Jacksonville, FL - HDTV - Page 53

MR James:

That is good news! I was wondering when that was going to happen for us. I hope they do the digital simulcasting shortly afterwards. I have noticed that bravo on comcast channel 15 looks alot better and looks digital anyone else notice this? I think they are already starting because some channels have also been moved around.

If you have any dates on simulcast for our area would love to know.

Thanks!

petercw2, - so you are getting which channels and which ones are you not getting?

42-1 (Channel 4) Yes/No -- Signal Strength ___
38-1 (Channel 7 - PBS) Yes/No -- Signal Strength ___
34-1 (Channel 17 - WB) Yes/No -- Signal Strength ___
32-1 (Channel 30 - FOX) Yes/No -- Signal Strength ___
19-1 (Channel 47 - CBS) Yes/No -- Signal Strength ___
13-1 (Channel 12 - NBC) Yes/No -- Signal Strength ___
10-1 (Channel 25 - ABC) Yes/No -- Signal Strength ___


OK let's rule out the obvious:

1. re-check all connections
2. re-boot your receiver
3. manually enter channel number - 34-1 or 19-1 - mayber your receiving is not mapping them correctly
4. Antenna type -(read below)

It appears you have some funky antenna, I believe you have this one (see link)
Square Shooter
http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_disp...=&PROD=SS-1000

Typical antenna used (I believe, at least this is the type I use - not the same brand though)
http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_disp...=&PROD=SPR7042

Ugly I know, but you probably should utilize one of these in your attic first then try to install outside if that doesn't work.

You can "demo" (in other words purchase one at Home Depot/Lowes) one and return it if necasarry, but I am willing to bet that the antenna you have now is the issue - it just looks gimicky and unreliable.

Good luck

petercw2,

I can't speak to the Winegard, but I know that performance doesn't necessarily have anything to do with price. As an example, I bought a Radio Shack indoor digital antenna, about $80. It was amplifed and looked great, but worked badly. I then bought a $40 Radio Shack outdoor antenna and stuck it in the attic, and can get all stations down here in Fruit Cove.

Granted, attic installations can be tricky because you can lose as much as 50% or higher of the antenna's efficient, but never hurts to try it as a first attempt. You can always move it to the roof afterwards.

Thanks to everyone for their help. The one thing I hadn't done and didnt realize would make a difference was "REBOOTING" the receiver. Well that did it. Can't explain why, but it did. I am getting all the channels and I think that I have it locked in pretty good. We will see as the weather changes and all the other normal variables.

The Square Shooter came very highly recommended by several installers I know that do not live here in Jax (I just moved here from Dallas a year ago) and it appears that Terk of all people have decided to licence the design and are selling the same one with their name on it now.

Also, it was this forum that I learned about the odd Sammy360 bug which causes there to be no audio on channel 17-1 when you have the guide for our zip code included. But when you "zero out" the zip code the audio is there, just no guide info. Can anyone tell me if there is a fix for that?

Thanks again for everyone's thoughts and insight. This is why I love the internet.

Oh, one more question

Signal Strength: What is the norm? My jumps all over the place 45-90, and doesn't seem to want to sit still.

As far as signal strength jumping, you really don't want it to do that. You really want it pegged, no movement above I would say 40 (but that depends on your receivers benchmarks, which I do not know) Actually you really want them pegged at 100. The truth of the matter the signal strength meters on all of our recievers really doesn't paint the whole picture as far as signal strength vs. signal quality. After thinking about it for a few minutes, you might just want to try a test out. I am sure somewhere you have an old pair of "Rabbit Ears" laying around if you do, I would test you signal strength with them connected (you should be able to get most if not all channels where you are located) and not have the fluctuations.

As far as your antenna - if I were you (only my opinion) I would go with a more standard UHF/VHF antenna, I think if you poll everyone here or other areas you'll find 8 out of 10 use the standard and have little to no issues.


As far as the WB 17-1 is concerned, search for AFH (username of Antonio) in this thread I believe he and Don Landis (username as well) commented here.

Is anyone else having problems with NBC's digital signal via Comcast?

I'm using my QAM tuner to get it, but the picture goes grey for a second about 5 times in a half hour. It's very annoying. I don't have the same problem on other stations.

Haven't noticed any such picture problems but I continue to have sound problems with non-HD programs on both the local NBC and ABC channels. They come in at about half the sound volume of the other HD channels which can be very annoying when "surfing".

Anyone else with Comcast HD notice channel 166 - NFLHD. Tonight watched highlights from past weekend games in HD. Anyone hear if this is part of our lineup now... don't recall seeing any post about NFLHD?

I saw that also. Both times that I tuned there they were showing SD programs with custom "NFL" sidebars like ESPNHD does.

Good Article about HDTV before Superbowl on www.jacksonville.com - Florida Times Union

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-onlin...17806400.shtml

I wonder if Jerry and staff will have their top, most qualified people running the show for the game. Lately WAWS has been doing a pretty good job compared to the sister WTEV for HDTV. Probably because of the Splicer technology where fewer people locally can mess with the signal to screw it up.
Lately the major problem on WTEV has been failure to promptly return to HDTV mode when returning from commercial breaks. I haven't watched that much WAWS except on the Sunday games but I have not seen the same problem.

Jeff- Thanks for that article- I hope these store sales people know to suggest the proper tuner to get HDTV locals on their new sale of a HDTV monitor. Most of these sets do not have a built in HDTV tuner.

I know this has been talked about ad naseum, but it floors me how many people have HDTV sets and no tuners/HDTV boxes and think they are watching HD - it really is sad the lack of education of the consumer and sales people out there

Well, I love my wife, but when watching say NCIS and the HD switch hasn't been flipped she doesn't seem to care. I've seen people with sets more expensive than mine watching D* stretched SD and thinking it is HD.

However, when there is a show with good "wow" factor like some of the Discovery channel nature show, she will remark about the color and/or clarity of snake scales or the like. To be honest, some of the network shows don't do HD justice.

There are a lot of complaints about Fox HD football broadcasts around the country, but WAWS seems to do a reasonably good job. I certainly haven't seen the shimmering grass and some of the other problems reported.

Reminds me Jeff of that very first HD broadcast in JAX, the Salt Lake City Olympics. I was blown away by the pictures and just marveled at what I was seeing. One night some friends stopped by for a brief visit and I had that showing and I said take at look at this! Their reaction? Oh, that's nice and then they turned their backs on it. They very clearly hadn't even noticed the unbelievable quality that they couldn't have seen anywhere else.

Yeah, you're right. People (most of them anyhow) are completely clueless!

Jonathan

Jonathan-

Is that when you went out and bought a better HDTV? yuk yuk !

Actually I went and got better friends!

Seriously, I've never really gotten to upgrade TV's. I started with Pioneer RPTV's back in '91 and kept it until Pioneer released their first HDTV RPTV, the Pro 700. It was junk because of a poorly designed line doubler and Pioneer eventually took it back and gave me the next year's model, the Pro 710. Physically identical, but completely different electronics and it worked great. So great in fact that another set of friends like it so much they asked me to sell it to them after I only had it 2 years. The amount of money I was able to get for it virtually bought me the next year's model (Pro 730, actually skipping one year). That turned out to be a very poor judgement call as that set turned out to have poorly designed video control cards and after a few months use, caused the screen to fill with artifacts.

Long sad story that ended (somewhat) happy is they finally, after a year+ of suffering with the problem, were able to fix it on the third attempt with newly engineered cards.

A few weeks afterwards and a new problem is starting up. When the set if cold and turned on, there's no RED being generated. A very blue picture is what I have to look at for about 5 minutes, during which time it gradually turns into correct color. Obviously a component is failing until it gets warm. Probably will go solid fail at some point, so another trouble report to Pioneer is in order....

Now you probably understand why I'm so interested in front projection DLP!

Are you back in town from your travels or still flitting about?

Jonathan

Are there many people that live in gainesville on this thread, just wondering if the can get channels ota from jacksonville there

Back in town now for awhile. I am swamped under 18/7 for about a week more yet as I attempt to get all these shows I shot edited and on the air, then we can get together to discuss the food for oil deal.

I knew you went through quite an ordeal with your RPTV. Here's a bizarre story about my Dwin-
Been using it for about 18 months with no problem, then after about 3000+ hours on the bulb it finally went out. So I popped in my spare and it lasted about 1 hour and pop! Now I had no spare. But the strange thing was, the original bulb looked fine so I saved it. I stuck it back in and it worked fine?????? The new one that seemed to last for an hour also looked good so I put it back in the box. Unfortunately after about an hour the bulb went out again. So, I figured it was not the bulb but probably a sensor failing shutting down the power supply. A bit of novice troubleshooting proved that the Thermistor was fine in the bulb box and the funny thing was, on the bench the PJ ran for hours and hours. After careful analysis, I realized the only thing it could be was the PJ in the HT was ceiling mounted, inverted. On the bench, right side up. Repeated tests indicated the PJ would no longer work inverted after an hour of use. It did not appear to be heat related as I tested for that. So, my fix was to remount my PJ in the coffee table and it has been running fine ever since.
At CES, I spoke to the engineer from Dwin and he wanted me to return it for him to experiment. I said only if he sends me a replacement which he agreed to do. Took my name and address and now I wait. He promised to send me a replacement so I could use the shipping carton and included ship return tag to send him my PJ. Any bets he will keep his promise? Hint- Attempts to call Dwin are futile as they don't return calls and don't answer direct. Great Projector but terrible company to deal with.

Hello and I need some assistance. My Comcast HD receiver has a red message light on the front panel. Does anyone know where to find the message to read, or how to get rid of the red light?....Thanks, Matt Q.

Jerry- Hope you are reading this thread-

WTEV had bad audio on Joan of Arcadia and CSI and the new show Numb3rs last evening. Picture was OK. Audio was broken up. I verified this on three receivers and confirmed this was not a problem on WAWS nor any other channel.

Same issue here with WTEV last night.

No help needed now. Read the message from the receiver. It helps when you press the menu button...Thanks.

Odd that this pops up every now and then. It is fine for a few days, then the "jitters" in the sound starts again.

Yikes! The sound was so bad I could not watch several of my favorite shows in HD

Joan of Arcadia, & CSI.

The warble and echo effect was dreadfull. Alas, this is about the 4th time this has happened on CBS in the last few weeks. Not just for a few minutes either but for hours. Ended up switching to the Analog OTA to keep from missing the show. Would switch back to the digital HD to check if it was fixed but still "sound impaired". Used to be a lip sync problem months ago. What gives?

Mrs. Hobbit was not happy either!

I wonder if the national feed is dolby5.1 and the down conversion to Dolby2 "stereo" is doing a hatchet job on the sound. Maybe one more good reason to just convert to the proper Dolby5.1

I recently canceled my Dish local channels because I believed the OTA to be reliable.

Not a rant really just would like to have reliable HD and not feel like we are still all beta testers. I DO like it when it works.

HD_Hobbit
__________

Will walk to Mordor for HDTV

HD Hobbit-

"I wonder if the national feed is dolby5.1 and the down conversion to Dolby2 "stereo" is doing a hatchet job on the sound. Maybe one more good reason to just convert to the proper Dolby5.1"

Technically, that's not how it's done. The DD2.0 /DPL and DD5.1 are exclusive channels sent in the AC3 system. The PCM is also sent exclusive in the data stream. Their hardware decodes the DD audio and uses the DD2.0 and sends this portion of the inbound to their outbout signal encoder. As best I can describe it without going into Dolby detail. Stations that do DD5.1 have to send both the DD2.0 and the DD5.1 so everyone listening will be happy.

I believe the trouble at WTEV began in mid December. Prior to that they had a fairly trouble free signal except for a rare failure to return to HDTV after a commercial break. I know Jerry began to do some changes in the PSIP generator back last month but I thought he told me he fixed the problem with the PID's that caused the audio problems. This breakup of sound may be something else failing now.

Personally, I don't have analog NTSC channels here anymore. Pulled all that equipment out of the rack. So, if the DT channel is messed up, WTEV loses my viewing time to WTLV or whatever.

Thanks Don for the explanation.

It helps my "laymans mind" if I think of the DD2 as a subset of the DD5.1, and yes it would make sense for both streams to be available for compatability.

I don't need the 5.1 - and am happy enough with the DD2. But the warble effect sounds like an oscillating dely that chops up the sound. One can sometimes hear multiple tracks - like an echo box or an old reverb spring from a garage rock band.

When FOX or PBS does 5.1 it does sound pretty sweet. I figured if CBS-Jax just "fixed" the DD2 sound by implementing the DD5.1? Well, wishful thinking on my part.

The MyHDPC120 card I use has both digital and analog tuner - fortunately.
The new record/watch/pause live HDTV recently implemented seems to work well.

The new MyHD130 is supposed to add a QAM tuner (?) to also do Cable TV signals, unscrambled channels of course.

As always this board is a wealth of information. If I ever have a HDTV hicup I check here first because 9 times out of 10 it is something wrong with the Jax locals and not my equipment.

HD_Hobbit

__________

HD_Hobbit-

If you ever have time on your hands and want to understand more about how the dolby audio is handled at your local station, check out the various pdf files at www.dolby.com. You'll have to dig and look as several of the diagrams and study several to have a complete picture but a good starting place is how the Dolby sound is managed in post production, where it all begins on the digital program master tape for air.
http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/prof...production.pdf

AS you will see broadcasting the audio is not simple as receiving it. any wonder your assumption is correct that 9 times out of 10 it's the station's mal function rather than your simple receiver.

Hobbit, can you get WJWB on your myHd120? If yes, could you do me a favor and tell me what it shows in the saved file (myhdchlist.mcl). It should look similar to this:
[INPUT1 No. 2]
Name = wb
PhyCH = 34
VirCH = 17
MinCh = 1
TunerInputType = AIR
SignalType = ATSC
Programnumber = 1
Sourceid = 1