Boston, MA - OTA - Page 41

There was some "default" information in our PSIP stream referring to the channel allocation (channel 30). At the suggestion of someone who read about this on the forum and sent me a private email, we changed from the default to manually inputting the frequency of channel 30. Apparently the Panasonic boxes need this information but none of the other boxes have been affected.

- Bob

FWIW, ABC in CT is also stretching the SD picture. maybe it IS something from the mother network. It bugs me as well.

Andy

For you night owls.....

Flight of the Intruder will air on WBZ Sunday, March 24, from 3am - 5am (Saturday night/Sunday morning). This in HD, of course.

Bob

Was going to say WCVB and WMUR are owned by the same people,
but not so for WTNH. So much for that theory.

Yes, the stretched format is annoying. I remember when 'BZ tried
the same thing, with just as many complaints.

Just updated my station list for Boston area in my thread

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=131725

Looks like now we could have all major networks:
CBS ABC NBC WB UPN PBS in digital HDTV by mid-summer!

And then there's FOX but nobody gets that in HDTV!

So maybe we can join the CEA Digital City list with Houston and Portland, and get the local stores to demo actual HDTV from our local stations????

could someone post the URL for the "new wbz hdtv website" ?

also jhe - what's the url for your station list - and
does it show power level? i'm mostly interested in
which stations broadcast at 1Mwatt so i can pick them
up with my current antenna. am i correct in assuming
that channel 7 will be broadcasting 1Mwatt on may 1?
and what about 56/WB? maybe not 1Mwatt for them - maybe
they are restricted to the same/lame 78000 watts as
is channel 25 ?

hey, how about that announcement of some new Zenith HDTV
sets with integrated tuner. 34" for $2500 including
tuner is a way better price than $3800 or $4000 for the
sony 34xbr2, and also is better than the price quoted
for the sony 34xbr2-followon - the one without integrated tuner.

oh, i didn't take note of whether the zenith
have firewire/HDCP/DVI/whatever.

I updated my prev post to include the link.

I don't show power levels, since then antenna heights can be an issue too, and I wanted to list in one place when I should go looking for new channels, and I don't see this listed anywhere in simple form.

Regarding power levels you can go to fcc.gov, or even easier check out

100000watts.com which goes to:

http://100kwatts.tmi.net/

or go to http://www.transmitter.com and download the FCC database listings there in spreadsheet format.


Anyway looks like the important stations will all have plenty of power, over 100 kw at least, except ch 13 which needs less being vhf.

I see even ch 31 is asking to double their power to get over 100 Kwatts.

So barring terrain problems, everyone should be able to get the new stations out to 50-60 miles or so, but maybe not with rabbit ears.

WBZ HDTV web site? News to me!

By the way, there is no station in Boston licensed for one million watts. Where are you located?

Bob Hess
Director, Broadcast Operations/Engineering
WBZ-TV/WSBK-TV/WLWC-TV/WBZ-AM/WODS-FM

hi Bob,
i must have misread something about
a wbz dtv website - see now it just an updated
channel 4 website. hey, if it doesn't mention DTV
it isn't up-to-date enough for me!

i am located in merrimack NH
in/near the soughegan river valley.
no 1Mwatt stations out of boston? good news -
so it takes less power than 1Mwatt for a DTV signal to reach me from needham.

thanks for updating your status post, jhe, you lexingtonian antenna wild man. how does your monster antenna tower go over with the neighbors?

btw, i grew up in lexington (so to speak).
lhs class of '79 .

I guess if you can get ch 31 you should be able to get the rest of the important stations, at least south to Needham. And you should get 57 great (I get it about 95% of the time at night, 60% days.) Your biggest problem might be the local Merrimack transmitters that could make using a preamp difficult.

As for my tower, it is tapered like the channel 7 tower, and looks pretty! I had one neighbor stop and ask if I was a ham, and when I tried to explain that the tower was just for TV she just looked at me in disbelief!

Luckily I am not near the historic districts, and am so close to Burlington nobody should notice my little tower.
From the street some of my neighbors with big 3 ft dishes in their front yards look far worse! Not to mention those ugly cables strung up and down the streets now that we have multiple cable systems thrust upon us!

Anybody heard from WHDH yet? No HD for Crossing Jordan last night either. I did see the "HDTV where available" bug at the beginning, though.

Boston area stations please note,

Channel 57 WENH-DT had a failure and is off the air!

But the important thing is they now have a "transmission status" page at their web: http://www.nhptv.org, accessed right on their digital tv schedule page! It has info on the problem and says when to expect them to get back on air!

I think this is a super use of their web page, and I sure hope other stations will get something similar set up to cover outages, low power operation, and even temporary problems requiring stretched pictures.

thanks for the additional info, jhe. i'm chuckling since
you call your 100-ft tower "little"!
i grew up in lex. near burlington too - we used to take
a quick walk
through the woods & across route 3 to burlington mall -
back when there was about 1 car per minute on rt 3 !
if you like please feel free to email me direct at eli@employees.org ,
so we don't bore the non-Lexies with the lex-specific
talk (oh, the travesty of PAYT, and what fun the airshow
will be this summer!)

as for channel 31, i've never gotten a picture from it.
also i've never gotten WENH-DT. my outdoor antenna is indoors,
in a south-facing room of the house. radio shack vx-120xr,
no preamp/amp. i always leave
the antenna pointed at needham. you mention local merrimack NH transmitters - to which do you refer - i am aware of none!

the only DTV stations i've ever received are
wbz, wcvb, wgbh, wutf (Spanish). but with those first 3 channels, i almost never watch cable tv any more. i'd
rather watch upconverted 1080i commercials than analog HBO!
(ok, i'm exagerating slightly...)

well, i'm psyched for NYPD blue tonight in HD - my favorite tv show.. DTV rules!

in other news, widescreen review has their whole issue
devoted to the new JVC D-VHS VCR. my interest level
about that unit is increased but i'm not willing to take
the plunge until they include a DTV-tuner...
yes,that subject belongs in another thread !

I also thought Crossing Jordan was not going to be in HiDef, but only the beginning scenes, before the opening credits were SD. After they came back from commercial break, it was back to HiDef for the duration of the show ....

Jim

Just for the record my tower (from Glenn Martin Engineering) is the smallest one made as far as I can tell, and is about 17.5 ft tall, but I extend it a bit with a long mast. It is even UPS shippable. It is made to go on roofs, but I didn't want to work up there changing all the antennas I've gone through.

Anyway, your request for power levels got me looking, and they are pretty interesting I think to a lot of people here, so my list now includes them.

Key points: Looks like WFXT-DT channel 31 is requesting to go up to 1 Megawatt. Another really key 1 megawatt station appears to be the Home Shopping Channel 18 planned for Lawrence.

I didn't want to add elevations to the list, but I noticed that channel 29 in Worcester looks to be the area record holder for antenna once they get going at 598 meters AMSL.

Most stations' antennas cluster around 300-400 meters, with some higher to the North and some lower ones toward RI.

Once cable takes over - and there is now a faint light at the end of the tunnel - we've got to get you a ham license so that tower can be used properly!

- Bob

Bob, you say " once cable takes over" as if it
were a foregone benign conclusion! i wish!
the light at the
end of the tunnel could be a sdtv-train or a much worse train :
mightn't the cable companies perpetuate ntsc & their
existing infrastructure even after "2006" when all
OTA broadcasts are DTV? what's their incentive
to upgrade 6.023x10^23 ntsc set-top-boxes, when they
can just buy a few tuners & converters to install
at the headend? ti fear they make more $ if they keep
their existing infrastructure, using the entire available bandwidth
for "digital cable" style overcompression of ntsc. they'd
be able to provide their 500 channels , with
quality adequate enough for enough viewers... :|

i wish cable would "take over" in a benign way that
provided HD signals to joe 6 pack with no $100 payment. but i am extremely skeptical. i think cable industry's natural goal is to eliminate/ignore hdtv and provide only SDTV at best, if they provide DTV at all. in many situations
i fear it may be more cost effective for the
cable companies to keep sending ntsc 480i via
their absurdly compressed "digital cable" - NTSC over
their cable plant using their existing infrastructure,
converting atsc->ntsc as they receive it from whatever
satellites & antennas. no observable service change
from the customer viewpoint, so many (most?) customer would not
mind that situation

please tell me what you think of the light at
the end of the tunnel with dtv & cable ?
my viewpoint is from so far in the peanut gallery
that it is surely not adequately clueful.

'm hoping that via DTV broadcast tv can resurge as a technology to compete more with cable & satellite.
with cross-licensing deals, local stations
could work out deals where they would broadcast
an associated-network's signal over the air.
for example, whdh in boston could broadcast
msnbc/cnbc on channel 7.3 ? on a scale of 1 to 10
how wacky are my ideas of what the broadcast/cable/satellite industry & infrastructure will look like in 5 years?

singal strenth for channel 4 went to 99 last night did they change something.
gene

Maybe I could find time to try for a ham license someday. I looked into it once in the old days, and got stuck at morse code. If it makes you feel any better I do have a couple of short wave radios, and long wire antennas.

But as to cable taking over (Sorry Bob, Viacomm probably owns lots of cable, but I still think of channel 4 as Westinghouse!): Not sure why anybody has it? I tried it once and the picture was so terrible with every channel cross modulating with the others I got dizzy watching it. And if it takes over how would people get news when a hurricane takes down all the cable lines???

Actually seems to me cable is pretty obsolete now, with them trying to cram thousands of channels into one little cable! If TV has any real competition it should come from Broadband with all the switching done at the head end and only the signals desired being sent out to each house, more like the old telephone system. Then there should be room for everything to be in HDTV resolution with much lower costs.

Nope!

Same WBZ - Full power all the time.

- Bob

I continue to receive 100% signal on 4 and 5 down in Taunton but last night the bottom dropped out of my 7 and 25 signal. I was getting about 60% on 7, last night only about 20% and about 45% on 25, last night about 20% also. I guessit had something to do with the heavy rainstorm. The stations seem to be coming back now. 4 and 5 remain rock solid using a RS amp. VHF-UHF set-top antenna at a west-facing window sill.

For all you Shrewsbury residents out there, I reported in another thread that I've been in contact with the S.C.C Manager of Technical Operations with regards to HDTV availability. I was told recently that S.C.C is still on track to offer HDTV via cable by late summer/early fall, once the Scientific Atlanta 3100HD boxes are available to them, and after adding the required equipment to their headend facility (antennas, encoders, etc.).

I'm not sure what type of programming will be offered, but I'm assuming the locals (since he mentioned adding new antennas) and hopefully HBO and Showtime HD.

Dino

Hope everything actually works out in Shrewsbury....Maybe I should consider moving. I'm sure Sutton will be one of the last in line if Charter ever decides to upgrade to HD in this area. I'm still waiting for digital cable and broadband access even after Worcester got it 2+ years ago.

Can someone out there with some electronic expertise please explain to me why on a miserable rainy, raw morning like this morning, my digital signals are at all time highs?

Normally I get the following: 20 (100%), 30 (100%), 31 (35-40) and 42 (45-50). As of this moment, the signals on 31 and 42 are 72% and 90% respectively. WHY???

One word - Atmospherics.

It is a temperature inversion. Often when cold air overrides warm air, it causes a ducting effect. This bends the electromagnetic waves (VHF/UHF broadcasts) to follow the curvature of the earth. This is different then VHF/UHF signals being reflected in the F2 layer of the atmosphere. Temperature inversions affect more local or shorter distance radio and TV transmissions. F2 layer would take you hundreds or thousands of miles. You would see Florida stations for example with F2 skip. When for example WBZ was on the tower with their temp antenna and low power, I could not receive them. When a front would come by I could get BZ for a few hours until the front moved by. Hope that this explains this phenomena.

Pat

One more question: Is there any way we could arrange to have these same atmospheric conditions 24 hrs. a day, 7 days a week?

Wishful thinking! Too bad the stations won't use repeaters for us out on "the fringe".

I was looking forward to watching "Greg the Bunny" and
"X-Files".

Both programs had a banner at the start proclaiming they were in Widescreen, but neither program was in widescreen. I called the switchboard and was connected to Dennis in Engineering, and he was not sure neither show was in widescreen.

I really wish broadcasters would get their act togther. Fox could learn alot from WBZ.

-j

Jeff,

You beat me to it. WTFO.

Tim