WHIO-DT has been the only digital station(out of 15) I've noticed which has demonstrated on a "regular" basis(as of late) they have the capability to properly insert local graphics(other than an ID bug) into HD ....

it was nice to see wcpo inserting local graphics into the HD channel - but that does not give them a pass on the jaggies.. but I believe they are finally taking the initiative to get it fixed.. here is my problem.. the graphics are still in the 4:3 safe zone.. get that stuff out to the 16:9 wings and make it smaller - HDTV can allow for some small but still readable text - kinda like weasel did with the local 12 bug during the ncaa hoops tournament a while back.. another suggestion.. only flash it up for the first minute or two after a commercial break

I asked Mr. Talley pretty much the same question and it seems to be an equipment limitaiton. Think one graphics machine feeding both HD and SD feeds. I didn't think to suggest moving them to the bottom of the screen, which would resolve heads being cut off, OTOH it would not be a good solution with ABC Sports.

Jeff,
I also asked if the key inserts (his term) were somehow related to the downsampling and he responded saying that they are not related. He hopes to have an answer to this problem within a week.

I think just having the ability to do key inserts in HD is such a HUGE improvement and is really, really cool! If given the choice between dropping to SD or having the HD weather keys, I would certainly choose the HD weather keys!

All,

I just received confirmation from Tom at WCPO that he has identified the faulty piece of equipment that was causing the "jaggies" issue. It was an HD frame sync connected to the HD network signal. Upon finding this root cause yesterday, he ordered up a replacement overnight, tested it this morning, and passed on the good news! FYI the unit had been installed since February with the new network rack.

He asked me to pass on his thanks to all for spotting this so quickly and providing such good evidence and feedback. Now there is no ABC HD until Saturday, so let's keep our fingers crossed for a few more days.

Personally I would like to thank Tom for his work and open communications on this - certainly WCPO did listen to us :)

lets hope this fixes it once and forall!!

doesn't wcpo pass gma in hd in the morning? that should be a good indication

Personally I would like to thank Tom for his work and open communications on this - certainly WCPO did listen to us :)
I second that thank you to Tom. If he needs concrete evidence as to the value of engaging with this forum, then he can use me as an example. In the past, I would simply not even try WCPO programming, instead opting for the Dayton alternative by default whenever I wanted to view ABC programming. Now that Tom has a dialog going with this forum, I try WCPO first, and only switch to Dayton if the HD PQ is really objectionable, and that has only been in the last week or so, and mostly only NBA Basketball.

lets hope this fixes it once and forall!!

doesn't wcpo pass gma in hd in the morning? that should be a good indication

Last I heard GMA wasn't in HD because of the WCPO crawl. Now we have keys on the HD feed it may be possible they have turned on the HD feed for GMA.

I just received confirmation from Tom at WCPO that he has identified the faulty piece of equipment that was causing the "jaggies" issue. It was an HD frame sync connected to the HD network signal. ......
....

Finally, something that seems to at least make some sense concerning an explanation for cause of the downsampling to 1280x360 from WCPO-DT during ABC HD, at least pertaining to this most recent occurance of the issue ...


lets hope this fixes it once and forall!!


I hope so too, especially since WKEF-DT has had problems the last few nights. Maybe they've been working on it today, as I've noticed They have "The Tube" down today - well, they have it labeled "The TUB" via either PSIP EIT or ETT (can't remember which table that "label" would come from) .... LOL .....


I think just having the ability to do key inserts in HD is such a HUGE improvement and is really, really cool!

Yes, it's very cool, much better than dropping to SD, IMO as well -- Personally, It doesn't bother me it's only in the "4x3 area", either ....


Last I heard GMA wasn't in HD because of the WCPO crawl. Now we have keys on the HD feed it may be possible they have turned on the HD feed for GMA.


I have seen them switch to HD for GMA on occasion(although I don't get a chance to check it very often), just not when they've had the local crawl up.

Sheesh! This WCPO jaggies thing makes you wonder what's really going on there. How can they be so out of touch with the quality of their product? Isn't there something seriously wrong when WE have to point it out to them and demand a fix?

To be entirely honest, certain shows are very good at masking the problem. Sports are very good at magnifying the problem and ABC hasn't been airing many events recently. Sure, it bugs the crap out of us, but i'm sure there are loads of people that never noticed the difference.

Also, keep in mind that at this time their ATSC signal is pretty much a second thought since their NTSC signal is their big money maker. I really don't blame them for taking that stance since they are running a business and they know where the bulk of their revenue comes from and it isn't us. I believe that WCPO is building and planning for the future and we're watching the progress. I'm happy that they are transmitting HD programming and they try to attend to our complaints.

i agree.. while it does not let them off the hook - they are being proactive and I am glad to see it... most of us were early adopters.. and things like this are the price early adopters pay - I, like most that had the ability, turned away from WCPO and used WKEF - just like a good consumer should do.. If company A is not doing their job, then go to company B for the service to hit company A in the benjamins!

jim

My take is if the local networks are able to appease the AVSers, they are putting out a better product for all to enjoy. This direct input from the public is something they are obviously taking seriously.

For instance the weather alerts (wed. during LOST) overlayed with the HD signal is likely a direct result of this forum.

Sure I would prefer the weather bug 16:9 and not 4:3 but I still was watching HD.

This is progress!!!!

Did anyone get a chance to check GMA on WCPO-DT this morning, or record it? Was it HD(including during the locally inserted crawl), and were the "jaggies" gone?

I had intended to set up a recording, but It slipped my mind this morning ...

Thanks ...

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

Somehow, I have the feeling the "100's of complaints" WCPO reportedly received last week when ABC's WED Night HD lineup was SD probably helped us more than anything else, even though it was "specifically" an issue that was unrelated to "the jaggies" ...

Hopefully, however the assistance provided by AVSforum members in this case provided an excellent example to station engineers of how valuable such feedback can be for them. Even taking a bit of time to say, monitor this thread should prove valuable to them.

Although, keep in mind, sorting through many of the subjects we discuss here to find the "info" that is relevant and of interest to them can become overly time consuming for them as well. While I don't think we should "limit" our discussions here to topics only of interest to broadcast engineers, I do think it is important for us to be as accurate, honest, and detailed as is "reasonably" possible when we address "problem issues" we're having with the local stations ...

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

While I think it's good many posters are focusing on the positive, and I'm more than willing to let "bygones be bygones"(I'm even hoping for it, LOL) so to speak --- and I'm glad they've been so responsive to us concerning the issue over the past week ... OTOH, Let's not "gloss over" things here and make things appear "rosier" than they are.

I think Bubster's post is pretty much right on the mark, and, no offense to the folks at WCPO, I think he's just telling it like it is, considering the "past history" of the Jaggies --- such as(this by no means is a "all inclusive", or "detailed" list) :

#1). The continuous appearance of "the jaggies" during ALL ABC HD between about August 2004(when they were first noticed by Jim, I was very busy that summer+watched little TV so don't know if it happened "earlier") and Jan 10, 2006. That's not a typo folks, that's one and a half years ....

#2) . In "relation" to #1 The repeated, and often consistant feedback(including screenshots, and Ron's findings which I sent them not once, but twice) and observations by many posters here as sent to WCPO enginnering between about August 2004 and Jan 10, 2006 .....

#3). The "responses" received from WCPO in some cases concerning #1+#2 above ....

To be entirely honest, certain shows are very good at masking the problem.


One easy way to spot the 1280x360 downsampling is to look at the "round" ABC bug off ABC HD feed during HD programming. When the downsampling is occuring from WCPO-DT, there are two small, very visable "creases" at about 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. I even see it if I "downrez" and send 480i via S-video out from STB. It's not there when the downsampling("jaggies") isn't occuring, was never there on the SD ABC feed, and the creases have never been there from WKEF-DT Dayton, WSYX-DT Columbus, or any other ABC HD affiliate I've seen.

The "jaggies"(1280x360 downsampling) were there from WCPO-DT continously from sometime in Summer 2004 (first reported here by Jim in August 2004, I was very busy that summer and was watching little TV so don't know if they popped up earlier), CONTINUOSLY - ALL the time during ABC HD, but *only* ABC HD feed(included SD material upconverted at network level, such as National commerical spots) until January 11, 2006, as reported here : http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6901890&highlight=jaggies#post6901890


Sports are very good at magnifying the problem and ABC hasn't been airing many events recently.


Actually, ABC has had NBA HD basketball quite frequently on weekends as of late, and NBC has had some HD Hockey on weekend afternoons as well.

I've watched portions of the HD NBA games on WCPO-DT or WKEF-DT occasionally over the last month or so(WKEF-DT has missed the HD feed a couple of times), and I did not see the Jaggies on any of those games prior to last weekend from WCPO-DT ..... I don't think the downsampling to 1280x360 was occuring at any time between Jan 11, 2006 and Sometime Last week.

Agree they are very noticable during HD football and HD basketball, They were also very noticable during 2005 Rose parade HD coverage on ABC.

Jeff,
Sure we know exactly where to look and see the problem, but my point was the uninformed users may never notice the problem. Yes, I was oversimplifying the HD sports coverage, but compaired to last year with the NHL and the NBA running in the spring there used to be more sports coverage. I also agree that the problem didn't reoccur until last week, I'm just saying that people never noticed the problem the first time around or even this time around.

my point was the uninformed users may never notice the problem.

I took no issue with that point, nor do I believe I indicated as such anywhere in my post. Part of my point was the "timing" involved with this most recent, and the previous "longstanding" occurance, as I think it may be somewhat relevant to the latest info we've heard on the cause of the problem, and the "dates" involved ...

As I've said before, (although for instance you don't see "creases" in the ABC bug on SD), I think the issue looks very similar to artifacts such as "interlace artifacts" on NTSC SD. I suspect that may even be potentially a reason why we had a problem getting our message through to WCPO on "the jaggies" during it's longstanding first "appearance" .....

However, I think the issue is very apparent to anyone(including to my 80 year old father with cataracts) given a direct comparsion to another source of ABC HD, such as WKEF-DT, Dayton. Not only because of "the jaggies" but also the reduced "effective resolution", although probably less so concerning the latter ..... I'd bet the guys in the MNF HD truck would have even caught it had they been monitoring WCPO-DT's off air signal during the Bengals HD game on MNF during 2004-2005 season, it was EXTREMELY apparent during that game for instance the difference between WCPO-DT+WKEF-DT .... Not only on the shots from the field, and on the "yellow stripes" on the announcer's mics, but shots they had of the "new" Camp washington Chili, and shots while driving over The roebling suspension bridge ...

YEAH! No "jaggies" on Remember the Titans this evening!

YEAH! No "jaggies" on Remember the Titans this evening!

Yes, it looks good :)

I am new to the world of HDTV (and to this forum). I recently upgrated my DishNetwork receiver to High Def with the Dish Network HDTV package. The world cup is coming up, so I want to get an Off-the-air HDTV antenna installed (to get the games on ABC). I have visited the website antennaweb, and found out that I need a Medium Directional Antenna (medium-size, multi-element antenna). I live in-between Over-the-Rhine and Clifton Heights, i.e., my house is on a hill side overlooking the downtown Cincinnati Basin, I have a hill behind the house that leads to Clifton. I know very little about electronics (and not particularly interested to learn), so I am looking for a trusted outfit in Cincinnati, that could set it up for me, i.e., reco an antenna, install it, then run the signal to the receiver using the existing cable from the dish (I understand that diplexers are involved).
Could you please send me recommendations in Cincinnati? Thanks a lot for any help you can provide. BTW, I did call a few businesses. Quotes ranged from $100 up to $400. Hence my request for a recommendation.
Gerard

Yes, it looks good :)

NBA playoff game looks bad here today. I say it's broke again. :confused:

NBA playoff game looks bad here today. I say it's broke again. :confused:

Are you referring to the overall picture quality or the "jaggie" issue. It looked fine to me compared to the previous playoff game. I didn't see the "jaggies".

Zauzou,

Welcome to AVSforum! You have a response via PM ...

NBA playoff game looks bad here today. I say it's broke again. :confused:

I checked WCPO-DT briefly a couple of times today during the game, including Comarpsion with WKEF-DT ABC HD Dayton, and I didn't see any problem with Jaggies from WCPO-DT during those short periods ...

I also watched quite a bit of "Remember the Titans" last night(mostly from WKEF-DT, however, mostly for the DD 5.1 audio), and didn't see a problem ... For some reason, WCPO-DT *may* look just a very, very slight tad "softer" on my sets than WKEF-DT(which also sends 720p), as has been the case since January 11 since the first, longstanding occurance of the "jaggies" were finally fixed (I saw no difference when they installed the new encoder, BTW). I had no way to do such a comparsion beforehand, as WKEF-DT switched from NBC to ABC in late August 2004. From what I can recall, WDTN-DT(Was ABC Dayton prior to August 2004) looked identical to WCPO-DT from Spring 2003, (when WCPO-DT first switched from upconverting ABC HD to 1080i to sending 720p) until WCPO's studio move in Summer 2004.

But then again, I may be seeing things, and if there is any difference there in PQ between WKEF-DT/WCPO-DT during ABC HD, it appears to be very slight.

NBA playoff game looks bad here today. I say it's broke again. :confused:

Yeah, not broken. After watching the Pistons game and DH today on ABC, I can say for certain that WCPO-DT is just fine.

Something is awry here. It's not as bad as it had been for last years NBA playoffs but I'm still seeing jaggies on the court lines that I do not see on TNT and ESPN coverage. I'll try to snag some screenies with my new Canon A620 that's supposed to arrive Monday :)

[edit] BTW I'm using TWC here if that makes a difference.

Something is awry here. It's not as bad as it had been for last years NBA playoffs but I'm still seeing jaggies on the court lines that I do not see on TNT and ESPN coverage. I'll try to snag some screenies with my new Canon A620 that's supposed to arrive Monday :)

[edit] BTW I'm using TWC here if that makes a difference.
I watched much of the Detroit/Cleveland NBA game on WCPO via TWC on channel 909 and there were no jaggies.

Bubster - where did you get the a620 from? it has been on my short list for cameras - however, it looks like its discontinued.. too bad becasuse it seems like a great camera!

Something is awry here. It's not as bad as it had been for last years NBA playoffs but I'm still seeing jaggies on the court lines that I do not see on TNT and ESPN coverage. I'll try to snag some screenies with my new Canon A620 that's supposed to arrive Monday :)

[edit] BTW I'm using TWC here if that makes a difference.

Bubster - where did you get the a620 from? it has been on my short list for cameras - however, it looks like its discontinued.. too bad becasuse it seems like a great camera!


Newegg has it real cheap: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16830120179

Fee 1 gig SD card comes with it also.

First off, real quick -- don't let my PM to Zazou(Note/clarification: he sent me a PM, and I responded to it via PM, which is why I didn't also respond to his post on this thread) keep others from responding to his post as well!

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

Early WKRC-DT field Test info :

I had seen this several years ago, but was digging through a bit of it again today for a post on another thread, and thought I'd post it for anyone who hasn't seen it who might be interested, since we don't often get a chance to see reception/field test info from our local stations ....

The following is a link to a paper from Gary Sringoli at Zenith from 1999 entitled "DTV Field Test Methodology and Results And Their Effect on VSB Receiver Design" :

http://www.zenith.com/digitalbroadcast/downloads/ATSC%20Field%20Tests%20and%20Rx%20Design.pdf

Included in the paper are reception field test results conducted in '98~99 for several U.S. digital stations. One of those stations was WKRC-DT, Cincinnati, albeit, at the time at about 1/2 power(or about -3db) of their current operation(800KW ERP). WKRC-DT's results are shown on Page 20+21. Here is a portion of that report(without the graphs/etc) :



From Pg 20 of ""DTV Field Test Methodology and Results And Their Effect on VSB Receiver Design", by Gary Sringoli :

"5.2.9 WKRC (CINCINNATI)
WKRC performed a DTV test to study their service availability in the greater Cincinnati area, and increase their DTV experience. The terrain in their area is also similar to that in Washington DC with lots of hills which provides a challenge to any transmitted signals. A total of 121 sites were tested, covering about 48 miles WKRC transmitted a DTV signal on CH 31 at an ERP of 349 kW and an HAAT of 951 feet. The transmitter is located just outside of the downtown area with an antenna pattern that was omni-directional. Note that this transmitter antenna had a relatively small HAAT value. Again, the combination of a low transmitter antenna height and rough terrain produces a large number of terrain-obstructed sites. WKRC had almost 40% of the test sites obstructed. The number of sites with two or more terrain obstructions was moderate (12%), causing some severe multipath during these tests. Due to the number of tall hills in the coverage area, only 82% of the sites had a received field strength above the minimum value needed for error-free operation. Despite this, 75% of the sites had error-free DTV reception (raw service availability). However, when the sties with field strengths below the minimum value were removed from the analysis, the system performance index was high at 91.9%, indicating that most of the sites without DTV reception had too little field strength. As with the other tests, over 50% of the obstructed sites had acceptable DTV reception, indicating once again that broadcasting is not limited to line-of-sight operation. Figure 27 illustrates the margin versus field strength for the Cincinnati tests. Note that there were very few strong signal failures in this test."

I have a quick question, i'm an antenna noob and need a recommendation for a good/cheap antenna for my hdtv. I don't need anything really fancy or expensive I just need it for the 3 months I'm at home, when I go back to school I'll have digital cable. I did the antennaweb.com thing and it said I needed a medium directional antenna for most my stations (towers are 8-10 miles away for all but 1 station) Can anyone make any recommendations? Thanks :)

I received a couple of updates yesterday from Tom at WCPO, and I thought I'd pass them on. Please note that I'm simply the "messenger"! From my dealings with Tom he seems very happy to help and explain things, so if you want more details you could try asking him....

1) DD5.1 is delayed until around September, due to the need for some additional equipment. They are going to implement this "properly", so that when ABC HD drops to Stereo, we would not just get 2 channels passed through inside a 5.1 "matrix", but instead would have a simulated 5.1 signal. It's not possible to simply pass the stereo "natively" since ABC HD doesn't drop their other AES streams, they just remain "empty". Hopefully the 5.1 will be ready for the Fall season!

2) It is not currently possible to pass GMA in HD due to the crawl. This is displayed via a "Dekocast" machine, which doesn't simply key the video but also shrinks and slightly sucks the video up to make room for the crawl, hence cannot work on the HD feed. There are some longterm plans afoot to purchase a HD dekocast, but not for this year.

2) It is not currently possible to pass GMA in HD due to the crawl. This is displayed via a "Dekocast" machine, which doesn't simply key the video but also shrinks and slightly sucks the video up to make room for the crawl, hence cannot work on the HD feed. There are some longterm plans afoot to purchase a HD dekocast, but not for this year.

I realize you're just the messenger, so don't take this as being directed towards you. If the crawl is the reason GMA can't be passed in HD, then the crawl should be eliminated from the digital broadcast. Viewers should never have to watch substandard programming because the station management "feels like" putting an unnecessary crawl on the screen (which I believe also squeezes and screws up the aspect ratio).

If they feel that some viewers would somehow be "deprived" without the crawl,
It would make much more sense to put the crawl up on analog 9 and send the HD feed to WCPO-DT. No reason to not let the viewer decide.

I have a quick question, i'm an antenna noob and need a recommendation for a good/cheap antenna for my hdtv. I don't need anything really fancy or expensive I just need it for the 3 months I'm at home, when I go back to school I'll have digital cable. I did the antennaweb.com thing and it said I needed a medium directional antenna for most my stations (towers are 8-10 miles away for all but 1 station) Can anyone make any recommendations? Thanks :)


Small~medium sized VHF/UHF combo such as CM3016, RS VU90 would probably be good choices, and are also relatively inexpensive(less than $50). Although these are "outdoor" type antennas they can of course be installed indoors as well(where this is "Room"), such as in an attic.

For an "indoor" type antenna, for UHF, The ~$4 UHF "outline bowtie" might do wonders combined with "rabbit ears" for VHF - WCPO-DT, ABC HD Cincinnati transmits on VHF currently, the rest of the local digital/HD stations transmit on UHF. You might even be able to get by on VHF with a "UHF only antenna", but you may need a VHF/UHF joiner(to combine the VHF rabbit ears with the UHF antenna), and a 300ohm~75ohm matching tranformer(balun) for the outline bowtie as well. Zenith Silver Sensor and RS DBT are among the best UHF "indoor type" antennas available, are generally in the $20~40 range. There is no better "indoor type" VHF antenna available than "rabbit ears" that I'm aware of.

There are also inexpensive(~$8~$20) VHF+UHF indoor antennas available, usually these have a UHF loop(very similar, but not quite as "good" a UHF antenna as the $4 outline Bowtie at RS), and VHF rabbit ears.

I received a couple of updates yesterday from Tom at WCPO, and I thought I'd pass them on.


Thanks for passing that along, I have updated WCPO-DT info in the first post of this thread, accordingly.


If the crawl is the reason GMA can't be passed in HD, then the crawl should be eliminated from the digital broadcast.


Based on some info that has been posted here in the past concerning how they have their switcher set up --- That may not be as easy as it sounds like it should be ... Luckily, however you can watch GMA in HD from WKEF-DT, Dayton -

Update: Then again -- Since they were able to set up the Weather graphics w/o dropping to SD, I might speculate that I'd think it might be possible for them to set it up so GMA could be HD, but without the local crawl inserted ... If it can be done from a "techincal" perspective, perhaps there may be other, "non-technical" considerations involved as well.

BTW, on WKEF-DT and other ABC stations you'll often see a national "crawl" during GMA HD (or SD) at bottom of screen instead of the locally inserted one from WCPO .. [update] : If I recall correctly from the last time I paid any attention(and that was quite some time ago), the local WCPO crawl "covered up" the national crawl from ABC [end update] ....


(which I believe also squeezes and screws up the aspect ratio).


hmmm ... I haven't paid much attention lately, but from what I have seen from them, I think WCPO has been one of the few stations which has generally just about allways perserved proper AR by "squeezing in" the sides slightly+ when as necessary they "squeeze in" a crawl/school closing info/etc. at bottom of the screen .... Concerning The crawl during SD GMA if they are "covering up" the national crawl with it, it would seem to me that no, (or little in the case the Local crawl is a tad bit "taller") "squeezing in" of the sides would be necessary to preserve proper AR.


If they feel that some viewers would somehow be "deprived" without the crawl,
It would make much more sense to put the crawl up on analog 9 and send the HD feed to WCPO-DT.


I do agree with you, that would seem to me to be the "optimal" situation for viewers, at least until analog shut off occurs ....

WXIX-DT is now sending out 27-5 and 27-6 tonight. This must be a PSIP issue. WRGT-DT has had the same problem although I can't verify if its there tonight since I can't get I good signal from my location

Robert,

I noticed that as well last night from WXIX-DT - Believe it started occuring sometime after 8pm. I also noticed it was also occuring from WDKY-DT Lexington, Last night.

It's still occuring from WRGT-DT, as has been the case the past couple of weeks during this "last occurance" of it from them. It's happened several times from WRGT-DT over the past several months, and it keeps popping back up(beginning during fox programming) sometime after they "fix it" each time ...

I expect some sort of PSIP issue with the Fox "splicer" issue is involved, especially given that it allways begins occuring during Fox programming, and because the 27.5 is labeled "East"(for Fox East Coast feed?) in PSIP tables ....

I do think I was getting something a bit different with this from WXIX last night vs WRGT or WDKY, perhaps due to differences in PSIP setup at the station ... With WDKY/WRGT, If I punch in the RF channel (4 or 30), the receiver "directly" showed 27.5, with WRGT-DT, it's the "same thing", but will decode on either 27.5 or 45.1 (didn't get a chance to check that with WDKY .... With WXIX, it was still going to "19.x", if I punched in "29", but, after tuning in WXIX, if I went to "27.5", it was decoding WXIX-DT there as well.

I suspect Many folks who have receivers which only update PSIP VCT info on rescans(or are using Sat receivers that get the channel remapping/guide info off the sat) may not even notice this, or perhaps in some cases there even may be folks experiening "issues" with this without realizing the 27.5 "exists" ....

Is something going on here? I could have sworn that last night I saw an update from Jeff that talked about what the different stations were doing with severe weather coverage and inserting graphics into HD. Now it appears to be gone. Am I the only one?

I noticed the same thing and thought it was odd. I received the email alert last night, but the post was gone this morning. Perhaps Jeff deleted it?

Guys, there's no problem .... I deleted it as I figured it was unnecessary and mostly only relevant for last night for folks, concerning WCET/DT being off air after storms until around 10pm/etc ...

It does seem "interesting" that In Cincinnati, the two stations that run Multicast SD weather services were the two stations breaking into programming(Including HD) on the main program service for weather coverage from the studio after 8pm last night, at which time and afterward, I'm not positive, but believe the severe weather had pretty much already "winded down" .... I wonder if they might end up doing things a bit differently after analog shut off?

I did some searching last night for new channels towards Columbus,Dayton,Cincy,lexington and Huntington. Speaking of the 27.5 Channels I have 3 (East) and 27.6 I have 2 (Mtn). Columbus Fox so there is one of the 27's Maybe the reason I pulled in 28 WTTE was because of the rain or weather was a factor because I can never pull it in before any weather factors like rain.I know weather was not a factor in it reading 27.5 it is a glitch from the FOX Networks making 28,45,19,and 56 remapping to 27.5 and 27.6 I don't know IF another was from Cincy or Dayton and the other was from Lexington. I got 64 WSTR for a while. And WOKI or WKOI I guess it was 43 (or 39 on the Digital Side) because it overrode Ch.18 out of Lexington this also happened before on Ch.8 out of Charleston and Ch.7 out of Dayton because they were on the same Digital Frequency? Also it happened on Ch.19 WXIX (29) and another Charleston Channel maybe it was 25 from that Direction if memory serves me right it has been 6 or so months ago since that happened?

It didn't have anything to do with the weather or long distance signal propagation. The Fox affiliates in the area(and evidently elsewhere as well) were(some still are), sending "Duplicate"(and incorrect) PSIP channel remapping info wed night. I suspect the issue may mainly be a Fox/Fox splicer issue rather than an issue at the local affiliates.

Several Fox affiliates were ALL remapping to 27.5/27.6 on Wednesday evening regardless of where they are supposed to "remap to", 27.5 was/is labeled "East", 27.6 is labeled "MTN" ..... in some cases those stations were also remapping to their "normal" virtual remapped channels as well. I saw WRGT-DT(30, remaps to 45.1 normally), WXIX-DT (29 - remaps to 19.1 normally) and WDKY-DT (4, remaps to 56.1 normally) ALL remapping to 27.5/27.6, WRGT-DT has been remapping to EITHER 27.5 or 45.1 for a couple of weeks, now(continuously) ....

For instance, on Wed night, I aimed antenna towards Dayton, Punch in "30", "27.5" pops up. Aim antenna towards Cincinnati, then signal from Fox Dayton isn't good enough so wont decode, but punch in "29" and then "27.5" and then WXIX-DT Cincy shows up on 27.5. Punch in "4" on the remote, then WDKY-DT Lexington shows up on 27.5. Aim antenna towards Columbus, punch in "36", then WTTE-DT shows up on 27.5/27.6/etc ....

WHIO-DT Dayton/WCHS-DT Charleston both transmit on UHF 41. WHIO-DT remaps to 7.1, WCHS-DT should remap to 8.x. WDRB 41 analog, Lousiville also transmits on 41. WXIX-DT cincinnati transmits on 29(remaps to 19.x), WLPX-DT(Formerly "Pax" now "i" network I believe) Charleston transmits on 29, remaps to 39.x. WTTK-DT, Kokomo, IN also transmits on 29 .... WKOI-DT Transmits on 39, remaps to 43.x, WLEX-DT transmits on 39, remaps to 18.1 ...... WVAH-DT Charelston transmits on channel 19, and remaps to 11.x, and so on and so forth .....

Actual co-channel interference can occur only on the channels the stations are "actually" transmitting on, not their PSIP remapped channels ... Some receiver's don't allow for "direct access" manual tuning to the actual RF channel being used, and require "autoscans" or "scanning stations in", and only the PSIP remapped channel is apparent to the "user". Some receivers will require you "clear out" the memory of "virtual remapped channels" if for instance, you'd say actually want to "tune" to channel 19 to try to find a digital signal there from WVAH-DT, if you've scanned and found WXIX-DT previously with the antenna aimed towards Cincinnati ....

PSIP channel remapping is *supposed* to make things less confusing for consumers, as the digital stations "show up" right next to their analog channel number folks are used to, it will also allow stations to keep their existing channel branding(logos/etc) after the transistion is over, no matter what channel they are actually "transmitting" on ......

I think what is actually occuring(at least currently) however is that it is often making things more complicated+difficult for consumers/OTA viewers, for "various" reasons including, #1) the differing ways PSIP is implemented by receiver manufacturers - for instance, apparently, there are some reports of receivers out there that won't even allow you to do any other feature besides "autoscan", which doesn't work very well if you need to tune to a station and "adjust your antenna", as you can't get a "signal meter" reading on a PSIP remapped channel until AFTER you've achieved at least a signal lock on the station), #2), as well as the fact that stations often seem to have difficulty sending "100% proper" PSIP on a 24/7, 365 day per year basis ..... and #3). Do I need a VHF or UHF antenna? The PSIP remapped channel numbers/stations' current analog channel # won't tell you ....

Where the channel remapping in concerned, I tend to still think of PSIP = "pretty stupid information protocol" IMO ;) ... especially since it is something that *seems* relatively simple, although, depending upon circumstances, actually using it can sometimes turn out to be quite confusing+"complicated", especially if your local stations tower locations are in different directions in your market, or if you receive stations from several different markets .... perhaps especially if you are in a "fringe area" for several different markets, in some cases with stations on the same RF or PSIP remapped channel numbers ....

end PSIP rant, sorry ......

Guys, there's no problem .... I deleted it as I figured it was unnecessary and mostly only relevant for last night for folks, concerning WCET/DT being off air after storms until around 10pm/etc ...

From what I remember of it, I thought the information was quite interesting/useful. I think it would be nice to have a record of those things too, so in the future we can look back and see what kinds of things were happening and when. I won't ask you to re-type all that though.

It does seem "interesting" that In Cincinnati, the two stations that run Multicast SD weather services were the two stations breaking into programming(Including HD) on the main program service for weather coverage from the studio after 8pm last night, at which time and afterward, I'm not positive, but believe the severe weather had pretty much already "winded down" .... I wonder if they might end up doing things a bit differently after analog shut off?


I do think that after analog shut off, they would most likely instead put a graphic up on the main channel and then have continuous live coverage on the weather SD service. It's probably too much to ask them to do that now, as it would require them to break in on the analog channel, put a graphic on the HD channel, AND provide the weather coverage on the SD weather channel. The break ins alone are probably enough stress on the engineers. Maybe they'll figure out a way to do it though.

Yep, sorry I didn't save it ... Switch around a bit the next time severe weather is in the area, you'll probably see something along those same linesy much the same thing(more or less) ...

I know the weather was not a factor in the 27.5 and 27.6's it is a glitch from Fox re-mapping the channels 28,45,19 and 56 to those channels..........but it(weather or rain) was a factor pulling in the Columbus Fox 28 WTTE and the 53 WWHO and 54 KET (Now I am typing in the Analog Numbers I know.........) And WSTR 64 or 33 whatever you want to term it........ and 48 WCET and Ch.11 WCHS. I know Normally Columbus is too far away for me to pull in when the weather is not a factor and Ch.11 is too far to pull in too. But 3 and 13 is closer to me so I can pull them in no problem...........Ch.8 is a weather factor too........Ch. 8 and Ch.11 is actually closer to Charleston and 3 and 13 is in Huntington. Ch. 64 or 33 Signal splatter or whatever you may want to term it is alot weaker than 5(35)9(10)12(31)19(29)because I can only get it when it is somehow maganified by the Weather or Atmosphere Factors or Signal Progo. How ever you spell it? Still Waiting on my friend to get his jobs done and In between the rain so he can finish up his jobs and get his bucket truck out without tearing up the yards where he is working at and so he will not tear up my yard but I do not care on mine. Maybe.......Maybe I will have better results with the Channel Master....of course I had to get them to send me another hardware packet all of the Bolts and Wing nuts were not there. A question to ask on it(The Antenna) on the Support boom There is 2 set of Triangle Supports for the Mast and Support boom Rivited in. And where the UHF side slides into the VHF part in the Picture it shows 2 more Triangle Supports where you put in all of the other Bolts (which they had to send more for me because I was shorted a couple) Is there Suppose to be 2 more triangles that you bolt in to support the front. ( I told them to send them with the other hardware packet but they did not come with the hardware packet) So I made me two with the Flex metal strap with holes drilled into them so far apart the comes rolled up in a roll. Hopefully that will work O.K. One last question on the Bow tie FM where the Antenna Wire hooks to it with the Wing nuts. Did you all move the 3 1/2 Inch thin prongs Forward to the end of the UHF Point (End you point the Antenna towards the Station) or let them rest on the Bowtie itself Facing outwards like all of the other Elements are. I let them rest on the Bowtie and I get a Better Picture (It seems to me it is better) But so far I only tested the Antenna for Connections etc. Before I get it 50 or So feet into the Air. And with it being about 7 feet of the Ground pointed to lexington it all seems o.k. there is too much Blockage down low to test Cincy here. I want to avoid problems now while it is at a level to work on it easy to test IF everything is properly Pointed on the FM Bowtie and Connector on the Short prongs. Like I said it works better if it is resting on the Bow tie. Like all of the other Elements are Pointed (OUT) is this right???

Speaking of the 27.5 Channels I have 3 (East) and 27.6 I have 2 (Mtn) I guess the Weather was some factor.


I know the weather was not a factor in the 27.5 and 27.6's..........


Dude! We can only read and comment on what you write ;)


but it was a factor pulling in the Columbus Fox 28 WTTE and the 53 WWHO and 54 KET


It's generally called "tropo". Certian conditions in lower levels of atmosphere, usually due mostly to temperature inversions(including at times to some extent normal radiational cooling overnight, especially in Warmer months) allow VHF/UHF signals to be refracted or "bent" beyond normal limit of curvature of Earth. The main factor involved is water vapor/"humidity" at certian levels in atmosphere, therefore weather is most certianly a factor involved. There are a a couple(or several depending upon how you "classify it), different "types" of tropo -- Tropo scatter(Which is more common, and be a factor for signals out just beyond curvature of earth to 300~500 miles or so max), and tropo "ducting" - the latter which can allow for reception of signals from many 100's or in some cases even 1000's of miles away ....

More detailed info here :

http://www.dxinfocentre.com/propagation/tr-modes.htm

Tropo forcast map for North America can be found here:

http://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo.html

Another somewhat common form of long distance signal propagation effecting TV reception is "Sporadic E" propagation, Es or "E-skip" for short-- It effects higher HF frequencies, Lo-VHF+FM broadcast, and very rarely up into higher VHF frequencies. Most typically, the MUF(maximum usable frequency) for Es when it occurs will lie somewhere between channel 2 and channel 4, a little less typically, channel 6 or somewhere in the FM broadcast band.

Typicially, E-skip signals are received from distances of 800~1200 miles or so, less typically shorter distances can be involved. We call it "sporadic E" because the signals are reflected off of ioninized portions of the the "E" layer of Ionosphere, which lies some 70 miles above surface of earth. By the way, E-skip is a "seasonal" thing, and it's peak in our area of the world occurs in the Summer months -- I am, in fact receiving signals via E-skip at times this afternoon from Mexico on Channel 3(trading places with WAVE 3 Lousiville) as I type this .... In addition to stations from Fl, TX, CO, NE and Wyoming, I've also seen Fidel Castro a couple of times in the past week on channels 3,4 or 6 giving a speech on Cuban TV ....

For more detailed info on Sporadic E propagation, see here :

http://www.uksmg.org/sporade.htm

==========================================

For excellent, detailed info+explanations of "normal" "RF line of sight" propagation on VHF/UHF as well as Tropo and Eskip, see here :

http://www.dxfm.com/Content/propagation.htm

By the way, you might also find the TV/DTV Spreadsheets(listing all the channels all stations in U.S. are broadcasting on) available at main page at www.dxfm.com useful as well. In fact, you, or others whom are interested might find much of the info at that site useful+informative.

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Is there Suppose to be 2 more triangles that you bolt in to support the front....

...... One last question on the Bow tie FM where the Antenna Wire hooks to it with the Wing nuts. Did you all move the 3 1/2 Inch thin prongs Forward to the end of the UHF Point (End you point the Antenna towards the Station) or let them rest on the Bowtie itself Facing outwards like all of the other Elements are. I let them rest on the Bowtie and I get a Better Picture (It seems to me it is better) But so far I only tested the Antenna for Connections etc.....

...... Like I said it works better if it is resting on the Bow tie. Like all of the other Elements are Pointed (OUT) is this right???


I don't know. You'll probably have to ask Channel Master or perhaps someone who has one, or someone who has experience installing whatever model of antenna you are referring to (I expect CM3671 as you had indicated you might be getting one of those ?) .... He hasn't posted here in quite a while, however I know AVSforum member "Paul210" has (or had) a CM3671 on his roof. So, You might want to try sending him a PM, he might be able to help you out.

OK let me see if I can clear this up then I will re edit what I typed before. When I was originally typed in about the 27.5 and 27.6's If the FOX'S flipped a switch or has something opened up to make or Equipment to read 28 (Columbus) as 27.5 45 Dayton or 19 (29)Cincy as 27.5 and 56(4) as 27.5 I cannot help that what I was meaning the Weather had to be a Factor in the Columbus 28 and the Dayton 45 the only time I can pull it in is when it Rains.......is raining or has rained..... That was what I was referring to when the weather was a factor in pulling it in. You can believe in what you want to believe and i can believe in what I believe. But the rain when it is raining or right after it rains helps me pull in channels better it must enhances it for me or my setup. Before it rains (Anytime)I cannot pull in48/64(33)54 ,28,45,53 when it rain .........is raining or just after it rains for a while I can pull all of them in. Then later it is like someone flipped the switch and turned them off. No signal when it rains 50%,75% or better.

Spikor,

I was not arguing with you, LOL, there's no need for you to "clear anything up" concerning your reception .... I choose to provide some facts and information concerning how the occasional enhanced propagation you're getting works in case you were interested, it's not a matter of "belief" ....

As for 27.5+27.6, I think we already covered that .....

Naw I was not thinking you were arguing nor I was arguing with you I wanted to clear up and re wored stuff to make some sense. I had too much traffic going thru around the computer nephews and etc when I was typing the 2 earlier posts..........We are all here to help each other to solve any problems which might arise over time.

Is anyone else having issues with WLWT-DT (channel 5.1)? I normally have a signal strength of 92 out of 100 and get a crystal clear picture OTA. However, ever since the storms late last week, the signal strength for WLWT-DT has been terrible (less than 50), resulting in an unwatchable picture. The signals on all of my other channels are the same as always (90+). Does anyone know if WLWT is having issues?

FYI. My antenna was not damaged in the storms as it is in my attic.

No problems with WLWT-DT here. Solid 95~100% signal quality reading off the meter as allways ....

Perhaps You might need to slightly reorient the antenna due to changes in Multipath or signal attenuation conditions such as might occur due to leaves being on trees vs. no leaves, any nearby trees/limbs knocked down by the storms/etc/etc.

Jeff,

Is it possible for multi-path to occur almost instantaneously for only one channel and not impact any other channels. I don't have any trees close to my house. I have checked all the trees I can see, and none lost major limbs.

FYI. I am using the CM 4228. In my location, WLWT is dead in the middle (compass direction) of the range of towers I am aiming at, so it should not be a finge issue. I am also only 14 miles from the tower.

Do you know if it is possible for a tuner to go bad for just one frequency? I have a D* receiver and they are known to be buggy.

Also, any suggestions on an easy way to check signal strength without going up and down a ladder in my attic 50 times. I have priced some signal meters and the cheapest one I can find for OTA digital is $250+.

Thanks,

Rich

Is it possible for multi-path to occur almost instantaneously for only one channel and not impact any other channels. Not to hijack, but it's definitely possible. As an example, my wife just complained that the local NBC affiliate had horrible ghosting that, indeed, wasn't on any other local channel. A quick tightening of the cable fixed it.

In short, start by looking for problems with connections. A good storm can introduce moisture which can screw with one frequency but not others. Check 'em all. If you're close to WLWT's transmitter, a loose connection will cause 35 to leak into the system, slightly off from what's coming from your antenna.

Just one possibility, however.

Jeff: apologies for the hijack.

Doc

No problem, Doc+thanks for adding the excellent suggestion concerning connections, as allways .... I once didn't realize for two weeks until I went to tune a weaker station that I had forgotten to connect coax that runs into attic from FM receiver up to the line going into attic from antenna .....

BTW, it's HOT in the attic this weekend, had to go in there this weekend to pull out(and later reinstall) a ventilation fan with a thermostat that needed cleaning ....

Rich,

Let us know how it goes+anything you discover, depending on anything unusual you might find or if it happens to be the case others have experienced the problem as well, It's possible I might have some other thoughts for other possibilites if it isn't a bad connection or isn't fixed by a bit of antenna "reorientation" ....

Currently, One more possibility I can think of follows(along with some "signal meter" info per your question), although I'd imagine it's a long shot, good news is there would be an easy, simple fix involved :

Would think this one would "really" be a long shot with attic antenna at 15 miles -- but, I would imagine in such a case if WLWT has made some slight improvements to their signal, I suppose it's possible Rich could be getting a little "too much" signal from them ... Especially As I had heard elsewhere it's possible some of front ends on the newer D* boxes can get a little too "hot" farily easily ..... In which case, adding a bit of extra atteunation in line should fix it ...

Concerning Rich's signal meter question - I think you'd really probably need a spectrum analyzer($$$$) for a "real" DTV signal meter, it would tell you what's going on with multipath as well. Otherwise, I Haven't heard of a "real" "signal strength" meter which is designed to work with ATSC(OTA digital), dunno if anyone has made one of those or not. If so, have a feeling it wouldn't probably be inexpensive ....

I think adding extra atteunation into your feedline, along with a little "calculating" can make for a very good seat of pants "signal strength meter" of sorts, but only if the signal you're working with is clean multipath or "interference" wise to begin with. Multipath which the receiver can't correct for, or any interference is just seen as extra "noise" by the receiver ...

RS has a variable atteunator for around or just under $10 which will go up to -20db, splitters can be used as well - 2 way splitter = ~ -3.5db. When you add enough extra attenuation in feedline to get to just at, or just below threshold of reception(just "lose" reception from any given station), whatever amount of attenuation you are adding gives you a rough idea of how much "extra" signal you have .... For me, for example, it takes about 50~55db of attenuation(In addition to adding extra attenuators, that's including estimated feedline losses+the existing splitters/etc I have in line, and is also with use of mast mount preamp) to just lose a signal lock from WLWT-DT/WKRC-DT, it's not much different for the other Cincinnati stations, except WCVN-DT, which takes about 20~25db attenuation to get down to "near threshold" levels. Those figures aren't "exact", but I'd think should be correct within say, 5~7db or so.

You can't tell much via adding attenuation if multipath, or interference is "messing things up" however .... You can also estimate about 4db of signal loss on UHF for 100FT RG6, probably around .25db for every F connector, probably about 1~2db for the balun if you want to try to get a better idea of how much signal there is "at the antenna" ...

Threshold for OTA digital is about 16db SNR. "Signal strength" wise, threshold for DTV reception should be about 41dbu on UHF/36dbu Hi-VHF, 28dbu Lo-VHF(per FCC info), I believe that's assuming the noise factor on your receiver front end is about 10db (tests have shown our current crop of receivers have NF averaging about 7 or 8db on UHF if I recall correctly). If you're using a mast mount preamp, generally speaking, the preamp sets the noise figure for your antenna system, most of the better preamps out there now have NF of around 3~4db or so ... But, that's not going to help you of course if the signals are too strong for you to be using a preamp ....

Anyway, I'd have to do the math or look up the recent thread in hardware area on it, so don't quote me on this -- but for dbm "scale" as is usually used to measure signal levels -- I think threshold for DTV on UHF is around -85dbm~~87dbm if I recall correctly.

This might be the wrong forum, but hey does any one have a clue as to why the Indy 500 is still not broadcast in HD? I figured by now it would have been, NASCAR can pull it off. What is up with that? It made me not even want to watch it.

This might be the wrong forum, but hey does any one have a clue as to why the Indy 500 is still not broadcast in HD? I figured by now it would have been, NASCAR can pull it off. What is up with that? It made me not even want to watch it. See this thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=681967

Here we go again. The Reds vs. Cubs in HD on Comcast Sports Network ("CSN") (carried by InHD), but it is blacked out on TWC. Instead we are stuck with the horrible SD broadcast on FSN. The Reds and FSN need to pull their collective heads out of their asses. Meanwhile, I guess I'll watch the Indians take on the Sox on ESPNHD.

My only question is whether it will be possible to watch one Reds game in HD this year?

Here we go again. The Reds vs. Cubs in HD on Comcast Sports Network ("CSN") (carried by InHD), but it is blacked out on TWC. Instead we are stuck with the horrible SD broadcast on FSN. The Reds and FSN need to pull their collective heads out of their asses. Meanwhile, I guess I'll watch the Indians take on the Sox on ESPNHD.

Then you're really gonna hate this - the Indians/White Sox game, up here, was available both on ESPNHD *and* SportsTime Ohio (in HD as well).

Your situation is not going to resolve itself until FSN Ohio (Cincinnati sub-division) puts up HD games. Are they doing ANY now? FSN Ohio up here had the Cavaliers in HD late in the season, so it's presumably possible you could see the Reds in HD from them at some point...though I don't know how connected the two wings of FSN Ohio are.

So, what is the logo spliced into the WXIX-DT feed? Most of it is in my overscan area so all I see is a couple shapes.

Haven't went into SM to reduce overscan to see if there are actually any "words" or letters there, but, with overscan at about 4.5% I don't think there is - Think all it is is "shapes" .... Given it's the same color blue as the default "Fox" Splicer Bug they've been using, maybe it is "supposed to be" that default bug ... Haven't seen any problems with other Fox affiliate Splicer inserted bugs(The small Fox45 for WRGT-DT from example).

It's been like that on WXIX-DT during Fox programming for almost a week now. I believe, it started happening last Thursday night, as I recall making a note on it in the post just after the storms last thursday I ended up deleting.

Perhaps also of note -- as Microbob first rerported -- Last wed night, WXIX-DT's 720p service was decoding on 27.5/27.6 PSIP virtual channels(at least on some receivers) as well as 19.1, that was fixed sometime Thursday .... WRGT-DT Dayton and WDKY-DT Lexington are two stations which are still(last I checked last night anyway) decoding at 27.5"East"/27.6 "MNTN" in addition to their "standard" PSIP remapped channels 45.1(WRGT-DT) and 56.1(WDKY-DT) ...

In any case, I like it better than the big blue "FOX" :-)

Here we go again. The Reds vs. Cubs in HD on Comcast Sports Network ("CSN") (carried by InHD), but it is blacked out on TWC. Instead we are stuck with the horrible SD broadcast on FSN. The Reds and FSN need to pull their collective heads out of their asses. Meanwhile, I guess I'll watch the Indians take on the Sox on ESPNHD.

My only question is whether it will be possible to watch one Reds game in HD this year?


No way that any FSN games will be in HD this year. Last year we sometimes used an HD truck but still aired in SD. I don't believe there are any plans to go HD in the near future mostly because of the huge, and I mean huge, difference in broadcast costs and cable carriage vs the small # of viewers.

I believe the Fox sports game Saturday, July 22 will be an HD game.

As was the case last year, I'd read all Saturday regular season games on Fox(broadcast) are going to be SD widescreen, upconverted to 720p. It's even possible it will be composite video at some point before it gets to Fox's HD encoder if the past, and info/reports at below link from this year are any clue.

See here for More info :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7676043&&#post7676043

The only Reds Fox(broadcast) games I see on the schedule currently are Sat. June 24th(at Cleveland) and Sat August 5th(At Atlanta).

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/teamSchedule?categoryId=71603&month=all

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If the Reds can make it to the playoffs this year, then finally perhaps those of us exclusively using OTA for HD(or others, I don't pay too much attention to whether or not any Reds Games have been HD via cable/sat "only" networks, I assume there have been some) should get to see a Reds game in HD ....

The only Reds Fox(broadcast) games I see on the schedule currently are Sat. June 24th(at Cleveland) and Sat August 5th(At Atlanta).




No, the August 5th game is at home, against Atlanta, and the July 22 is now a possible Fox game, not booked for sure.

No, the August 5th game is at home


Thanks for the correction.

Slightly OT...anyone else experiencing extreme dropouts on TWC tonight?

No way that any FSN games will be in HD this year. Last year we sometimes used an HD truck but still aired in SD. I don't believe there are any plans to go HD in the near future mostly because of the huge, and I mean huge, difference in broadcast costs and cable carriage vs the small # of viewers.

I believe the Fox sports game Saturday, July 22 will be an HD game.

Thats the standard reply to why there isn't more HD material. What it does not really explain is that why FSN-Ohio is one of the last major FSNs to go HD. By my count 25 of the 30 mlb teams' regional sports networks are broadcasting at least some games in HD, with the majority of those broadcasting at least one half of the team's games in HD. See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=649135&highlight=fsn

The COO of FSN, Randy Freer, stated in October last year that the goal by the end 2006 is "to be televising a majority of the live sporting events in each of our markets in HD." http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=588435&highlight=fsn. Cincinnati is an FSN market. Either a whole lot of Xavier games and other college basketball and football games are going to be in HD this year, or this statement is wrong.

Thats the standard reply to why there isn't more HD material. What it does not really explain is that why FSN-Ohio is one of the last major FSNs to go HD. By my count 25 of the 30 mlb teams' regional sports networks are broadcasting at least some games in HD, with the majority of those broadcasting at least one half of the team's games in HD. See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=649135&highlight=fsn

The COO of FSN, Randy Freer, stated in October last year that the goal by the end 2006 is "to be televising a majority of the live sporting events in each of our markets in HD." http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=588435&highlight=fsn. Cincinnati is an FSN market. Either a whole lot of Xavier games and other college basketball and football games are going to be in HD this year, or this statement is wrong.

Just my personal 2 cents worth, but Reds TV has always been a financial loser. A few years back the Reds were the only major league team who did not have a local TV outlet airing their games, and the only reason was that whoever produced and aired Reds games lost money. I believe FSN Ohio is probably in the red (so to speak) over the last couple of years.

Speculation is that the Reds new ownership will probably form their own TV network in the next couple of years, just as the Indians did this year.

I don't think the COO made any promises, saying only that it is his "goal" to air in HD. I don't know if they even have the bandwidth available from Time Warner yet, much less the money to do the productions.

Again, these are just my personal opinions on the subject. Maybe things will change during football or basketball seasons.

Just my personal 2 cents worth, but Reds TV has always been a financial loser. A few years back the Reds were the only major league team who did not have a local TV outlet airing their games, and the only reason was that whoever produced and aired Reds games lost money. I believe FSN Ohio is probably in the red (so to speak) over the last couple of years.

Speculation is that the Reds new ownership will probably form their own TV network in the next couple of years, just as the Indians did this year.

I don't think the COO made any promises, saying only that it is his "goal" to air in HD. I don't know if they even have the bandwidth available from Time Warner yet, much less the money to do the productions.

Again, these are just my personal opinions on the subject. Maybe things will change during football or basketball seasons.

I agree with many of your thoughts. I don't think, however, that News Corp. (owner of FSN Ohio) is losing money on the Reds. News Corp. just purchased the remaining 60% stake in FSN-Ohio last year (which has three division, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland). FSN Ohio has about three or four assets: Reds baseball, Columbus Blue Jackets, the Cleveland Cavs, and perhaps, college basketball. The whole NHL strike killed the fledgling Blue Jackets audience. Out of the four, I'd say the Reds and the Cavs are probably the top two draws. Bottom line is something has to be making money for News Corp, or I doubt it would have purchased the remaing 60% stake.

I think the biggest thing going against FSN-Ohio is the lack of other content that people care about when one of the four sports mentioned above isn't on. In other words, although some viewers might be attracted to a particular sport only carried by FSN, they aren't inclined to stick around afterwards. The Ohio Sports report, which was weak from the start, was cancelled a few years back. Most people I know in southwest Ohio could care less about the NBA -- which seems to be a major focus of the national FSN programming carried by FSN-Ohio. A-10 basketball is good, but it doesn't appear to have the advertising support (the nationwide Sunday night ACC game, however, is usually a good matchup). I can't remember the last Ohio State football game on FSN-Ohio (was it Ohio St. vs Arizona a five or so years back?). The loss of the Cavs couldn't have been good for the Cleveland market. If FSN-Ohio loses the Reds, it would be a devastating loss. You might as well shut it down at that point.

Randy Freer needs to figure out a way to get quality, national HD sports programming to supplement local HD sports productions on the FSNs. You've got to spend money to make money sometimes.

I've been using a TWC CC for about 4 months with a Toshiba 56MX196. Had some problems when they came out the first time to install it. Had to get a firmware update from Toshiba, then had TWC come out for another install, and it's been working fine ever since. I have had to rescan the channels once or twice, which requires a power cycle on my tv.

The install guy told me that they have "tons" of problems with their current CC installs and that they were hoping the type II cards would work better when they come out. That sounded like marketing spin to me, since the type II's will allow them to get more revenue from PPV and on demand.

TWC definitely makes it hard to get a CC. They don't have any reference to them on their website. One of the CSR's even tried to tell me they no longer offer them. They won't let you do a self-install either. It must be installed by their tech.

(I believe i'm getting billed $2.75 a month.)


Did anyone using CableCards from TWC get charged $42.95 for installation? The Raleigh division states on their website they charge $42.95 while the TWC-Cinci site does not have the same notation.

Notice WKRC has a New CW page up on their website. In one section, it says CW can be watched on digital channel 12.2(that's all it says) ..... I wonder how many viewers will understand what that means ....

They are also "urging viewers" of UPN/WB to contact their cable/sat provider and request they carry WKRC's SD CW subchannel on a "analog tier" ... Phone numbers for the cableco's CSR's and "administration" are given ....

See here :

http://www.wkrc.com/cw/default.aspx

I also notice that, on my browser at least -- As has been the case for the past several months, The links below are broken on WKRC site to the "HDTV info" pages. Is this a browser setting(IE 6.0) issue on my end, or are they broken for everyone?

These links still show up via WKRC website "search" function, and show up near the top on a google search for "HDTV+WKRC"(and are accessable in a google cache as shown farther below), or "HDTV+cincinnati", although I don't see where they are accessable elsewhere from WKRC's site. These pages(which talk about CBS HD on WKRC-DT, as well as a good section on receiving WKRC-DT's digital signal, including via OTA with an antenna) were previously accessable via a "HDTV" Icon on WKRC website main page menu bar, that button now says "About CW" which is the link to the new "CW" page ...

Here are the "broken" links :

http://www.wkrc.com/hdtv/default.aspx

http://www.wkrc.com/hdtv/receiving_hdtv.aspx

They are currently still available in a google cache, here's the link to the cache of WKRC's main HDTV page, retrieved March 2, 2006 :

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:dNcHn43G06UJ:www.wkrc.com/hdtv/default.aspx+HDTV%2BWKRC&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

and, the "receiving HDTV" section, a google cache retrieved Feb 22, 2006 is here :

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:CBs9OgFYBA4J:www.wkrc.com/hdtv/receiving_hdtv.aspx+HDTV%2BWKRC&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

I searched the WKRC site to see if I could find any other helpful info which might help folks interested in receiving their digital signal(including OTA) for either CBS HD, Local 12 programming or "CW Network"(when 12.2 becomes available), but couldn't find anything ....

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Hope folks farther South are having some luck receiving WB HD(future CW affiliate) from WBDT-DT 18 (remaps to 26.1) Dayton ... given their directional antenna pattern, relatively low ERP for UHF full power(35 KW ERP), and that WXIX analog is 1st adajcent channel, with WLEX 18 analog lexington being Co-channel, it unfortunetly may prove more difficult for Folks South of the Northern Cincinnati suburbs to receive compared to the other Dayton HD stations ...

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


On another more positive note, I've been noticing many more HD commercials airing lately during National breaks ... I didn't count them, but I've especially noticed quite a number of them during the last weeks of HD "Everwood" on WB HD, Including a number of HD car commercials ..... Even caught a HD promo for a CBS sitcom about a week ago on WHIO-DT(didn't get switched quickly enough to WKRC-DT to see if they aired it in HD as well) during the HD airing of "We Were Soliders" movie ....

I also notice that, on my browser at least -- As has been the case for the past several months, The links below are broken on WKRC site to the "HDTV info" pages. Is this a browser setting(IE 6.0) issue on my end, or are they broken for everyone?

They've got a problem with the ASP.NET code on those pages. I get an ASP server error. Probably something simple to fix, but apparently they haven't updated/checked those pages in quite a while.


On another more positive note, I've been noticing many more HD commercials airing lately during National breaks ... I didn't count them, but I've especially noticed quite a number of them during the last weeks of HD "Everwood" on WB HD, Including a number of HD car commercials ..... Even caught a HD promo for a CBS sitcom about a week ago on WHIO-DT(didn't get switched quickly enough to WKRC-DT to see if they aired it in HD as well) during the HD airing of "We Were Soliders" movie ....

I agree that there are more HD commercials airing these days. Not to be too sarcastic, but I highly doubt that WKRC aired that (or nearly any) commercial in HD.

On a related note, we've talked about this before, but I think it's important for stations to pay more attention to the quality of their non-HD content on their HD channels. Again, as I've said before, you're better off watching analog WKRC for anything other then HD content because of how horrible everything looks on their HD channel. The other channels are guilty of this as well, but I think WKRC is by far the worst. WLWT-DT is the best by far, and WCPO has recently gotten better (check their newscast now... looking better).


One more thing, in regard to the Reds. The game is on every night at my house. I'm going to watch whether it's in HD or not. That said, I'd love to see at least some games in HD, and I think it will come. The Reds and FSN recently signed the expansion contract so that now FSN is televising every game except day games that fall on a weekday.

Is it just me or is WXIX-DT "down?" I'm not getting any picture. Full signal strength though.

Analog 19 (via channel 3 on TW cable) is working fine.

jimp2244,

I'm decoding WXIX-DT just fine here at 9:50pm, had checked them about 20 minutes ago and they were decoding fine as well ...

However -- They must be having some sort of issue(of course, the splicer inserted bug has just been "weird shapes" the past 2 weeks instead of saying "FOX") , as when I've checked the past 45 minutes or so, on 19.1 they've had the 4x3 SD feed up for the current show(with white Fox bug in 4x3 area), WRGT-DT Fox Dayton has had the Fox digital feed(16x9/720p) via the splicer with the Local "fox45" splicer inserted bug. Not sure, but think the current show is 16x9 SD widescreen upconverted to 720p at net.

Odd... I still can't decode 19.1 or 19.2, though I show full signal strength. I guess it could be something with my setup, but that is odd that it only affects WXIX.

Not noticing anything odd with their PSIP here, have only checked one of three receivers, however ... If your equipment allows it, can you decode them if you "direct tune" to their RF channel 29, or maybe 29.3, or 29.4?

And/or, maybe try a "rescan", which can sometimes be necessary on some receivers if stations change something in their PSIP, or PAT/PMT tables.

I tried direct tuning as well. Same result. If it's just me having the problem I'll just wait and see if it's still happening tomorrow and then decide what to do.

Seeing terrible pixelation all across the bottom 25% of the screen via TWC in Cincy on NBA Finals.

Anyone else?

I tried direct tuning as well. Same result. If it's just me having the problem I'll just wait and see if it's still happening tomorrow and then decide what to do.

After investigating this a little further per the below, I don't think the problem is on your end. As Jimp2244+my differing results concerning the ability to decode them currently might indicate, I expect this issue may effect different receiver models "differently" .... So, depending upon how any given model of receiver may handle this issue, others may have difficulty decoding datastreams from WXIX-DT tonight as well. In any case, hopefully it will get it straightened out, soon. If not, those experiencing problems may need to contact WXIX.

Checked another receiver(Internal ATSC receiver in Sony KD34XBR960 HDTV), and, although I'm decoding WXIX-DT fine tonight on this receiver as well on 19.1/19.2 via PSIP VCT(virtual channel table) info - I then tried direct tuning to 29.3/29.4(without PSIP), which has allways worked before on this receiver, but it is NOT working for WXIX-DT now ... So, first I tried a few other stations via "direct tuning" - such as 34.3 for WCET-DT/HD, and they decode just fine, as usual ...

Then, I try everything from 29.1 to 29.19 for WXIX-DT with no luck ....

So, next, I decide to check out an "undocumented ATSC" diagnostic info screen available via this set's service menu to see what I may be able to find out, which is :

It appears possible WXIX-DT may currently be having a PSIP or MPEG2 configuration issue involving PAT/PMT (Which I believe per info below probably is referring to MPEG2 Program Assosiation table/Program management table).
Took a couple of screenshots which I've attached.

At left is pic of this "diagnostic" screen while tuned to WXIX-DT, and decoding them on PSIP virtual channel(from VCT) on 19.1. You can see video in the background along with reflection of a lamp in the room, sorry about the latter.

Look at the line labled "PSI": --- PAT is in Red(which I believe indicates some sort of problem), PMT is not "lit up", which I also believe indicates some sort of problem. MGT, TVCT, EIT, ETT, STT indicators are all showing Green or yellow, these all refer to various PSIP or MPEG2 program tables. Note that CVCT (cable virtual channel table) is an optional 2nd virtual channel table stations can send cableco's, I don't believe I've ever seen it ever show up as active from any station's datastream received OTA.

Also perhaps of interest, note that PID's(MPEG2 packet identifiers) are apparently being identified properly at addresses above HEX30 - "The Tube" shows PID's above HEX 40.

Compare to the screenshot at right, showing some of the current info from WRGT-DT 30(45.1 PSIP), Fox Dayton. As you can see, everything of interest on the "PSI" line is lit up in Green or yellow(Note: I believe Yellow probably indicates it's "working" but perhaps not with full functionality -- All stations/program services I looked at tonight have have ETT showing up as "yellow", currently), and in fact I am decoding WRGT-DT normally on this receiver currently, including via direct Tuning to 30.3(without PSIP VCT info).

Update: Hard to say, but for those folks who are decoding WXIX-DT fine on 19.1/19.2 currently, depending upon how your receiver handles such issues, now may not be a good time to do a "auto channel scan" ..... Although, OTOH, oddly enough I'm having no problem on Zenith HDV420, which updates it's "channel tuning" info from what the station is sending every time I "switch channels" ... Also note that I can punch in "29" currently on the Zenith for WXIX-DT, and it shows remapping to 19.1, and decodes just fine ...

Same Pixelization here CincySaint.

ABC is a joke. I havent seen a major sporting event shown on this channel in 2 years that hasnt had problems.

Tony

Looks like its fixed.....we will see if we can make it to the end of the game.

Tony:

Hate to say it but it's a WCPO problem. I posted the same thing on the AVS thread in programming and no one else is having the problem.

PS - 11:25 looks ok again.

It may be a TW problem. I haven't watched much of the game, so can't say for sure, but when I have checked it(Including over the past 15 minutes or so) I haven't seen any problems here OTA from WCPO-DT, or from WKEF-DT, ABC HD Dayton.

I also did not see any problems with WCPO-DT OTA, but The last time I checked was when I was having the WXIX issues so I may have missed any problems if they occurred OTA as well.

I called a friend who receives his signal OTA and he had the same problem. It only lasted for about 15-20 minutes.

Its definitely WCPO CincySaint, its always WCPO. No matter what it is, MNF - the Rose Bowl.......it really is sad

I wish I had OTA and could pick up the Dayton feed.

Tony

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060609/LIFE03/606090342

'Today' to air from atop bridge
"Weekend Today" viewers will learn all about the area's newest attraction - the Purple People Bridge Climb - during a live report Saturday morning.

WLWT-TV anchor Sheree Paolello will broadcast live from a glass platform atop the bridge in the 7 a.m. hour of the show, which does not air here at that time. Channel 5 will cut away from its 7 a.m. local news to NBC's coverage, says Brennan Donnellan, news director.

Normally the first hour of "Weekend Today" would air here at 8 a.m., but the schedule has changed this week because of NBC's telecast of the French Open tennis tournament at 9 a.m.

I called a friend who receives his signal OTA and he had the same problem. It only lasted for about 15-20 minutes.

Its definitely WCPO CincySaint, its always WCPO. No matter what it is, MNF - the Rose Bowl.......it really is sad

I wish I had OTA and could pick up the Dayton feed.

Tony

I noticed it also. OTA & via TWC. At first I thought it was a reception problem but the affected area was only the lower portion of the screen. I just switched to the Dayton feed.

Quick update/followup -- From what it looks like from here, it looks like the issue from WXIX-DT jim2244 and I were discussing appears to be fixed, currently.

I assume jimp2244 can decode them now on his receiver that was having the problem last night?

Notice I can decode them now on the Sony just fine on 29.3/29.4 without PSIP as well as via PSIP on 19.1/19.2.

Current Screenshot attached of portion of diagnostic screen via Sony SM mentioned earlier, while I'm tuning to/using 29.3 w/o using PSIP VCT - As you can see, it is now recognizing the various necessary PSIP/MPEG2 tables properly(in Green or Yellow except CVCT/Cable Virtual Channel table).

Fingers crossed it stays this way the next time the 720p feed from Fox via the splicer is used(which I'd think should be 8pm tonight) .....

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

Update: 8:10pm - All seems to be working well from WXIX-DT+Fox HD so far tonight... AND, I see the Splicer Inserted Blue "Fox" bug has not only been fixed, but has also gotten smaller, and has better placement concerning sets with overscan. Looking at it with ~4.5% overscan Looks like you could probably have about 6~8% or so overscan on the side and still see it all.

Quick update/followup -- From what it looks like from here, it looks like the issue from WXIX-DT jim2244 and I were discussing appears to be fixed, currently.

I assume jimp2244 can decode them now on his receiver that was having the problem last night?



Yes, just to confirm, WXIX-DT is decoding fine now for me.

The Fox logo is small size now. It is fully visible durung network programming which is nice.

Anyone else noticing the 8 sec delay on the England vs Paraguay game on WCPO? Think it is them or ABC?

Anyone else noticing the 8 sec delay on the England vs Paraguay game on WCPO? Think it is them or ABC?


One way to find out would be to check WKEF-DT Dayton, which unfortunately can't receive right now. I did notice that WCPO-DT completely dropped audio for about a minute or two asl well when I switched from MLB on FOX to the World Cup on ABC so I could see some True HD after looking at the FOX upconverts (which I am not against btw -- I'd much rather have upconverts than no HD at all).

At 1:48PM, Only noticing about a 1 second difference between WCPO analog/WCPO-DT HD, and WKEF analog/WKEF-DT HD during the HD soccer - Which is normal. Takes more time for the encoding/decoding, including at the users decoder.

I'd also certianly much rather have widescreen SD (not letterboxed) than 4x3 SD, however, I wish they could send component video from the venue for all the Fox Baseball games, as for some reason the composite video artifacts are more annoying to me than usual ...

Hey guys, I've been noticing a lot of new cable going up in Maineville area.
Not sure what it is but it's orange and about 2-3" thick. They are laying it underground.
From my understanding TWC is suposed to take over the N area of Maineville by the end of the year, but some of the cable is being ran in areas that are suposed to be under TWC already.

Any ideas anyone? BTW, It might not be a TWC cable either....

Just a guess as I really have no idea... It could be fiber. I believe a while back (years) Time Warner was laying fiber optic cable at the street level. It could be that that area has still not been upgraded yet.

The orange cable is multistrand fiber. It is hard to say who it belongs to because all the cable and telecom companies use subcontractors. You might want to ask the crew installing it but sometimes they don't even know who it is for.

NBA finals look really good tonight - best picture I have ever seen on WCPO. Guess we'll see if they can make it through the entire game!

Did they get their new hardware installed? Logo is a little off but thats ok

Tony

Hi, this is my first post and I need some help figuring out how to receive HD channels. I have a Sony Grand Wega with a built-in HD antenna and up until about a month ago I was receiving over the air HD broadcasts. NBC was channel 84.1 and ABC and CBS were something like 107.21 and 107.31. Now, my TV doesnt pick up any HD channels and I have even reprogrammed it. Does anyone know if they changed the channel numbers recently or did my antenna just go out?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kurt

Hi, this is my first post and I need some help figuring out how to receive HD channels. I have a Sony Grand Wega with a built-in HD antenna and up until about a month ago I was receiving over the air HD broadcasts. NBC was channel 84.1 and ABC and CBS were something like 107.21 and 107.31. Now, my TV doesnt pick up any HD channels and I have even reprogrammed it. Does anyone know if they changed the channel numbers recently or did my antenna just go out?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kurt

Sounds like you have your cable hooked up to your HDTV instead of your antenna or you're browsing your cable input instead of your antenna input. When viewing from an antenna ABC will appear on 9.1, NBC on 5.1, CBS on 12.1.

I have seen TWC pass what is called PSIP data which (among several things) will remap the 107.21,107.31 and 84.1 to the same virtual channel they are on over the air (OTA).

So, since you're viewing your HD from TWC, try checking out 9.1, 5.1, 19.1, and 12.1 to see if your HDTV received the PSIP data.

OTA came in handy today when Time Warner's complete service went out since about 10am this morning until about 8pm tonight

Anyone still awake??? Guess things are working well :)

Last night I finally got some time to spend with my HTPC and long story short I was able to get the PSIP guide working with the dvico fusion 5 card. WCPO, WXIX, WLWT, and WSTR all had accurate psip guide data - WKRC had nothing and WCET only had data for 48-2, 48-1 was blank.

jim

Has anyone heard an update on the satellite providers offering local channels in HD in the Cincinnati area? I know DirecTV made the annoucnement a few weeks ago but no schedule was offered. Dish Network included Cincinnati in their list of planned cities at the beginning of 2006 but I haven't heard anything since then.

I'm currently a TW customer and I'm frustrated by their customer service, several weekends of bad pixelization (SD and HD) but don't really want to mess around with an OTA antenna.

Any updates appreciated.

// Scott A

The latest indications from DirecTv is that the locals should up this fall - so I take that to mean September. The original estimate was June / July, but they have been very quiet about it since the official announcement that Cincinnati was on the list.

jim

Anyone still awake??? Guess things are working well :)

Last night I finally got some time to spend with my HTPC and long story short I was able to get the PSIP guide working with the dvico fusion 5 card. WCPO, WXIX, WLWT, and WSTR all had accurate psip guide data - WKRC had nothing and WCET only had data for 48-2, 48-1 was blank.

jim

Jim,

I don't know about last night, however generally speaking I've been pretty much allways getting full EPG data via PSIP(including detailed program descriptions) From WCET-DT/ 48.1. Lately, even WPTO-DT has had full EPG info when I've checked. For the most part, WCVN-DT/KET has pretty much allways had fully populated+accurate EPG info via PSIP.

Dayton on the other hand -- WKEF-DT has had the same EPG data present as was the case a month ago ... For instance, for the past 4 weeks, On Saturday Night prime time, it has said "Remember the Titans is on" ... Well, it was on, about 5 weeks ago ..... Looks like something similar is going on with WRGT-DT as well ..

I almost never get any programming information from WXIX-DT PSIP. On rare occasions it will show up with the name of the current show and the next show coming up, but even then many times it's wrong. Are other people having success with WXIX?

The latest indications from DirecTv is that the locals should up this fall - so I take that to mean September. The original estimate was June / July, but they have been very quiet about it since the official announcement that Cincinnati was on the list.

jim

I was told roughly 2-3months from the CSR rep today.

Got a H20 and AT9 dish coming for install this weekend anyway. I'll be ready when they light up the signal!

I almost never get any programming information from WXIX-DT PSIP. On rare occasions it will show up with the name of the current show and the next show coming up, but even then many times it's wrong. Are other people having success with WXIX?

Same here, although I haven't been checking it a lot lately. As Jim experienced, believe I've been missing program info quite often from WKRC-DT as well -- although, prior to a few weeks or so(maybe more, can't recall exactly) it was fine.

I was told roughly 2-3months from the CSR rep today.

Got a H20 and AT9 dish coming for install this weekend anyway. I'll be ready when they light up the signal!

You can't pick up the signal over the air? I can almost guarantee you will be very disappointed with the HD picture you get from DirecTV.

You can't pick up the signal over the air? I can almost guarantee you will be very disappointed with the HD picture you get from DirecTV.

Yeah, I can get Dayton/Cincy locals via OTA and will.

However, I already have a directv system (for ~3/4yrs) and have been getting locals ($4.99) all that time. So, since the HD locals won't cost anything extra why not have the choice of directv locals and OTA locals both. Won't hurt.

I know the quality of the OTA should be much better and plan on using it. But, you never know when the directv HD locals might come in handy, and they won't cost anymore then I'm already paying........

I will do the same here r_willis.. if its "free" then might as well have it as a back up! (provided I stay with directv)

jim

I will do the same here r_willis.. if its "free" then might as well have it as a back up! (provided I stay with directv)

I recently switched to Dish... I couldn't stand Time Warner dragging their feet on new additions to their lineup. Thus far I have been 100% happy.

I have seen D* side by side with TWC, and now E* side by side TWC, E* and TWC were very close, D* was very soft. Who knows how it will be in a year once D* has all their satellites up and operating though...

damn sunday ticket.. lol

damn sunday ticket.. lol

In terms of not switching (if you are an HD enthusiast) that is the only reason to stay with DirecTV.

damn sunday ticket.. lol

Unlike others here, I like TWC. My customer service has been great -- they did my HD DVR install on New Years Day. And that DVR rocks and I didn't have to pay $1000 to D* for something that will be old technology in a year.

I am VERY lucky in that I am grandfathered in having Sunday Ticket with no other programming on D*. You can't do that anymore.

As always, I am anxiously awaiting football season.

its tough.. being a browns fan here in cincinnati - about the only way I am going to see the browns is sunday ticket.. so as of right now, sunday ticket is taking a priority over hd .. same here cincysaint - cant wait for football season!!

go browns!!

Unlike others here, I like TWC. My customer service has been great -- they did my HD DVR install on New Years Day. And that DVR rocks and I didn't have to pay $1000 to D* for something that will be old technology in a year.

I am VERY lucky in that I am grandfathered in having Sunday Ticket with no other programming on D*. You can't do that anymore.

As always, I am anxiously awaiting football season.

For the most part the customer service was fine from Time Warner. My problem is their slow addition of new channels, especially HD. ESPN2HD, UniversalHD, National Geographic HD, HGTV HD, NFL Network (regular and HD), etc. etc. I paid more money to TWC than I pay to Dish Network and now I get more than double the HD channels...

I noticed last night that FOX 19 is now putting in its own logo in place of the blue FOX logo.

I noticed last night that FOX 19 is now putting in its own logo in place of the blue FOX logo.



It looks much nicer than the generic blue Fox Logo.

Hey guys (Longtime member, first time poster, haha)

I recently purchased a 50 inch Wega Sony TV and I'm going to be getting the cablecard with the HD Tier from Time Warner. Has anyone had any problems with the Cablecards?