I can see WSBT all the way up here in Crystal Lake. WNDU is still canceling out WQRF for me. I can also see a hint of analog 24 from VALPO.

That's a good haul for SBT :D It's so strong by me I'm getting it on my small yagi I made for WYIN and its pointed for 56 not 22 :eek:. NDU and SJV its picking up too :). My Normal South Bend DX corner reflector yagi clone has got SBT in at 90% on my DTT-900.

Gotta go play tonight and see what happens :D

WXFT (60.X) and WGBO-DT (66.X) both are simulcasting their respective primary subchannels on their respective subs. So,we have not only 60.2 now, but 66.2. I wonder if this is a precursor to HDTV for both channels...things that make you go HMMM.

WXFT (60.X) and WGBO-DT (66.X) both are simulcasting their respective primary subchannels on their respective subs. So,we have not only 60.2 now, but 66.2. I wonder if this is a precursor to HDTV for both channels...things that make you go HMMM.

I saw that too. Yeah, it does make you wonder that's for sure.

I've been watching WITI 6 (well, more on 6.2 (RTV) than the regular Fox Channel :P) tonight since about like 4-5pm this afternoon. It's really booming in strong on RF33 all the way to Northwest Indiana tonight!

I can see WSBT all the way up here in Crystal Lake. WNDU is still canceling out WQRF for me. I can also see a hint of analog 24 from VALPO.

So Valpo is where analog 24 is out of! I can get hints of it down here in the South Suburbs but it's very faint.

Right now, I am getting WTLJ (I think that's it) 54.1 and 2 out of Muskegon-Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo! It's been coming through great this afternoon with very minimal break up :) It's as watchable as a local! Do I get the award for channel coming in from the furthest away, at least at the moment? heh I know some of you guys have WAY better antennas and setups and will have me beat in the next few nights but that's still very impressive. Those signals coming out of Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo is quite a trip to make all the way here. I'll scan again later, I have a feeling if I managed that I should be able to get even more stuff during the late night period.

I've been getting WLS crystal clear with absolutely no problems until just now. Now my signal strength is zero! Could this have something to do with the doubling of signal strength? I have an attic antenna in Lombard.

That's a good haul for SBT :D It's so strong by me I'm getting it on my small yagi I made for WYIN and its pointed for 56 not 22 :eek:. NDU and SJV its picking up too :). My Normal South Bend DX corner reflector yagi clone has got SBT in at 90% on my DTT-900.

Gotta go play tonight and see what happens :D

I can see all of the full power South Bend Digitals. Even our LP analogs!! I can also see WKOW. I lost most of the Chicago digitals at one point tonight! Not bad for my 4-bay UHF Panel!!! If I only had a true DX antenna and a rotator I could probably see more.

I've been getting WLS crystal clear with absolutely no problems until just now. Now my signal strength is zero! Could this have something to do with the doubling of signal strength? I have an attic antenna in Lombard.

I have Directv was just watching WLS news and they reported they boosted there signal.I switched over to my Panny plasma tuner,with OTA on roof,15% signal no picture!I've never had a problem with WLS.I also do not get WLS with my OTA tuner on my d* hr20-7000 DVR.WLS comes in fine thru sat.I have antenna on roof and live 20miles west of Chicago.

Ones I don't normally get, This Tropo is smokin :D

10 (RF-8) is on my UHF antenna. And a few other interesting cool ones. This is the best I've seen Tropo to the north since I put up my DX clone antenna's this year. :)

I can see all of the full power South Bend Digitals. Even our LP analogs!! I can also see WKOW. I lost most of the Chicago digitals at one point tonight! Not bad for my 4-bay UHF Panel!!! If I only had a true DX antenna and a rotator I could probably see more.

I logged a couple of your Milwaukee stations tonight as you can see in my pictures in my other post. What Channels does Weigel supply to Milwaukee?

I was going to put up a rotor again this year but decided to just go with fixed antenna's. The top 2 are clones and the bottom was built from scratch and directors size tuned while peaking for channel 56. Lotta Fun :D

My Zenith STB is having convulsions with the multiple maps from different towns on the same RF channel it's processing. :eek:

Ones I don't normally get this Tropo is smokin :D

WPNE-DT is from Green Bay, WI! :eek: Nice catch! :cool: I haven't gotten even a whisper from South Bend tonight; it's all north and northeast. Madison, Milwaukee, and yep, got rf 24 (WTLJ) from Grand Rapids! Not bad. Nothing like the monster tropo last Friday, but tomorrow night could be even better.

I've been getting WLS crystal clear with absolutely no problems until just now. Now my signal strength is zero! Could this have something to do with the doubling of signal strength? I have an attic antenna in Lombard.

Yes, it could. With multipath in your attic ("ghosts" on analog broadcasts), the multiple reflections of channel 7 just got amplified. Adjusting your antenna, as they say, may help...

Tvropro you are VERY lucky tonight! I wish I could get watchable signals for all of those..you can tell the tropo conditions are ideal tonight because it's taking a while on my end just to scan. A little while ago I got the PSIP data for CW 18 in Milwaukee but sadly no picture or sound :( Same story with 58..no picture or sound but my TV is mapping the 5 digital channels for 58 in Milwaukee to the correct spots. The antenna being in the attic is what's killing this for me :( if it wasn't in the attic I'm sure I'd probably be able to watch all of those for a little bit at least. Anyway, I am getting alot of hints of stuff but with where our antenna is I doubt it's gonna be able to pull a signal for them let alone a reliable one. We have a fairly good indoor antenna at the lake house in MI, I'll see if my folks can bring it home and let me try with that because it's one of those where the actual antenna can be stretched out.

Edit: I take that back! As of Midnight I'm suddenly getting 58 out of milwaukee CRYSTAL Clear. NO break up or anything! All 5 of the 58 ones too! This is great! I'm gonna go watch it for a bit before I lose the signal!

What Channels does Weigel supply to Milwaukee?

They own WDJT58 (the CBS affil), indies WBME and WMLW, and WYTU (Univision).

WMLW and WYTU are low-power stations that are also subs on the other two.

WPNE-DT is from Green Bay, WI! :eek: Nice catch! :cool: I haven't gotten even a whisper from South Bend tonight; it's all north and northeast. Madison, Milwaukee, and yep, got rf 24 (WTLJ) from Grand Rapids! Not bad. Nothing like the monster tropo last Friday, but tomorrow night could be even better.

So that's where it's from. :) That's 200 miles from me. :D Back in the analog days I could get WBAY and WFRV channel's 2 and 5 from Green Bay, when 2 and 5 were off the air here locally in Chicago.

South Bend has been weak and spotty since the north went crazy. Earlier on Friday it was smokin and the north was weaker. The north is still coming in this morning but not as strong as last night.

I remember back in the old analog days of DXing getting up early on Sunday mornings and getting Indianapolis, Dayton, Battle Creek, Green Bay, Peoria etc. I logged allot years ago (was in this since 1972) and was more into it. Since I got into c and ku satellite in 1987 the OTA thrill was kinda gone, but digital is neat. It's nice to watch a perfect picture vs trying to make out a station ID through sometimes very snowy conditions.

Tvropro you are VERY lucky tonight! I wish I could get watchable signals for all of those..you can tell the tropo conditions are ideal tonight because it's taking a while on my end just to scan. A little while ago I got the PSIP data for CW 18 in Milwaukee but sadly no picture or sound :( Same story with 58..no picture or sound but my TV is mapping the 5 digital channels for 58 in Milwaukee to the correct spots. The antenna being in the attic is what's killing this for me :( if it wasn't in the attic I'm sure I'd probably be able to watch all of those for a little bit at least. Anyway, I am getting alot of hints of stuff but with where our antenna is I doubt it's gonna be able to pull a signal for them let alone a reliable one. We have a fairly good indoor antenna at the lake house in MI, I'll see if my folks can bring it home and let me try with that because it's one of those where the actual antenna can be stretched out.

Edit: I take that back! As of Midnight I'm suddenly getting 58 out of milwaukee CRYSTAL Clear. NO break up or anything! All 5 of the 58 ones too! This is great! I'm gonna go watch it for a bit before I lose the signal!

58 has been in there before for me. I added 38 Green Bay, and 49, 12, 30 Milwaukee last night. Everything else I got before plus the normal 4, 6, 10, 18, 36, 55, 58. If 25 analog switches to channel 2 in Chicago I should be able to get 24, I'd like that.

Having the antenna outside is like adding 50% to your signal from the attic. You should toss one outside if you can.

Here a couple pics of 58 last night you can download to remember getting it last night. :D

and WYTU (Univision).

Telemundo, not Univision. :)

- Trip

58 has been in there before for me. I added 38 Green Bay, and 49, 12, 30 Milwaukee last night. Everything else I got before plus the normal 4, 6, 10, 18, 36, 55, 58. If 25 analog switches to channel 2 in Chicago I should be able to get 24, I'd like that.

Having the antenna outside is like adding 50% to your signal from the attic. You should toss one outside if you can.

Here a couple pics of 58 last night you can download to remember getting it last night. :D

I'm far enough from WWME-CA 23 analog to null it out and get WBAY-DT from Green Bay, also on 23, from time to time. William Hepburn's model forecast looks good, with tropo increasing a bit in intensity every night through midweek next week. Given the weather conditions, I think that's valid. Those who missed last night, and previous, will have plenty of opportunities through Tuesday. Remember: evenings after dark through 9 AM in the morning work best.

I've been getting WLS crystal clear with absolutely no problems until just now. Now my signal strength is zero! Could this have something to do with the doubling of signal strength? I have an attic antenna in Lombard.

WLS was back this morning, at its usual singal strength in the 70s. I did not do anything different from last night. Does anyone know if there signal was out last night? Looks like mridan had the same problem as me at around the same time last night.

Tribune story on WLS power boost (today) and switch to 44, perhaps by mid-October (with continuing operation on RF#7).
www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-biz-wls-sept4,0,1577535.story

BTW, what will a tuner do when both RF#7 and RF#44 map to 7-1, 7-2 and 7-3?

Is WLS really going to keep broadcasting on 7 too after the move to 44? If so, why?

58 has been in there before for me. I added 38 Green Bay, and 49, 12, 30 Milwaukee last night. Everything else I got before plus the normal 4, 6, 10, 18, 36, 55, 58. If 25 analog switches to channel 2 in Chicago I should be able to get 24, I'd like that.

Having the antenna outside is like adding 50% to your signal from the attic. You should toss one outside if you can.

Here a couple pics of 58 last night you can download to remember getting it last night. :D

Thanks Tvropro! I know this whole tropo stuff sounds silly but it's really neat and I enjoy being able to see channels in these markets I've never actually visited yet.

At 1am I got a big treat, with the exception of WTMJ I had a HARD SOLID lock on ALL the other Milwaukee channels! A hard, solid lock on them for about a half hour. I caught part of WITI's rerun of the 10pm news :D While the hard lock lasted the quality was great! I will say this specifically..whatever they're doing at PBS 36 up there they're doing a DAMN good job! They're putting all 3 of our PBS affiliates here in Chicago to shame, I was truly shocked. The PQ was great and they even have a weather and traffic sub channel! Channel 11, 20 and 56 all need to be taking notes from them. The only thing I wish I could have caught a glimpse of was RTV..with the ideal conditions going right through this week hopefully I'll get a chance to see it :D Neither Comcast or the other cable providers can provide this to me :p It's great!

Believe me after that EXCELLENT show last night I'm gonna throw something outside asap, because when this happens that should let me have a reliable signal longer plus maybe some other stuff I wasn't able to get.

I'm far enough from WWME-CA 23 analog to null it out and get WBAY-DT from Green Bay, also on 23, from time to time. William Hepburn's model forecast looks good, with tropo increasing a bit in intensity every night through midweek next week. Given the weather conditions, I think that's valid. Those who missed last night, and previous, will have plenty of opportunities through Tuesday. Remember: evenings after dark through 9 AM in the morning work best.

You're out in a very open area most likely, being in DeKalb so I'm not surprised at all this neat stuff you manage to get when the tropo is great. The one market I would be happy to get even just one channel from during this stuff is Rockford. Hopefully I'll have a better chance at that once we get something up outside.

Someone on this page was touching on the "All or nothing" aspect with Digital. It's no joke, if you get enough of the signal and it's strong enough, you will be getting ALL of these channels with a crystal clear picture. Not like analog at all when you might catch them but there would be snow or other interference. If you can't lock enough of the signal you'll get nothing period. Maybe the PSIP data but without enough of the signal that will be it. That's the real difference I can see with Digital vs analog right now is you will get all or nothing.

Oh HVS! I wanted to say before I forget I am very impressed with the quality of the Milwaukee CBS affiliate :D Great quality and from what I caught of it good signal too. I also liked WLMW, reminded me of how WCIU was right after it went back to English in '95. Great stuff and keep up the good work in all 3 markets!

WMLW-DT is anything but "crystal clear". It's shamefully blurry as all heck (don't know why, but it's always been that way - even before they added all the subchannels. The Brewers games on there are practically unwatchable on a larger-screen TV).

Also, WDJT-DT has a lot more artifacts than WBBM here does - due to all the subchannels.

Now, the station from Milwaukee that's really impressive is 10.1 (PBS-HD). I was getting it in a couple of nights ago, and was reminded again of how excellent a channel could look if the stations weren't so subchannel-crazy.

I lost most of Chicago at one point last night.


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The Zenith STB will allow you to enter in an RF channel but you will only get a .1, to get all the sub channels you have to autoscan.

Not really true.

You'll get them all mapped, but they will default to being skipped by the Channel-Up and Channel-Down keys (so will the .1 channel, as you'll notice if you move off it and try to get back to it).  You have to go to Channel Edit to select them as stops on the Channel-Up and Channel-Down trips, but you'll find them already listed there.

If you pick them up via a rescan in Auto Tuning or in an Easy Add, or if you add them through a Manual Tuning, the .1 and all subchannels will be selected by default, and Channel-Up and Channel-Down will stop on them (unless you go to Channel Edit and deselect them).

I lost most of Chicago at one point last night.
So did I. Actually, a lot of the stations were going in and out all night. Good to know there wasn't anything wrong with my reception equipment, because I was worrying a bit there.

Not really true.

You'll get them all mapped, but they will default to being skipped by the Channel-Up and Channel-Down keys (so will the .1 channel, as you'll notice if you move off it and try to get back to it).* You have to go to Channel Edit to select them as stops on the Channel-Up and Channel-Down trips, but you'll find them already listed there.

If you pick them up via a rescan in Auto Tuning or in an Easy Add, or if you add them through a Manual Tuning, the .1 and all subchannels will be selected by default, and Channel-Up and Channel-Down will stop on them (unless you go to Channel Edit and deselect them).

My Zenith has got so many different maps in it from same channels from Dxing it don't know what to do I think. :eek: :(

I lost most of Chicago at one point last night.


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Actually being in Chicago I didn't loose anything when using my ant pointed at the loop. I did loose 23 digital on my Milwaukee stack though.

BTW When is That going to do something any ETA?

Is there any news about what will happen to WCHU and WLFM when WLS takes over RF44?

Actually being in Chicago I didn't loose anything when using my ant pointed at the loop. I did loose 23 digital on my Milwaukee stack though.

BTW When is That going to do something any ETA?

It does on 23.3. All the others are just motion graphics. Nothing in the immediate future.

I lost most of Chicago at one point last night.


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Ewww! Analog! Ewwwwwwwww! :p :D

Is there any news about what will happen to WCHU and WLFM when WLS takes over RF44?

They've applied for 26, but WBBM will probably snag it from them. Beyond that....no idea. They could apply for 20...

It does on 23.3. All the others are just motion graphics. Nothing in the immediate future.

I know theres's music there. I thought That was going to be a video service :(

Barely picked up WSJV and WNIT last night. That makes 4 South Bend Stations (WSBT and WNDU were very strong.) This morning, I'm just barely getting WOCK for the first time.

Schaumburg, apartment master antenna, DTT901. No surprise on getting SB stations, as the antenna is basically pointed at them. I tried with and without a Motorola Broadband amp (15dB, low noise, 1GHz bandwidth), but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

Tons of other frequencies showing something at one time or another, but not enough to sync. I wonder if some could be 'noise' from adjacent strong local channels, though.
5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 18, 20, 24, 26, 28, 33, 35, 40, 42, 46, 49.

Normally, I get all the full-power Chicago/Gary stations, and WWME and WCHU (no audio). WOCK was a first today.

Tropo was better Friday

Is there any news about what will happen to WCHU and WLFM when WLS takes over RF44?WLS has an application for a fill-in translator on 32. Maybe once they're on both 44 and 7 they'll try to make sure WCHU can get 32.

WLS is showing a nice bump in signal strength out here in Grayslake - now at 80% on my LG tuner. Signal was around 65% before the boost. WBBM is unchanged at 75%. I was locking WLS before so no biggie for me. Hope it helps those who had marginal signals.

Tropo was better Friday

I agree, it was WAY better on Friday night. Last night my TV was picking up a lot of hints of stuff but none of it was strong enough to show up.

Definitely didn't get the show last night that I got on Friday night :( Didn't manage anything at all last night

WLS has an application for a fill-in translator on 32. Maybe once they're on both 44 and 7 they'll try to make sure WCHU can get 32.

32 is out as well, Weigel has filed for displacement from Ch. 46 to Ch. 32 so they should get it since the fill-in translator for WLS will be pointless with them going to 44. Ch. 20 I believe is out as well because I believe Polnet has an application in Schaumburg on 20. Unfortunately, it looks 9 or 11 are the best options for WCHU, so it kind of looks like Venture is screwed in this situation. The only way WCHU can get a UHF frequency is if CBS leaves VHF and either knocks Polnet off 20 or Weigel off 39 and then 26 would be available for WCHU.

Alas, still toying around with the oddball stations...

Still can't get WCHU-LD on a regular basis, and it's nonexistent during most waking hours. The signal just doesn't seem to make it out to Arlington Hts in robust form, or maybe it has difficulty in penetrating all the large trees and houses nearby. Since they're said to be broadcasting at 15kw on 44, you would think it'd make it out here unless they have some sort of null to the north and west. If they end up on low power VHF, then forget about it. Speaking of which, I've never even been able to get a whisper of WOCH-LD on 4 out here either. On the other hand, since the analog shutoff, both WJYS 36 and WWME 39 come in strong as the others, usually with signal strength well into the 80's. And then the other night, I locked WWTO at 70%with the antenna aimed toward the city - turns out it was tropo cause it was gone a few hours later. WYIN 17 also only becomes lockable here during fits of tropo.

Does anyone know when WWTO is planning to turn their juice to 80kw? I'd love to see if it can become a regular lock in the NW burbs...

I'm getting 6 WLFM out here in Geneva on my Sony DVR but not on my TiVo DVR. It's snowy but I can see the slideshow and hear the music.

Yea great Tropo tonight, I'm watching the cool tv, not bad very tube like!

Im getting

WTMJ
WKOW
WCGV
WHA
WVTV
WTVO
MPTV (BTW I like the traffic cam, why cant sombody do this instead of weather)
I also like the jazz, classic, with the stills, (this is another reason why our PBS should be like theirs)
WISN
WITI
WTLJ

Most of my chicago stations are gone, WLS and CBS are smoking though. Cant pickup a hint of WGN, but thats normal :(

Yea great Tropo tonight, I'm watching the cool tv, not bad very tube like!

Im getting

WTMJ
WKOW
WCGV
WHA
WVTV
WTVO
MPTV (BTW I like the traffic cam, why cant sombody do this instead of weather)
I also like the jazz, classic, with the stills, (this is another reason why our PBS should be like theirs)
WISN
WITI
WTLJ

Most of my chicago stations are gone, WLS and CBS are smoking though. Cant pickup a hint of WGN, but thats normal :(

What antenna are you using and, how high in the air is it Bob? How are you getting Milwaukee way down in Manteno but no WGN?

Schaumburg, apartment master antenna, DTT901. ... WCHU (no audio).

Several of us have reported that the DTT901 (and I've found also the DTX9950) can't get the audio from WCHU's and WLFM's digital signals.  I'm sure it's your CECB and not your reception.

What antenna are you using and, how high in the air is it Bob? How are you getting Milwaukee way down in Manteno but no WGN?

There are 19's in Madison, Fort Wayne, IN (soon to move to 18), Grand Rapids (if he's getting WTLJ, there's a hint what it could be), and Peoria. Probably one of those butting in on his signal.

Barely picked up WSJV and WNIT last night. That makes 4 South Bend Stations (WSBT and WNDU were very strong.) This morning, I'm just barely getting WOCK for the first time.

Schaumburg, apartment master antenna, DTT901. No surprise on getting SB stations, as the antenna is basically pointed at them. I tried with and without a Motorola Broadband amp (15dB, low noise, 1GHz bandwidth), but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

Tons of other frequencies showing something at one time or another, but not enough to sync. I wonder if some could be 'noise' from adjacent strong local channels, though.
5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 18, 20, 24, 26, 28, 33, 35, 40, 42, 46, 49.

Normally, I get all the full-power Chicago/Gary stations, and WWME and WCHU (no audio). WOCK was a first today.

Wish my building still had their rooftop antennas hooked up. They are still on the roof and at about 140ft up they would do great on reception, better than what I get with my rabbit ears I use now.:( I don't get WLS anymore I do get WBBM now though so I consider that an improvement since I haven't watched anything on WLS in years and WBBM has NFL games.

I can do real well with Rockford and Madison from my balcony since I face the west I even get Quad Cities at times.

Not to bug you again, hvs10trk, (as I've probably bugged you enough about it lol) but, could you take a look at the data for the schedules for the U, Me-TV, and Me-Too? I think Me-Too's has been off for a little bit with the marathons going on. I think the U and Me-TV was off a one point tonight (like I want to say maybe the 6:30/7:00 time slots on both channels), but it could be back to normal tonight; not sure. Thanks again! :)

They've applied for 26, but WBBM will probably snag it from them. Beyond that....no idea. They could apply for 20...

sebenste, is WBBM Channel 2 going to be moving to UHF?

It's a good idea, if you were thinking of putting an antenna up in your attic, or roof, or improving what you have now, to think about this.

WBBM-DT will carry the Super Bowl on February 7, 2010. I'm guessing there will be a good chance of ice and snow on roofs, and very cold attics. So, if you are football fans, and want to see the game pristine in over-the-air glory, make sure your reception is solid before the weather starts getting cold. Seeing our local water parks close today for the last time is a good reminder that winter is not all that far away, unfortunately.

WCHU-LD has applied now to dismiss the channel 26 app and instead displace to channel 7...

... at 4.75 kW. I'm somehow imagining the FCC not going for that.

- Trip

WCHU-LD has applied now to dismiss the channel 26 app and instead displace to channel 7...

... at 4.75 kW. I'm somehow imagining the FCC not going for that.

- Trip

That would be one heck of a translator, er, low power station! Normally,
of course, channels 2-13 are limited to 300 watts for low power stations, except in extreme circumstances. Citing the problems WLS has now on 7, WCHU wants 4.75 kilowatts on channel 7 to serve as many as possible, saying
essentially they need that much power to do what 300 watts was supposed
to do.

Invariably, they want to take over WLS' equipment on Sears, and I more
than bet they've talked with them about it.

But I agree: I don't think that has a ghost of a chance of flying with the FCC.

WCHU-LD has applied now to dismiss the channel 26 app and instead displace to channel 7...

... at 4.75 kW. I'm somehow imagining the FCC not going for that.

But I agree: I don't think that has a ghost of a chance of flying with the FCC.

Didn't WLS want to keep 7 and broadcast on both frequencies?

Yes, they did, but WCHU might be able to successfully argue that WLS shouldn't be able to squat on two frequencies. I certainly hope they can argue that, anyway.

I really can't stand this "co-located fill-in translator" non-sense. If a station wants to be on UHF, they should be on UHF at full-power and not be on VHF at all.

- Trip

I finally got my antenna installed and most of the signals I get are about 80 or so, I am getting channel 2 and at times 7.
That being said the signal is on an amplifier but not sure if its a good one got it from a friend...(Philips Video Amplifier, 12dB) is the one I am using only link I found http://www.buy.com/prod/philips-signal-amplifier-1-way-450mhz-signal-amplifier-philips-signal/q/loc/111/90146143.html

So my question that I have is this amp good enough or would a different one/kind be better and if so any recommendations?

I finally got my antenna installed and most of the signals I get are about 80 or so, I am getting channel 2 and at times 7.
That being said the signal is on an amplifier but not sure if its a good one got it from a friend...(Philips Video Amplifier, 12dB) is the one I am using only link I found http://www.buy.com/prod/philips-signal-amplifier-1-way-450mhz-signal-amplifier-philips-signal/q/loc/111/90146143.html

So my question that I have is this amp good enough or would a different one/kind be better and if so any recommendations?


That amp in your link is not what you should be using. It only goes to 450 mhz, UHF starts at 470mhz. That amp is for the old cable tv bands and in general is a very noisy amp. I would look at Winegard or Channel Master low noise pre amps.

10:00 -10:01 PM WGN was showing channel 2 news from atlanta (wsb-tv), and flipping between the start of family guy and cw vampire spots.... weird

Yes, they did, but WCHU might be able to successfully argue that WLS shouldn't be able to squat on two frequencies. I certainly hope they can argue that, anyway.

I really can't stand this "co-located fill-in translator" non-sense. If a station wants to be on UHF, they should be on UHF at full-power and not be on VHF at all.

- Trip

Why doesn't the FCC allocate only LD and limited power translators like the shopping channels and religious fill-ins for VHF? That would free up more UHF for the full powered stations. It would be a more efficient use of the bands.
Nothing against TBN or HSN, but you can watch them on satellite or basic cable. Their OTA option just uses prime bandwidth. Who ever heard of a 1 MW TBN or home shopping affiliate either? Heck, they'd be fine at VHF with 3 kW. Saves them money on power bills too.

And I agree. WLS should "step off" VHF 7 if they go to UHF 44. 2 frequencies is a waste.

Who ever heard of a 1 MW TBN

WTBY, KTBN, KDTX, KETH, WHFT, KPJR, WHLV, KNMT, KTAJ, WSFJ, WTCE, WPGD, WTJP, WBUY, WJEB, KDOR, KITU.

Couldn't resist. :)

However, LD stations are secondary. If a full-service station, like WLS, wants the UHF frequency, the LD is bumped and has to find a new frequency.

- Trip

10:00 -10:01 PM WGN was showing channel 2 news from atlanta (wsb-tv), and flipping between the start of family guy and cw vampire spots.... weird

I caught a bit of that, too, but didn't know who it was. I thought it was another Tribune station, but WSB is owned by Cox. Maybe some CW satellite feed?

10:00 -10:01 PM WGN was showing channel 2 news from atlanta (wsb-tv), and flipping between the start of family guy and cw vampire spots.... weird

WSB-TV does the Mega Millions drawings. So I'm guessing WGN master control did not cut away soon enough from the WSB air-to-satellite feed after the drawing.

FYI,

Just wanted to finally put the details of our set up here. I'm the tech director at a church in Crystal Lake.

I have a Winegard HD7084P on top of our student center, about 35-40 feet up. No trees in the way. Quad shielded RG6 cable with the Channel Master 7777 pre-amp feeding an old Voom receiver that the OTA part still works.

Every Chicago station is coming in at least 95%, with most 98 or 99. Although for some reason, the tuner doesn't like WBBM. Whenever I try to view it, the box resets itself. So I'll have to get a new tuner before Super Bowl next year.

Other than that, it's working perfectly. Everyone is happy. :)

Anyone else experience this on your own tuners?

A few months ago, (I think it's been just a little time after WLS switched from 52 to 7 on the digital spectrum) I noticed that on all my tuners we have (Zenith DTT900/DTT901, Zinwell 970-A, Apex DT250, Dish DTV Pal Plus) been sometimes having an odd schedule on channel 7-1 (7-2 and 7-3 have been correct as far as I know). I did end up contacting WLS about this and I recall the instance that I mentioned to them.

Back when I contacted WLS in July, there was a day I tuned in to WLS at about 3:00pm and on all of my converter boxes, it listed the program as "ABC NEWS NIGHTLINE" from 3:00pm - 5:30pm, which was incorrect, as usually during that time "Inside Edition", "Jeopardy", and "ABC 7 News" is on during this time period. Then the same day, it said, "ABC WORLD NEWS WITH CHARLES GIBSON" from 5:30pm - 6:30pm, which is correct for a half hour, but then ABC 7 News comes on at 6pm, so the latter was incorrect then.

I received a reply saying that, while the guide data leaves ABC 7 correctly, sometimes it could get a bit mixed up to its final destination, and that they have let the appropriate people know.

I've still been having this issue on all my converters, as the guide has improved on some time slots, it's been incorrect on other times.

Just seeing if others have seen this on your own converter boxes. :)

I've noticed the programming guide on my converter boxes is often wrong on some channels. Haven't been paying enough attention to notice a pattern. I use the RCA box from Walmart and the Venturer (Winegard) box from Target. And a digital TV, 6 months old, that slightly outperforms either of the boxes.

I had noticed channel 26 and subs coming in without the usual dropouts for the last few days. Wondering if it was just because of seasonal weather etc, or whether the upgrade project had changed something. But now as I write this 26.4 is dropping out as it has been for months. So maybe just weather related fluctuations.

I didn't think it was possible, but they've managed to lower the bar even further with the picture quality on WMAQ. Tonight's game had the worst macroblocking I've ever seen on an NBC football broadcast.

Why do they insist on trying continuing to cram two subchannels in with a 1080i main channel? Why can't they shut 5.3 off during prime time and/or when they're running live sports on 5.1? Or better still - since NBC also owns Telemundo -- why don't they move 5.3 to 44.3 (and possibly run it there with both Spanish and English audio)???

And on a related note -- does anybody even watch 5.3 in the first place? All I ever seem to see on there are blurry Olympics rerurns -- what's the point?

I didn't think it was possible, but they've managed to lower the bar even further with the picture quality on WMAQ. Tonight's game had the worst macroblocking I've ever seen on an NBC football broadcast.

Why do they insist on trying continuing to cram two subchannels in with a 1080i main channel? Why can't they shut 5.3 off during prime time and/or when they're running live sports on 5.1? Or better still - since NBC also owns Telemundo -- why don't they move 5.3 to 44.3 (and possibly run it there with both Spanish and English audio)???

And on a related note -- does anybody even watch 5.3 in the first place? All I ever seem to see on there are blurry Olympics rerurns -- what's the point?

I hate to say it but it's only going to get worse. OTA is following the same road as Cable, Dish Network and Direct tv. There is money to be made in craming as much as possible in the limited bandwidth. And it's all about a buck. :(

It's a good idea, if you were thinking of putting an antenna up in your attic, or roof, or improving what you have now, to think about this.

WBBM-DT will carry the Super Bowl on February 7, 2010. I'm guessing there will be a good chance of ice and snow on roofs, and very cold attics. So, if you are football fans, and want to see the game pristine in over-the-air glory, make sure your reception is solid before the weather starts getting cold. Seeing our local water parks close today for the last time is a good reminder that winter is not all that far away, unfortunately.

Real Men will brave the bad weather and put them up then. Whats the old Ham saying something like... If you didn't put the antenna up on the worst day in the worst storm I wont work. :D

As I was browsing around this morning, it seemed to me that 56-3 and 56-4 must have a bit more juice to them, as they didn't seem as choppy/pixelated as when they started. I don't know if it was the program or what, but I know there was a lot of movement on the screen and it didn't seem choppy/pixelated when there was movement on those 2 channels. Anyone know if they got a bit more power on those two channels?

I hate to say it but it's only going to get worse. OTA is following the same road as Cable, Dish Network and Direct tv. There is money to be made in craming as much as possible in the limited bandwidth. And it's all about a buck. :(

I can see how they would make money by adding subchannels that people actually watch -- but how many viewers could 5.3 possibly have? A subchannel that nobody watches certainly isn't going to generate much (if any) advertising revenue.

As I was browsing around this morning, it seemed to me that 56-3 and 56-4 must have a bit more juice to them, as they didn't seem as choppy/pixelated as when they started. I don't know if it was the program or what, but I know there was a lot of movement on the screen and it didn't seem choppy/pixelated when there was movement on those 2 channels. Anyone know if they got a bit more power on those two channels?

Not more power, but more bits allocated to them.

Hi, and sorry if this is a left field sort of question, but I'm trying to figure out how to stop public transit ruining my soaps.

I live right next to the Blue line, like "so often that you won't even notice it" next to the train. You can touch the tracks from some of my windows. Normally, the reception (with a Terk TV5) is fine. The problem is when the train passes. Now, I had the problem back in the days of analog, but then it cast a little barely noticeable static on the screen. With digital it kills the signal altogether.

At the closest point, the TV itself is probably about 20 feet from the train. (It's a bit hard to judge because the building and the tracks are all at angles). I tried moving the aerial about ten feet deeper into the apartment, towards another window and away from the train, but that doesn't seem to do the trick. Since it's an intermittent thing (except during rush hour) it can be hard to judge the difference in changes.

Typically I'd think to go up, but there really isn't much up to go. It's only a two story building, and the rooftop is at or about as high as the train. About the only advice anyone's been willing to give me so far is to get a directional and point it towards the Willis, but I'm not sure there are any ways to do that and still not come with the L obstructing the line.

Opinions?

I live right next to the Blue line, like "so often that you won't even notice it" next to the train. You can touch the tracks from some of my windows. Normally, the reception (with a Terk TV5) is fine. The problem is when the train passes. Now, I had the problem back in the days of analog, but then it cast a little barely noticeable static on the screen. With digital it kills the signal altogether.I just took the Pink line myself yesterday.

How in the world could you live with that thunder, roaring and screeching? I lived near O'Hare for the first 39 years of my life. Some people like to claim that "you get used to it" - but I can vouch that you never, ever do.

I didn't think it was possible, but they've managed to lower the bar even further with the picture quality on WMAQ. Tonight's game had the worst macroblocking I've ever seen on an NBC football broadcast.

Why do they insist on trying continuing to cram two subchannels in with a 1080i main channel? Why can't they shut 5.3 off during prime time and/or when they're running live sports on 5.1? Or better still - since NBC also owns Telemundo -- why don't they move 5.3 to 44.3 (and possibly run it there with both Spanish and English audio)???

And on a related note -- does anybody even watch 5.3 in the first place? All I ever seem to see on there are blurry Olympics rerurns -- what's the point?
Earlier this summer, 5-3 had Giro d'Italia (the Italian version of Tour de France), Tour de France, and the Ironman competitions. Since some time in August, it's been summer Olympics reruns.

Not more power, but more bits allocated to them.

Heh, you're right; wrong word on my part lol

Umm, would you have to edit your first post of the channel list and add 56-3 and 56-4 to the list, as well as 60-2 and 66-2? Just thought I'd ask. :)

How in the world could you live with that thunder, roaring and screeching? I lived near O'Hare for the first 39 years of my life. Some people like to claim that "you get used to it" - but I can vouch that you never, ever do.

It's really not that bad. Even at the point it's worst it's not loud enough to impede normal conversation. It's a low rumble, sort of like the sound of pushing a dolly down a hall, any sort of screeching or squealing is infrequent. The only times it's bad is during rush hour, but that's when I'm doing other things anyway. The bad parts are the sorts of things that you don't really anticipate, like when there's some sort of message and you can't figure out who's talking in your apartment, or when the train stops right outside your window.

This occasionally leads to odd looks between you and the passengers. Or accidentally flashing men working on the tracks. Honestly, I get more disruption from drunks wandering by from the nearby nightlife.

Besides, this is one of those buildings where the L is the only thing bad going for it. A pre-1900 landmark-grade building on the Near Northwest side with indoor parking, in walking distance to an L stop (heh), and a half-lot sized garden, (soon to be two when I get one on the roof)? I'll put up with the L.

The only problem is the television business. I'd get cable, but it's not only the principle of the thing, but the only cable I can get is Comcast, which isn't so much getting cable as paying someone monthly for the right to knee you in the groin.

just curious with channel 7 in the process of getting fcc approval to move to rf 44 ... by the way how long does this take to do... when will channel 26 and its sub stations get the fcc approval to finally get the new antenna up and running and so we get the full signal at 500 kw...


also did anyone else notice wgn now dropping out at night all of a sudden and even fox dropping out yesterday morning...

anyone knowing what is going on with " that" tv channel 26.5.. we are now in september and nothing but that annoying placard saying" what is up with that"

just curious with channel 7 in the process of getting fcc approval to move to rf 44 ... by the way how long does this take to do... when will channel 26 and its sub stations get the fcc approval to finally get the new antenna up and running and so we get the full signal at 500 kw...


also did anyone else notice wgn now dropping out at night all of a sudden and even fox dropping out yesterday morning...

We have a construction permit from the FCC for our new antenna and power increase. We just need more time. As for 26.5 "That", its just there.

I just wanted to very quickly post here that sometime in the last 24 hours, WJYS has added a third subchannel onto the two existing ones. Right now it just says that WJYS 62 Too will be coming soon. I wonder what will be on there?? I have a feeling they're getting ready for when they finally get up to their full power and supposedly cover the entire Chicago area, not just the Southern portion of it.

I realize WJYS is STILL not up to full power yet, but wanted to post that little bit of info here for everyone :)

Heh, you're right; wrong word on my part lol

Umm, would you have to edit your first post of the channel list and add 56-3 and 56-4 to the list, as well as 60-2 and 66-2? Just thought I'd ask. :)

:o Yeah, I've been busy this summer and forgot to update that. D'oh! Thank you for reminding me. Check it out and see if you see any mistaykes, er, misteaks (mmmm...steak!). :D

As for 26.5 "That", its just there.

Nononono...hold on a second here, HVS. I have to call you out and straighten you up on this one.

You see, about That...That is just that. That is not there; if That were There then it would be There, and not That. But that That is being called that, that is, That...it would be incorrect to say that That is There, if There really was That. But since that That is not the case at all, that is, That is not There...it stands to reason that That just needs more time, but not to be There. Obviously, there isn't a There on your lineup, and that's that. Or That.

Glad I could clear that up.

:D

just curious with channel 7 in the process of getting fcc approval to move to rf 44 ... by the way how long does this take to do... when will channel 26 and its sub stations get the fcc approval to finally get the new antenna up and running and so we get the full signal at 500 kw...

also did anyone else notice wgn now dropping out at night all of a sudden and even fox dropping out yesterday morning...

Emily Barr from WLS said roughly mid-October...dunno how frequently Kal Hassan, CE of WLS check the board these days since he's so busy...but that was the last I heard.

I'd get cable, but it's not only the principle of the thing, but the only cable I can get is Comcast, which isn't so much getting cable as paying someone monthly for the right to knee you in the groin.

Quote of the day! :D You are wise, oh newbie! :D

Glad I could clear that up.

:D

My brain hurts.

- Trip

:o Yeah, I've been busy this summer and forgot to update that. D'oh! Thank you for reminding me. Check it out and see if you see any mistaykes, er, misteaks (mmmm...steak!). :DSure thing :) I'll take a look at it and see if notice anything that needs to be added or subtracted or whatever the case may be. :)

Nononono...hold on a second here, HVS. I have to call you out and straighten you up on this one.

You see, about That...That is just that. That is not there; if That were There then it would be There, and not That. But that That is being called that, that is, That...it would be incorrect to say that That is There, if There really was That. But since that That is not the case at all, that is, That is not There...it stands to reason that That just needs more time, but not to be There. Obviously, there isn't a There on your lineup, and that's that. Or That.

Glad I could clear that up.

:D HUH? I'm lost. (LOL) :D

I just wanted to very quickly post here that sometime in the last 24 hours, WJYS has added a third subchannel onto the two existing ones. Right now it just says that WJYS 62 Too will be coming soon. I wonder what will be on there?? I have a feeling they're getting ready for when they finally get up to their full power and supposedly cover the entire Chicago area, not just the Southern portion of it.

I realize WJYS is STILL not up to full power yet, but wanted to post that little bit of info here for everyone :) I noticed that tonight when I turned on the TV that it's on 62-3. Maybe since part of the subchannels is associated with FamilyNet, maybe they'll show more of that channel's schedule.

They must be copying off of Me-Too with branding of their name on that channel with "WJYS 62 TOO", ya know? :P

judget, re your reception problems....u didnt tell us what antenna youre using...or at least i dont recall....and i think u are limited to indoor antennas only?

if youre willing to spend some money this indoor antenna might work for u.....i've heard from supposedly reliable sources that this is one of the better/best indoor antennas....i have no idea what a good price for it is....see what u can find online >

Winegard SS 3000 Indoor UHF/VHF Antenna
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mZutwMuIFVc/SZ2gHcQgWYI/AAAAAAAAAbY/RD4Zo5WO69I/s320/Winegard+SS3000.gif
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=JC-SS3000&d=Winegard-SS-3000-Indoor-UHFVHF-Antenna-(SS3000)&sku=&mc=03

judget, re your reception problems....u didnt tell us what antenna youre using...or at least i dont recall....and i think u are limited to indoor antennas only?

if youre willing to spend some money this indoor antenna might work for u.....i've heard from supposedly reliable sources that this is one of the better/best indoor antennas....i have no idea what a good price for it is....see what u can find online >

mookie mookie, er... I mean judjet ,never did tell us any specifics about an antenna except a VHF/UHF antenna

Hi..... I'm trying to figure out how to stop public transit ruining my soaps.......I live right next to the Blue line, like "so often that you won't even notice it" next to the train. You can touch the tracks from some of my windows. Normally, the reception (with a Terk TV5) is fine. The problem is when the train passes. Now, I had the problem back in the days of analog, but then it cast a little barely noticeable static on the screen. With digital it kills the signal altogether. ........ It's only a two story building, and the rooftop is at or about as high as the train. About the only advice anyone's been willing to give me so far is to get a directional and point it towards the Willis, but I'm not sure there are any ways to do that and still not come with the L obstructing the line. Opinions?

wow....u have quite a problem....all that voltage sparking off the 3rd rail as the train goes by must be causing your problems...and if thats the case i think the only thing u can do is position your antenna as far away from the track as possible...

i've noticed that just the very minor spark from turning on a light switch in my house can cause a short dropout...especially on ch 7 and ch 2, both of which transmit on vhf (the lower vhf frequencies are more susceptible to spark noise than the higher uhf frequencies)....and u have a farrrrrr worse noise problem.... astronomically worse!

but there must now be many people with this same problem all along all the cta lines....i'd try calling the cta ....maybe u can find a cta engineer who is at least willing to look into it for u...and the tv station engineers might be willing to give it a shot too....

all that spark noise may well be getting into the tv tuner or the converter box thru the ac power line as well as the antenna line....maybe there are noise filters they could recommend? they might even have some to give u to try.....good luck....

Good Tropo again tonight, best in a few nights. Milwaukee, Madison like locals all night since about 11pm.

Gilbert, any comments/predictions for the upcoming week? Seems like similiar weather all week. WKOW is a real Barn Burner over here on the lake in 60626. I'd like to see WBBM get on UHF at maybe 26, but sure would hate to lost WKOW now. If WBBM does move to RF26 I predict a lot of co-channel issues with those located NW. Equipment is a DTT-901 and a 7777 preamp with a 4221 antenna. Great setup.

My brain hurts.It will have to come out.  (Nothing against Trip, of course, but that is the next line.)

WKOW is a real Barn Burner over here on the lake in 60626. I'd like to see WBBM get on UHF at maybe 26, but sure would hate to lost WKOW now. If WBBM does move to RF26 I predict a lot of co-channel issues with those located NW.I'm also northwest and about the same distance from each of those stations as you, but I've never gotten even a weak whimper out of WKOW.

Gilbert, any comments/predictions for the upcoming week? Seems like similiar weather all week. WKOW is a real Barn Burner over here on the lake in 60626. I'd like to see WBBM get on UHF at maybe 26, but sure would hate to lost WKOW now. If WBBM does move to RF26 I predict a lot of co-channel issues with those located NW. Equipment is a DTT-901 and a 7777 preamp with a 4221 antenna. Great setup.

All of Madison was great last night from DeKalb. South Bend was a no-show...so was Milwaukee. I'm with you, I'd hate to lose WKOW...we'll see what happens with the FCC app. WKOW, by the way, is at 1492', on top of a bluff, with 800 kilowatts. My antenna rotor controller broke, so I'm using a backup that can only turn it 270 degrees. But just before it broke, I was able to lock WKOW in DeKalb, with my ChannelMaster 4228 classic antenna in the attic, breaking up by day but solid at sundown with no tropo...and a friend of mine with the same ChannelMaster 4228 classic antenna 30' up can get it in Waterman, south of a bluff that runs across DeKalb county, at night with no problem as well; he can't lock it during the day. WKOW will certainly be a significant interference factor with WBBM...as it was with WCIU analog before June 12.

As for tropo...warm days and cool nights with light winds off the lake mean a fair low-level temperature inversion, so Madison/Milwaukee should be booming in the next several nights...longer range is possible tonight and through Tuesday morning.

THIS is airing college football, and it is the #1 team in the nation Florida Gators. It is the "SEC Network Game of the Week". It is not a replay from another day, but live action. :D :D :D

The 4 stations on 26 are going to end up being better than the big 3 networks at this pace. GIVE 26 another station so they can air more of their stuff in HD!!!

anyone know why wgn channel 9 is dropping out in the evenings... was not having this issue before until a week or so ago. i tried to call wgn's dtv hotline for the last 3 days.. line is always busy no matter what time of day or night.. think they took the phone off the hook due to the problem...





any help....

THIS is airing college football, and it is the #1 team in the nation Florida Gators. It is the "SEC Network Game of the Week". It is not a replay from another day, but live action. :D :D :D

The 4 stations on 26 are going to end up being better than the big 3 networks at this pace. GIVE 26 another station so they can air more of their stuff in HD!!!

Saturday's Suntimes sports "On the Air today" section does not list this game or the pit game on wpwr... why the snub?

Editors have yet to reply to my email.... yes i read newspapers, some old school habits die hard.

Saturday's Suntimes' sports' "On the Air today" section does not list this game or the pit game on wpwr... why the snub?

Editor's have yet to reply to my email.... yes i read newspapers, some old school habits die hard.

i just checked on that channel... it is an old vincent price movie not college football...

i just checked on that channel... it is an old vincent price movie not college football...

Florida game is over now. It was good.

Next week it is Alabama which is ranked #4th in the nation.

Florida game is over now. It was good.

Next week it is Alabama which is ranked #4th in the nation.
what time next saturday

what time next saturday

11am.

It is listed on the zap2it tv listings page.

anyone know why wgn channel 9 is dropping out in the evenings... was not having this issue before until a week or so ago. i tried to call wgn's dtv hotline for the last 3 days.. line is always busy no matter what time of day or night.. think they took the phone off the hook due to the problem...
any help....

The last few nights have been great tropo skip openings. Some other station is ducting in and interferring with WGN. WLS, WTTW, WCIU, WBBM all suffer from this too. WGN is usually the first to go for me, usually around 9:30 at night. The rest soon follow.

I'm thinking that we can takes Gilbert's absence from the thread this evening as him being called away to watch the NIU Huskies lay down a 41-7 arse-whupin' on the WIU Whatchamacallits!!!

Nice weather forecast for the game AND Tropo, Gilbert!!!

:eek:

I'm thinking that we can takes Gilbert's absence from the thread this evening as him being called away to watch the NIU Huskies lay down a 41-7 arse-whupin' on the WIU Whatchamacallits!!!

Nice weather forecast for the game AND Tropo, Gilbert!!!

:eek:

LOL! Actually, I was at the Sandwich Fair, but I'm glad to hear about the mudstomping our Huskies delivered. We should have beat Wisconsin last week,
and we took it out on Western this week!

Oh, get back on topic? My first digital lock from Ohio! As I type this, I am watching WEWS-DT, rf 15, resolving to channel 5.1. It's the ABC affiliate in Cleveland, OH(!), with 870 kw of power. One of my furthest catches to date with tropo...

Still coming in at 1 AM. Enjoy.

http://weather.niu.edu/gilbert/WEWS-DT.jpg

It's weird to see an ABC affiliate without any subchannels!

watch the NIU Huskies lay down a 41-7 arse-whupin' on the WIU Whatchamacallits!!!

Nice! :D

(And next week, Western plays Stephen F. Austin, who beat this week's opponent by a truly ridiculous score of 92-0.) http://sfajacks.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/recaps/091209aaa.html

Still coming in at 1 AM. Enjoy.

http://weather.niu.edu/gilbert/WEWS-DT.jpg

It's weird to see an ABC affiliate without any subchannels!

Nice :) used to get Ohio back in the day in Analog.

Nononono...hold on a second here, HVS. I have to call you out and straighten you up on this one.

You see, about That...That is just that. That is not there; if That were There then it would be There, and not That. But that That is being called that, that is, That...it would be incorrect to say that That is There, if There really was That. But since that That is not the case at all, that is, That is not There...it stands to reason that That just needs more time, but not to be There. Obviously, there isn't a There on your lineup, and that's that. Or That.

Glad I could clear that up.

:D

Hold on, I need a chalk board to draw that one out.

LOL! Actually, I was at the Sandwich Fair, but I'm glad to hear about the mudstomping our Huskies delivered. We should have beat Wisconsin last week,
and we took it out on Western this week!

Oh, get back on topic? My first digital lock from Ohio! As I type this, I am watching WEWS-DT, rf 15, resolving to channel 5.1. It's the ABC affiliate in Cleveland, OH(!), with 870 kw of power. One of my furthest catches to date with tropo...

There is a fair dedicated to people who love sandwiches? How do I not know about this? I could go for a ruben right now, sauerkraut with thousand island between melted swiss cheese and corned beef all on butter toasted rye. Mmmm.

I live in Villa Park and have a roof top antenna. Didn't have any problems getting WLS 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 until they did the switch to all digital and reduced their power. Then the channels would come and go for an hour or so. Starting last night channel 7 is completely gone. Their website said they increased their power last week and up to last night I had no problems. Guess my question is What Happened?

Thanks

I live in Villa Park and have a roof top antenna. Didn't have any problems getting WLS 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 until they did the switch to all digital and reduced their power. Then the channels would come and go for an hour or so. Starting last night channel 7 is completely gone. Their website said they increased their power last week and up to last night I had no problems. Guess my question is What Happened?

Thanks

There are many things that could have happened, Something happened with your antenna, something new is blocking the signal, attenuating or causing multipath. Weather conditions such as tropo could be interfering. You need to check out these things I mentioned and see if thats what going on. Channel 7 is working fine here.

Why does everyone think when there is an issue it's the transmitters fault? Can you check with neighbors in your area and see if there having any problems? If no-one is getting it than it could be something else but if it's just you you narrowed it down to your system. Trial and error in troubleshooting, checking each chain in the link is the only logical answer.

I find it interesting that so many people are having trouble receiving channel 7. I live near the intersection of I-55 and I-80, about 45 miles out, and use a Winegard HD-7082 about 23 feet above ground level and an indoor amp ahead of a splitter for the two branches of my distribution system. When 7 was using their temporary digital channel I had nothing but problems with signal dropouts but now even at their low power level on channel 7 I have had no problems at all. Even channel 13 has no breakups here about 80% of the time. Now here is my question. Are tv transmitting antennas designed to, in effect, tilt the direction of the maximum signal downward towards the horizon or are they designed to radiate the maximum signal parallel to the earth's surface at the antenna site which would be somewhat above the horizon?

I live in Villa Park and have a roof top antenna. Didn't have any problems getting WLS 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 until they did the switch to all digital and reduced their power. Then the channels would come and go for an hour or so. Starting last night channel 7 is completely gone. Their website said they increased their power last week and up to last night I had no problems. Guess my question is What Happened?

Thanks

Hi Vpcavalier,

Welcome to the forum! We're glad you're here.

As others have said, it probably is with your antenna system. If you had "ghosts" on analog channel 7 when it was still on, I bet the signal "multipath", that is, the channel 7 signal bounces off of numerous buildings and such and hitting your antenna at slightly different times is causing the problem. What antenna do you have? A larger antenna is more directional, and will eliminate that multipath. If you have this, or something like it...

https://www.tselectronic.com/winegard/hd7698.html

Then I would go up and adjust the antenna. Either way, I'd go up and make sure the antenna is still pointing to Sears Tower, and that the lead-in cable is still in good condition, and all connections along the way to your TV are solid.

I live in Villa Park and have a roof top antenna. Didn't have any problems getting WLS 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 until they did the switch to all digital and reduced their power. Then the channels would come and go for an hour or so. Starting last night channel 7 is completely gone. Their website said they increased their power last week and up to last night I had no problems. Guess my question is What Happened?

Thanks

I know a guy in VP and asked him about his reception. He's got an indoor antenna and lost Ch 7 when they went to the DTV switch. Got a little signal, but not enough to lock in. After they boosted power, he now is able to get picture, although too much picture pixalation most of the time to be very watchable. Said he hasn't noticed any further changes, good or bad, since the power boost.

Does Sunday Night Football look like crap tonight or what? I don't know if I can blame WMAQ on this one though. WTMJ and WNDU are just as bad tonight with the fast motion and macroblocking.

I also put up the new Channel Master 2020 and I'm mostly happy with it. Sure I lost WMVS, but I can now get WTLJ, WOTV, WGVU, WTVO, WIFR. WSBT seems a little better too. Of course, WITI, WDJT, and WISN are all in better now. 10 elements UHF to 20 sure helps. Not sure if I'll jump from the Winegard AP-8700 (19 dB UHF) preamp to the Channel Master 7777 (26 dB). I might have some overload issues since I can walk a 1/4 mile east and see the Sears Tower on a nice day like this.

Does Sunday Night Football look like crap tonight or what? I don't know if I can blame WMAQ on this one though. WTMJ and WNDU are just as bad tonight with the fast motion and macroblocking.

I only saw one occurance of motion artificats(OTA) otherwise it looks good.

Does Sunday Night Football look like crap tonight or what? I don't know if I can blame WMAQ on this one though. WTMJ and WNDU are just as bad tonight with the fast motion and macroblocking.

There are several posts on this in the HD Programming thread (SNF week 1)
There are several post mentioning the poor PQ of WMAQ. WREX out of Rockford looks good. If you are not happy go the NBCChicago.com site, and in the contact us section, you can tell them what you think. This is much worse than LY, with the same subs.

Does Sunday Night Football look like crap tonight or what?

It sure did, but mostly because of the quality of play... :(

Hi Vpcavalier,

Welcome to the forum! We're glad you're here.

As others have said, it probably is with your antenna system. If you had "ghosts" on analog channel 7 when it was still on, I bet the signal "multipath", that is, the channel 7 signal bounces off of numerous buildings and such and hitting your antenna at slightly different times is causing the problem. What antenna do you have? A larger antenna is more directional, and will eliminate that multipath. If you have this, or something like it...


Then I would go up and adjust the antenna. Either way, I'd go up and make sure the antenna is still pointing to Sears Tower, and that the lead-in cable is still in good condition, and all connections along the way to your TV are solid.

Thanks for the welcome and info. Before the switch over in June I had no problems with channel 7, had been watching the digital channels for at least 6 months. All of the other channels come in fine. Channel 7 was gone most of the weekend and came back around 5 PM Sunday.
As for the antenna it is extremely old (at least 20 years). Being extremely old myself and hating heights I am not inclined to go up and check out the connections. Since all of the other channels come in ok, would replacing the antenna help with channel 7? Also any recommendations on who to contact to have an antenna installed?

Thanks for the help.

Hvstrk,

So, now whenever THAT? becomes a "channel" (meaning starts showing shows, etc) is it going to be a national channel like THIS, where it airs all over the states, or will it just be a channel only local to Chicago (sorta like how MeTV is only local to Chicago and Milwaukee and Me-Too local only to Chicago)? Just was wondering.

Also, any way you can just flip the switch for the guide data for Me-TV's new schedule that started today, since we are still on the old guide data/schedule on Me-TV at the moment? Says "Perry Mason", but "Hogan's Heroes" is on right now instead. Just thought I'd mention this too :)

Well, I got my Winegard HD7698 antenna up this weekend and I'm impressed my tv's found 38 digital channels. Comcast is no longer! When I check the signal meter I'm getting many channels in the 80's for signal strength and some like 26.1-26.5 & 20.1 between 45-50 and they still look great, however, in the evening seems like after 8:30pm I notice many channels get very weak signals 10-16 percent, some unwatchable. The U, channel 26 went out completely the last two nights. It's fine in the morning and afternoon. Is this the tropo effect I've been hearing about. I'm in Woodstock.

Well, I got my Winegard HD7698 antenna up this weekend and I'm impressed my tv's found 38 digital channels. Comcast is no longer! When I check the signal meter I'm getting many channels in the 80's for signal strength and some like 26.1-26.5 & 20.1 between 45-50 and they still look great, however, in the evening seems like after 8:30pm I notice many channels get very week signals 10-16 percent, some unwatchable. The U, channel 26 went out completely the last two nights. It's fine in the morning and afternoon. Is this the tropo effect I've been hearing about. I'm in Woodstock.

Most likely yes, these conditions have been causing problems for the last couple of weeks usually at night and in the morning. Once the condidtions change you should see much better results. Out here in Plano, almost 50 miles west of the city I have no problems with any of the major Chicago stations when weather conditions are "normal". The last two weeks have been up and down.

Earlier this summer, 5-3 had Giro d'Italia (the Italian version of Tour de France), Tour de France, and the Ironman competitions. Since some time in August, it's been summer Olympics reruns.

I watched quite a bit of the Giro d'Italia this summer, and some of the Ironman. Last spring I caught a good portion of the 'round the world yacht race. I remember some beach volleyball, as well. Others may have no interest, but I appreciate the choice of some non-network-standard fare. :) Oh, and count me a fan of Australian Rules Football on 20.3, too.

Thanks for the welcome and info. Before the switch over in June I had no problems with channel 7, had been watching the digital channels for at least 6 months. All of the other channels come in fine. Channel 7 was gone most of the weekend and came back around 5 PM Sunday.
As for the antenna it is extremely old (at least 20 years). Being extremely old myself and hating heights I am not inclined to go up and check out the connections. Since all of the other channels come in ok, would replacing the antenna help with channel 7? Also any recommendations on who to contact to have an antenna installed?

Thanks for the help.

Not that I am aware of in your area. Your second option would be to just gut it out until 7 goes to channel 44 in mid-late October-ish. Then you should get it.

Hvstrk,

So, now whenever THAT? becomes a "channel" (meaning starts showing shows, etc) is it going to be a national channel like THIS, where it airs all over the states, or will it just be a channel only local to Chicago (sorta like how MeTV is only local to Chicago and Milwaukee and Me-Too local only to Chicago)? Just was wondering.

Also, any way you can just flip the switch for the guide data for Me-TV's new schedule that started today, since we are still on the old guide data/schedule on Me-TV at the moment? Says "Perry Mason", but "Hogan's Heroes" is on right now instead. Just thought I'd mention this too :)

No idea. Like I say, its just kinda there. Guide data fixed. (for now)

Well, I got my Winegard HD7698 antenna up this weekend and I'm impressed my tv's found 38 digital channels. Comcast is no longer! When I check the signal meter I'm getting many channels in the 80's for signal strength and some like 26.1-26.5 & 20.1 between 45-50 and they still look great, however, in the evening seems like after 8:30pm I notice many channels get very weak signals 10-16 percent, some unwatchable. The U, channel 26 went out completely the last two nights. It's fine in the morning and afternoon. Is this the tropo effect I've been hearing about. I'm in Woodstock.

Yep, that's tropo for you.

For any others out there who might be looking for ideas, let me recount my recent adventures with 7.1 and 2.1.

I'm out on the Eastern edge of Aurora, near Waubonsie Valley High School.

Prior to the June analog shut down, I had both an Antennas Direct V4 mk II and a DB4 in my attic. I combined the two antennas with a Channel Master 7777 preamp. The V4 was specifically to receive 2.1 on channel 3 and was aimed dead on towards the Sears Tower/Hancock. The V4 is a low VHF antenna with a claimed gain of about 4 dB over the reference dipole. The DB4 was for everything else and was pointed somewhat south of the Chicago so that I could get 56.1 from Gary as well. Obviously, the V4 fed the VHF input of the 7777 and the DB4 fed the UHF input. My only significant complaint were the occasional nights when 2.1 broke up too much to watch.

After the June shut down and channel shuffling, I found 2.1 to be vastly improved by the move to channel 12, but 7.1, as many have noted, fared more poorly. 2.1 was stable most of the time, but 7.1 had quite a few unwatchable days. I replaced the V4 low VHF antenna with a Winegard 7694 high VHF and UHF antenna. (The 7694 is the smallest, lowest price member of the new Winegard 769x family.)

With the V4, the signal meter showed about 72 out of 100 on my TV for 7.1. With the 7694, the reading increased to about 92. 2.1 is at 92 as well. I have seen *NO* dropounts on either 7.x or 2.1 since the antenna change. I did test the 7694 across the entire spectrum of Chicago stations, and was able to receive them all. Unfortunately, the 7694 is too directional to pick up 56.1 while pointed towards Chicago, so I continue to use the DB4 for UHF with the 7694 for VHF. (I did notice that the filters on my 7777 aren't as precise as I imagined, since I could get some UHF through the VHF input, and some VHF through the UHF input.)

First side note: although the 7694 claims to have a reasonably high front-to-back ratio, I'm picking up 35.1 from LaSalle strongly enough to watch, even though it's almost directly off the back of the antenna.

Second side note: I also tried using the 7694 combined with the DB4 *before* the 7777 pre-amp (using a 2-to-1 splitter backwards) and running the combined pair into the the VHF/UHF input of the pre-amp. I wanted to try using the 7694 to pick up all the Chicago stations, and aim the DB4 directly at 56.1 (of even farther south, if necessary) to get the best possible signal from 56.1. Unfortunately, while the DB4 didn't seem to interfere with the 7694 at all, the 7694 seemed to completely knock out any signal from 56.1. Fortunately, I can still point the DB4 such that 20.x and 38.x are still about 85 and 56.1 is about 75.

In the final configuration, at 35 miles from the Chicago transmitters and receiving through my asphalt shingles, on my 4th generation Panasonic TV tuner I get:

2.1 92+
5.x 85+
7.x 92+
9.x 95+
11.x 85+
20.x 83+
23.x 70+ (the actual 23.x, not the 26.x remap)
26.x 97+ (including the 23.x and 48.1 remaps)
32.1 97+
35.x 70+
38.x 85+
50.1 95+
56.x 75+
62.x 85+

I don't remember the results from the Spanish language stations, but I did lock 44.x, 60.x, and 66.x with high readings on the meter. 61.x was there as well, and it was stable for the short time I observed it, though I don't remember the reading.

I do remember finding analogs 48, 24, 39, 46, 40, 41, 34, 25, 6, and 23. This is the first time I've ever seen 6 or 24.

Last side note: I haven't run through all the stations on the 5th generation tuner in my Panasonic DVD recorder, but since the DVD recorder was generally noticably better on the weakest stations (35.x, 20.x, 38.x, 2.1, 7.x, 56.x) than the 4th gen tuner, I'm expecting even better results with the new antenna configuration.

I hope this might be of some use to anyone looking for examples of successful antenna systems.

Dan (Woj...)

Well, I got my Winegard HD7698 antenna up this weekend and I'm impressed my tv's found 38 digital channels. Comcast is no longer! When I check the signal meter I'm getting many channels in the 80's for signal strength and some like 26.1-26.5 & 20.1 between 45-50 and they still look great, however, in the evening seems like after 8:30pm I notice many channels get very weak signals 10-16 percent, some unwatchable. The U, channel 26 went out completely the last two nights. It's fine in the morning and afternoon. Is this the tropo effect I've been hearing about. I'm in Woodstock.

When this happens again, do a channel rescan, and see if you get any new channels, if only for the evening. BTW, slap a channelmaster 7777 preamplifier on that, and you should get Milwaukee and Rockford, if you rotate the antenna in those directions. You may get them even without the preamp.

At the closest point, the TV itself is probably about 20 feet from the train. (It's a bit hard to judge because the building and the tracks are all at angles). I tried moving the aerial about ten feet deeper into the apartment, towards another window and away from the train, but that doesn't seem to do the trick. Since it's an intermittent thing (except during rush hour) it can be hard to judge the difference in changes.

Typically I'd think to go up, but there really isn't much up to go. It's only a two story building, and the rooftop is at or about as high as the train. About the only advice anyone's been willing to give me so far is to get a directional and point it towards the Willis, but I'm not sure there are any ways to do that and still not come with the L obstructing the line.

Is going under an option? You basically have a giant steel + aluminum can sitting between you and the transmitter. So if you can't go up, possibly going down might help to get it out of your line of sight.

The WLS request to relocate to channel 44 has been approved by the FCC. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-2052A1.pdf

- Trip

The WLS request to relocate to channel 44 has been approved by the FCC. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-2052A1.pdf

- Trip

Looks like the wheels are in pretty good motion for WLS! Hope it all works out for WLS and for the viewers that can't receive 7 at the moment now.

So, do they have to do any construction/building on WSNS 44's old transmitter for WLS to be ready to be on RF44?

Cool. Now if WBBM would go to UHF and WCIU and WYIN ups their power, most of us would be sitting pretty.

Looks like the wheels are in pretty good motion for WLS! Hope it all works out for WLS and for the viewers that can't receive 7 at the moment now.

So, do they have to do any construction/building on WSNS 44's old transmitter for WLS to be ready to be on RF44?

I'm sure Kal will correct me here if necessary, but their old channel 52 DTV transmitter will be retuned to broadcast on channel 44. Then, they'll use the broadband broadcast TV antenna up there now to use for 44.

And now the work can commence at full throttle. And believe me, it will. Kal isn't going to waste any time on this...

I'm sure Kal will correct me here if necessary, but their old channel 52 DTV transmitter will be retuned to broadcast on channel 44. Then, they'll use the broadband broadcast TV antenna up there now to use for 44.

And now the work can commence at full throttle. And believe me, it will. Kal isn't going to waste any time on this...



this is great news...kal please let us know when the new rf will be up and running... also some day kind of like when the cubs get to the world series... channel 26 and its subs will be done... and we will get something on " that" tv

I'm new to the OTA game. Just set up a HBU22 antenna up in my attic in NW Indiana pointing towards Chicago and the channel scan came back with 52 digital and 8 analog stations. Really surprised how good the channels come in. Wish I would of known about OTA a few months ago before I got set up with Directv. Just wanted to say hi and also was wondering what the deal with the station that says "What is up with that?" I swear I have about 6 stations that only have that on the screen along with about a dozen spanish stations.

The WLS request to relocate to channel 44 has been approved by the FCC. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-2052A1.pdf

- Trip

City and State
Chicago, Illinois

Channel
44

Power (kW)
473.3

Antenna HAAT (meters)
515



How much power were they using when they were on 52? Back then I couldn't get them reliably with my UHF antenna. I can get them now with my VHF antenna. Figures.

I'm sure Kal will correct me here if necessary, but their old channel 52 DTV transmitter will be retuned to broadcast on channel 44. Then, they'll use the broadband broadcast TV antenna up there now to use for 44.

And now the work can commence at full throttle. And believe me, it will. Kal isn't going to waste any time on this...

It was mentioned in the paper that WLS will be broadcasting on both 7 and 44 after the work is complete, is that true? It seems kind of pointless to have 2 full power frequencies. Obviously, WLS is going to get this done quickly to get their signal fixed once and for all. Now, what will happen with WCHU, they have to be just as quick as WLS in moving too, but nothing has been approved for them yet.

I just assumed the WLS VHF station was going dark a month or so after 44 is turned on. Why would they even want to operate 2 full-power stations? That seems ridiculous.

And yet they've applied to operate both. I think the FCC should deny it. WCHU-LD has asked to operate channel 7, actually, since they're about to get displaced off of 44.

- Trip

I just assumed the WLS VHF station was going dark a month or so after 44 is turned on. Why would they even want to operate 2 full-power stations? That seems ridiculous.Not if they would give all the bandwith on one to WLS-HD.

It's bad enough we have to suffer through the Football games on NBC now with the way they look - wait'll they start showing them on ABC, too.

Just set up a HBU22 antenna up in my attic in NW Indiana pointing towards Chicago and the channel scan came back with 52 digital and 8 analog stations.Yeah, it's normal to thrill and marvel at it at first, but how many of those are you actually going to watch?

And how many aren't mirrors and redundant network and syndicated programming?

Before long you'll be glad you have that satellite package to supplement it. All I can say is, thank God I have one myself - otherwise I would never had heard more than a mere mention of this recent ACORN scandal. And that's something that I, as a taxpayer, consider extremely important and have a right to know.

Yeah, it's normal to thrill and marvel at it at first, but how many of those are you actually going to watch?

And how many aren't mirrors and redundant network and syndicated programming?

Before long you'll be glad you have that satellite package to supplement it. All I can say is, thank God I have one myself - otherwise I would never had heard more than a mere mention of this recent ACORN scandal. And that's something that I, as a taxpayer, consider extremely important and have a right to know.

Let's not forget that both Illinois senators just voted to perpetuate the fraud...

Enough politics!

How about we start a pool as to when 44 goes on the air?

Is going under an option? You basically have a giant steel + aluminum can sitting between you and the transmitter. So if you can't go up, possibly going down might help to get it out of your line of sight.

I probably could, and I'll give that a try.

The only thing is what about pm3839's point? Is it the actual train, or the electric the train is using? I think the interference begins when the train begins its approach, but I'm not entirely sure.

How about we start a pool as to when 44 goes on the air?Sure thing.  I'll take April 5, 1970.

[Sho's post didn't specify WLS-DT, just channel 44, and it's in the Chicago OTA thread.]

Sure thing.* I'll take April 5, 1970.

[Sho's post didn't specify WLS-DT, just channel 44, and it's in the Chicago OTA thread.]

DOH! lol


Okay, WLS on 44....

I heard plenty about it on the local news. Personally I think it's cable news that's the problem. They inject too much personal opinion into the news not too mention entertainment gossip.

Other than a couple of mentions, I hadn't heard much about it at all in the mainstream media until the last couple of days.

How much power were they using when they were on 52? Back then I couldn't get them reliably with my UHF antenna. I can get them now with my VHF antenna. Figures.

Looks like they only had 153.6 kW on CH 52. I also had occasional problems getting them on their old UHF channel and have only had a few minor blips getting them on CH 7 before they increased power. But WLS should be much stronger on CH 44 at the higher power than it was on 52.

I probably could, and I'll give that a try......The only thing is what about pm3839's point? Is it the actual train, or the electric the train is using? I think the interference begins when the train begins its approach, but I'm not entirely sure.

i thought i was very clear...but i'll be happy to clarify >

i'm guessing most or all of your reception problem is due to the tremendous electrical sparking/arcing noise/interference that you're being bombarded with whenever an electrically powered cta train goes by....the power comes from a track rail which arcs like crazy under the train cars whenever the train is in motion.....its not the presence of the train cars themselves, its all that electrical arc noise thats killing the digital tv signals....

so as i said, call the cta and the local tv station engineers....many people that use antennas all along the cta lines must be having the same problem....they might have some tips/solutions for you....a power line noise filter might really help...

i thought i was very clear...but i'll be happy to clarify >

i'm guessing most or all of your reception problem is due to the tremendous electrical sparking/arcing noise/interference that you're being bombarded with whenever an electrically powered cta train goes by....the power comes from a track rail which arcs like crazy under the train cars whenever the train is in motion.....its not the presence of the train cars themselves, its all that electrical arc noise thats killing the digital tv signals....

so as i said, call the cta and the local tv station engineers....many people that use antennas all along the cta lines must be having the same problem....they might have some tips/solutions for you....a power line noise filter might really help...


You really think someone from the CTA is going to even know how to handle a call like that?

I heard plenty about it on the local news. Personally I think it's cable news that's the problem. They inject too much personal opinion into the news not too mention entertainment gossip.

...and NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS don't? It's an industry wide problem. They are editorialists with agendas not news reporters. That would explain the ratings slide they have been experiencing.

If this thread is going to devolve into a political discussion, I may as well leave and not come back.

Can we go back to complaining about WLS-DT's picture quality or something?

Hi, and sorry if this is a left field sort of question, but I'm trying to figure out how to stop public transit ruining my soaps.

[PORTIONS EDITED OUT]

Typically I'd think to go up, but there really isn't much up to go. It's only a two story building, and the rooftop is at or about as high as the train. About the only advice anyone's been willing to give me so far is to get a directional and point it towards the Willis, but I'm not sure there are any ways to do that and still not come with the L obstructing the line.

Opinions?

ah one of Mike Royko's trusted confidants

you didnt mention what your receiver is -
my analog tv with dtv converter box gets interference from the apartment
complex maintenance golf carts - electric DC motors -
this is the analog tv itself picking up the noise - pre-cutover experience

if you can erect a mast 10 to 20 feet on the roof with a decent antenna
fed by the rg-6, maybe .....

Oh, get back on topic? My first digital lock from Ohio! As I type this, I am watching WEWS-DT, rf 15, resolving to channel 5.1. It's the ABC affiliate in Cleveland, OH(!), with 870 kw of power. One of my furthest catches to date with tropo...

some years back when i owned a house and an outdoor antenna-
and tropo was good, I would get an analog station that ID as Cleveland -
but on the hour, there was an extra ID after the Cleveland one
that said it was a repeater station in Sandusky, OH
but Ohio is still Ohio right?

I had problems with the South Shore and the freight trains on the tracks next to them and the only way I cured it was to raise my antenna from about 10 feet to just above 24 feet. The cars if they are metal and between you and the teansmitter will bother the picture.

If this thread is going to devolve into a political discussion, I may as well leave and not come back.

Can we go back to complaining about WLS-DT's picture quality or something?Well, on that subject, having as many subchannels as possible is more important, according to the majority of those hanging around this thread these days.

I think everyone's pretty much given up on that discussion here, what with all the "tiny SD CRT CECB newbies" that have flooded the thread since the "switchover", plus the fact that it's just plain pointless to even complain about it anymore, period. It's only going to get worse, so you might as well be resigned to it.

Anyway, you do have the option of just ignoring the "other" discussion, you know - like plenty of others seem to have no problem doing.

You really think someone from the CTA is going to even know how to handle a call like that?

well, the cynic in me says no.....but the optimist in me says maybe....cant hurt to try....

as i said, try to get to an engineer....at both the tv stations and the cta....many people near the cta tracks must now have this problem....maybe they already have some possible solutions...or at least are willing to try to find some....

and now that i think about it, call the fcc too....they may say the cta has to fix this kind of a reception problem....or at least document attempts to fix it....

having as many subchannels as possible is more important

People want viewing choices! It would be nice if they were all in HD. Why did they limit the amount of bandwith per channel? It makes little sense to me if they all planned on having subchannels. It appears the maximum limit currently imposed is 2 HD channels, or having 1 HD channel and 3 SD channels. Anything more than that and the viewing choices are harmed because the picture quality would make viewing unwatchable.

Maybe sometime in the future when they boost broadcasting power they will also increase the bandwith too. That way more channels can look better, which should be the goal of everyone-- To have the most content with the best picture possible.

Why did they limit the amount of bandwith per channel?

Because the laws of physics are really hard to violate?

- Trip

Because the laws of physics are really hard to violate?

- Trip

I thought they were easy to manipulate. :p If they can send a man to the moon, then why can't ABC or NBC give us 3 channels of perfect 1080p? Maybe it means granting a second channel to map, so that the bandwith is doubled per network. Is that possible?

The Shannon-Hartley theorem shows that there's a maximum amount of data that can be provided on a certain bandwidth given real world noise.

It was something briefly mentioned in one of my classes, so I don't remember it very well, but I'm pretty sure it's relevant here.

And as for a second frequency, there are none available. And who would pay for the additional transmitting equipment, power bills, etc?

- Trip

The Shannon-Hartley theorem shows that there's a maximum amount of data that can be provided on a certain bandwidth given real world noise.

It was something briefly mentioned in one of my classes, so I don't remember it very well, but I'm pretty sure it's relevant here.

And as for a second frequency, there are none available. And who would pay for the additional transmitting equipment, power bills, etc?

- Trip

Who collects the fee's? If it is the government, can't they change the fee structure so we get more HD and more channels? Right now, I would guess there are at least 40+ channels that are not used at all. 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 26, 32... ect, there are a lot of unused channels between those numbers. Maybe some networks would not want to pay for additional equipment and power bills, but maybe some networks would pay. Since government is giving cash for clunkers, housing rebates, ect, maybe government could eat up some of the cost for new equipment for improving PQ and adding content?

40+ channels? The spectrum only contains 49 channels (2-36, 38-51), and Chicago itself has 15 full-powered stations. That's 34. Subtract Rockford , Milwaukee, South Bend, (16 frequencies total) you get 18. 14-16 are reserved, leaving 15.

And that doesn't count low-powered and Class A stations, which take up the rest of the openings. And that does count VHF, which WBBM fled from low-VHF, and WLS is fleeing high VHF, so nobody will be building anything there anytime soon.

- Trip

......2HD channels......Anything more than that and the viewing choices are harmed because the picture quality would make viewing unwatchable.Wrong. It already is.

Boy, do I miss the days when all of us here were in an uproar over when PBS-HD's once-mesmerizing 1080i PQ first started going south, and we actually organized a campaign to bombard WTTW with complaints (not that it got us anywhere then, either, but at least people were more passionately "anti" about it).

I curse the day these "SD ATSC tuners" were released. From the time I joined until the "digital switchover", all digital tuners were HD, and therefore, this whole forum was mainly focused on HD.

It's such a shame that this forum has really been "dumbed down" so much since then. I wish the "CECB'ers" would just all go over to "DTV USA Forum", or somewhere more dumbed down like that (any forum such as that one - and they're certainly not the only one - that considers the crappy "DTV Pal" the best CECB, has got to be pretty retarded about this whole thing). Then they can all rave together about all the useless subchannels they're so happy to be seeing on their 13" TV's.

The Shannon-Hartley theorem shows that there's a maximum amount of data that can be provided on a certain bandwidth given real world noise.
Exactly. ATSC has to put up with all sorts of outside interference, ghosting, etc... Cable typically use 256QAM, which has about double the bandwidth of ATSC (38Mbit vs 19Mbit), but then it runs through a more-or-less protected clean pipe.

Ideally, you could run 2 full-bandwidth HD on cable. Comcast runs 3 using VBR. They also quickly learned that at least one of those 3 must be 720p or you get problems. USA/SciFi/Discovery are all 1080i, and were horrible when they first combined them. They eventually swapped NatGeo (720p) and SciFi.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hKKr1wyE9-C5yQQNb4qz0lg8kHWgD9APUCBO4

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hKKr1wyE9-C5yQQNb4qz0lg8kHWgD9APUCBO4

"Mark Colombo, a TV enthusiast and electrical engineering student who maintains an online database of the country's TV stations"

I wonder who this could be? :D

- Trip

Who collects the fee's? If it is the government, can't they change the fee structure so we get more HD and more channels? Right now, I would guess there are at least 40+ channels that are not used at all. 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 26, 32... ect, there are a lot of unused channels between those numbers. Maybe some networks would not want to pay for additional equipment and power bills, but maybe some networks would pay. Since government is giving cash for clunkers, housing rebates, ect, maybe government could eat up some of the cost for new equipment for improving PQ and adding content?

There is a limited amount of bandwidth per channel. One HD channel and and a couple subchannels in SD is really pushing it. The technology of ATSC is based on MPEG-2 it was outdated already when they pulled the plug on analog. So unless they scrapped the whole system and went to MPEG-4 forcing anymore channels in the current technology is useless. It will just deteriorate the picture worse till all you'll see is smeary blocks.

Then they can all rave together about all the useless subchannels they're so happy to be seeing on their 13" TV's.

got a 4" B/W sony watchman (http://cgi.ebay.com/ANTIQUE-SONY-B&W-TV&RADIO-MEGA-WATCHMAN-_W0QQitemZ370248896977QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090823?IMSfp=TL 090823151005r3790#ht_1794wt_1162) picture looks great! :)

FYI - 26.4 currently showing "motel hell"

Before the analog shutoff, channel 2 was by far the hardest to receive at decent strength. Since the switchover it's been rock solid in my area (40 mi NW).

For my big rooftop antenna, the tropo effects have strengthened the 26.x channels here for the past week. They went from no signal most of the time to occasional dropouts just often enough to be annoying. Once the leaves start falling I hope to see some improvement.

Strangely, channel 32 has gone from occasional dropouts to no signal most of the time.

My indoor Phillips MANT510 is getting everything just fine these days. Channel 32 is especially strong, so the rooftop trouble is likely multipath.

There is a limited amount of bandwidth per channel. One HD channel and and a couple subchannels in SD is really pushing it. The technology of ATSC is based on MPEG-2 it was outdated already when they pulled the plug on analog. So unless they scrapped the whole system and went to MPEG-4 forcing anymore channels in the current technology is useless. It will just deteriorate the picture worse till all you'll see is smeary blocks.

Can they switch to MPEG-4 without people changing tuners? Can ATSC do MPEG-4? Or would this be another switch like the one where the old tuners stopped working?

Wrong. It already is.

Boy, do I miss the days when all of us here were in an uproar over when PBS-HD's once-mesmerizing 1080i PQ first started going south, and we actually organized a campaign to bombard WTTW with complaints (not that it got us anywhere then, either, but at least people were more passionately "anti" about it).

I curse the day these "SD ATSC tuners" were released. From the time I joined until the "digital switchover", all digital tuners were HD, and therefore, this whole forum was mainly focused on HD.

It's such a shame that this forum has really been "dumbed down" so much since then. I wish the "CECB'ers" would just all go over to "DTV USA Forum", or somewhere more dumbed down like that (any forum such as that one - and they're certainly not the only one - that considers the crappy "DTV Pal" the best CECB, has got to be pretty retarded about this whole thing). Then they can all rave together about all the useless subchannels they're so happy to be seeing on their 13" TV's.

50" plasma here and those subchannels are not useless. I watch a lot of MeTV and MeToo. Great programming on those channels.

Or would this be another switch like the one where the old tuners stopped working?

Yes.

- Trip

"Mark Colombo, a TV enthusiast and electrical engineering student who maintains an online database of the country's TV stations"

I wonder who this could be? :D

- Trip


NOT ME!

:cool:

Can they switch to MPEG-4 without people changing tuners? Can ATSC do MPEG-4? Or would this be another switch like the one where the old tuners stopped working?

Unfortunately it would require new equipment at both the tv stations end and your end.

50" plasma here and those subchannels are not useless. I watch a lot of MeTV and MeToo. Great programming on those channels.

What Rammitinski is talking about is back in the day there were only HD channels with all the bandwidth was going to it. The picture quality was quite nice. With subchannels the HD has gone to the dogs with soft video and digital artifacts galore. The closest thing we have left to all the originals in Chicago is channel 2. So far they have held out without any subchannels.

Unfortunately the trend has started to compete with cable multicasting on OTA. As time goes on things will only get worse for HD channels and SD picture quality. To get an idea of the future go look at some overcompressed internet video with blocking and blow it up to full screen. That is what we will be watching on our tv's if the stations have it there way. It's all about money not quality.

What Rammitinski is talking about is back in the day there were only HD channels with all the bandwidth was going to it. The picture quality was quite nice. With subchannels the HD has gone to the dogs with soft video and digital artifacts galore. The closest thing we have left to all the originals in Chicago is channel 2. So far they have held out without any subchannels.

Unfortunately the trend has started to compete with cable multicasting on OTA. As time goes on things will only get worse for HD channels and SD picture quality. To get an idea of the future go look at some overcompressed internet video with blocking and blow it up to full screen. That is what we will be watching on our tv's if the stations have it there way. It's all about money not quality.

I understand. I've seen horrible SD on PBS where everything is grainy. But I have seen good SD on other channels. There has to be something different on the station end causing the bad picture, and not just because of subchannels. This is why I have hope that somehow the stations will make everything better as time passes.

It's indirectly because of subchannels. The more subchannels there are, the more each one needs to be compressed down. The more you compress them down, the worse they look.

- Trip

Wrong. It already is.

Boy, do I miss the days when all of us here were in an uproar over when PBS-HD's once-mesmerizing 1080i PQ first started going south, and we actually organized a campaign to bombard WTTW with complaints (not that it got us anywhere then, either, but at least people were more passionately "anti" about it).

I curse the day these "SD ATSC tuners" were released. From the time I joined until the "digital switchover", all digital tuners were HD, and therefore, this whole forum was mainly focused on HD.

It's such a shame that this forum has really been "dumbed down" so much since then. I wish the "CECB'ers" would just all go over to "DTV USA Forum", or somewhere more dumbed down like that (any forum such as that one - and they're certainly not the only one - that considers the crappy "DTV Pal" the best CECB, has got to be pretty retarded about this whole thing). Then they can all rave together about all the useless subchannels they're so happy to be seeing on their 13" TV's.

Greetings Gents...usually I just lurk these days but had to throw a couple of thoughts into the mix.

I see the move to crowding as many sub-channels as part of the evolution of this new medium. Call it either a new toy or marketing opportunity. Broadcasters see the new toy as something they can market as a "value added" or may even find a way to make a couple of bucks. Those services that do survive financially will remain, those that don't will vanish (anyone remember "The Tube"). With the newness of ATSC on the overall TV market, it's a feature that is still both undefined and untested. I suspect we'll see a scale back on some subs as the novelty, interest and/or money to operate them will wane.

Also, as we've seen with all the signal problems, the technical aspects of digital are fluid as well. Just like with other means of transmission, the theory of operation vs. the reality lead to a period of "fine tuning" and improvement. Ten years ago few could have realized the problems encountered today. I expect changes and shakeouts for the next several years...where they lead depends on what makes money.

While I can join you on wanting less subs and better video...I also have cable that is my main source of viewing. My mother-in-law, who has never wanted cable and lived with poor analog choice and reception is very happy with her converter box...she lives on MeTV. How can one argue with a nice 80 year old lady? LOL

Cheers...

This is why I have hope that somehow the stations will make everything better as time passes.They do occasionally upgrade things with newer, more advanced equipment, but naturally they don't do it for our sake. They do it with the intention of making a profit (by being able to sell more advertising slots) - which means that even if you get a temporary boost in PQ, by the time they're done adding more subchannels, it usually ends up right back where it was before (unless you're like WCIU - which has at least some put some money, effort, and intelligence into making it look as good as possible - unfortunately most don't even care that much).

Or, like in the case of NBC, they improve things at the network level, but it's all for naught, because of the local station adding too many subs.

Point is, if they have the technology, you know they're going to overuse it for greed's sake - to squeeze every dollar possible out of it.

By the way, I like MeTV and MeToo a lot, too. Unfortunately, the majority of subs aren't usually that worthwhile, and they usually don't look that acceptable. And then, like is the case with ION Life, some people may actually want to watch it - but it's so bandwith starved you can't. At least I can't. But I honestly don't know how anyone can, when everytime anyone's boobs so much as jiggle a bit, it blocks up.

But this "HD subchannel" thing is what's really insane. It doesn't make any sense at all to do such a thing.

Maybe it gets to me more than it does a lot of others because I really only watch TV HD - I'm not into "Blu-Ray" or whatever, so when people say "just watch Blu-Ray's" (like some actually do, over in other sub-forums here), that's not really an answer for me. You can't get 3/4 of the stuff you see in HD on TV on Blu-Ray. I'm a TV guy - I think I only own 2 pre-recorded SD-DVD's.

Also, I just wanted to say no offense to the people over at "DTV USA Forum". I didn't mean to infer that everyone who posts or moderates over there is "dumb" - because they're certainly all not.

It's just that the "CECB" part of the forum in particular is not really up to speed with what goes on around AVS.

They do occasionally upgrade things with newer, more advanced equipment, but naturally they don't do it for our sake. They do it with the intention of making a profit (by being able to sell more advertising slots) - which means that even if you get a temporary boost in PQ, by the time they're done adding more subchannels, it usually ends up right back where it was before (unless you're like WCIU - which at least has some brains and is at least putting some effort into making it look as good as possible - unfortunately most don't even care that much).

Or, like in the case of NBC, they improve things at the network level, but it's all for naught, because of the local station adding too many subs.

Point is, if they have the technology, you know they're going to overuse it for greed's sake - to squeeze every dollar possible out of it.

By the way, I like MeTV and MeToo a lot, too. Unfortunately, the majority of subs aren't usually that worthwhile, and they usually don't look that acceptable. And then, like is the case with ION Life, some people may actually want to watch it - but it's so bandwith starved you can't. At least I can't. But I honestly don't know how anyone can, when everytime anyone's boobs so much as jiggle a bit, it blocks up.

But this "HD subchannel" thing is what's really insane. It doesn't make any sense at all to do such a thing.

Maybe it gets to me more than it does a lot of others because I really only watch TV HD - I'm not into "Blu-Ray" or whatever, so when people say "just watch Blu-Ray's" (like some actually do, over in other sub-forums here), that's not really an answer for me. You can't get 3/4 of the stuff you see in HD on TV on Blu-Ray. I'm a TV guy - I think I only own 2 pre-recorded SD-DVD's.

I think that MeTV has the same number of subchannels as PBS. Why is it that PBS looks HORRIBLE compared to MeTV?

I think that MeTV has the same number of subchannels as PBS. Why is it that PBS looks HORRIBLE compared to MeTV?

The equipment used to compress everything is the main difference. WCIU has presumably spent ALOT of money on very high-end equipment.

There are also two basic forms of compression:
Simpler compression just takes the input and squashes it to a specified bitrate. (I think this is open-loop?)

Higher-end equipment uses a method where the original data parallels the compression and is compared at various steps. The compressed data can be slightly altered to restore some lost info without increasing the bitrate. (I think this is closed-loop, or I have the two reversed.)

You can also compress better by sampling more frames, but that tends to cause more and more lag.

I'm guessing it's quite a bit more complicated, but I think that is the basic idea.

I think that MeTV has the same number of subchannels as PBS. Why is it that PBS looks HORRIBLE compared to MeTV?

I think they are over processing the signal. They are receiving their national feed at 1080i and then have to convert it to 720p, and then compress it for transmission with all their sub channels.

I don't believe they spent any significant dollars for their equipment and quite possibly don't know how to use it.

When they switched to 720p it took them months to get the picture quality to where it is now, believe it or not it was worse at one point in the past also.

Their 1080i HD transmissions were pristene.

It's indirectly because of subchannels. The more subchannels there are, the more each one needs to be compressed down. The more you compress them down, the worse they look.
Just wait until the mobile sub-channels take away even more bandwidth!

The equipment used to compress everything is the main difference. WCIU has presumably spent ALOT of money on very high-end equipment.

There are also two basic forms of compression:
Simpler compression just takes the input and squashes it to a specified bitrate. (I think this is open-loop?)

Higher-end equipment uses a method where the original data parallels the compression and is compared at various steps. The compressed data can be slightly altered to restore some lost info without increasing the bitrate. (I think this is closed-loop, or I have the two reversed.)

You can also compress better by sampling more frames, but that tends to cause more and more lag.

I'm guessing it's quite a bit more complicated, but I think that is the basic idea.

We are talking about MPEG-2 encoding, look here (http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=106971&seqNum=3) for more info on mpeg-2, the international standard.

"Some statistical multiplexers use a technique called look ahead statistical multiplexing (pioneered by DiviCom—see http://www.divi.com/). In this technique, the material is encoded or statistics are extracted in a first pass, the information is passed to the multiplexer (while the original input video is passing through a pipeline delay), and bit rates are assigned for each encoder; so when the real encoding happens, a reasonable bit rate is already assigned. This solves some of the nasty feedback issues that can happen in less sophisticated designs."

Further it defines:

"Compressionists are studio engineers who not only understand how to operate the encoding equipment but also apply their artistic judgment in selecting the best trade-off between compression ratio and picture quality."

Or, what the broadcasters call us behind our backs. As in, “Joe, we got another one those compressionists complaining about our artifacts, turn up the headroom modulator.”

Unfortunately the trend has started to compete with cable multicasting on OTA.

It is not competion if the PQ is so poor we disconnect the antenna and subscribe to cable again! I'm extremely tired of poor PQ watching the Bears game while I know damn well nobody is watching the mother loving olympics on 5-3!

It is not competion if the PQ is so poor we disconnect the antenna and subscribe to cable again! I'm extremely tired of poor PQ watching the Bears game while I know damn well nobody is watching the mother loving olympics on 5-3!

Cable does not provide better HD than OTA. In most cases, OTA is the best HD available.

I don't watch the NBC subchannels, there is nothing there worthwhile. It all depends on the content. Good content will draw viewers. Good PQ is icing on the cake. Nobody will watch worthless content even if it is the best HD PQ.

Cable does not provide better HD than OTA. In most cases, OTA is the best HD available.

I don't watch the NBC subchannels, there is nothing there worthwhile. It all depends on the content. Good content will draw viewers. Good PQ is icing on the cake. Nobody will watch worthless content even if it is the best HD PQ.

That depends on the video source, the stations encoders, subchannels, and a number of other things.

All cable channels that are HD are either 1080i or 720p. Cable, by how it encodes the signal, can easily fir two HD channels and a few SD channels in each frequency. On a 1080i stream, you really need all 17.4 mb/sec for video (the other two mb/sec go to audio, PSIP, and other things). At 720p, you can get it on par with a 1080i signal, if the encoders and video stream are good enough to handle it.

And that's the key: if you have subchannels, do 720p instead of 1080i. Done right, it will look as good, and if you have good enough encoders (and I mean top of the line), you can still run 3 subchannels and do well. Now that WCIU has literally the best encoders in the world and they've tweaked them for optimum performance, tell me their HD picture from the ballparks is lousy! It could be a bit better with fewer subchannels, but on a 42" 1080p Samsung, it looks excellent to my eyes.

Now contrast that with ESPN HD. For Monday Night Football, the signal has to go through 3 encoders before it hits your cable system, who then has to encode it again. Over on the HD programming forum, one person said it best...it was ESPN, or just "OK". The video leaving the truck was 90 mb/sec, more than enough for a drop-dead gorgeous picture, which they can see in the truck very well. But by the time it reached you, it was a bit soft.

On the other hand, WCIU/WGN/Comcast gets the exact same video feed, IIRC, at an astonishing 1 gb/sec via microwave. With WGN's older encoders, and with a subchannel, there's considerable macroblocking. WCIU's looks very good (I think they got rid of the "pulsing" that occurs with wide crowd shots), and Comcast SportsNet HD is generally excellent.

All that to say this: there are many ways that pictures can be degraded besides subchannels. While these are certainly a big factor, there are many others that are just as important. Encoders, the number of re-encodes, distribution path quality, source material quality(!), are just several of many factors that make good HD look good.

BTW, WTTW has the latest generation of encoders. I don't know if they do dynamic bit allocation. If they don't, that would help 11-1, to be sure.

CSN looks excellent now? I'd have to see that to believe it.

Last summer when I saw a Sox game on it in a bar/restaurant on a 42" Panny plasma, it looked absolutely terrible (and this was in Chicago, where they had long since dropped the extended analogs). Even the buddy I was with, who isn't a "videophile" by any means, commented on how bad the artifacts were (actually, he just said that it "looked like crap" - they he went on to tell me that a lot of the guys he knew and worked with were forever complaining about the sports and general PQ of the providers. And these were just ordinary JSP's. So I'm not sure if I can totally believe that crap that the providers often try to hand us that "the ordinary person" doesn't notice such things).

IIRC, too, people used to complain about it quite a bit since it went HD - but I admit I haven't really been following it all that closely in recent times - although I do seem to remember seeing one or two comments somewhere saying it generally still left a lot to be desired. Plus, I don't know if Chicago is cramming it 3 to a QAM frequency, instead of the former 2, like almost all the other areas are now. If they are, it's probably worsened even more because of it.

You can't necessarily go by what is said by the majority in the local Comcast thread here, because most of the people that post there care absolutely nothing about picture quality. It's all about quantity at any cost over there. So much so that they won't even honestly admit when it does look bad.

CSN looks good now? Plus, I don't know if they're cramming it into their "3 to a QAM", instead of the former 2, like almost all the other channels now. If they are, it's most likely worsened because of it.

There definitely can't be any argument as far as ESPN or WGN looking bad, though.

You can't necessarily go by the local Comcast thread here, because most of the people that post there care absolutely nothing about picture quality. It's all about quantity at any cost over there. So much so that they won't even honestly admit when it does look bad.

Ding ding ding. They're still cramming 3 to a QAM. But, on DirecTV, it looks excellent...better than...um...Comcast...yeesh.

As for the Comcast cable board, I don't think it's about them not knowing what a bad picture looks like. Ramm, you and I remember when WTTW was 1080i, had a low bitrate 11-2 rebroadcasting 11-1 for outlying cable systems, and using proper bit allocation, 11-1 looked jaw-dropping. Many there and everywhere else think a "good" HD picture is the way it is or should be. Nuh uh. If MPTV Milwaukee on 10-1 shows something in 1080i, or when CBS shows SEC or NFL football on WBBM, or just about any sports on CBS, then you'll truly know what excellence in broadcast HD is.

Ding ding ding. They're still cramming 3 to a QAM. But, on DirecTV, it looks excellent...better than...um...Comcast...yeesh.

As for the Comcast cable board, I don't think it's about them not knowing what a bad picture looks like. Ramm, you and I remember when WTTW was 1080i, had a low bitrate 11-2 rebroadcasting 11-1 for outlying cable systems, and using proper bit allocation, 11-1 looked jaw-dropping. Many there and everywhere else think a "good" HD picture is the way it is or should be. Nuh uh. If MPTV Milwaukee on 10-1 shows something in 1080i, or when CBS shows SEC or NFL football on WBBM, or just about any sports on CBS, then you'll truly know what excellence in broadcast HD is.

Comcast sucks. Their free QAM OTA stations sound like R2D2 constantly.

On the other hand, WCIU/WGN/Comcast gets the exact same video feed, IIRC, at an astonishing 1 gb/sec via microwave. With WGN's older encoders, and with a subchannel, there's considerable macroblocking. WCIU's looks very good (I think they got rid of the "pulsing" that occurs with wide crowd shots), and Comcast SportsNet HD is generally excellent.


Any idea when WGN might upgrade their encoders? Something is clearly wrong when WGN is pixelating like crazy with 1 subchannel and WCIU isn't pixelating much with 5 subchannels. WGN looks fine on more still shots, but on fast moving action, forget it. When they had WWE Smackdown, it looked horrible. Even the introduction to the WGN news has lots of pixelation.

Ding ding ding. They're still cramming 3 to a QAM. But, on DirecTV, it looks excellent...better than...um...Comcast...yeesh.

As for the Comcast cable board, I don't think it's about them not knowing what a bad picture looks like. Ramm, you and I remember when WTTW was 1080i, had a low bitrate 11-2 rebroadcasting 11-1 for outlying cable systems, and using proper bit allocation, 11-1 looked jaw-dropping. Many there and everywhere else think a "good" HD picture is the way it is or should be. Nuh uh. If MPTV Milwaukee on 10-1 shows something in 1080i, or when CBS shows SEC or NFL football on WBBM, or just about any sports on CBS, then you'll truly know what excellence in broadcast HD is.

Getting to the point where nobody but the engineers at the stations and headends will see a true HD picture. I didn't have a HDTV at home when 11 was 1080i but saw it a few times at other places, it was nice.

Comcast sucks. Their free QAM OTA stations sound like R2D2 constantly.

Generally, broadcast digital channels are passed on as-is. There is no additional compression. The only 'encoding' is converting to 256QAM and modifying the PSIP info.

Here in Schaumburg on Comcast, ESPN-HD and ESPN2-HD are only doubled with other channels (TNT with ESPN, CSN with ESPN2). Others include TBS/Big10, NFL/Versus, MLB + 6 SD (remember that 256QAM has double the bandwidth of ATSC.) Interesting to note that all these double-only HD's have something in common....

..when CBS shows ... NFL football on WBBM, or just about any sports on CBS, then you'll truly know what excellence in broadcast HD is.


I was so releived to watch the Bears game on channel 2 instead of 5. I don't think I saw one instance of macroblocking on fast motion like I did last week on Sunday Night Football. I don't think I'll be watching much SNF this year if they don't figure out how to clean up the PQ.

Generally, broadcast digital channels are passed on as-is. There is no additional compression. The only 'encoding' is converting to 256QAM and modifying the PSIP info.

That hasn't been the case in my testing. Recording the same program OTA vs Comcast in various instances (I have two TiVos each hooked up to a different source); HD for some channels was 2/3 the bitrate of the OTA version. There is a clear visible difference in terms of artifacts and there are often numerous A/V glitches with the Comcast version as well. SD was even worse with both lower bitrate and lower resolution.

That hasn't been the case in my testing. Recording the same program OTA vs Comcast in various instances (I have two TiVos each hooked up to a different source); HD for some channels was 2/3 the bitrate of the OTA version. There is a clear visible difference in terms of artifacts and there are often numerous A/V glitches with the Comcast version as well. SD was even worse with both lower bitrate and lower resolution.

Correct, Twinbrook. When cable companies negotiate carriage of their HD signal, they can have clauses which state that no additional compression can be done by the cable system. WBBM engineering (Mr. Schneke), on the Comcast Chicago thread, has emphatically declared that NO compression is occurring on Comcast with their video carrier. For other stations, I don't know. TSReader and visual observations will reveal which ones do and don't get compressed further by Comcast and other pay TV providers. Regardless, re-encoding of the signal via Comcast may cause a slight degradation in quality, but HVS has also stated that if they do it a certain way, there should be no noticeable degradation.

i thought i was very clear...but i'll be happy to clarify >


No, you were perfectly clear, it's just that others are discussing the physical blockage as the problem rather than the electrical interference, so I was looking to reconcile or assess the two ideas.


so as i said, call the cta and the local tv station engineers....many people that use antennas all along the cta lines must be having the same problem....

That's what's so crazy. I can't seem to find many people who have this problem. As far as I can tell, anyone in a similar situation either has cable or doesn't have a tv. Even the specialists I've talked to tend to take a "but why don't you just get cable" sort of response that really irks me. Nevertheless, I will try that advice...and probably report back, because this is bound to be a funny story.

That hasn't been the case in my testing. Recording the same program OTA vs Comcast in various instances (I have two TiVos each hooked up to a different source); HD for some channels was 2/3 the bitrate of the OTA version. There is a clear visible difference in terms of artifacts and there are often numerous A/V glitches with the Comcast version as well. SD was even worse with both lower bitrate and lower resolution.
All I can say is that typically 2 broadcast channels are paired per frequency. This includes any subchannels. There should be no reason to do any compression.

For here in Schaumburg, they are paired:
WCPX (no subs), WYCC (no 20.2)
WCIU (no 20.5), WPWR
WBBM, WTTW
WMAQ, WFLD
WLS, WGN

I don't know if the missing subs are actually carried, but hidden by not putting them in the PSIP.

The SD's are typically packed 10 per frequency.

All I can say is that typically 2 broadcast channels are paired per frequency. This includes any subchannels. There should be no reason to do any compression.

For here in Schaumburg, they are paired:
WCPX (no subs), WYCC (no 20.2)
WCIU (no 20.5), WPWR
WBBM, WTTW
WMAQ, WFLD
WLS, WGN

I don't know if the missing subs are actually carried, but hidden by not putting them in the PSIP.

The SD's are typically packed 10 per frequency.

WCIU is actually Channel 26, not Channel 20.

So it would be no "THAT" AKA 26.5

:D

Noticed that the "Earl" showing at 5 PM on WPWR was native widescreen HD.
Top that off with "Dr Oz" and "The Office" which air the same way on WFLD. While I don't see either of these stations going back to correct their allotment of last year's shows, at least the new syndicated shows are airing in their original format. Now if WFLD can only get rid of those ridiculous blue bars on local SD programming..

ota dtv 62.x has a stronger signal at oakton and elmhurst rd lately
some increase in power? a change in antenna?
those 12 am - 2 am showings of popeye cartoons, roy rogers/gabby hayes movies
are a lot better .... am waiting for the weekend GGW infomercial

There is a clear visible difference in terms of artifacts and there are often numerous A/V glitches with the Comcast version as well.For whatever reason, I definitely see more artifacts on the Comcast locals than on the OTA's when I'm watching it at my sister's (Crystal Lake - Carpentersville headend).

For whatever reason, I definitely see more artifacts on the Comcast locals than on the OTA's when I'm watching it at my sister's (Crystal Lake - Carpentersville headend).

Could be the transcoding from 8VSB to QAM.

I noticed that my dvr taped an episode of the simpsons on fox 32 that was one of the HD ones the fox network ran recently. This was at either 5pm, 6pm or 10:35pm. Even though it was originally in HD on fox, wfld ran it in sd. Was kinda bummed out, but expected it.

ota dtv 62.x has a stronger signal at oakton and elmhurst rd lately
some increase in power? a change in antenna?
those 12 am - 2 am showings of popeye cartoons, roy rogers/gabby hayes movies
are a lot better .... am waiting for the weekend GGW infomercial

Not that I have seen...it has actually been weaker out by me. The fog/temeprature inversions have probably made the signal a bit stronger closer in.

For whatever reason, I definitely see more artifacts on the Comcast locals than on the OTA's when I'm watching it at my sister's (Crystal Lake - Carpentersville headend).

Are you comparing ClearQAM with OTA, or cable box with OTA? Some issues could be the cable box. Also, if a cable box, some TV's may default to different video settings between different inputs.

About the only true way to compare would be to have two identical TV's side-by-side.

Are you comparing ClearQAM with OTA, or cable box with OTA? Some issues could be the cable box.Yeah - that's why I said "for whatever reason".

It's through a cable box. Could be the TV, too.

Saw that one too... looks like they just cropped the sides. It seems like a waste when they went through all that trouble to fill the whole 16:9 screen with animation in the original broadcast, and I'd have probably expected letterboxed widescreen at the very least. Seems that the local 16:9 broadcast capability on WFLD/WPWR really does depend on the show, and I wouldn't expect any changes on shows they already had last year and earlier. For that matter, I'm not sure if the Simpsons syndicator even offers an HD option given that it is a legacy show.

BTW, also noticed that stuff like "Everybody Hates Chris", "Without A Trace", or "Cold Case" is only 4:3 in reruns - maybe syndicators are only preserving the widescreen aspect on the most recent "flagship" shows.

I noticed that my dvr taped an episode of the simpsons on fox 32 that was one of the HD ones the fox network ran recently. This was at either 5pm, 6pm or 10:35pm. Even though it was originally in HD on fox, wfld ran it in sd. Was kinda bummed out, but expected it.

Saw that one too... looks like they just cropped the sides. It seems like a waste when they went through all that trouble to fill the whole 16:9 screen with animation in the original broadcast, and I'd have probably expected letterboxed widescreen at the very least. Seems that the local 16:9 broadcast capability on WFLD/WPWR really does depend on the show, and I wouldn't expect any changes on shows they already had last year and earlier. For that matter, I'm not sure if the Simpsons syndicator even offers an HD option given that it is a legacy show.

BTW, also noticed that stuff like "Everybody Hates Chris", "Without A Trace", or "Cold Case" is only 4:3 in reruns - maybe syndicators are only preserving the widescreen aspect on the most recent "flagship" shows.

Syndicators are now starting to offer more in HD. It seems there's been quite a bit of shoulder shrugging on the delivery methods.

Syndicators are now starting to offer more in HD. It seems there's been quite a bit of shoulder shrugging on the delivery methods.
I would assume there may also be an issue of $$$. I'd assume HD reruns will cost more than SD reruns.

Just out of curiosity, is "Chris" only syndicated in 4:3 form, or is there any option available for the widescreen version? Seems to me that the reruns of shows such as "House" or "Desperate Housewives" on the *other* station(s) were opted for in SD, yet the Tivo denotes them as HD.

Syndicators are now starting to offer more in HD. It seems there's been quite a bit of shoulder shrugging on the delivery methods.

Just out of curiosity, is "Chris" only syndicated in 4:3 form, or is there any option available for the widescreen version? Seems to me that the reruns of shows such as "House" or "Desperate Housewives" on the *other* station(s) were opted for in SD, yet the Tivo denotes them as HD.

Desperate Housewives and House are SD with our current delivery system. They're supposed to be launching a HD box soon. There are a few new HD delivery systems coming to life so I assume more HD is on the way. Not sure about Chris. Have no idea how we get it. It's kinda new.

62.3's "coming soon" card is back.  For a couple of days the station had just a black screen with 62.2's audio.

62.3's "coming soon" card is back.* For a couple of days the station had just a black screen with 62.2's audio.

That channels scares me so much I haven't even listed it in the front yet. Best infomercials? Now, if they can do better than that, I'm all ears. But for now...call me very skeptical. And very afraid. ;)

Very interesting.

While I'm thinking about it, some other shows come to mind where it seems to have been forgotten that they were originally broadcast in glorious widescreen - "George Lopez", "Bernie Mac", "Malcolm in the Middle", "Everybody Loves Raymond", are formerly prominent examples. Do you think legacy shows (of that level) might be stand a chance of being revived on a new HD delivery system?

Desperate Housewives and House are SD with our current delivery system. They're supposed to be launching a HD box soon. There are a few new HD delivery systems coming to life so I assume more HD is on the way. Not sure about Chris. Have no idea how we get it. It's kinda new.

Just be happy we don't have annoying sidebars on SD broadcasts like WVTV and WCGV. Has anyone seen that? Terrible...

Very interesting.

While I'm thinking about it, some other shows come to mind where it seems to have been forgotten that they were originally broadcast in glorious widescreen - "George Lopez", "Bernie Mac", "Malcolm in the Middle", "Everybody Loves Raymond", are formerly prominent examples. Do you think legacy shows (of that level) might be stand a chance of being revived on a new HD delivery system?

Anything is possible.

Noticed that the "Earl" showing at 5 PM on WPWR was native widescreen HD.
Top that off with "Dr Oz" and "The Office" which air the same way on WFLD. While I don't see either of these stations going back to correct their allotment of last year's shows, at least the new syndicated shows are airing in their original format. Now if WFLD can only get rid of those ridiculous blue bars on local SD programming..

Been watching "Earl" and "The Office" this week. Unfortunately, I think the HD picture looks pretty soft. Definitely looked better when they first ran on NBC. I have Netflix streaming through my Tivo, and I think the quality of "The Office" through Netflix looks better than the reruns on Ch 32-1.

swiat, mean 4:3 aspect ratio? use your TV menu to rescale ....

Does anyone have contacts to WTTW? What's up with the pink splotch on the left side of the screen? I'm guessing they know about it, but figure I'd post here to see if anyone knows anything.

Does anyone have contacts to WTTW? What's up with the pink splotch on the left side of the screen? I'm guessing they know about it, but figure I'd post here to see if anyone knows anything.

Last time I just used their contact form on the WTTW web site.

http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=0,2,4

swiat, mean 4:3 aspect ratio? use your TV menu to rescale ....

one solution sure. but, I don't want to rescale every time I switch to those channels.

That channels scares me so much I haven't even listed it in the front yet. Best infomercials? Now, if they can do better than that, I'm all ears. But for now...call me very skeptical. And very afraid. ;)

WJYS is in a bit of an interesting position that they've been in for pretty much all of it's existence. When it was analog, only the Southern parts of the Chicago viewing area could get it. Even after the Digital transition with some exceptions and a great antenna of course, if you're North of the city you pretty much still can't get it.

Their story really is sad, sad, sad :( All their main channel has is infomercials and religious programming. 62.2 is a digital feed of analog Channel 34, WEDE and it has Family Net on it. It's a step up from what they have on their main channel but still not really where they need to be at this point.

At one point, through most of '96 they tried going General Market Independent and they really were showing promise at that point. They had The Odd Couple, Laverne and Shirley, I Dream Of Jeannie, The Rifleman, The Fugitive, Bonanza, Rescue 911 as well as some older movies. On Wednesday nights they had Japanese Anime on from 7-9pm. Whether you like Anime or not it was a VERY gutsy move as anime almost never is shown on free tv. And for the most part it was shown un-edited too. When WGBO Channel 66 changed to Univision WJYS got almost all of their shows and movies. Some of it they never ran. If you live North of the City this whole paragraph is probably a shocker. So for a time, WJYS was showing a lot of hope and for the life of me I will never understand why they didn't expand their signal coverage area to cover the entire Chicago area at that point. Had they done that I think they would have been much more successful with their attempt at being a General Market Independent.

This WJYS Too that's coming soon has the potential to be very promising. Normally, I'd say it would just be more infomercials and religious stuff but the "Too" part is what's making me curious. They were supposed to have increased their coverage area in August so I'm suspecting this third sub channel is getting ready for that.

What I hope to see, but probably won't happen, is WJYS running some General Market stuff on their OWN. Not another Family Net feed. There's no way Weigel owns the rights to every classic TV series in existence. It would be very nice to see the owners actually try with this station and show they give at least an iota of a damn about it.The potential is there for them to go back in the right direction and show signs of life again but we'll just have to wait and see what happens when they take the covers off this WJYS Too. I do think they will try the General Market thing again at some point but that won't happen until the station gets new owners. I can't see the current owners still owning WJYS a few years from now..that's a whole separate story for a separate post ;)

WJYS is in a bit of an interesting position that they've been in for pretty much all of it's existence. When it was analog, only the Southern parts of the Chicago viewing area could get it.

<snip>

If you live North of the City this whole paragraph is probably a shocker. So for a time, WJYS was showing a lot of hope and for the life of me I will never understand why they didn't expand their signal coverage area to cover the entire Chicago area at that point. Had they done that I think they would have been much more successful with their attempt at being a General Market Independent.

<snip>
;)

Under the old analog UHF rules, a station's transmitter had to be at least 20 miles from any other station separated by 2, 3, 4 or 5 channels.
Thus, WJYS had to be at least 20 miles from WXFT (60) and WGBO (66) (current calls used) downtown.
With digital, even adjacent channels are possible with co-located transmitter sites. WJYS digital is supposedly on the Willis (per Wikipedia).
I think WJYS could be a pretty hot property if put up for sale, in as much as no other full-power UHF slots are likely to open up in the #3 market.

There's no way Weigel owns the rights to every classic TV series in existence.

There is so much classic TV that could be aired that is not. I give MeTV credit for airing some great stuff. But there is much more waiting to be aired. Why not the #1 night time series in USA history - Dallas (53% of American households watched Who Shot JR which is more viewers than in any Superbowl). Or why not Knot's Landing? I don't think either of those 2 shows has been OTA since they originally aired.

There is so much classic TV that could be aired that is not. I give MeTV credit for airing some great stuff. But there is much more waiting to be aired. Why not the #1 night time series in USA history - Dallas (53% of American households watched Who Shot JR which is more viewers than in any Superbowl). Or why not Knot's Landing? I don't think either of those 2 shows has been OTA since they originally aired.

Kinda remember Dallas being on channel 66 at one point think when it was still WFBN. Actually WGBO was pretty good after Spectrum (Pay Tv) died till Univision bought them.

I'd love to see some of the old classic cop & PI shows - Mannix, Cannon, The FBI (with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.!), the original Mission Impossible stuff with Martin Landau. Even re-runs of Hill Street Blues and LA Law would be cool - but no Cop Rock!

Oops, I think I just revealed that I'm an old f@rt.

I'd love to see some of the old classic cop & PI shows - Mannix, Cannon, The FBI (with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.!), the original Mission Impossible stuff with Martin Landau. Even re-runs of Hill Street Blues and LA Law would be cool - but no Cop Rock!

Oops, I think I just revealed that I'm an old f@rt.

Mission Impossible, Hill Street Blues and LA law are on ALN

http://www.americanlifetv.com/

ALN is on some cable systems and the big dish.

Some of the last few posts had some good stuff in them I want to comment on but how do I multi-quote here? Click quote for each post I want to quote?

Click "Multi-Quote" on each post you want to quote, then hit the "Post Reply" button at the left.

- Trip

I'd love to see some of the old classic cop & PI shows - Mannix, Cannon, The FBI (with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.!), the original Mission Impossible stuff with Martin Landau. Even re-runs of Hill Street Blues and LA Law would be cool - but no Cop Rock!

Oops, I think I just revealed that I'm an old f@rt.

MeToo had a good classic cop show this weekend about a southern cowboy cop who moves to NYC. I never heard of this show before last weekend. Now I am going to watch it every weekend that I can. I think it is great that we can discover shows that we might not have seen in the past.

Click "Multi-Quote" on each post you want to quote, then hit the "Post Reply" button at the left.

Trip

Thank you! I figured out how to multi-quote on a few other forums but wasn’t quite sure how to do that here.

Under the old analog UHF rules, a station's transmitter had to be at least 20 miles from any other station separated by 2, 3, 4 or 5 channels.
Thus, WJYS had to be at least 20 miles from WXFT (60) and WGBO (66) (current calls used) downtown.
With digital, even adjacent channels are possible with co-located transmitter sites. WJYS digital is supposedly on the Willis (per Wikipedia).
I think WJYS could be a pretty hot property if put up for sale, in as much as no other full-power UHF slots are likely to open up in the #3 market.

Thanks for the insight on this, I knew there had to be a reason why WJYS has always been between a rock and a hard spot when it came to increasing coverage area.

I quite agree that if WJYS gets put up for sale it will be a VERY hot property. If the whole WGN/CW war flares back up again, WJYS could very well end up the new home of the CW here. I’m sure there are several other big names who would love to get the station. It's hard to say right now who would try the hardest to get it though. We'll have to wait and see. I honestly expect it to be up for sale within the next year or so. If the current owners still have it in 2 years I'll be shocked. Any potential buyer could do a far better job with it than their current owners are. When I said that the exact reason behind WJYS’ current troubles was best saved for another thread, this is what I meant by that. This link will do a better job of explaing the deep trouble they’re in.

caselaw.findlaw.com/data2/illinoisstatecases/app/2007/1062428.pdf

Basically, what it comes down to is they got sued and lost. Now, they have to pay a LOT of money! On top of that, they may very well have a SECOND lawsuit pending against them too…yikes!

So, even if they wanted to re-try being a General Market Independent, as you can see there’s no way they can do that right now under the current owners and exactly why I don’t think the current owners will be able to hold onto the station much longer.

I'd love to see some of the old classic cop & PI shows - Mannix, Cannon, The FBI (with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.!), the original Mission Impossible stuff with Martin Landau. Even re-runs of Hill Street Blues and LA Law would be cool - but no Cop Rock!

Oops, I think I just revealed that I'm an old f@rt.

See, shows like that would be a major improvement for ‘JYS! They wouldn’t need a full schedule of stuff to start either. Just a few hours a day of shows like this and some other old shows that Weigel doesn’t have the rights to or aren’t currently showing and their viewership would improve tremendously! I’m sure they’d quickly expand to have more hours a day of shows too.

Kinda remember Dallas being on channel 66 at one point think when it was still WFBN. Actually WGBO was pretty good after Spectrum (Pay Tv) died till Univision bought them.

Post-Spectrum, WGBO was an excellent Independent! They were lesser-known than WPWR, WFLD and WGN but they did the very best they could with what they had. They had several problems though. One was they had to fight the other 3 Independents here for shows, often getting the left-over scraps. Secondly and probably the much bigger problem that plagued them was Grant, their owners at the time, overspent WAY too much on shows. Eventually Grant had to give up their 3 stations at the time. Our WGBO along with the ones in Philly and Miami. The Philly and Miami stations enjoyed greater success than WGBO did. Combined Broadcasting bought all 3 and for a few years they remained Independent. Finally in ’94, after fighting to remain Independent and looking at several options to stay put with no changes, WGBO sold to Univision. At the time, there were several other interested buyers. Cox and Viacom were 2 of the bigger ones. The Miami and Philly stations got bought by Viacom and became UPN affiliates. Later they became MyNetwork affiliates. There’s a strong possibility that if they hadn’t sold to Univision, they would have become our UPN affiliate. The final Station Manager of WGBO made a very heart-felt goodbye message that they ran the final month before the switch to Univision.

I just wanted to fill everyone in on some of this since this thread’s been slow lately. When it gets techy and people need advice, I tend to stay low out of courtesy :)

...Mannix...The only show where the tire squeals were real. :cool:

I just wanted to fill everyone in on some of this since this thread’s been slow lately. When it gets techy and people need advice, I tend to stay low out of courtesy :)

Keep going! This kind of stuff is fascinating, and it's a lot easier reading it here than digging it out of wikipedia. :D

ALN is on some cable systems and the big dish.

Unfortunately, I have the "small" DI$H. However, my Stealthtenna is still working like a charm. I can finally watch AFC hosted football games (WBBM) in uncompressed glory.

I can see how they would make money by adding subchannels that people actually watch -- but how many viewers could 5.3 possibly have? A subchannel that nobody watches certainly isn't going to generate much (if any) advertising revenue.

Earlier this summer, 5-3 had Giro d'Italia (the Italian version of Tour de France), Tour de France, and the Ironman competitions. Since some time in August, it's been summer Olympics reruns.

I've enjoyed watching Universal Sports on 5.3... though I agree, the picture quality is horrible. And just a correction, they showed the Giro, but not the Tour de France (that's on Verses). They locked up the rights to the Vuelta a Espana and just finished showing that, thus giving them 2/3 of the cycling "Grand Tours" (yeah, I'm a cycling fan).

5.3 has potential, in my opinion, especially as a compliment to ESPN (which is all mainstream sports) and Verses (the oddball sports)... Universal Sports is slowly carving a niche of all Olympic-related sports, which fits in with NBC's rights nicely... too bad it's rather painful to watch!

october 1st is here and about half the ota stations
have the psip clocks already turned back to standard time

almost rolled over and went back to sleep

kd9fz
comments, criticisms and questions of sanity are always welcom

Keep going! This kind of stuff is fascinating, and it's a lot easier reading it here than digging it out of wikipedia. :D

Yep it sure is easier to read all that fascinating stuff here than dig it up on Wikipedia :D The accurate stuff that Wiki DOES have on it is often buried underneath a lot of mis-information or worse yet scattered over several pages so it helps when you can put alot of it on one spot for others to read.

A few more fascinating tidbits on a few of Chicago's former Independent stations.

Did you know??...

-Despite the hardships WGBO faced, they had two major areas where they did quite well in and excelled in. One was the very solid Cartoon blocks they had. When it came to their cartoon blocks, it was kind of like flipping the tables on WFLD, WPWR and WGN where instead of getting the scraps they got the rights to and showed a lot of the big name cartoons. At one time or another they aired every big-name cartoon that has existed! The cartoon blocks were also some of their highest-rated blocks of shows and did quite well for them.

The other area WGBO excelled at was local advertising. Back in '88, it cost just 500 bucks for 1 week worth of commercial spots. Because of the great deal they gave, a lot of local area businesses were able to take huge advantage of that and got airtime on WGBO. Without WGBO they would never have gotten their names out there and people wouldn't have known about them. As a result, those businesses experienced increased foot traffic or their phone lines lit up. For the entire 8 year post-spectrum period, local advertising was always one of their strong suits. I'm sure that locally these days a 1 week commercial package probably costs 4 times what WGBO charged back in '88.

-One final tidbit involves WSNS. As a lot of you know, WSNS was English language what seems like once upon a time ago. They signed on in '70 and at first things were rather upside down there. Later in the early '80s, they tried ON TV Subscription based tv. Subscription based TV was big in the early '80s in Chicago before regular cable tv services became common. Around the time ON TV ended, WSNS' owners, Video 44, had financial troubles among some other problems. For a short while after ON TV ended they tried being an Independent but were fighting a difficult fight against the already established WPWR, WFLD and WGN. WSNS was eventually sold to, believe it or not, what became Univision. They were a Univision affiliate for a short while. After that they were bought by Telemundo. BUT in the brief period between being Univision and Telemundo affiliated they were an English language Independent. I remember that brief period in '85 more than the ON TV part of their history. During this brief period between the two networks they were really getting it together and gaining a lot of momentum, briefly running alot of the syndicated shows and older sitcoms that were floating around at that time! A lot of people think that there was a lot of huge potential for WSNS. Had things been different and luck had been with them there's a great possibility they would still be an English language Independent now that would be on par with WCIU. I agree. It's very sad..we'll never know what could have been. If you want some idea of the kind of potential WSNS may have had, look at WGBO's post-Spectrum history. What they became is very close to what WSNS was briefly starting to become and what they should ultimately have ended up as. They just couldn't get back on their feet :(

-Interestingly enough, if you are a night owl and up late enough, WSNS airs some English language infomercials. Can't help but wonder what could have been if you look at that..just the fact they're running ANYTHING English language at all.

Cool. Now if WBBM would go to UHF and WCIU and WYIN ups their power, most of us would be sitting pretty.

Oh how sweet that would be.

MeToo had a good classic cop show this weekend about a southern cowboy cop who moves to NYC. I never heard of this show before last weekend. Now I am going to watch it every weekend that I can. I think it is great that we can discover shows that we might not have seen in the past.

That sounds like McCloud with Dennis Weaver. IIRC, McCloud was part of a regular rotation in prime time of 3 or 4 crime shows - different one each week.

That sounds like McCloud with Dennis Weaver. IIRC, McCloud was part of a regular rotation in prime time of 3 or 4 crime shows - different one each week.

Yep. It was part NBC's Mystery Movie along with Peter Falk's Columbo and Rock Hudson's McMillian and Wife and later, a bunch of different 4th series.

No idea. Like I say, its just kinda there. Guide data fixed. (for now)

Tiny change for MeTV that would need to be changed, which I noticed as I was browsing tonight:

Time-------------Actual Program----------------Guide Data
7:30-8:00pm-----The Bob Newhart Show--------The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Thanks in advance, hvs :)

hello all.... just my monthly post... have we heard of anything going on with a final time frame on channel 7 moving to rf 44, the signal strength of wciu and its subs... including what is going on with "that tv" and what is with the channel 62 and its third substation... i have seen nothing about what is going there on there website or anywhere else....



finally does anyone know what happened with indiana stations 16 and 22... i was getting these without a problem and now " no signal" even when i check the signal strength it does not show a drop... this they change the direction of the signal to move it away from chicago...


please assist... the stuff about channel 62 is very very interesting...

An application for WLS on UHF 44 finally showed up in the FCC database:
http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?call=WLS&city=&state=

Before it was just a proposed rule change. I guess the 30 day waiting period after the federal register publication has elapsed. We're waiting on the construction permit next.

hello all.... just my monthly post... have we heard of anything going on with a final time frame on channel 7 moving to rf 44, the signal strength of wciu and its subs... including what is going on with "that tv" and what is with the channel 62 and its third substation... i have seen nothing about what is going there on there website or anywhere else....



finally does anyone know what happened with indiana stations 16 and 22... i was getting these without a problem and now " no signal" even when i check the signal strength it does not show a drop... this they change the direction of the signal to move it away from chicago...


please assist... the stuff about channel 62 is very very interesting...

See above on channel 44...I forgot to post that on Friday. Don't know about 62.3. WCIU, no word. South Bend...you were getting those with the quirky airmass we had largely over us this summer and early fall. It's gone now, along with 16 and 22.

The October 7th TV Technology magazine shows the brand-spanking new HD master control and HD equipment for WYIN-DT 56.(1-4) in Crown Point, IN. They've confirmed they're going to stat-mux 4 channels with 56.1 and 56.2 in 8 mb/sec HD, and the other two, standard definition channels, using the remaining 3 mb/sec. One will be a government channel of some sort, kind of like an "Indiana Channel" showing legislative stuff like the "Illinois Channel" shows.

A quote from Chief Engineer Henry Ruhweidal: "8 megabits is more than enough for a 720p channel...generally we run about 6 mb each. It all looks fine, unless you get a lot of simultaneous motion on all 4 channels, and then you'll get some artifcating. But that won't happen now that we're feeding different types of different video on all 4 channels." They're using new Harmonic VBR encoders to do this. Wonder if it's the same ones WCIU uses?

Anyway, they also have 3 satellite/ENG trucks now for remote production. That's pretty impressive, since they were nearly broke about a decade ago.

But 8 mb/sec good HD? I dispute that one, but we'll see. Oh, and the engineer was asked if we wanted to do *3* HD channels? He said the technology wasn't there right now. Interesting stuff from the Hoosier state...

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/tvt_20091007/

The question I have, of course, is just what they're planning to air in dual HD/dual SD. PBS West? PBS World?

- Trip

The October 7th TV Technology magazine shows the brand-spanking new HD master control and HD equipment for WYIN-DT 56.(1-4) in Crown Point, IN. They've confirmed they're going to stat-mux 4 channels with 56.1 and 56.2 in 8 mb/sec HD, and the other two, standard definition channels, using the remaining 3 mb/sec. One will be a government channel of some sort, kind of like an "Indiana Channel" showing legislative stuff like the "Illinois Channel" shows.

A quote from Chief Engineer Henry Ruhweidal: "8 megabits is more than enough for a 720p channel...generally we run about 6 mb each. It all looks fine, unless you get a lot of simultaneous motion on all 4 channels, and then you'll get some artifcating. But that won't happen now that we're feeding different types of different video on all 4 channels." They're using new Harmonic VBR encoders to do this. Wonder if it's the same ones WCIU uses?

Anyway, they also have 3 satellite/ENG trucks now for remote production. That's pretty impressive, since they were nearly broke about a decade ago.

But 8 mb/sec good HD? I dispute that one, but we'll see. Oh, and the engineer was asked if we wanted to do *3* HD channels? He said the technology wasn't there right now. Interesting stuff from the Hoosier state...

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/tvt_20091007/

We're using the latest Harmonic encoders.

Chanels 23.3 through 23.8 and 26.5 have vanished, raising the question, "What's up with that?"

I believe Porky Pig has the answer ....


Ttttttthat's all folks!

hello all.... just my monthly post... have we heard of anything going on with a final time frame on channel 7 moving to rf 44, the signal strength of wciu and its subs... including what is going on with "that tv" and what is with the channel 62 and its third substation... i have seen nothing about what is going there on there website or anywhere else....



finally does anyone know what happened with indiana stations 16 and 22... i was getting these without a problem and now " no signal" even when i check the signal strength it does not show a drop... this they change the direction of the signal to move it away from chicago...


please assist... the stuff about channel 62 is very very interesting...

I meant to answer this sooner but wanted to see if anyone else answered first.

As for That TV..it's been just a slide saying "What's Up With That?" and coming soon since the digital transition. I never knew what to make of it myself although when you allocate SIX subchannels on one of your channels plus one on the main channel that's a little odd. 23.3 had the slide along with music on it for a while.

As for Channel 62, a few of my posts on the last page talk a bit about WJYS and it's interesting history. But, as for 62.3..right now it says "Coming Soon WJYS TV 62 Too..A second chance to see your favorite programs, WJYS-DT 62.3 Hammond/Chicago" No one really knows what will end up there. We'll see soon enough I suspect. Might just be more infomercials/religious programming, could be a second Family Net feed, may be something else all together we just don't know yet. I live in the South Suburbs and get WJYS all the time so once they take the wraps off WJYS 62 Too I'll let everyone know what ends up there ;)

And you are right Sebenste, we have had a VERY quirky air mass over the Midwest all summer. I'd been getting constant hints of a LOT of stuff we shouldn't normally be able to get..a few times I got a couple South Bend stations and one night I had ALL of Milwaukee's but that's really unusual and doesn't happen too often. I even managed one out of Grand Rapids one day. So as for getting 16 and 22 reliably, it's pretty rare and is usually only possible with great tropo. Last couple weeks I've gotten nothing extra outside of the Chicago channels.

But 8 mb/sec good HD? I dispute that one, but we'll see.MPEG 2? No way. It's going to look downright terrible.

Hearing that, I really don't feel so bad anymore that I'm not really able to get it. There's no way in heck I'd ever be able to watch it, anyway. I'm thinking it'll even look worse than before.

By the way - what's the "Illinois Channel? (And how come I don't get it?)