Colorado Springs, CO - HDTV - Page 216

Yep. Tried adjusting the antenna and everything. Absolutely no signal. It's really strange. But I guess I know it's on my end now. Which isn't exactly what I wanted to hear.

Do you think any kind of interference would be messing with it? One thing that is kind of strange, is right around the same time CBS went out, my Lenovo multimedia remote's range on my HTPC went to abysmal.

What software and tuners are you using on the HTPC? Is there no signal to the TV tuner as well as the HTPC tuners or other TV's. If it were interference it should affect all the channels since the los is the same for all of them.

You might try calling KKTV's engineer tomorrow and asking him. I've talked to him before and he's a nice guy and helpful.

Just got my DTA boxes from Comcast the other day and much to my surprise they don't support the local HD channels. Is that by design? Before, I had the cable plugged straight into my TV and could receive channels 2-99 as well as the digital HD channels -- now with the DTA box I only get 2-99. Grrrr.....

Right now, I'm running directly from my antenna to my TV and using my HTPC for hulu and other streaming. A tuner card is in the works.

Thanks for the tips though. I'll give him a call later today.

http://www.kktv.com/station/misc/48082407.html is it Mark Doan, you've spoken with?

Yes.

Let us know when you figure out the problem. I don't have a clue at this point and since no one else has jumped in with advice I'd say we're not alone.

You might also try an antenna thread or your specific TV thread on this forum. There are some pretty sharp people on here that may have an answer or at least a direction.

I sent an email off to Mark, I'll let you know what I find out.

Something I just noticed- both KKTV and Mytv (11-1 and 11-2) are acting the same way. Are they both CBS stations?

I don't think it's affiliated with CBS, but it's a national network called MyTV. It is a sub of KKTV, though.

I've been talking with Mark and he seems to think it's my antenna for a few reasons. He's actually stopping by my house over lunch and trying a few out. I'll let you guys know what he comes up with

So for the signal their tower is giving off, it really helps to have a directional antenna. He showed me how fussy an omnidirectional can be. They are also in the process of switching over to new towers, so that transition may be one of the reasons. Kind of an open ended problem, but it is what it is. I'll look into an attic antenna.

That's one nice thing in this market - all the towers are in the same place. That switching may be the problem, though. I noticed the last few days, my CBS recordings have been flickering, but I had made some changes to the system including the video card, so I'm not sure if that wasn't the problem. I just reset everything so I'll find out soon enough.

As close as you are, you might be able to get by with an indoor antenna. My daughter is in Longmont and uses a Philips that spreads out kind of like a web and picks up everything in Denver perfectly and I think she only paid about $10 for it - not bad for 40 miles away.

Anyway, glad you're getting the problem worked out.

Hey, thanks for all the helpful replies as well. He recommended this one: http://www.winegarddirect.com/ss-300...00-antenna.asp He brought one over and it picked up a pretty good signal. You can definitely tell when people walk in front of it though.

Ain't it grand, gotta love Comcast. You can upgrade the DTA boxes to the HD boxes "for a small monthly fee", not sure what the fee is, instead I installed a AntennasDirect ClearStream 2 to pull in all the local HD channels, its working great and the picture is even a little better than with Comcast (and FREE!)

I believe the digital conversion went into effect yesterday, 5/3. Comcast turned off the analog channels and is forcing everyone to get converter boxes (http://digitalnow.comcast.com/). I switched my setup over to mix of DTA boxes and a nice HD antenna a few weekends ago.

Brian

What's happening w comcast? This morning I found out that they've killed or reallocated some of the analog, not just the digital channels. I'm going to call them now.

When is Comcast going to give us new HD channels? I thought it was supposed to start right after/during the digital conversion.

Right after they raise your bill

I just received a card in the mail from Comcast saying that I will be receiving 65 new HD channels on June 2.

Guy

I received the same card, I'm too lazy to type the list, but here is a scan of the new lineup. My question is, which channels are in each of the HD tiers.

Brian

Nice list. Wonder what the quality will be like.

I'm moving to Colorado Springs in late June. Currently a Dish customer here in Alabama but would like to build an HTPC using the soon to be released Ceton card (I'm too new to post links but google cetoncorp.com for details) and ditch the dish box.

Am curious the experiences anyone might have had in COS with Comcast and cablecards. Any issues to be aware of? Do they require a truck roll for installation?

Also, anyone know the following?
1) Does Comcast in COS use SDV and, if so, what type of headend are they using (Cisco or Motorola)?
2) What strategy is Comcast using for copy flags in COS? Apart from premium channels, is everything else marked copy freely?

Thanks for the intel!

If anyone's interested or recording anything today on 21.1 or 21.2, they have a transmitter problem and have been off the air for a couple of hours and not back as of this time (11:36AM).

wow...nobody's posted in several weeks....
anybody notice that Fox21 has been broadcasting the repeats of the syndications of King of Queens and Two and a half men in HD lately?

Since I don't have HD (yet), I was wondering if there were any opinions out there (I'm sure there are - ) on the HD experience here in Colo Spgs. How do people like:

1. HD OTA
2. Comcast (xfinity - puhleaze)
3. DirecTV
4. Dish
5. Internet delivery

Compare and contrast with BluRay for example (the only true HD source in my opinion).

Thanks

Don't know what you mean by "Is it that bad?"

Using Blu-Ray as a comparison, I'm not that big on movies, so have only sampled BD, but find that some of it is crap also. Was very disappointed in some of it.

Anyway, I mainly watch OTA - have been since 2006 as many others on this forum have and have seen the vast improvement since infancy and now it's very consistent and overall the PQ is very good - better than any other source. The best is outdoor sports and I think CBS has by far the best PQ and dolby for that, with Fox a close 2nd. ABC sucks here because of lack of Dolby - and because it's ABC.

Also have Dish and the PQ is much better overall than a couple of years ago, excellent on some channels and mediocre on others. The source content and the individual channels can vary greatly in quality, but that is true with all sources.

Some claim D* has better PQ than Dish, but my son has D* and I don't see the difference. In fact, my 4-yr old plasma still looks better than his new Sony LCD, so PQ is dependent on equipment also.

Satellite is far better and has more HD than cable, especially since the only provider here is Concast. In all honesty I haven't seen their HD lately, but it was lousy the last time I saw it and I have no inclination to even consider it.

That was meant as a tongue in cheek reference to springsHD=Horrid.

My wife and I watch mostly OTA but do watch a couple of BR movies a month (Netflix). We don't really like the huge cable/sat tax for the few extra stations so between OTA and Netflix we save a bundle and are quite happy. As for HD quality I can only talk to OTA and BR movies. OTA quality is all over the map depending on station and show being broadcast. If it's prime time OTA, the quality is awesome and I'd dare say is better than the average BR movie we rent. Who knows why, I could speculate, but that's my opinion.

Lately I have been noticing many of the non-prime time crap shows that we do occasionally record and watch have extra garble on the top like a digital signal. This is new to me and is only related to my home built PVR which I recently updated but doesn't show up on my TV. I don't know why there would be a difference, but I do find it annoying and it only seems to be associated with certain non-prime time shows.

What bugs me most is how the locals dork with the audio and picture quality when they feel everyone must know RIGHT NOW and CONTINUOUSLY that some place 100miles east of us is having heavy rain and lightning. Sometimes that crap is so loud they risk killing more people with weak hearts than the storm itself if it produced a twister. The way I see it.. if it's that bad I ALREADY KNOW ABOUT IT. OK.. done with rant.

Scott

I'll join your rant, Scott. Those weather alerts get ridiculous. They also screw up the commercial skip processing in BTV. If anyone needs a weather report they can get it on the internet or on KOAA sub or KKTV sub. I never watch anything live anyway, so these alerts are useless to a lot of us anyway.

I'm wondering how much of this weather warning traffic is dictated by their operating license (i.e. "in the public interest") or because of some marketing hype.

That's a good point, and you're probably correct. However, the obnoxiousness of their methods and poor quality of some of the tools involved I'm sure are not mandated by law. Heck.. I may be wrong about that since most the crap our government does is stupid.

They put up them stupid alerts so in case there is some sort of "weather event" they'll have bragging rights and then inundate us with stupid commercials about how great their weather detection is and they were first on scene to report.