Fort Wayne, IN - HDTV - Page 4

Got my first view of some of WISE's "true" hd signal. Saw the last few minutes of Ed and some of Law and Order. Both looked good, but don't have the "wow" factor that you get from sports, i.e. Sunday night football on ESPN HD. Feels good to be able to get some OTA HD!

Hopefully WPTA will be transmitting hd soon. Would love to start watching some HD MNF, and I have also heard that the movies they show on Sunday's are really good.

MASS,

I'm about 25 miles from Ft. Wayne towers. I'm using a yagi style antenna on a 10' pole mounted on the peak of my roof. I get both WPTA and WISE at nearly full strength. I haven't been able to pick up WANE's signal at all yet. Although they may not be transmitting at full power, they could be testing their signal.

Go to antennaweb.org and you will be able to find out exactly what type of antenna you will need.

Jason

JL -

Here's some info on Fort Wayne...

WANE 15 (STV) -- 31 (DTV)
For now only broadcasting the weather radar on 31-2.

WPTA 21 (STV) -- 24 (DTV)
Broadcasting upconverted 4:3 programming on 24-1.

WISE 33 (STV) -- 19 (DTV)
Just started broadcasting NBC'S HDTV schedule last week on 19-1. Prior to that they were up-converting and cropping 4:3 material of which I hope they stop because it cuts too much information off the screen.

WFWA 39 (STV) -- 40 (DTV)
Broadcasting the national PBS HD demo loop on 40-1 and the local PBS programming on 40-2. When they first went on the air they used their NTSC channel of 39 on the HD side but have since reverted to the ATSC channel. I am currently receiving a high signal strength on 40-1 but the picture is black. 40-2 is ok.

WFFT 55 (STV) -- 36 (DTV)
Broadcasting some EDTV on 36-1 but with such a low signal strength I cannot always receive it.

WINM 63 (STV) -- 12 (DTV)
VHF religious channel which I do not have a VHF antenna to receive.

Living in South Bend for about five years, I would stick with your stations. They have been broadcasting their DTV longer. Fort Wayne is just beginning and none of the stations are broadcasting the program guide in the signal yet.

Tom

TKO,

What type of signal strength are you getting from WANE 31-2? I have been unable to lock into their signal yet. WPTA and WISE both come in at nearly full strength. Having access to the radar at all times could be kinda nice.

Thanks,

Jason

Greetings one and all!

I was introduced to this forum by one of the members. I don't know what his forum name is but his real first name is Caleb.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Matt Kyle and I am the director of engineering here at WISE-TV/DT, 33 & 19-1.

I found it very informative to read the posts not only on this thread but in the rest of the info and reception area.

The Whole HDTV thing is new to all of us (some more than others!) hopefully we can all grow and learn together.
That said I am open to any and all comments, suggestions, reception reports, and constructive criticisms.

We are still feeling our way into this digital era, I don't have all the answers. I don't even know all the questions yet!

We just switched on the true HDTV feeds from NBC.
Any prime time programming that is fed from NBC in HD will be passed through in HD.

I also heard some rumors that the Olympics might have some 5.1 surround content?
We have the encoder to send this out if it becomes available.

I currently have a Samsung SIR-T150 that I use at home with a computer
monitor to access the Ft. Wayne digital signals. I have to say that after
seeing real HD content OTA that I MUST replace my 32 inch analog set with a 16-9 HD display.
(Anybody need snow shoveled for cash?)

So with all that feel free to contact me, I'm usually away from my office but I do eventually
respond to e-mail and phone messages.

It's real busy here with all the new things going on.

Regards

MK

Welcome to the forum MRK. Glad to have you aboard. BTW, out of all the signals in Fort Wayne, I think yours has been the most reliable overall.

Now if we could just do something about the quality of programming. ;-)

Thanks for the summary.

As noted, I'm on the south edge of Elkhart -- I bought a pair of U-75's from Radio Shack when I moved to my house in March. (They are "Red" on AntennaWeb's scale.) I figured I could pull Ft Wayne on a 75mi antenna, which is why I bought two. One for the locals and one for Ft Wayne.

I did an attic mount at first, which worked for Analog with only one local channel in static. All the DTVs are not at full power so I had to move outside to get them. I did manage to pull Fort Wayne's 24.1 - better than 21 Analog. Not bad on a "Red" antenna (and AntennaWeb suggests a "Blue").

I'll probably stick with SB locals for now ... although getting programs an hour later in the summer could be good.

BTW: I'm not getting a program guide in SB either. Some stations have "DTV Program" listed, but no accurate guide.

JL

Jason,

I'll bet you will not get WANE in Huntington. They were just granted, and
are operating under an STA with a decent ERP of 40Kw but the antenna height is only 288 feet. The antenna is side mounted on the NE side of tower so you would be shadowed by the tower in Huntington.

And to complicate matters further the type of antenna they are using is not an Omni pattern. Want to guess where you are?

MK

No probs getting the radar signal. Are they broadcasting on 31.01 yet?

Jason,

It looks like MK answered it for you. I live on the northwest side of Fort Wayne and actually use a small indoor Recoton antenna with a booster. The antenna is in my basement and I recieve channel 31-2 at about 75%. I also have a temporary yagi outside with a preamp and receive poor reception because I think it's too low but I don't want to mount anything on my house.

Tom

Matt,

I have one suggestion on the WISE DTV channel. I think it is best to broadcast the 4:3 material in its native form and not zoomed and cropped. Most new HD receivers and TV's will have the ability to zoom so it is best left as a choice to the viewer.

Thanks for checking into this forum.

Tom

Fort Wayne D's lookin good tonight.I like a good challenge.

159 DTV's logged

http://community-2.webtv.net/GregBarker/DXPHOTOS/

Tom,

I switched our local content to 4x3 late last week. If you are referring
to upconverting to 1080i I do not have any options but to use the 1080i
signal our encoder is HD only.

It has been my limited experience that most of the receivers do not allow
for any manipulation of a native HD signal IE 1080i. I would be interested
to hear from those of you that can do this.

We currently use two Toshiba rear projector 16x9 monitors in our studio
as part of the news sets. They allow for multiple options for filling the screen. We use that feature to show full screen images from all of our 4x3 material.

When fed the wideband component HD signals from my STB It will not
do any manipulation at all. If we feed it wideband SD it does allow for the
zoom, stretch and crop functions.

I'm a bit surprised as the height is far more important than the power
level. Since the leaves are mostly gone perhaps it is helping?

What is your antenna set up?

I'm not sure when the 31-1 signal will be live. My guess is that they do
not have all of the equipment in place to allow for transmission from
Indianapolis.

Some of you may not know that WANE TV's programming except for
local news is originated from Indianapolis via fiber optic lines. Even the
local commercials are fed to Indy and then replayed to air from the
server at the correct times. The main HUB at WISH-TV provides
programming for at least 4 other LIN TV stations.

MK

Hi Matt great to see you took my advice and checked the forum out. I'm sitting here and watching 3rd watch and I'm seeing black bars on the side and the top. What's going on with that. It looked great last week.

I live SW of Huntington up on a hill above the Wabash Valley. Up until a few weeks ago, I could easily get 36.01 when they were broadcasting at the pitiful 100W @ 218ft. I can easily get 63.01, but I don't think I'd ever watch it...

I have an 8-bay channel master antenna up on the roof on a 6 foot mast with a 20dB amp in line to drive the signal over the crappy RG-59 cable I have in the house. Now I just need to get another antenna up so I can watch the Indy channels as well.

A higher receive antenna improves the line of sight. Put it 250ft up and you get much better reception than at 100ft!

BTW: A higher broadcast antenna also improves line of sight. Less power goes further at a higher height. For example, a typical Class A FM is 6kW at 100m. The same range of coverage can be done with 2.75kW at 150m, or 1.55kW at 200m. At 50m it would take 24kW to cover the same range. This can translate into TV as well.

The problem with placing the antenna high is that the lower power can have trouble penetrating buildings and tree cover even close to the antenna. Stations make a choice of having a large coverage area (high antenna) or better penetration (higher power).

JL

That's good news. Based on my reception of DT24, I should be able to get DT31 once it is full power. DT36 will be equally good once they get their 1000kW running. (DT19 will be about the same as DT24 once it is full power.)

I'm going to like DTV once it is full power.

JL

The NBC HD satellite receiver decided to take a holiday Friday night. Passing all those bits wore it out!
I came in Saturday morning and did a reset on the system and it seems to be OK now. You were seeing the 4x3 upconverted feed.

MK

Or they choose to do both! WANE TV's analog signal is running at a 2.5 Megawatt ERP. WFWA Analog is right at 1 Megawatt and the rest of us are in the neighborhood of 550 Kilowatts ERP. What is also typically done is that the antennas are designed with downward beam tilt to make sure the power does not go shooting off over the horizon. They use what is termed null fill on antennas that are located close to the desired service area. The Ft. Wayne stations are all located directly in the major population area and should have heavy null fill so those located close to the towers get good signal levels.

The FCC originally licensed DTV stations power levels to replicate the footprint of the analog signals.
In our case they said that we only needed to have an ERP of 50 Kilowatts.

Now being UHF broadcasters where we were used to using higher powers for penetration of buildings to hit the secondary sets with no outdoor antennas most of us paid for independent engineering studies that could allow for increased ERP's. The values that are being throw around here are the results of those studies. Our licensed updated ERP value is 350 KW

WANE DT Original Grant 90Kw Applied for 1000Kw (waiting for approval)
WPTA DT Original Grant ?Kw Applied for 335Kw (Approved)
WISE DT Original Grant 50Kw Applied for 350Kw (Approved)
WFWA DT Original Grant 90Kw
WFFT DT Original Grant ?Kw Applied for 1000Kw (Approved)


The FCC database must have been purged of the original power level
grants? They do not show up for WPTA, WFFT or WISE.
WFWA is running at the original licensed power.

What is interesting and reading these forums seems to prove it out is that the lower power levels do actually work quite well. The higher powers will do wonders for indoor reception or poor antennas.

For review here are the local signals as I know them to be currently transmitting.

WPTA Channel 24DT 335Kw 224.4 Meters
WFWA Channel 40DT 90Kw 221 Meters
WANE Channel 31DT 40Kw 88 Meters
WISE Channel 19DT 9.9Kw 234.9 Meters
WFFT Channel 36DT 0.97Kw 64.4 Meters

MK

2.5 Megawatts? That low?

Two of the South Bend Analog Stations (16 and 28) are 5 Megawatts, a third is 4790 kW (22), the PBS (34) is 1380kW and LeSea (46) is 1120kW. Most are around 305m to 335m HAAT (34 being lower at 246m).

Fort Wayne's HAATs run 223m to 252m. (HAAT is height above average terrain, for those who don't hang out at the FCC website. Sorry about the metrics, but I've given up converting to feet.)

I'm 55 miles away and can pull WPTA's digital signal (my prediction software says I should get a 22.94dB signal). Your current signal (DT19) is predicted to be 7.64dB -- too low to lock on -- but if you build your CP's 350kW I should get a 22.66dB signal ... which is good enough to watch.

I'm wondering why the PBS stations didn't bother raising their allotments. WFWA staying at 90kW and WNIT at 50kW (currently STA 40kW). I suppose in the long run they will save on electricity.

Thanks for the history lesson.


I have WANE originally on DT4. It makes sense for them to want to stay in the UHF market. I wonder if someone could apply for DT4? I'm looking forward to the "next step".

JL

They probably could not get the money/grant for the extra engineering studies that the maximization cost?

As for the power bills that is not a small change prospect. In Indiana roughly 70% of the bill is calculated from the peak demand during the month.

When we installed out IOT transmitter our raw Kilowatt hours dropped by 25% but our bill barely made 5% savings. In California (before the crash) the power companies would provide substantial upfront rebates to broadcasters that installed more energy efficient transmitters.

My estimates have our electrical cost to operate DTV at licensed ERP as pretty close to $3000 per month.

(Some more history)
Our old GE Klystron Transmitter consumed 121Kw to output 30 + 3 Kw.
Ran Class A so it used 121Kw 100% of the time

Our new IOT Transmitter consumes an average 48Kw to output 30 + 3 Kw.
Runs class AB so it's power consumption varies depending on the picture
content. Black or dark pictures consumes the most power and White or light pictures the least.

Quite a difference.

DTV Transmitters operate more like the old Class A tubes in that the bitstream is transmitted at 100% power or better all the time.
If all of the vectors align just right the transmitter has to put out 2 to 3 times more power for a minute amount of time.

DTV power is measured as an average power level and Analog power is measured as a peak power level.

MK

MRK229,

Welcome to the board. It's nice to have the technical point of view for the topics and some "real" answers to some questions.

Based on your comments about transmission power and height of the antenna, I can attest that height of the antenna has the biggest impact for my situation. I can receive all of the stations that at broadcasting from above 200m at nearly full strength, while I cannot receive the others at all.

Also thanks for broadcasting the upconverted material at the OAR of 4:3.

Hopefully we'll get to test out a 5.1 transmission sometime soon.

Thanks again and welcome,

Jason

Has DT24.1 WANE been at lower power the last couple of days. I had a decent signal but now it is lost. Hmmmm ...

JL

I haven't had any problem receiving dt24.1 lately. Just as strong as ever tonight, unfortunately I'm patiently waiting for them to start passing the HD signal. Would really like to watch Threat Matrix tonight in HD.

I will be watching ER tonight though, mostly because it's in HD, I haven't watched that show in years but will give it a look tonight.

It's back again on my receiver... Must have been weather related. I am fringe.

JL

Anyone get an update on WANE-DT?

I haven't heard anything. Just added a 12db signal amp though and am now able to receive 31.2. I can now check the radar anytime I like YIPEE!!

Obviously they have the ability to transmit digitally, hopefully when 31.1 is up and running they will be passing the HD signal immediately.

I'm still crossing my fingers and hoping I will see a MNF game before the end of the year.

Jason

As of tonight I'm getting 31.1, 31.2, and 31.3. All at very low signal strength, I'm experiencing audio and video dropouts sporadically, but they are indeed there.

31.1 is upconverted 4x3 material from reg CBS channel, 31.2 has the test channel banner on it, and 31.3 is the weather radar. This is a good sign that better things are to come (hopefully in the form of raising their antenna broadcast height and turning up the power).

Let's all hope we're watching some HD college basketball soon.

MAX HD,

Here's your chance to log an additional two channels!! I think if I had your antenna setup my wife would kill me, but it is a pretty cool deal, I'm definetly jealous.

Jason

I may die if WANE decides to test passing the HD signal tonight for the Victorias Secret fashion show!!

Last I heard, it was not going to be in HD at all.

JL