Little Rock, AR - HDTV - Page 2

macd,

Great report. Especially the part concerning 16-1, 38-1 signals being among the strongest! PBS should be on the air by late summer from KASN's tower in Redfield. They are beginning construction and it should go fairly quickly.

KATV didn't have any additional room on their tower for KETS-DT. Both KATV and KASN towers are basically 2000' structures. KETS-DT will be near the top of the tower. They have shifted the proposed height so I am not sure of the exact height. But figure somewhere in the top third of the tower. As a comparison- KASN and KASN-DT share a top mounted antenna at 1989'.


I've known the DOE for a while now and also know the fellow who is in charge of the project. They are both very competent and actually care about DTV. I would bet that things will progress rapidly now that they are started. Most of the delay to this point appears to have been budgetary (dealing with State and Feds), and a channel change. Things that could slow them down at this point include tower crew delays, weather, etc.

The problem with lo band VHF stations (2-6) is that an efficient antenna for them is physically large. Combine that with impulse noise and you may have a problem. Another issue is that *most* DTV stations are UHF. Folks who haven't seriously tried to receive off-air signals for years are buying antennas that focus on the UHF band. Could be trouble. On the other hand, VHF tends to propagate further and have less terrain issues then UHF. I'll defer answering your question about reliability. I'm taking a wait and see approach.
I haven't heard anything from them concerning HD vs SD multicasts. Personally- I would be fine with them SD multicasting during the day to serve their education mission IF they would then go HD during evening hours at a decent bitrate. You got to think that there is a an awesome potential for gorgeous HD being PBS. Again- I'm willing to wait and see.

When are you gonna drop by for the nickle tour?

Anyone have a date for KETS 2 to start HD transmission?

Hi guys,

I've been reading this thread for a while, but haven't jumped in til now. I don't actually have any HD at home yet, I'm just staying informed so I'll know what's going on when I do. Anyway, I'm an editor at KVTN, and we are on the air. I'm not an engineer, so I don't know exactly what our power is, but on the monitor in Master Control, it has been pixilating a lot, and this morning there was no audio. I don't know if that's any help, but I have been enjoying reading this thread, so I hope that I can contribute more in the future. Keep up the good work.

We are currently at 4.7 kw, but the engineer I spoke to said we will be doubling that soon (I don't know how soon, next week maybe). Our transmitter is in England, so if your antenna is pointing west towards Shinall, it probably wouldn't get our signal anyway. Let me know what you can get (or can't), the engineers are interested in finding out that there actually are some potential viewers out there.

We do monitor it here at the studio, which is in west LR on Napa Valley. I don't know exactly what type of antenna they have the reciever connected to, but it can get all of the other digital channels. We do experience more dropouts on our own channel than the others, so I guess thats just our reception here. I'll try to keep you informed.

Anyone having trouble with KLRT-DT this evening? I am seeing macro blocking. Took a quick look at some monitoring gear I have access to remotely and things look fine. Still bugs me though. I rarely have trouble monitoring my stations here at home.

I recently moved to west Little Rock and have the Samsung 160 and a Channel Master 3016 (suburban range antenna in the attic). For the past few weeks, I was able to pick up 4-1, 7-1, 11-1, 16-1, and 38-1 easily with very little drop outs. Last week sometime, I was unable to receive 16-1. It may come on for a few seconds every minute, but now nothing at all. I thought I'd found the best place to point the antenna, but now I'm not so sure. I rescanned the digital channels, and now both 16-1 and 11-1 are gone. I was having no problems with CBS until I rescanned. I watched CSI: Miami with no drop outs at all this evening. I know that these are the two strongest broadcasting stations, so I can't figure out why I cannot get these two, but can get the weaker stations. Maybe I can fiddle with the antenna some more and hopefully find all the signals again. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Jordan

Is anyone going to sign up with Comcast for HDTV?

I am. A comcast installer will be over at my house thursday morning.

I've been waiting for Comcast to offer this for a long time.

tmcelmurry,

What kind of deal are you getting? Do you have to buy all of the movie packages to get HBO and SHO? What about the cost of box rental?

Thanks

comcast hdtv is $5 a month. we were told that we would get cbs, nbc, abc, and you would get HBO HD and Showtime HD if you already had there packages.

The lady that I talked to also told me that they had plans to add one or two other channels shortly, but who knows.

arxaw,
My zip code is 72227-6462. I just found it weird that I was able to pick up all the channels easily for a while, and now it's difficult. Thanks
Jordan