San Francisco, CA - OTA - Page 128

I missed your original post, or I would have responded to it.

Your questions are very valid, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an easy answer to it. In a nutshell, each station has selected their own "volume" level, and some of them are quite different from others. There is supposed to be a standard for this, but sadly, it is either implemented poorly, or not at all.

Also, some stations, like KPIX, employ a lot of audio compression, which means they pull up the low parts in the sound, and push down the loud parts, so that the volume is constant no matter if the contest is a whisper or an explosion. This has a side effect of making things sound much louder than a station that does not compress.

I don't know of any solutions at the moment. Audio has always played "second fiddle" on TV, and I was hoping that digital TV would finally bring an end to that. But that does not seem to be case.

I saw your questions but was waiting for someone with more knowledge to answer, because, as far as I can tell, it's all due simply to lack of attention by the various stations to their audio on their digital signals, nothing more, nothing less.

With stations going to automation for everything now, and most still monitoring their analog signal off the air, since it's not delayed, there's no one listening to their digital signal. They can see the picture on their monitor, and can probably see levels on audio meters, but they're not really paying attention to them. And after the analog shut down, they'll have to listen to the output of their switcher, since they can't switch listening to the delayed digital signal, so things won't be any better.

I've seen programs where the audio of the commercials is much louder than the program content, and vice-versa the commercials are lower than the program content. I've also seen drastic changes in audio levels going from commercial to commercial. With no one sitting there monitoring the levels like there used to be in the past, whatever goes into the server when it's recorded is what gets sent over the air.

Each station seems to have a different average level, too. KPIX-CBS 5 used to be MUCH louder than the others, but seem to have lowered their levels some in recent weeks. KNTV-NBC 11 is always lower than the other stations.

So, I have no answer other than the lack of monitoring on the part of the stations. I suggest that your friend email them and complain!

Larry
SF

Today on 7-3 between 1:58 PM and 2:05 PM, somebody hillariously goofed at the controls! The program content suddenly ceased mid-stream, and somebody's Windows desktop was displayed, while you could see them clicking on files and folders. I was holding my breath waiting for the person to click on IE and surf for porn for the entire Bay Area to see!

That's an excellent point. Where I work (a station to be unnamed), we are always listening to analog air -- as you said, we can't monitor digital air because it's delayed, which makes it impossible to roll breaks in live events. Although nobody has come out with an exact plan yet, I expect that when the analog is shut off, we will be listening to "control room out," and not air, for both audio AND video. While we have an off-air monitor for the DTV signal, we cannot use that as the main monitor, again because we need "live," or as close to live as we can get monitoring for the times when we roll breaks manually.

We do have an expensive 5.1 audio monitor in the room, but most people never turn it up, as it's too confusing to have that and the analog going at the same time. Most operators just look at the meters on occasion -- if they're bouncing, all is perceived to be good. But really, we could have silence on the DTV channel for a LONG time and nobody there would notice -- it would probably be calls from viewers that alerted us to the problem.

I would have loved to see that.

The KGO Accuweather is run entirely by PC. The files are recorded to the server from the Accuweather feed and from a local recording, and then played back in a specified sequence by the computer. No one's there controlling it... except when the computer crashes and needs to be reloaded.

Larry
SF

I got a DTVPal DVR on Tuesday, and it's working great, except that it hasn't yet collected the TVGOS information that's supposed to be transmitted by KPIX. All I'm getting is the PSIP data from the individual stations. Is anyone else able to get the TVGOS info from KPIX? Thanks.

Bob

I have IN THE PAST gotten TVGOS listings from 5.1 - I did it just as a test of my Sony 250 DVR, which now uses channel 9 (analog) as its host station, but will have to swtich to 5.1 on the occasion of the February transition...

I ran a simulation a couple weeks ago for KTVU after I was reviewing the FCC coverage map loss areas. My biggest concern is that the FCC maps ignore viewers beyond the contour.

The yellow areas represent areas not likely to receive UHF 44 (post-transition facility), when they probably can receive VHF 2. Granted, some areas are covered by other markets, but some are not.

I am not a proponent of using Low-VHF for DTV, for problems in urban/sub-urban areas, but the reality is that many people on the fringes depend on analog Low-VHF analog TV.

After Xmas I picked up a LG LCD, so I'm very new to the OTA HD thing. I bought a Terk HDTVa (looks like a silver sensor w/ dipoles). After some adjusting I was able to get most of the Bay Area Stations at Normal signal quality. (The LG uses Bad, Normal, Good for signal quality.) I have the antenna on a wood display cabinet which sits on the fireplace mantel so it's about 6 feet off the ground.

This was a month ago and twice since then we have had KPIX (5.1) signal quality go to Bad and thus making the channel unwatchable. All the other main channels we watch, KTVU-DT (2.1), KGO-DT (7.1) and KNTV-DT (11.1) were all fine at the time. Both of these times we had a rain storms in the Bay Area. (ie last night)

We live on the West end of Alameda (94501) and I've been using antennaweb to get the proper heading to point the Terk antenna but I just found antennapoint and its giving me a slightly different heading.

antennaweb is saying 253°
and
antennapoint is saying 268°

I'm not sure which is right since I've entered my street address on both sites and both show the same spot on the map.

I wish I could just install a roof antenna to improve the signal but we rent the house. The other option I might be to look in the attic to what I could put up there and possibly avoiding dealing with the landlord.

Do any fellow Alameda residents have any advice?

Hi Folks,

I finally finished research, design, procurement, assembly, and installation of my new HD-optimized system. Many thanks to the AVS forum.

I'm hoping that this might help some of the folks out there that are in a similar situation. Santa Rosa can be a challenging area to receive major-network TV signals.

It's kind of a high-end system, as I was trying to bring in some pretty distant stations that my old CM-Quantum rig just wasn't capable of; although it was a very good antenna, especially for VHF.

Here's a picture (attached).

I'm in a deep-fringe area here in Santa Rosa and this new rig pulls in over 30 stations at the moment (mostly digital, up to 60+ miles). I expect 40+ digital channels when the Sutro-tower stations in S.F. finish moving their antennas up to the top of the tower and all the dust settles in Sacramento, etc. I'm pulling in stations from Walnut Grove (Sacramento), Mt. San Bruno (KNTV), even KSBW down in the Salinas/Monterrey area (although it's analog...); no Sutro yet, except in the very early mornings before they start their antenna work for the day. I expect to get all the Sutro's when they finish their work on the transmitters...

COMPONENTS & WEIGHTS:
TERRESTRIAL DIGITAL 91XG w/HARDWARE - 4.5 lbs.
BLONDER-TONGUE BTY-LP-HB w/HARDWARE- 8.5 lbs.
CM-9521A ROTOR w/HARDWARE - 7.5 lbs.
THRUST-BEARING (TB-105) w/HARDWARE - 2.0 lbs.
TIN-LEE UV-7X COMBINER w/HARDWARE - .25 lb.
RESEARCH-COMMUNICATIONS 9254 PRE-AMP w/HRDWR - .25 lb.
--------------------
23 lbs.

For coax; I went with LMR-400-75 from Times Microwave. Very low-loss coax; Did my own cabling with the TM EZ-400-FM-75 connectors, sealed with dielectric silicone grease and wrapped in coax tape. I bought a few tools to do the job correctly. It's about a 90 ft. run.

I picked up some unused, military-surplus, AIRCRAFT-GRADE ALUMINUM TUBING: 6063-T832 for the mast. Nice and light, very strong. It's up about 35 ft.

It's a great rig that really pulls in signal well. On the higher-quality content HD stations (KVIE, KQCA, KNTV), it looks like I'm watching blue-ray...


- DFGY

I went to the KPIX website and sent a note to the station engineer about my problems getting TV Guide On Screen data. He promptly sent two very nice replies:

Robert,
Thank-you for your note. We are currently experiencing a problem getting
data from TV Guide. We are working with the provider to restore the
service as soon as possible.
Regards,
Mike
Michael Englehaupt
Director of Engineering
KPIX-TV/KBCW-TV

**AND***

Bob,
I'm told from TV Guide that we should have this restored on Monday. I
apologize for the inconvenience.
Regards,
Mike

I live in a north facing apartment building in the Marina district of San Francisco and put the antenna in a bay window. I had been using the Radio Shack loop antenna / rabbit ears (appx $35.00) with gain control which worked okay, but didn't get KNTV (well, one time I held the antenna at arms length outside the window I got intermittent reception); otherwise the overall antenna performance was spotty on KQED and sometimes I suffered signal loss on that and other stations.

I built the UHF/blogspot bowtie antenna and report good reception on the UHF channels, even with a subpar reflector (my laundry drying rack for now.) But the concern is getting KGO and KNTV going forward as they will be VHF and the bowtie isn't quite getting them. If I fiddle with it, I do get KGO and also all the UHF Mt. San Bruno channels like Ion, etc., but not KNTV.

- Would it be worth trying to buy an amplifier? At this point, the expense of around $30 - $40 would come close to buying a specialty antenna.
- Any hope of getting KNTV with one of the more specialty antennas as mentioned in this forum? Such as the Winegard or other brands?

Deep Fringe Guy...

Nice antenna set up! It'll be interesting to see what you get after the transition and after they get the new digital antennas installed on Sutro Tower. Keep us posted.

Larry
SF

The problem for you two-fold: one is that VHF requires a large antenna, one with longer elements, that's too big to have inside, and two, the signals are being blocked by the hills down where you are, so they aren't strong enough to be picked up inside by a smaller antenna.

Your only hope for success is an antenna with some gain up on the roof, like a Channel Master 4228 or one of the new combination high VHF-UHF antennas for channels 7 to 51. I don't think you're going to have much luck with an indoor antenna at your location.

Larry
SF

I'd never heard of antennapoint.com before, so checked it out. What they're giving is the magnetic heading, while antennaweb is giving you the actually heading. Here in the Bay Area, the magnetic heading is supposed to be about +17 degrees from the actual direction. So if you going by sight, use the antennaweb value. If you're using a compass, use the antennapoint value. Your antenna will end up in the same place.

Larry
SF

Thanks Larry,

I had a feeling you might chime-in! Hey, thanks for all the great info. that you post. It has been and continues to be very helpful to me.

It's been an interesting and fun project.

The new rig will definitely bring in Sutro UHF and VHF-HIGH and should do it very well. I really don't get much right now due to the transitional work though. I do get KNTV very well and most of the main Walnut Grove stations and I even get KSBW channel 8 analog pretty well, but, with some snow. But, Sutro is my main source and always has been. I'm getting 7 analog, but I'm temporarily living without 2, 4, and 5, which is tougher than I thought it would be...

I'm kind of surprised that our own Sutro stations are so far behind. I would have expected the Sutro consortium to be one of the first in CA to be finished with all their transistion work...

I'm confident that If everyone moved their digital transmitters to the top of Sutro and upped their power to 1000kw, most of Santa Rosa would have very good reception from Sutro, with the use of a CM-4228, or DB-8. I know that not everyone is planning on increasing their UHF power to 1000kw, but it sounds like Santa Rosa will do pretty well when all the transition work is completed.

You know, the only major drawback that I see to "deep-fringe" digital, is that low-flying, small aircraft do tend to (temporarily) disrupt the picture (if they're flying between the my rig and the transmitter) . I wish there was something that could done about that... Analog was also affected, but in a different (much less significant) way. Digital is much more sensitive to this. My local stations are powerful enough that they aren't bothered by aircraft. Perhaps the FCC will allow another kw increase for UHF in the future to help remedy this?


Best Regards,

- DFGY

The old 4228 is not available (easily) anymore, they updated it a little bit and call it a 4228-HD (ch. 7-69) now. http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_disp...p?prod=4228-HD

- DFGY

There's more than enough room in the Pacific Ocean for all those people living in the yellow areas to move to

I don't think I've ever posted any of these to AVS forums before. If it wasn't for ham radio I wouldn't have gone to all this trouble.

First image is the 50' tower with a pair of 91XGs and a pair of home made ch 7 - 13 log periodics. The 91XGs are at 62'. The big antenna is an 18 - 30 MHz LPDA.

The second image is a view up the hill from my house to the tower. The base of the tower to the house is 430'. I'm using 525' of semi air dielectric CATV hardline. The hardline loss is about 10 dB. I'm using Tin Lee VHF and UHF preamps.

The third picture is a panorama taken from the top of the tower and I've labeled the approximate directions for the major antenna farms. Walnut Grove is actually my worst direction.

Chuck

Nice rig Chuck!

I always enjoy seeing how other folks do things; especially hams. I wish mine was that high. I'd have to apply to the county PRMD to do that though... Probably notify the FAA too!

It looks like you might be able to top that Monterrey Pine in front of Walnut Grove and maybe get some signal improvement?

I topped a few of mine this year that were down in the back 40 of the property; improved my Sutro signal quite a bit... They tend to creep up over the years...

How are those dual 91XG's working out for you?

- DFGY

Thanks. That pine is not on my property and the neighbor won't let me take it down because he'd be able to see my tower better and he doesn't want to lose a pine tree. His house is 800' away in the middle of a 38 acre parcel with at least 100 pine tree. Go figure.

A pair of 91XGs has a very narrow pattern and that helps my multipath problem.

Chuck

KVIE, high quality? I don't think I'd use those words to describe what I get from them. Here's an example of what I saw the other night during "Soundstage:"



Admittedly, that was tough material to compress, but the average bit rate was only about 11 Mb/s, which is woefully inadequate and far below what Blu-ray can do.

VideoJanitor,

Are you perhaps on cable or satellite? OTA is uncompressed, full-HD. And KVIE has done an excellent job on 6.1 (real UHF 53; soon to be ch. 9) relative to all the other HD subchannel stations that I pull in OTA. KVIE has a higher HD content on their HD subchannel, based on my viewing experience. It is very close to upconverted DVD or Blue-Ray. Not the sound mind you, the picture... I still haven't tried to see what the sound would be like if I ran it through the Marantz SR75000.

A lot of times, I've noticed that KVIE will tend to show more music-type shows on their SD subchannel 6.2, also. So maybe that was the SD subchannel you were watching?

OTA can be up to 5 times better quality than cable or satellite, that's why asked the question above...

- DFGY

TREE: That's too bad; sometimes neighbors can be hard to deal with, even in the country...You could maybe offer to pay to just top it and keep the tree... I did one near my house for $200.00.

MULTIPATH: That's real interesting to me. I do get occasional airplane multi-path, which pixelates my picture. Only on the long-distance stations, but most of my stations are long-distance... I've seen those dual setup's before; some folks use the Blake JBX
Yagi's... In my situation, I've found that just one 91XG is very, very, directional; sometimes only 4-6 degrees will make the difference between seeing a picture and no knowing that one is there at all. They have excellent rear rejection (F/B RATIO) too.

I wonder if horizontal stacking would help me with the airplane multi-path... I've done some research on the subject and it seems that the 8VSB, the modulation used for ATSC is prone to aircraft multipath, so the tuner/receiver's in the TV's, and converter boxes are in large part, to blame for this. I've heard that some tuners are better than others at dealing with airplane multi-path. But, I don't want to get rid of my Kuro!

- DYFG

Mythbuster control says: False!

All HD broadcasts are compressed in one way or another. Raw HD coming over the satellite is at about 30 Mbps, whereas there's only 19.39 Mbps available in an OTA signal.

Then, every SD subchannel causes a further degradation of that HD. So in the case of KVIE, I don't have any data, but it would be safe to assume that each SD subchannel is sucking up 1.5 Mbps or more, add in audio and that's about 3.5 Mbps, minus the 19.3 Mbps you had to start with, and now you're down to 15.8 Mbps. Now subtract audio on the HD, plus guide data and other things, and you're down to 15.4 Mbps. And that assumes the SD subs are compressed all to hell instead of being 2-2.5 Mbps each, which could shove the HD down to 12 or 13 Mbps.

- Trip

I have a question on that topic...

I have heard that the 8VSB OTA broadcasts quite often provide more Mbps than the corresponding QAM transmissions from Comcast. I have both OTA and Comcast cable in San Jose. Take, for example, KTVU-HD. In theory, would I expect a better picture and/or sound from Comcast (ch. 702), or directly from the KTVU transmission from Sutro (2-1)?

At the moment I have a CM4228 going directly to the TV. The Comcast signal is being received by my Tivo HD. The TV reports the signal strength, but neither of these devices report the bitrate, so it's hard to tell.

Is OTA better (or worse) than cable in general, or is it case by case?

Regards,
Scott

Hi Trip,

Well, this could be a technical can of worms...I think it depends on which sources you believe. I have a flyer in-hand, which seems to be typical of all the information I've seen on OTA vs. Satellite and Cable picture quality (paraphrased below). And with my own eyes, I've seen Comcast in my area that was far inferior; plus I've seen the really high-quality HD coming from stations like KVIE - it's spectacular. Sometimes I'll even watch a program that I don't particularly like, just to marvel at the quality of the picture!
Even 700-club on KNTV is it? is pretty impressive... Comcasts HD, that I've seen is like a low-quality SD on my OTA system...

Here's some info. from a flyer from Antennas Direct:
Satellite Provider: Signal starts out at: 20 mbps; by the time it reaches the dish at the house, it's as low as 6mbps. Same with Cable.
OTA: Signal starts out at 20mbps; and ends up at the house antenna at 20mbps. Highest bitrate available.

- DFGY

I think it's a big can of worms because there are a lot of variables. Some programs are not very high quality to begin with and when they're broadcast on HD channels they're only as good as the original source. Maybe one of our broadcast engineers will chime in....Can you see a difference?

I don't have cable or satellite, I have OTA. And when I go down to a local resturant or bar and watch the game or I'm in a dept. store watching a cable signal, I see a very big difference. My OTA is far superior.

- DFGY

Thanks Larry! I have been using a compass so once I used the antennapoint value the KPIX signal improved a lot. KNTV-DT (11.1) Signal is weaker now but if I'm sure I point a just a few degrees south it will improve.

Of the locals that I've looked at, only KQED's Comcast feed is different from their OTA signal. The Comcast KQED-HD feed is actually higher bitrate than their broadcast version by about 3-4 Mbps. For the others, the two versions seem to be identical.