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San Francisco, CA - OTA

2M views 20K replies 1K participants last post by  jamesm113 
#1 ·
I'm thinking of upgrading to an HDTV and have some questions for those getting OTA HD in the Bay Area.


I live in Berkeley and it looks like while I get most of my networks from SF, I need to also point toward San Jose, 57 miles away, to get NBC. I've been looking at the Channel Master antennaes, but I can't tell if you have one station in the blue range and the rest in the green or yellow ranges, whether you can just point your directional antennae at the blue and pick everything else up off the rest of the antennae, or whether you'd need two directionals or one that can point in two directions.


Also, on antennaeweb, it has a column that's supposed to read "live now" for digital channels that are being broadcast, yet none of the bay area channels say "live now." Most are blank. I take it for granted that the digital broadcasts are available right? You can't get HDTV from an analog broadcast, can you, and I know that's available OTA. Also, I assume that all the digital channels are UHF, so I need to buy the antennae that can reach 60 miles on UHF to get NBC, don't I?


If I go the HD route, I'll be using Directv plus OTA, so I will need to get all the networks in HD to really make the investment worthwhile (as directv will give me either none, or only CBS HD). I'd appreciate if anyone in Berkeley, Oakland, Albany, etc. can sound off on their OTA experiences.


Thanks for the input.

UPDATE: I was asked to add the info below to my post. I now live in a hilly area in Oakland and can't get OTA reception any more. Too bad for me.


Viewers in the San Francisco Bay Area will find the following sites very useful for finding local digital stations:


Bay Area DTV - HDTV Channel List - http://www.choisser.com/sfonair.html


FCC DTV Reception Maps - http://www.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/


Locate TV stations available at your address and compute expected signal strength and directions -
http://www.tvfool.com/
 
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#4,601 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Calaveras /forum/post/16644951


KVIE is actually running 50% more power and they are on their final antenna but KVIE and KXTV are on different towers so that might be the difference.


Too bad that KTEH is not carrying HD programming.


Chuck

I lost KVIE. The signal level is only about 30% and the SNR is zero. Can't get a lock with those numbers. I wonder if they're still tweaking things. I was getting it fine on UHF.
 
#4,605 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by DEEPFRINGEGUY /forum/post/16645521


I'm getting KGO 7 reasonably well here, now that they're broadcasting from the top of Sutro. None of the others on Sutro, which is what I expected... I should be able to tell exactly when (KGO) they start their antenna work - I expect to loose KGO again, when that happens.

i'm in the rockridge hills (only about 300 feet up) and have line of sight to sutro. I'm picking up OTA with a silver sensor placed in the attic of a 2-story house. the UHF channels are showing 60-70% signal strength under mythtv using a pchdtv hd-2000 card; KGO is only showing 50%. so i'm taking a hit from the move to VHF. when KGO was on 24 i would occasionally have weather-related dropouts, so i expect that things are going to be worse for me, unless i go find an antenna with better VHF gain.


as for my tivo, it does seem to have miraculously picked up the new physical channels. i dont know if this is because the mapping was pushed from D*, or it somehow knew it had to rescan.
 
#4,606 ·
KGO was not coming in here during the day but tonight it has the best signal I've ever seen from it; SNR 27 dB and Signal Quality 87. I saw it this good once or twice for a few minutes in the last two years on channel 24. It'll never be 100% here but the 24KW is already better than I thought it would be.


I got a report from a friend in Placerville saying that KGO & KOFY were in all day today.


For Larry..... No changes to any of the low power stations I can receive here. I thought that K45HC was going but no dice.


Now that KTVU analog is off I discovered I can see a very weak signal from KOTR-LP out of Salinas running 3KW and I don't have a low VHF antenna.


Chuck
 
#4,607 ·
With my old antenna (sort of VHF+UHF), I am missing KTVU and KRON.


This is from Sunnyvale.


With my new antenna (DB2 clone, UHF only), I lost KGO for good. Which is disappointing since the analog 7 used to come in fairly good. It is the only channel that I cannot pick up. I don't know if it would get better. This is the antenna I use now. I would hate to put in a combiner due to my wiring situation.


In conclusion, I ended up worse after the digital cut over.
 
#4,608 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteWhiskers /forum/post/16644814


I think it's your antenna. TVFool shows you should get good reception of channel 7. As an experiment try hooking up some rabbit ears to the coax on the roof and then scan for 7 on your TV.

KGO is in the green zone for me too on tvfool, but I'm not getting it, even though I'm getting stations with similar power levels (but most are UHF, and KGO is VHF). Well, I get KNTV, which is also VHF, but 7dB stronger, and located a little closer on Mt. San Bruno. I figure if I had an outdoor antenna I might get KGO too, but I'm in an apartment.
 
#4,610 ·
As of 11:05PM in Northern Santa Rosa, I am receiving KRON4 (38) and KSTS48 (49) with occasional dropouts; KQED9 (30), KCNS38 (39), KBCW44 (45) and KCSM60 (43) are a no go. I am receiving the following stations with good signal strength and quality:

KTVU2 (44)

KPIX5 (29)

KGO7 (7)

KNTV11 (12)

KOFY20 (19)

KRCB22 (23)

KTSF26 (27)

KICU36 (36)

KTEH54 (50)

KKPX65 (41)
 
#4,611 ·
Larry,

From Martinez with a deep fringe antenna and mast mounted pre-amp I get 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 20, 44, and 60. I don't see any signal for KRON on any of the channels listed in the FCC database. Rotating the antenna I get 36 and 54 as well as 22 and 50. Don't care about the foreign language stations like 48.
 
#4,612 ·
I'm in Sunnyvale too and am getting KGO just fine OTA. I'm using an old Radio Shack UHF/VHF antenna in the attic of my 3-story townhome. I imagine the height helps.


I don't get KRON reliably OTA though. Unless it's their antenna location, seems like they must be putting out way less than half power. Went to their website and couldn't find any information about this. Much of what was there was pretty stale (still had tables indicating the switchover in February 2009). Didn't see any announcements on their broadcast either.


I also have locals on Directv and saw KRON breaking up on their satellite feed on Friday after KRON switched to physical 38 earlier than most other stations! Seemed better yesterday. I think I heard that Directv gets its locals via antenna and not by a direct feed from the station, which is what I believe cable uses.
 
#4,616 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by wm_tell1 /forum/post/16646490


As of 11:05PM in Northern Santa Rosa, I am receiving KRON4 (38) and KSTS48 (49) with occasional dropouts; KQED9 (30), KCNS38 (39), KBCW44 (45) and KCSM60 (43) are a no go.

I read some info that KCNS, KCSM, and KBCW did some coax rerouting possibly going to a different antenna.


Last night I had good conditions on UHF to Sutro and 9 & 5 were exceptionally strong. Previously under these conditions KCNS, KCSM, and KBCW would come in. Last night nothing on those stations. Instead KTVU was solid for a long time and KRON was in for awhile too. KPIX and KQED which had no changes acted normally.


This morning KTVU was still coming in but weaker. It's acting more like KCNS used to.


Except for KGO which is temporarily on its analog antenna, we aren't going to know how this will play out until all the construction is done.


So for the Bay Area, June 12th was the first step, and hopefully October will be the final step.


Chuck
 
#4,617 ·
Look like a lot of people are having trouble getting KGO. I have a UHF only Channel Master 4221 antenna and I can only get KGO on my Channel Master CM- 7000 converter box.

No signal on my Sony W3000 TV or Dish Vip722 receiver. I am able to get KNTV (vhf 12)

just fine. I notice if I do not split my incoming signal and directly connect my antenna output

to my Sony tv, I can get KGO but the signal is very low and picture is not watchable due to

breakup.


So the question is KGO not transmitting at full power? Do I need to get a VHF antenna?

I was hoping because I was getting analog KGO using my 4221 antenna I would be ok.
 
#4,618 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by chibi /forum/post/16648597


Look like a lot of people are having trouble getting KGO. I have a UHF only Channel Master 4221 antenna and I can only get KGO on my Channel Master CM- 7000 converter box.

No signal on my Sony W3000 TV or Dish Vip722 receiver. I am able to get KNTV (vhf 12)

just fine. I notice if I do not split my incoming signal and directly connect my antenna output

to my Sony tv, I can get KGO but the signal is very low and picture is not watchable due to

breakup.


So the question is KGO not transmitting at full power? Do I need to get a VHF antenna?

I was hoping because I was getting analog KGO using my 4221 antenna I would be ok.

Ken Nist profiled the 4221 here and found that it performs very poorly at Channel 7 with 15dB of loss but has only about 1dB of loss at Channel 12. He describes how to use a pair of rabbit ears here as a tuned dipole to achieve appoximately 2dB of gain, an improvement of 17dB compared to the 4221.
 
#4,619 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by wm_tell1 /forum/post/16649201


Ken Nist profiled the 4221 here and found that it performs very poorly at Channel 7 with 15dB of loss but has only about 1dB of loss at Channel 12. He describes how to use a pair of rabbit ears here as a tuned dipole to achieve appoximately 2dB of gain, an improvement of 17dB compared to the 4221.

Thanks for the reply - but I can not find the rabbit ears upgrade you mentioned.

Looks like the two links you posted are the same.
 
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