Hartford, CT - OTA - Page 12

Sure.

Let's see how this has worked so far:

• That means they negotiated with the network parent companies
• and no negotiations to-date with local affiliates to acquire the right to re-transmit the HD signals

If I'm not mistaken, that means the independently-owned local affiliates have little, if any, leverage in negotations with DirecTV. And let's face it: negotiations always come down to money.

So in a nutshell, they want you to do the negotiating for them. Without a set of complaints and no solutions (waivers) they have no leverage.

Otherwise DirecTV can point to the population segment able to get OTA signal, and the ability to get a waiver for the distant feeds, and defend their position in court for quite a while.

Ready for the bad news?

This is a PM I received from Arnold Chase who is an AVS member and the owner operator of the antenna complex on Rattlesnake Mt. in Farmington.

---------------

The behind the scenes situation is unbelievably screwed up, involving channel swaps and FCC battles. CH. 30 vs CH 61 & CH 24. The bottom line is that WTIC will be up in a few months with a temporary (but probably pretty decent) signal, but CPTV is still dealing with FCC issues. If it goes the way I think it will, CPTV will go on with more power than they ever dreamt of. Unfortunately until the FCC gives the final OK (and new channel assignments) to WTIC and WEDH, they can't order their antennas. Without knowing what antennas they will be using, I can't order (or build) the new candelabra. It will be 8 - 12 months from that time before the project is finished.

I'm probably more frustrated than you guys over this...

Regards,

Arnold
-----------------------

This sucks.

does this bad news apply to wvit also as far as the time frame is concerned or will they be ota soon with any luck???

scottte

Will this have any effect on WFSB going full power?

WFSB is on their own tower, and their channel assignment is locked in (they are on the air), so no it should not change their timing (a couple months out at this point). Though I'm hoping for DD5.1 for this weekends game.

jake14mw

My comcast Motorolla HD STB has both toslink and coax digital. One thing you might want to know is that there is a known issue with audio dropouts and static with the current crop of Motorolla STB's, here is a link to some information I shared with others.

Man I can't post a bloody URL as I have not posted more than 5 times .

***************.com/htsthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=492178&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=3&vc=1

add a www to the above url, back up in the thread to read the entire discussion.

FYI the audi problems are nowhere near as bad as they were, I still have them but they only last about 5-10 minutes or so before going away

What they mean here is that way back a few years ago, they were one of the nice stations that actually gave out waivers to DirecTV customers. This was before the 119 sat was around. My friend has a waiver from them. He was also able to get one from WTNH becuase he is far from them. But all the other Hartford staions would not budge.

That sucks about the tower...you would think with all the waivers granted the FCC would have this finalized by now.

I replied to Arnold's email in regards to WVIT. They are on a different tower, but I don't know if the lawsuits would be an issue. The engineer at WVIT told me that the antenna was on-site and ready to be installed when the antenna reinforcment was complete. I'm trying to find out if this
is true.


Such, have you received any new information on the DD 5.1? I was under the impression it would be a while. I was praying we'd have it in time for the Superbowl!

The other INHD channel went out at the same time as WFSB-DT came on. Coincidence? I wonder if there is some sort of limitation of the number of HD channels they can carry. Still I'm not unhappy with the swap out.

sorry to seem out of touch, but does the above mean wfsb is also moving to rattlesnake mt for full power????

But it does sound like WTIC be up soon, albeit at lower power. Right?

Andy

Got a note back from Victor today. He is waiting for one more piece of equipment from Dolby (a $15K part), he's struggling to get the PO through his finance department so he can get it here. I asked if it would be up for this weekend & he said his is doing everything possible.

As for the tower location, WFSB will be going full power on the same tower they are on today, on Avon Mt.

I emailed Comcast today about DVI update and PVR availability. Here's what I got.


At this time the Digital Video Recorder service is not yet available in
the New England region. Comcast is working hard to offer as many new
services as possible. Unfortunately we do not have an estimated launch
date to provide as to when this type of unit will be available.

I'm sorry, at this time the DVI port on the back of the DCT-5100 does
not function.

The DVI output is HDCP compliant, which is a copyright protection that
disables the ability to record HD programming. At this time it is not
active, Comcast and Motorola are currently in discussions with the
parties that defined the HDCP standards, unfortunately we do not have
any estimated availability date to provide at this time.

Doesn't seem like anytime soon for the PVR. I was told during my install that DVI was going 'active' early 2004. That doesn't seem likely since they are still in negotiations.

That's a pretty important part! I'll keep my fingers crossed for Feb 1.

Did he mention when the switch to full power would be? Is he waiting for the Dolby equipment to arrive to do it all at once?

WTIC already got their new channel few months ago. They were suppose to be on ch6 but got new assignment for ch31. Are they still complaining?

No, read farther back in the thread.

They will be doing the Dolby upgrade first - what is going on right now, waiting for the one last Dolby part.

They just finished pouring the concrete footings for their steel tower upgrade last week. Adding steel to tower comes next & its weather dependent. Getting the tower upgraded comes before raising the new full power transmitter. My guess (this did not come from Victor but from my interpretation of his comments) is that it will be a couple months before their full power transmitter is up and running.

My info on WTIC is they do have their new channel number, they have ordered their antenna & are waiting only on tower construction to be completed.

Hard for me to argue with Arnie Chase however, given he owns the darn tower...........

Well, this makes sense to me. Think about it, although I have heard CLAIMS that adjacent digital channels pose no problems, my experience tells me that in the real world there will be some interference, probably seen as a lower quality number on the signal "meter" on the DTV sets, possibly even wiping out channels entirely.

Think about it... I think Connecticut is rather unique in this situation. All these OTA channels are clustered together. First, you have WVIT channel 30 analog, a 3 MegaWatt analog powerhouse. (Remember analog stations run at a much higher ERP than digital). On another tower about a mile away, WTIC is supposed to be lighting up Digital channel 31. On that same tower, CPTV is occupying Digital 32. A few miles up the road, WFSB is on digital 33. Our friends from New London WHPX are on digital 34 (don't laugh at that one, I get WHPX-DT with a 75 signal strength in Bristol with a StealthTenna in the basement), and finally WVIT gets channel 35 digital.

Nowhere but on cable would you see channels 30-35 completely occupied. The problem is, on cable the signal strength of all the channels can be equalized. With OTA, this is impossible. The more powerful stations will interfere with the less powerful ones, the tower closest to the home receiver may overload the DTV box's front end and wipe out adjacent channels. This does not take into account atmospheric disturbances and other weather-related reception variables.

If I were in the middle of the fray, I know I would want a digital assignment out on my own somewhere so I can pump out a good signal and not have any interference.

BTW, if adjacent channels pose no interference issues, then why does AntennaWeb.org say I need to have a medium directional (code red) antenna to pick up WTIC-DT 31 when I live 6.6 miles from the tower in direct line-of-sight? In fact, the list shows WHPX-DT 34 AND TV analog 26 (New London) as EASIER to receive from my location than WTIC-DT!!

I wonder if CPTV got a power boost for WEDN-DT 45? I could not get the station except for a minor blip once around Thanksgiving, but the past 3 weeks or so it has been booming in at 50-65, steadily improving as time went on. It is now very reliable to tune in at any time with very few dropouts.

I have been receiving WEDN-DT with good signal from the moment they went on the air. I admit though that I have big antenna on a rotor on my roof with the preamp. On the other hand I can't get WFSB reliably even though I am 7.5 miles away from transmitter.

Some infromation on adjacent channel interference can be found here. http://www.tvtechnology.com/features...gy121003.shtml
There has been a fairly recent request for a channel swap by PBS for the Norwich and Hartford channels. This may be the new hold up on the WTIC et al tower. John

INHD & INHD2 problems !!! anyone else having issues receiving these channels ?? They won't lock in they flicker in and out , then they go blank ..


I sure am loving CBS high def though !!! Go COMCAST

I got an update today from the Rattlesnake Mountain transmission facility manager. WTIC-TV has decided not to go with a temporary DTV antenna (which was going to be installed by now), and instead they will install a permanent antenna at a temporary (side mount) location until the candelabra is installed. This should take place in a few months time. Their temporary location will be at about the 800' level, which will place it about 300' HIGHER than WFSB's permanent location. Once the candelabra is built (about 12 months from now) WTIC will move their antenna up another 500+ feet to their permanent location. This will result in a transmission location 200' higher than WVIT's permanent location, and 800' higher than WFSB.

Even with a temporary transmission power level (about half of what it will ultimately be), I'll bet that WTIC's temporary signal will FAR out-distance WFSB's full power coverage.

A good predictor of the differences that we'll see can be estimated by comparing the existing WEDH analog signal (450' tower on Avon Mountain) against WVIT's analog signal (1,139' tower on Rattlesnake Mountain). In UHF, the saying is as true as ever: "Height IS Might!!!".

Does anybody here in CT have Comcast with just the basic cable and the HD box? I am interested if that is available because I have the HD package from D* and I have just CBS-HD from E*. I would like to drop the E* one channel setup and get ABC, NBC, and CBS all in HD from Comcast. I figure this would only be about $16 for all three versus $6.50 for one channel.

achase,

any new word on wvit's dtv antenna???

scottte

I have prefered basic(analog) and an HD box. No premium channels. I get the HD locals plus ESPN-HD, inHD 1&2 for the cost of renting the HD box.

Bfadams-

So do you pay about $16? And can you tell me what analog channels you receive on any regular TVs you have hooked up to cable? Is it just channels 2-22 or do you receive more? I was led to believe that they couldn't install a trap ( for basic cable only) if you were receiving the HD channels. A bandwidth issue, maybe?

I get roughly channels 2-99 minus the premium channels. I pay about $47 including taxes etc. The HD cable box is $6.95(price is included in the $47). I think the price will be going up a $1 or so soon for the box. The filter that they could put on would decrease my bill about $4. The Comcast CSR said they could install a filter that allows the HD signal to go thru if you wanted only minimal basic service.