Phoenix, AZ - HDTV - Page 20

15.1 is down right now and has been for a couple weeks. Can't comment on 61.1 - worked for me last night from 10-11pm (Simpsons).

You forgot the classic " We have forwarded your request to our Programming department" and my favorite " There are many issues we must consider before adding new channels or services"

After reading many of these posts, I finally made a decision on which TV to purchase. I also purchased a $7 antenna and recieve the usual 6 or 7 HDTV Local Signals and a few other signals all FREE and they look great. This saved me from sending more money to COX for their HDTV service and Box. I just wish ABC would get the transmitter fixed, cause it would have been nice to see the Playoffs in HDTV, even if it is only 780p and not 1080p. Anyway. I got an LG 52" with the HD3 chip and I really like it. The Mits was over priced and I did not like the Samsung picture quality. I can't wait until the HD4's come down in price.

I live in Ahwatukee, so I have a clean shot to south Mountain. The locals come in great and I can also switch to Cox, if I need to. Love the Picture in Picture (PIP) too..

I look forward to learning more from these threads and throwing in my 2 cents worth now and then.
Rich

I live in North Scottsdale and have a USDTV receiver and a 4 bow tie antenna 10 ft. above my chimney. I get good reception on all channels in Phoenix and Tucson 109 miles away except KGUN-9 which is not yet at full power and PAX-51. I'm guessing PAX 51 is still at low power.
My antenna is aimed at 130 degrees which is mostly towards Tucson.

I have Cox Expanded basic cable and I am unable to tune into the HD channels like 76-1 and so on with my HD setup I have a Hitachi 32 inch HDTV and an old RCA DTC-100 (I subscribe to DirecTV but get the cable service with my cable modem). I e-mailed Cox about this:

My message to them was the following:

I understand that Cox simulcasts the HD local channels for those who have basic service and a HD tuner that can receive HD over-the-air channels. According to the Cox HD Webpage fine print all that is required to receive local HD channels is Cox Basic Service and Cox Digital Cable is required to receive any premium HD content. What channels would I tune to with the Basic service to receive the local HD channels?

And this is what they said:

Thank you for your inquiry.

We have located the Web site, please note at the bottom you will see a disclaimer that you will need to subscribe to HD service. See below:

"An HD capable converter and remote rental ($10/mo.), subscription to a minimum service level of Cox Cable required to receive Cox HDTV service."

Please reply to this message if we can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Heather
E-Care Specialist
Cox Communications - Arizona

Can anyone confirm this with their setup?

Thanks,
Keith

You need a tuner capable of receiving QAM broadcasts. A standard OTA receiver will not work.

Note that 90% of the CSRs at Cox don't know anything about HDTV and will babble incessantly, repeating lines from the sheet that they're given regarding it.

Ah, interesting... One of the 6 installers that came out mentioned that even if I was over at 7th st or 7th ave, I'd probably be able to pick up most of the stations. Where I am, though, I can't even pick up reflections with a giant channelmaster on my roof with amp.

I'm going to get DirecTV to start the ball rolling with waivers and see how far I can get there.

Thanks for the encouragement, though.

The rules changed a few months ago, and waivers don't work anymore. The only way to get distant locals is to have your local station O&O (ie, Phoenix-area people get Fox), or be outside of a DMA. You might have better luck with having your service address be somewhere in say...NYC or LA. That should allow you to get all the distant locals without too much hassle.

I requested a waiver to get distant locals from Directv, and they indicated they would do it, however, I haven't heard from them yet, although it's only been a week, so it could be BS.

About a month after I spoke with Directv, I started getting ch 89 Fox from LA. A couple of days after that I got a postcard from Directv indicating which networks had granted or refused waivers.

If anyone is concerned, it appears that ABC 15.1 is back on the air.

Yeah I noticed, but wasn't this upgrade supposed to include a power output increase? I'm not seeing any stronger signal than before the outage.

Unfortunately, they still haven't fixed their audio problems and it seems they lost their program guide info too.

This upgrading of Tx's and adding a backup seems really odd to me since they've applied to move back down to physical channel 15 eventually, so they'll have to go through all this again when that occurs.

There is a July 1 deadline that top 100 big-4 stations must be at whatever power they want to be grandfathered for, and this was probably part of their strategy. That deadline does not care what the local station wants to do later as far as changing channels, for instance. New transmitters are pretty backward-compatible, meaning that while a change back to 15 will not be cheap, all of what they are doing now will not be in vain toward that effort. A different exciter and a few odds and ends, maybe a new antenna, maybe not, and they will be good to go. Adding more cabinets for more power now is certainly something that would accomodate a later channel change.

A far as SEEING more power, that depends on how you measure it. If they are transmitting at higher power, you are most definitely receiving at higher power. But typically, signal quality measurements for DTV are based on MER (modulation error ratio) which is a ratio of successfully received bits vs. corrupted bits. If you are receiving primarily all bits successfully at low power, higher power will not register as higher signal quality...you already have nearly perfect reception if you are successfully decoding all of the bits. It only will read different to folks who were right on the edge, level-wise. IOW, those about 40+ miles out. IOW, it is now time for those folks to think about trying to receive them possibly for the first time.

And of course signal reception quality is not to be confused with PICTURE quality, and level itself is a small part of the signal reception quality equation anyway.

The audio problem and PSIP problems are separate issues. Concentrating your engineering resources on installing new transmitter cabinets is more likely to mean less resources for the ancillary problems.

Accoreding to the FCC website the 4 major network affilates ABC,FOX,CBS,NBC in the top 100 markets must be at full power by July 1. All other stations have until July 1 2006 to be at full power. KGUN-9 however is putting up a new tower and transmitter and still is not at full power,maby they got an extension. This is the only station left that I can't get a good signal on.

So regarding post-Jun-30 Channel 15 - is anyone else seeing wild fluctuations in strength (or more technically error rate as reported by a receiver)? I'm in Cave Creek and I have a clear line of sight to South Mountain, about 32 miles away. All of the locals come in at about 90% (using a winegard OTA antenna, model unknown, installed by directv about 3 feet off the ground) except channel 15, which is all over the map. Yesterday it was 30%, today it's 90%. Tomorrow who knows where it will be. Are they still twiddling after just coming back up on the 30th? I do not get any of the Tuscon stations, and I don't really care.

Dan

FWIW I also noticed the signal strength on 15.1 is literally all over the place.
The tuner on my HR10-250 Directv receiver is receiving and holding on to the 15.1 signal however the builtin HD tuner in my Sony RP LCD is just showing "No Signal" [this is during the daytime hours, I've noticed in the past sometimes the signal comes in better at nite so I'll have to check this evening]

FWIW this is the results I get when checking the signal strength from my HR10:

51.1 - mid 50%
45.1 - hi 70%
21.1 - lo 70%
15.x - all over the place between 20-60% jumping around constantly
3.1, 5.1, 8.x, 10.x, 12.1 and 33.x all in the 89-95% range

I live near 35th Ave/Camelback and use a Winegard SS-1000 "Square Shooter" for OTA reception.

We completely cancelled the TV portion of our Cox services, and we still get expanded basic and HD locals with our cable modem service.

Our Sony TV has an integrated tuner, and it tunes in the HD channels.

Gary

Due to the recent "full power" directive, I went ahead and did a full frequency scan from 2-69 and found no channels. Oh well.

To get HD locals from Cox I'm under the impression you would need either a digital set top box OR a cable card both requiring you to have the digital cable package from Cox.

I suspect the HD channels you are receiving are OTA and the basic channels because the installer was too lazy to put the filter on your cable line.

FWIW, I also rescanned for digital channels - during the daylight hours it found nothing, however in the evening it did find 15.1 and 15.2. This is similar response as to before 15.x went down for nearly a month to "upgrade" it's h/w.

I suspect they may have not tweaked whatever h/w was put in yet. I would be interested in hearing from the engineers of 15 what the status is and what the month of downtime accomplished.

Well, that's interesting. You and Dan's experience is the opposite of mine.

Before the upgrade I had lots of fluctutions on 15.1, now it seems a little bit more stable but I still indicate the same signal level as before the change. I haven't watched them very much since there's nothing interesting on right now so maybe I just haven't noticed.

Since I'm in the NW valley instead of due N like you, I wonder if they changed their emission pattern?

Seems like this gets rehashed every few weeks here.

A QAM tuner will tune the HD locals if you have basic cable, and Cox has reportedly stopped installing filters, will even remove them upon request. According to posts that I have seen you should be able to get at least basic cable if you have internet service and with it HD locals via a QAM tuner.

I have only broadband through Cox, and am able to receive expanded basic. Obviously, no filter.

Best regards,

Rich

As everyone mentions their COX service.

I have COX HighSpeed Cablemodem service and home dial-tone service (land-line phone). I finally have gotten COX to stop calling me and trying to sell me their "digital" and "HD" programming. It took 2 years, but I finally got it done.

I had to put a padlock on the cable box attached to the house. "COX" recently did a "field-audit" or "tap-audit" to see if anyone was stealing cable. When they did my block, they were nice enough to short out my multi-switch. Of course they denied all the way up.

About a month ago, they came, and made mention about the padlock again. I told them, well, as you can see the dish on the side of the house, and HD OTA antenna, why would I want their crummy "digital" service. He said cable was soooo much better then DTV. Finally it was, have a nice day, and SLAM went the door.

Geez.

One of my favorite sayings, "You will NEVER pry my dish away from my dead-dying fingers!"

I have the newer HD dish with the integrated 4-way switch. Wired to a Terk MS58.

I have the standard canned DirecTV Wineguard OTA antenna. I was really skeptical at first on the locals. Originally I got the RCA DTC210. Upon installation, I could get EVERY local channel EXCEPT for 15.1. This for me was the test to see what sort of HD signal I could get prior to getting the HD-TIVO (5+ year tivo user, MUST have DVR!)

I then purchased my HDR10-250 and installed that in-place of the DTC210. I received 15.1 out of the box, no problem.

I live way north. I cannot really see South Mountain. I'm in the Desert Ridge area, Tatum, north of Deer Valley. I am anticipating like everyone else, what DirecTV is going to do with the added satellite launches, and channels they are planning on adding.

ESPN2-HD and TNT-HD are a given, but what else is there? Local channel delivery? What other stations on the total choice plus have alternative HD feeds?

Anyone have any ideas?

iotp, do you get 15.1 at all times of the day? The signal seems to be better at night than during the day. During the day, it falls down to below 40% for me and I can't pick it up. At night, it's up over 80%. I'm just a little North of you, sandwiched between Tatum Ranch and Dove Valley Ranch. All of the locals are solid for me except 15.x, which are all over the map.

Dan

Dan,

I work during the day so I cannot tell you about that.

Wifey is at home during the day and I have her pretty much watching the OTA locals, if there was a problem, I'd hear about it.

From what I have been experiencing since they turned back on about a week ago, no problems at all on 15.1 all points of the day.

So I get my daughter to bed, all ready to watch some recorded shows...

Went to watch "I wanna be a Hilton" recorded from 12.1 OTA, and not in the now playing list. After doing some digging I noticed the HD10-250 state "lost signal or no antenna on input 2".

Anyone see that last night?

I have a question, the answer to which might be pretty interesting to anyone in the Phoenix market. I don't understand the policy very well, but it seems that if you have an owned and operated station in your local market, DirecTV or DISH will allow you to receive, at no charge, a DNS HD station that carries that network's HD feed. For instance, KSAZ is owned by FOX/NewsCorp, so DTV allows anyone with a HD STB or HD PVR to receive KTTV-DT on channel 89.

If that is indeed the way things are supposed to work, should we not also be getting the UPN station HD feed from LA? (assuming it is available). If the only criteria is O&O, KUTP is also an O&O station (again, FOX/NewsCorp), and it carries UPN programming. Since there is no current Phoenix time-zone UPN HD feed available for KUTP to carry, having the LA UPN HD station available would come in very handy.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

DirecTV doesn't carry UPN HD, only the big 4 networks (that means no WB or PBS either). Plus, UPN is owned by Viacom (CBS, etc), so KUTP isn't actually O&O. KCOP (LA's UPN) is also owned by Newscorp, so it isn't O&O, and thus wouldn't be carried by DirecTV as a distant local.