Youngstown, OH - HDTV - Page 63

Click HERE to review a better installation guide.

The Digital Home forums are an excellent resource for antenna builders. The guys there have come up with some sophisticated designs. The second antenna installation guide I just posted will show the best methods for installing an antenna.

BTW, I receive all but a couple of the stations in green, yellow and pink on my TV Fool report. I've attached a photo of my setup, which is mounted on a 55' tower. I'm using an old style Channel Master 4228 UHF antenna along with a Winegard YA-1713 high band VHF antenna, a preamplifier and rotator. The tower is over 40 years old, and I had the original antenna setup replaced a few years ago.

Many imported Chinese antennas and other gimmick antennas (flying saucer style and most indoor antennas) are worthless; however, a properly designed antenna system will do an excellent job.

Wow - how many channels do you get?


ANd where would you get a tower like that and how much $ would it take?

I receive about 50 channels including sub-channels - just about everything from Akron, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Wheeling/Steubenville and Cambridge.

Towers used to be relatively inexpensive. 40 years ago they ran about $20 or so per 10' section. Today, they're between $150 and $175 or more per 10' section. Your best bet is to look for a solid used tower. Some people will give one to you in exchange for you taking it down. Others will want some money - usually less than $150. You'd need a gin pole (aka jin pole) with a pulley and long rope attached to it and a helper or two in order to properly take one down. It's absolutely critical that you make sure a tower is solid before you climb it. You must also use an appropriate safety harness. Towers are occasionally listed on Craigslist.

Click HERE to see a new 50' tower on eBay.

So, is it worth all the hassle? You get 50 channels, but how many of them are unique and how many are duplicates?


Also, during football season, how many different games can you pick up?

We dumped Dish Network a few years ago. There is actually a surprising amount of programming available over-the-air. There are quite a few duplications. I receive 3 ABC, 4 CBS, 4 FOX and 4 NBC stations.

During football season, the Cleveland and Pittsburgh games are receivable every week along with a few Fox games and the Sunday night NBC game.

We subscribe to Netflix for movies and other programming.

I was surprised at "THECOOLTV" station. An OTA all music video station is awesome!


Any other cool stations out there to look for that you wouldn't expect?

I enjoy ThCoolTV. 11 and 9 currently carry Retro Television. This-TV carries old MGM shows and movies. WIVM carries Retro Television and Tuff TV. The CW and YTV are available. Akron's channel 23 carries Ion, Qubo and Ion Life channel. Me TV (old movies and shows). 4 PBS stations with multiple sub-channels.

We also enjoy Netflix which has over 20,000 movies and TV shows available for streaming. It's $8 per month for unlimited streaming.

Yeah, I jumped on the Netflix bandwagon a few months ago. Pretty much the coolest and best Technology invention in the last coiuple decades IMO.

I didn;t realize ION was an OTA channel.

What's Tuff TV and YTV?

Tuff TV HERE.

MyNetworkTV HERE.

A neat thing with DTV tuners is that with duplicate programming you can keep the channels you best recieve and delete the rest.

FWIW, my "outsider" opinions on reception based on childhood/teen memory:

I'm not sure how TV reception was in your part of the county during the analog days; I'd think it would have been similar to Salem minus the Cleveland stations. I'd concentrate on the Youngstown and Pittsburgh outlets. My dad grew up in Salem; my grandparents had a big antenna on at 30 ft tower with a rotator. Along with the local (Youngstown) stations, they were able to recieve almost all the Cleveland & Pittsburgh outlets along with Steubenville and Wheeling (albeit snowy). A time or 2 I picked up the CBC outlet in Hamilton Ontario on ch 10. (My grandparents were kind enough to let me play /w the TV and rotator when they weren't watching anything.)


This is where skipping duplicate programming come into play, if you want to do that. Say you want to see the big four networks out of Youngstown. Say for example you can reliably recieve the Pittsburgh stations as well. you can have your tuner skip the big 4 outlets there. However if one of those carries RTV on a sub but none of the Youngstown station carry RTV, you can still have that Pittsburgh sub added on your channel list while still have the main big four programming skipped.

Northern Columbiana County is in a great position to be able to get 3 TV markets. The southern part may be at most 2 of them. If you're only interested in the Youngstown stations you can fix your outdoor antenna to the north. Otherwise you'll a rotator or 2 separate antennas pointed toward PGH.

We actually receive stations from four markets in Salem. Wheeling-Steubenville is separate from the Pittsburgh DMA. I also should have mentioned that I receive four PBS affiliates plus sub-channels. The reason I cannot receive four ABC affiliates is because WTAE's transmitter is located 15 miles southeast of downtown Pittsburgh; it's 70 miles from my location in Salem. It comes in when there is some mild tropo. WTRF, Wheeling, isn't worth watching because it carries ABC and Fox as standard definition sub-channels in addition to its main (subpar) high definition CBS broadcast. We receive RTV from WTOV, Steubenville, and from low power WIVM. WIVM's transmitter is located just west of Alliance, less than 20 miles away. I usually keep my antenna system pointed towards Cleveland and receive the Youngstown stations off the side of my UHF antenna. This is a great area to be located in during football season. The Cleveland and Pittsburgh games are always available along with plenty of other games on Fox. WKBN in Youngstown carries both CBS (27.1) and FOX (27.2) in 720P, which results in both feeds being bit starved and causing pixelization during action scenes.

I'm located on high ground at 1250'. The highest spots in Salem are approximately 1330', and there is a spot just south of town that is 1380'. There are some low lying locations in the area where few, if any, Cleveland and Pittsburgh stations are receivable.

.... Check your PM.

I have 40 ft. tower I'm willing to sell. It's 3 10ft sections 1 10ft top section and a 3ft base. Plus a 16ft heavy duty pole and the mounting bracket for the house. It's already taken down just need to haul away. PM me and i'll give you a price.

I noticed this too, but I'm thinking they might be seeing how viewers feel about watching 27.1 in 1080i at the expense of 27.2 going back to 480i. It's not as much of a loss since they have WYFX-LP up on 19.1 now and it's still in 720p. Even though I imagine most of WKBN's fringe viewers won't be able to pick up 19.1, it is nice to see CBS/WKBN not over-compressed and in 1080i for the first time in 2 years.

I just logged on to this forum for the first time in a long while, I came here when I noticed 27.2 was back to being SD. Does the WKBN Chief Engineer still post here? We can only speculate that the change is due to 19.1 coming online. I actually picked up 19.1 here in Parma one time when skip was up. The only problem was it wiped out WOIO 19.1 (I still got 19.2). I had to rescan to get WOIO back. Note I never get WOIO's repeater in Akron even though I get everything else from Akron. I wonder how well RF 24 comes in over there in Youngstown. I hope you are getting it because that's the only way you'll see the Browns some Sundays. I saw the Steelers on WKBN in place of the Browns two time so far this season.

I just registered to post about a problem I started having on my big TV set with channel 27.2.I have never had any problems getting this channel in before as it is my favorite channel,or was until lately.

A few days ago the picture starts freezing every few seconds and makes channel 27.2 unwatchable.I have 2 other TV sets in the house that has no problems at all with 27.2. One TV set connected to an old crappy antenna recieves 27.2 just fine.Another old small TV that is connected to the same good,quality antenna as the big TV also gets 27.2 in just fine.I have tried switching cables and rescanning channels and no matter what I can't get channel 27.2 to come in decently on my Big TV. It's gotten worse today,and now I can barely pick channel 27.2 or 19 on that TV set at all. Does anyone know if this is a malfunction on my Big TV or what?I have no problems with any other channels.

It's all about the signal limitations.

B.H., if I recall right, you're in Greenville PA, right? That's a bit far for the WYFX-LD signal, though I wouldn't say so for sure until I find Trip's mapping of WYFX-LD.

Michael, you're just not going to be about to get WOIO-LD 24 in Parma. It's in the exact same place as other Akron signals (WVPX is even on the same tower), but WVPX is 1000 kW vs. WOIO-LD's 11 kW.

I get it here, but I'm a short hop away from the Akron antenna farm. I could probably get WVPX, WEAO and WDLI with a paper clip.

It sounds, from the reports here, that WYFX-SD on 27.2 is having some other issues aside from bouncing back to 480i.

I seem tor recall that Trip and I were speculating about SD vs. HD on 27.2, and that Fox somehow would not count a subchannel as the "HD home" of its affiliate. (I could be wrong in that memory.) Now that WYFX-LD 19.1 has been up and running for a while, maybe they had to switch 27.2 to SD.

Trip's Longley-Rice coverage map for WYFX-LD HERE.

Trip's Longley-Rice coverage map for WOIO-LD HERE.

The PSIP data for 27.2 was changed to WYFX-SD today. Seems this change is here to stay, at least for a while. Oddly, 19.1 WYFX-LD seems to be completely gone for me. I'm close enough that I used to easily pick it up with an indoor antenna, now nothing. It's as if it isn't transmitting anymore. Can anyone confirm that 19.1 is still broadcasting?

My TV must have been late to cache the update. I'm glad to know 19.1 isn't completely gone off the air since it seems it will be the only way to receive FOX in HD now, unless the dual 720p broadcast is brought back. Despite the changes in PSIP and how crisp and uncompressed CBS looks in 1080i, I'm still not convinced that this is truly permanent. As mentioned above, this effectively prevents extreme western PA and other fringe portions of the Mahoning Valley from receiving FOX in HD because of the limited ability to pick up WJW as it is. I'm too far west to see WPGH, and I imagine most others west of the state line are too.

I live in Salem and receive WJW, WPGH and WYFX (19.1) 24/7/365. I am on high ground and have a deep fringe antenna setup. As long as you're not in a low spot or valley, it is possible to receive stations from 60+ miles away.

I think FOX requires SD network feeds to use letterbox. After all, look at the placement of the bug in network programming. They are the only major network that doesn't place the bug in the 4:3 TV safe area.

Not only that, but the SD feed is underscanning. Part of the VBLANK is visible at the top of the image.

Main reason why you are seeing the quality increase is because they were squeezing both WKBN and WYFX at 720p each in 18mbits of bandwidth. With 19.1 they pretty much have that whole 18mbit for the single channel (do they have a subchannel on there? Even so, if 480i/p it is likely using 2-3mbit tops) so the quality is inherently going to be better with more bandwidth available.

I just checked now and it looks like they fixed it.

Does anyone have a solution on how to receive 31.1 . I have had 2 different antenna's mounted on the roof. I now have an 8 Bay Antenna good fot 45 miles, and 33.1 signal goes from 0 to 100. Location just south of lockwood blvd.. Any suggestions welcome !!!

Are you trying to get 33.1 or 31.1? If you meant 33.1 then being in youngstown you should be able to get it with just rabbit ears. I live in Hubbard and although I have a outside antenna I can still get 33.1 with rabbit ears. You could be too close to the station and over amplifying or maybe there is a problem with your coax or connections. I have a channel master 8 bay and I have no problems with the local stations.

The WYTV-DT broadcast is directional, favoring receivers north and northwest of the antenna. Regardless, there is enough spilling to the south that you can pick up 33 in the Boardman Best Buy with no antenna. If you are in Mahoning County, you should be able to pick up 33 anywhere above ground with only a pair of rabbit ears.

Having never been on this board, I have no idea how to ask a question, so I'll just start here. We have a HDTV and Armstrong cable. I want to get an antenna that will enable us to eliminate the cable bill. I tried a little flat, flexible antenna that gave crystal clear reception but only for 7 stations; several repeated. Will we be able to get various cable stations with only an antenna, inside or out? My husband loves Modern Marvels, A&E, Discovery and a few others. We are in Springfield Twp, approximately 10 miles south of Youngstown Ohio.

Hello Milee and welcome..

To get any kind of Cable Channels at all you have to have paid Cable service..As far as Antenna, Outdoor Antenna is always better than an indoor. If you get what's called an amplified indoor antenna (that you plug into the wall) that might get more than seven stations..Others here that live closer to you can give you a better idea on what to do..Good Luck,