Raleigh, NC - HDTV - Page 487

The pattern RF30 is transmitting is almost an arrow towards Raleigh - I don't get it in Youngsville, while i do get 25 out of Chapel Hill and 36 from Roanoke Rapids, Sometimes I get a 23 that translates to 25.

1. when you say 'combiner', do you mean splitter in reverse? If that did not work, you can get what is called a join-a-tenna, where you buy a type of splitter that for one port is all band, and for the other port it would be tuned for channel 25 which is PBS I believe out of Chapel Hill now.

2. The only time that I have heard of people using a combiner is when one antenna is suited mainly for UHF signals and they want to add a second antenna that is more suited to VHF. Otherwise, why not use a rotor?


3. I have combined two indoor antennas... One is a directional Terk antenna, the other is a small omni-directional UHF that I need to pick up PBS.
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1. Join-a-tenna is what I meant. I can never remember that name although I own one from Pre Broadcast Frequency Changes.

2.Why not use a Rotor? - mostly same reason as other poster - timed recordings and in my case limited room in my attic. - And timed recording is why I am rethinking using a "Join-a-tenna". I has the situation on Sunday where the Better Half wanted to watch PBS but at the same time wanted to watch at a later date ABC Hallmark. So I recorded Hallmark. Unfortunately the Antenna I had connected to both tuners was the one connected to the PBS pointing Antenna. Needless to say ABC got recorded with tons of pixelation and barely any audio. That is why I am rethinking a Join-a-tenna. Just curious if anyone else had gone this route with any success.

3. Did you use a reverse splitter or a Join-a-tenna ? Splitters are cheap but Join-a-tenna can get pricey. Especially if they do nothing for you like my last one.

Thanks to everyone for their comments.

I should also have mentioned... since my antennas are indoor ones, I am just using a splitter in reverse because of convenience.

IF I ever get around to putting up a proper outdoor antenna configuration, then I might do something different to combine those antennas... but I would still probably need two antennas to get what I want to get.

HDMe2,

So a combiner has been working well for you? I have not tried a reverse splitter since before the stations got their frequencies reordered. Maybe I should revisit this.,

I am tired of depending on a Remote A/B switch to choose between the two.

I must be one of the few lucky ones where I have a rotor, but I don't need to turn it unless I want to watch the Triangle stations. I just keep my antenna pointing southwest toward Wilmington and receive them, plus New Bern, Washington, and Greenville from the north. All the networks are accounted for. The only way I get CW or MyTV in HD though, is to pick up 22 and 28. I also like Antenna TV which is only on 17. Nobody closer carries it.

I am so far behind the times that I didn't even think about DVRs when I mentioned using a rotor. I haven't recorded anything in years. Even when VCR's were popular, I rarely used them for recording.

Veedon. The way the technology accelerates along means you are probably only five minutes behind

Hello all. Longtime lurker, VERY infrequent poster. Thank you to all the regular contributors, as this forum thread has helped me with TWC and Clearqam over the past 1.5 years.

Tired of not being able to find WTVD in HD on TWC Clearqam (in Raleigh, near North Hills), I ordered a Mohu Leaf this week. I've never done a roof mounted antenna, while my indoor antenna experience has kept me from getting UNC-TV at all and WTVD on a consistent basis. Wife's desire to watch the Oscars on ABC later this month prompted the antenna purchase.

Plugged Leaf into an aging Samsung DTB-H260F set top tuner. Mounted it inside to an east facing, exterior wall by a window at a height of 10 feet over ground level (255 ft above sea level). Garner tower is 13 miles away SSE. Got all majors including ABC. Problem solved.

Now, I'm greedy and would like to turn in PBS, as a backup to QAM. Is there any chance of UNC-TV (w/o an amplifier) but mounting the leaf in the attic? Raleigh UNC repeater is half power (dbm) of the others that I receive, and Chapel Hill tower is 30 miles away and 2Edge.

Thank you for any advice, Arnold

Again, thank you to this community for sharing your experience.

Higher is almost always better, getting antennas outside helps, good RG6 cable, but in the end - you'll probably need either an amp and/or a rotor and /or a better antenna.

Arnold, I like the Winegard HD8800 UHF antenna. It is light, and has a lot of gain to it for the lower channels like PBS in your area, and wind resistant if you put it outside on the roof or the side peak. Also the price is good at solidsignal.com

Thank you both for your quick replies. I probably would have gone onto the roof a couple of years ago, but I discovered that my TWC internet-only line didn't have a trap on it. With a new antenna (even though it's an indoor Mohu Leaf), it increased my desire to make the OTA option really work completely.

I'll check out the Winegard that you recommended, jspENC.

Mr Ziffel,

Samsung DTB-H260F - Interesting. I still use mine everyday. I see on Ebay a used one for $139.00 . I got my first Samsung which was the first gen Digital Tuner for a Dollar off of Ebay and free shipping. I sold it a year later for $25.00

My DTB-H260F occasionally loses signal and I have to power cycle it. It appears to be caused when I select the EPG and it gets some bad data. Other then that it just keeps chugging along.

The problem in the RDU area is that WUNCs tower is in one place, and all the others are elsehwere. The antenna that has been suggested to you is a directional antenna, and is designed only to get the stations in the direction it is pointed. Hopefully, you'd be able to get the WUNC repeater from Garner, but that is not likely. Meaning you'd need a rotor, or some kind of a 2 antenna setup like DonB was asking about. There is also hope that you could aim the antenna at Garner, and get WUNC off the back, as sometimes these directional antennas also have a smaller gain area 180 degrees from where they are pointed. I did this for a while with a CM4228 before the digital transition, when WUNC-HD was in the mid 50s, and it wasn't reliable for me.

I eventually got 2 CM4288s. One for the Garner towers, and one for WUNC & several Greensboro stations (mainly WXLV ABC) that broadcast less compressed signals. I "combined" them via a media center PC where I had several tuner cards, some connected to each antenna.

So, if you run coax to your attic or roof, it would be worth running 2 or 3 coax cables, "just in case".

Drew

Outdoor antennas work best, buy you might try Antennas Direct if you want an amplified indoor antenna. I have one of their Micron models that I bought at a local store. The antenna claims a range of 25 miles. I'm in NW Raleigh about 25 miles from the WUNC transmitter in Chapel Hill, and the antenna brings that station in fine most of the time. In fact, it does a pretty good job for all of the Raleigh market stations (as long as the weather is not horrible) except WRPX, which is hit or miss, and it occasionally gets Greensboro stations.

Is the 17-3 Weather Channel a thing of the past? I see 17-1 and 17-2 just fine but 17-3 says "Searching for signal" despite showing program info.

I had to rescan tonight after moving... (really moving, not "moving")... and I noticed that I too lost 17.3 and wondered if it was a fluke or if they truly dropped it.

Could also be they dropped it for the Superbowl this weekend to increase bandwidth to the 17.1 HD channel too and maybe not permanent?

Good point. I didn't think of that. I haven't decided if I am going to watch the Super Bowl on WXII or WNCN. I hope NBC is on top of their game tomorrow; sometimes football looks "blocky" (like an Internet stream) to me on NBC while it doesn't on CBS or Fox. Since I have seen this in every NBC affiliate I have ever seen, I am going to assume it's not the local affiliates.

I see the blocks on WECT and WITN, so I believe it is NBC more-so than the locals.

Has anyone tried pointing their antenna to the west and receiving the Garner stations from the back side of their antenna? I would think the stations would be so strong that it would not really matter which way you are pointing. I am 40 miles away from the WNCT/WITN tower and I can point my UHF to the WWAY/WECT/WSFX tower to the south and still pick up those two, plus WCTI/WYDO/WUNM 25 miles north as long as their isn't strong wind without any problems.

I haven't tried that recently with the Garner/Raleigh tower sites. However, I do not have a rotor and leave my antenna pointed at the Garner farm 99.999% of the time and from the back I get WGPX and WGSR (15ish miles) and from the side I get WFMY, WGHP, WCWG, WMYV, usually WXLV, and sometimes WLXI at about 35 miles. I used to get WSET from Lynchburg, VA from the back, too, sometimes but not anymore. About a year ago, I pointed it toward Roanoke and I got WDBJ, WSET, WGSR, WGPX, and WSLS clearly. From the back, I got "fluttery" WRAL, WRAZ, WUNC, and very pixelated WLFL and WUVC still came through. I also got same Greensboro stations but WLXI was much clearer.

WCWG must have the most powerful transmitter of the Triad stations. Here in Raleigh it seems to come in better than WXLV or WFMY.

Don't know if it'll last past the game, but I'm getting great bit rates on NBC 17 during the Super Bowl, high 16's-17+ mbps. Great comparatively anyway, looks like I'm getting whatever would have been shared to the weather station now directed into the HD feed. And same bit rate via OTA and TWC.

Dropped it to give the bandwidth to Super Bowl. It's peaking just over 18 Mbps and averaging 16 Mbps tonight. I normally run 17-1 at 14-16 Mbps. The Weather will be back for a short time, but MH DTV will fire up later this month and it will disappear forever.

I noticed how much better NBC looks tonight. Too bad it can't always look this good. But then, why shouldn't it, and why can't it.

Running a brand new Harmonic Electra MPEG encoder this weekend. This thing is sweet and far more efficient with MPEG compression than the old system. I'm loving it!

You're very brave running any new equipment this weekend, but looks good. What's going on with local ads in HD?

We run a lot of local HD spots now. Last break had two in it. We are holding back on local promos because there's an issue with HD spots needing a "special" HD spot number. If we run a huge number of special numbers, we'll have a mess to clean up later when some other new equipment goes online. It's just a matter of keeping the numbering manageable.

Nope. Not brave at all. I had decided against running it on air because of some earlier issues testing it Wednesday, but while I had Time-Warner Engineers on the phone Friday, my old encoder decided to croak when I loaded the Olympic catalog file, so I switched. TWC found their equipment reverted to my SAP channel PID and fixed it on the fly.

We've been on the new encoder since Friday afternoon.

Glad I called this Also good move and great results for the game tonight.

Call me dumb, though, but what is MH DTV?

I'm not sure if this is what NBC17ENG was referring to, but there is something called the ATSC-M/H standard that is supposed to allow mobile and handheld devices to better receive OTA signals.

I always forget about that... Since I don't have a mobile device that tunes those channels, I forget that we have some (at least WRAL I think) doing that locally.

MH DTV will fire up later this month and it will disappear forever

Is mobile devices seriously what 17-3 will be used for? I hope it is not a third Music video subchannel in the local area.

I probably am the only person that really liked Winter sports on the sub channel that is now been taken away.