I live in between Baltimore and Washington, DC so I am able to receive lots of OTA HD stations from both markets. I have dual ChannelMaster 4228 8-bay UHF antennas pointed at both sets of broadcast towers based on the compass headings posted for my address at tvfool.com. I had originally set up the antennas using the data posted at antennaweb.org. I recently realigned both antennas using the tvfool.com compass headings. I found that the antenna for Baltimopre was aimed correctly but the DC antenna needed to be realigned for the best signal.
Here's where it gets kinda weird. When setting up my ATSC tuners (V-Box 3560-A-USB's), the signal strength from the DC stations is now stronger than the Baltimore locals. This is odd because I'm about 10 miles or less from the Baltimore broadcast towers and about 25-30 miles from the DC towers. I suspect that the compass headings I used for Baltimore weren't quite correct so I plan on fiddling with the alignment when I get the chance.
I had been experiencing a certain amount of periodic freezeups, jerkiness, stuttering, and skipping when recording from the Baltimore stations. I recently set up BeyondTV to use the DC stations instead and now my recordings seem almost perfect with but a few rare artifacts. The CW was the worst offender from Baltimore but this week's episode of Reaper from the DC station played back better than I've ever seen it and was essentially perfect with only one minor audio dropout of about one second.
Is it possible that the artifacts I was seeing when recording from the Baltimore stations were the result of too strong of a signal? I had a distribution amp setup to feed my six ATSC tuners. The outputs of both rooftop antennas on my 2-story house were combined using a standard VHF/UHF/FM splitter/combiner and then routed to the distribution amp located in the basement. I have since included an inline amplifier from the antenna feed and replaced the distribution amp with a 6-way splitter with essentially no change in the signal levels. I checked the signal strength with both the inline amp and the distribution amp and there was still no change in signal level. The inline amp is supposed to boost the signal by 18dB so I expected to see at least a slight change but I got bupkus.
The good news is that my stuttering and other issues seem to have disappeared by switching to the DC stations but WTF is going on with my Baltimore stations? I can only assume that the artifacts I experienced were the result of overdriving the tuners since the antennas are of extremely high gain. What's got me confused is that the signal strength is lower from Baltimore than it is from DC. I may actually have a clearer line of sight to the DC towers than the ones in Baltimore due to tall trees to the north of me.
Here's where it gets kinda weird. When setting up my ATSC tuners (V-Box 3560-A-USB's), the signal strength from the DC stations is now stronger than the Baltimore locals. This is odd because I'm about 10 miles or less from the Baltimore broadcast towers and about 25-30 miles from the DC towers. I suspect that the compass headings I used for Baltimore weren't quite correct so I plan on fiddling with the alignment when I get the chance.
I had been experiencing a certain amount of periodic freezeups, jerkiness, stuttering, and skipping when recording from the Baltimore stations. I recently set up BeyondTV to use the DC stations instead and now my recordings seem almost perfect with but a few rare artifacts. The CW was the worst offender from Baltimore but this week's episode of Reaper from the DC station played back better than I've ever seen it and was essentially perfect with only one minor audio dropout of about one second.
Is it possible that the artifacts I was seeing when recording from the Baltimore stations were the result of too strong of a signal? I had a distribution amp setup to feed my six ATSC tuners. The outputs of both rooftop antennas on my 2-story house were combined using a standard VHF/UHF/FM splitter/combiner and then routed to the distribution amp located in the basement. I have since included an inline amplifier from the antenna feed and replaced the distribution amp with a 6-way splitter with essentially no change in the signal levels. I checked the signal strength with both the inline amp and the distribution amp and there was still no change in signal level. The inline amp is supposed to boost the signal by 18dB so I expected to see at least a slight change but I got bupkus.
The good news is that my stuttering and other issues seem to have disappeared by switching to the DC stations but WTF is going on with my Baltimore stations? I can only assume that the artifacts I experienced were the result of overdriving the tuners since the antennas are of extremely high gain. What's got me confused is that the signal strength is lower from Baltimore than it is from DC. I may actually have a clearer line of sight to the DC towers than the ones in Baltimore due to tall trees to the north of me.
