Lafayette, LA / Beaumont, TX / Lake Charles, LA - HDTV - Page 237

Watched "The Train" on 2.2 instead of 7.3 which was pixelating at my place...
also recorded "Run Silent, Run Deep" to watch tonight....not much else to do with the weather...

A friend of mine is building an "office" on some land west of Beaumont. She is bringing one of her converter boxes out there this AM and I am bringing a cheap rabbit ear antenna with me that I got at Big Lots for $3.

I am curious to see what, if anything, we can pick up on an old TV that is in the building. It is a 1985 model TV that the power switch does not work on. To turn it on you plug it in, and to turn off, well you get the picture...

I am just wondering if we will get a picture out there with only rabbit ears...

I will let you know...

Probably get 4.1 and maybe 64.1 as well as 12.x.......and 6.1 if you are lucky
Be interested to see how it works out...depends on what is in/on the walls..if there is metal, you're SOL...using a rabbit ears inside vs an outside antenna is usually 9-12db down anyway...

Yeah, I know, but am willing to give it a shot just to see. I am merely curious.

As it is right now, it basically is a 12 X 24 "portable" building and she just started putting insulation in the walls. Right now it is "weathered in" and little else.

I did not get a chance to check it out today though. Battery went dead on her car and we spent time getting it back on the road...

Maybe tomorrow.

OUCH!!! Last night a friend was supposed to come by and pick up a ATOLL audio preamp for use at Mardi Gras,,,,never did..and today found out why...his AC compressor caught on fire yesterday (evidently was using the defroster)...then he had a tire go flat on him and one nut was rounded off (this happened in a Crawdad's parking lot) and they had to use a grinder to get it off so they could change the tire! YIKES!!
(and here I am worrying about my cracked heater core....oh well!)
Still interested to see what you get..probably have to put the antenna outside since the portable bldg is metal likely on the sides and roof..
Have fun!

Nope. No metal. This is a building that was built by a friend of her's husband before he passed away. My friend was given the building as long as she would pay to have it moved. Just 2 X 4s and thin wooden siding with 3/4" plywood floor. The only metal is the brackets where the rafters meet the top plate and ceiling joists on top of the wall and where the rafters meet the top ridge rail. She is even using Pex plastic pipe for the water supply.

Hopefully I can give a report this evening.... As they say, stay tuned.

27.3 has programming on it! Infomercial at the time I saw it. Will have to see what else comes on...

Yeah saw that earlier...no more color bars!

Ok, here are the results of the reception test from "the office" out on 105 west of Beaumont...

4 (RF40), 12 (RF 12), and 34 (RF 33) all came in with flying colors. 6 (RF 21) would lock on if I held the antenna in just the right spot and at just the right angle.

The converter box could "see" 64 (RF 43) but would not lock on. Not even a sniff of channel 36 or 27.

All in all' pretty much what I expected, but it was a fun exercise none the less...

I guess we'll just have to erect that 50 mast for an antenna she's been hanging on to.

BAnds were open last night and into this morning......got most if not sll of the Houston high power with the antenna pointed away from Houston...nice to see KTXH is full HD widescreen last night instead of SD as DISH has it.

As usual 43/64.1 was not there...but RF 36 out of Houstom KFTH was in solid!!

[quote=BPTTV;18151936]BAnds were open last night and into this morning......got most if not sll of the Houston high power with the antenna pointed away from Houston...nice to see KTXH is full HD widescreen last night instead of SD as DISH has it.

Yeah KTXH is a regular catch here with a little tropo. Always seems to be in HD when it comes in.

OK guys and gals, here's the scoop...

I talked to Mark Ewing, CE at KVHP this morning because channels 36 and 43 were off the air.

KBMT is in the process of removing the STL from 36 and moving it to 43. Therefore, the Orangefield, Hillibrandt Road, and Jasper sites are all down right now.

I would expect changes on KUIL to be forthcoming very soon... HD programming I hope!

I drove by the Hillebrandt Road site this afternoon and saw no activity, however, the site is obscured by an old house and trees. And it was WAY too muddy for me to try to get back there.

I did not see anything new on either tower.

Both 36 and 43 as far as I can tell, are still off ther air.

Jasper?? I thought that site was fed via Ku sat.....so it shouldnt be affected.

London has to get a tower crew up Orange (the 36 tower is not in Orangefield...American Tower called it "Orange field" but that site is more Peveto or N Orange) to remove the STL receiver and put a 43 yagi up to look at the 43 site....then put the STL up on Hildebrandt...and get a STL transmitter and dish for the studio tower...

I miss my Family Guy on 64 at night.....

All I know is that Mark said that all three are off due to the STL musical chair dance...

Wasn't there talk that the Jasper site would be fed OTA? I know that is not optimal due to the ducting issues on 36, but can KBMT feed it any other way right now?

How is MyTx fed to Waco and Tyler? Or is MyTx all originated locally in each market?

Somebody forgot to turn the 36 and 43 Xmitters back on...

I'll ask Russ or someone at KBMT....I know the Jasper site was sat fed the last time I was there....not via 36 RF...As for feeding it other way, only a Ku sat feed would be feasible. KBMT has no other RF path that direction...(they need the "Warren 27" or another midpoint site to hop from 36 or 43 to Jasper 44.

MyTX looks to be locally generated and not a network per se...just branding..

KUIL has not been on Satellite for about 6 months. Here's the letter from their CE back in August, 2009..


Found this in the FTA section of satelliteguys...

Is that a new STL on the channel 12 studio tower pointed at Hillebrandt Rd. perchance??? That's what it looks like to me.

Thats IS true of KUIL-LP/LD (64 analog and 36/43 digital..) However, I was refering to KVHP-LP (now LD) in Jasper...which was on 66 and now on 44. It IS still fed by Ku sat signal....Yes they DID use a sat to get the feed from LCh to the 64 analog tower....but when 36 digital came on the air in Orange fed via STL from the KVHP tower in Edgerly, they decided to use that as a source for the Beaumont tower....HOWEVER, that hasn't worked very well as KFTH-DT which is on RF36 in Houston at 2000ft and 1MW ERP comes in quite a bit and causes the 36 digital rcvr at the Hildebrandt tower to unlock, pixelate AND totally lose the signal from K36ID in Orange; there were times 64 analog was blue screen or pixelating because of it..In fact the last 2-3 nights, KFTH-DT on RF36 has been BOOMING in..if KUIL-LD had been on, it would have been with NO data...just a dead carrier....that was a bad choice by BlueBonnet to do it that way (it did allow them to drop the sat feed from LCH to BMT but then they had too many signal dropouts!)...Would have been better if they had put another STL shot on 6 GHz from Orange tower to the Beaumont/Hildebrandt tower but that was $$$ to spend they didn't want to.
The feed to the Jasper tower is a different feed (the commercials they run are geared toward the Jasper area...so when they dropped the BMT sat feed, they could NOT drop the sat feed, on a different Ku channel, to KVHP-LP)

I hope that explains it and clears up any confusion out there.

As to KBMT having a dish looking at the Hildebrandt site, it could be..I'll take a look at it later today......I'll give Russ a call and see where they stand on the actual STL feed from KBMT studios.

Oh BTW, some LPs do NOT even serve the Community of License..one in DFW is licensed to Corsicana!!! 50 miles south of Dallas....the signal for the LP looks NE toward Plano and the "rich side" of Dallas....and NO signal at all is sent toward Corsicana...
Full power stations ARE required to cover their COL; LP/LDs dont HAVE to....and in some cases, never have (Our own local analog 22 is licensed to Beaumont and Orange..but they have NO signal in Orange at all....even if they moved to KYKR's S Vidor tower, they would still have a null toward Orange..so much for being "commissioned" to provide local programming, etc.

Yes, the STL was moved and installed on Wednesday....and is working (but thats another story!) BUT they are having problems with the encoding equipment at the studio..one problem shows up and then reboot and another issue!! Probably wont see 64.1 back on this weekend....

Well the carrier for 43 is up...but no data......looks like they forgot to turn off the transmitter (oops)
Dont know if 36 is up or not...

Yeah, both the channel 36 and channel 43 carriers are up and going, but no data on either one...

Still nothing on 64.1.......propagation has been good the last couple of nights..I saw 18.1 out of LCH (nice to see PBS in HD at times; wish DISH would fix their feed on 8...they are taking the HD OTA and feeding it in 4x3 format so part of the screen gets cut off...DUH!)..
but something has been weird....20.1 (19) and 2.x (35) were coming in from Houston..but no 11 or 13 or 26.1...yet 67.x(36) was coming in....somewhat selective propagation???
LFT's KATC 3.1(28) was booming in from Rayne (where their 1800 ft tower is) but KLFY 10.1 which is on its own 1800 tower 1/2 mile away from KATC's was a no show..1MW UHF vs the poor ERP of 10 on VHF...they would have done better staying on their UHF channel (wait, wasnt it 52?? Well so much for that!! Should have gone for 29 and both KLFY and KATC could have shared one tower and one antenna..which would have saved KLFY from going into bankruptcy....I wish our local stations had done the same thing..built one master 2000ft north of I10; the FMs may have liked it...and kept their current sites as aux/backups)

Here is what I did this weekend...

As I posted a few days ago, I had bought a remote control, IR learning component switchbox at Lowe's the other day.

Digiblur posted a link to a HDMI with coaxial and Toslink ports that he used, which I thought was a really nice switchbox. But I opted to go the individual route. I ended up buying a 4 X 1 remote controlled composite switchbox, a 5 X 1 RC HDMI switchbox, and a 4 X 2 RC Toslink switchbox to go along with the RC component switchbox I already had. I got everything hooked up this weekend, except the Toslink box. (More on that later...)

On the IR learning component switchbox, I used the remote for the CM antenna rotor. 1 for the #1 position, 2 for the # 2, etc. Since the rotor control is to my left, and the switchbox is to the front, it works out great. I didn' want to use the power on of the individual device, because I figured that if it powered on the device, but for some reason it didn't switch the box to the right input, and I tried it again, it might put the box to the right port, but then turn off the device... hence the decision to use the rotor control remote. Worked out perfectly. Each other switchbox has an included remote.

Now to the Toslink box... Went to Wally World and indeed they had Toslink cables. The one on Twin City had two, both of them 3 footers. That won't work... Had them call the store on Memorial. They had one... and 8 footer. Bridge City... none. Went over to Rat Shack. $32 for an 8 footer... I don't think so. Blew it off and went home to start the connecting process for all the other boxes.

On Amazon.com I found a site that had five 6 foot long Toslink cables for $2.56 each, and free shipping. So I bought them all, and they are on the way.

Everything is working great, although I don't think I ever saw as many wires in one spot outside of a radio or TV station... I have 4 devices that have coaxial digital audio capability, 5 that have Toslink (counting the TV), 3 that have HDMI, and 7 total that have composite outs including an old laser disc player (of course not all of these need to be hooked up).

Now to the one problem that I have encountered... I always have had what I consider a low line level audio volume level coming out of the converter box that I will use to record over the air into a Samsung DVD/VCR. I am going to also use the cable box to record to the same device whenever I need to. The line level audio from the cable box has never been what I would call great either. but it was OK.

The problem is that when the audio from the converter box and the cable box is routed through the composite switchbox, there seems to be a considerable amount of audio volume loss, making it very hard to hear. I lose maybe a third of the volume level that was low to begin with. the other devices that I have hooked up to the Samsung are OK, because there is not a low volume issue to begin with.

So, I think I have (somewhere) an old, small amplifier that I will hook the line level audio out of the composite switchbox into, then boost it up to get me back up to where the level needs to be. That is the only solution that I can come up with. If anyone else has any other ideas, I surely would like to hear them. I would like to hear everybody's ideas. Thanks.

Many cable boxes can be set for variable or fixed volume outputs in their menu setup. Make sure it is set for fixed if you find that it is switchable.

-ML

Thanks, ML. I tried that but it made no difference(I kept the CB volume at max anyway). BUT, that got me to investigating further, and changing the audio range (wide-normal-narrow) from "normal" to "wide" DID make a difference. So thanks for the prompt to look into it. Still a considerable amount of audio loss through the switcher, but much better for the cable box.

Still might like a bit of a boost overall...

UPDATE: By switching the audio on the CB box to "narrow" boosted it even more, so the CB audio level is fine now, and I can live with the volume level of the other 2 devices, and I have a Winegard converter box that I may try first.

This sounds like an impedance imbalance is causing the audio difference. You may have a low impedance input being fed by a high impedance source. When this occurs, the high impedance source will be lower in level than the other sources (assuming the others are low impedance sources). This can be "fixed" with transformers or amplifiers.

This might be a little over your price range ($100+), but I really (really, really) like the STA-1 and STA-2 "stick on" amplifiers from Radio Design labs. Both are dual channel amplifiers.
See: (http://www.rdlnet.com/product.php?page=54) and (http://www.rdlnet.com/product.php?page=56).

I have about a dozen here at the station to increase the audio level from consumer tape (VHS) recorders and DVD decks. I also use them to convert other unbalanced (2 wire) audio sources to balanced (3 wire).

The STA-1 can reduce the gain by -12 or raise it by +20; the STA-2 varies from unity to +24 Db. They also act as unbalanced-balanced electronic transformers. All in all, a very fun box to play with.

Transformers are cheaper, but the STA 1 or 2 have a Frequency Response of dc to 25 kHz (+/‑ 0.25 dB) and an THD (total harmonic distortion) of: 0.003% to 0.009%; (0.005% nominal). Try and beat either spec with a transformer!

Richard

I heard Radio Design Labs had new boxes coming out...one a 50KW AM stick on (see attached)...HDTV is next

I like it! It doesn't even need an audio input. I wonder if they come in different flavors (country/western, talk radio, jazz, etc.)?

Or maybe they just modulate the 3 phase power input ports?

I really need more information before I purchase one.


R

As they said in the Blues Brothers, it plays both kinds of music: Country AND Western

I think the audio input is AES digital....wonder if it does IBUZ??? I'm taking bets on how long the 3 phase screw terminals last....50KW AM is 33AMPS of RF.....I want to see the adaptor to the Heliax on that puppy